In that case, the orange mob boss has nothing to worry about…

Lately, I’ve been wondering more and more often what it would take for the American people to oust this regime from office.

A good example of how fundamental religious belief is nothing more than mental illness.

The reason seems rather to be that these people are deliberately and very demonstratively protecting their own underage daughter because they are fully aware of what their “conservative” peers have in mind for her.

That’s true, but this misunderstanding may be due to the fact that what is sold as AI today is by no means what movies like Terminator are about.

Yes, it is unfortunately becoming increasingly clear that even in the EU, billionaires and their companies are above the law. The legal situation should be clear here and there should be consequences - but there apparently aren’t any.

Unfortunately, this applies not only to Twitter, but to most US tech giants in particular, to meta, for example. I have already stopped counting the massive violations of the GDPR that meta and others are constantly committing, because nothing happens anyway. If anything, the fines are so low that violating the law brings these companies far more revenue than it costs them.

So unfortunately, the same major issue that brought the US to the brink of a straight up dictatorship also applies in Europe: even the most blatant violations of the law have no serious consequences for the richest of the rich – and that is why billionaires are becoming more and more powerful.

The situation may be better in the EU for now than in the US, whose legal system obviously no longer even maintains the appearance of fairness, but even in the EU, the enforcement of the law is miles away from anything that could even remotely be called justice.

The reason seems to me to be the same as in the US: concentration of power in a tiny billionaire class that asserts its influence through corruption.

I think that if things continue like this, and I see no indicators that they will not, it will not be long before even the appearance of justice is abandoned in the EU as well.

Edit: Here is an example of how this is possible - it’s just plain old corruption, but in the highest ranks of our institutions: From Meta to the EU Parliament: Former chief lobbyist negotiates data protection (German article)

Aura Salla was Meta’s chief lobbyist in Brussels for many years. Her task: to convince politicians to weaken EU digital rules such as data protection in order to generate even higher profits with Facebook, WhatsApp, and other platforms.

I vote and regularly attend protests, but lately I’ve also been pointing out to people on social media that whataboutism is not very effective.

Please explain it to me. And by that I don’t mean a general explanation of how journalism works, because I probably know a whole lot more about that than you do, but an explanation of why you believe that the US, together with Israel, should not be held responsible for the murder of innocent children. And then I would also like to know what your motivation is for defending the current US regime, because I don’t understand it.

Yes, I’m simplistic when it comes to this: I wouldn’t accept being ruled by organized crime that covers up its heinous crimes by starting a war. But hey, it’s nice that you know the names of two renowned psychologists.

I have given up hope that the US population can be counted on. They have allowed too many atrocities to happen, and it is equally obvious that they will not even act for their own sake.

I simply do not accept arguments such as “there is no evidence,” because only the worst can be expected from the US - the evidence is the president who leads the US.

Looking at the comments here, even here in the Fediverse, it’s quite easy to understand how the US regime is possible despite its completely obvious depravity.

I didn’t want to start a discussion about the pros and cons of megathreads, I just wanted to ask whether this is common practice in the Fediverse. That doesn’t seem to be the case - and for good reason, given the decentralized nature of the network. For the sake of simplicity, it would be welcome for some topics, but I’m sure we’ll manage just fine without it.

I’m on Piefed(.social). However, the discussion is still mainly taking place on Lemmy. If there is such a megathread on the war in Iran on .world, for example, I can’t find it.

Thank you very much for the explanation :)

Can someone explain this to me? I’m out of the loop when it comes to mainstream social media, and I suspect that’s what this is about…

Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll definitely take a look at that. It’s remarkable how the US has managed to maintain an image of “freedom” for years, even though it uses autocratic surveillance methods not only only on any other country but on its own citizens - and also for years and years. You almost have to be grateful to Trump for revealing all this in such an incredibly stupid way, just to enrich himself.

In 2020, the European Court of Justice declared the Privacy Shield agreement, an agreement on data exchange with the US, incompatible with European law and thus effectively terminated it, not because of the activities of any corporations, but because data stored on US servers is not sufficiently protected from access by the US government (Schrems II ruling). The reason for this is the absurd legislation in the US, such as the Patriot Act, which, although it has been weakened, still allows the state to force any company or private individual to hand over all data processed on servers physically located on US soil, even without any suspicion or a court order.

As a result, all US companies doing business in the EU were forced to operate servers on European soil in order to continue their activities legally. European companies that used US providers that did not comply had to switch to providers that do not operate servers in the US.

Unfortunately, it took only 21 months for US lobbying to undermine the European Court of Justice’s decision: in 2022, a follow-up agreement was adopted, the “EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework,” which is no different from its predecessor at all. The legal situation remains the same in the US, and once again there is no protection of data from the US government.

In short, anyone who uses services that are processed on US servers is not protected from arbitrary access by the US - and this also applies to EU citizens.

I don’t feel sorry for anyone sitting there.

I think it’s fair to say that pretty much all the dystopian visions of the future from literature and films have now become reality. Brave new world…

Yes, absolutely, I completely agree: the Panama Papers already made this very clear - and the fact that not one of those who benefited most from this outrageous multi-billion-dollar fraud against citizens was ever prosecuted already showed that both the law enforcement agencies of the countries and the political leadership are so deeply infiltrated that they simply do not fulfill even their most basic duties anymore. In other words: corruption on a scale that one can only conclude that even most of the remaining democracies must be rotten to the core.

And yes, you are also absolutely right with the second point: Nazi ideology has always been closely linked to the interests of business magnates. That is where the term fascism, as originally coined by Mussolini, comes from: autocratic rule by the economic elite.

What I wanted to point out with the example of the US, and specifically the Eppstein affair, is simply another example of how billionaires have now apparently come to the conclusion that, thanks to their corrupt accomplices in the corridors of political power, they are untouchable - and this is precisely how the US president is acting, who should actually have been in prison for decades for countless serious crimes. Unfortunately, he is not, but is now leading the US as the spearhead of international organized crime, which is unfortunately still not called that because, despite its obviousness, it is secured by state pseudo-legitimacy.

Edit: Another example from Europe is the CumEx scandal - here, too, the massive profiteers, all of whom are billionaires, have never been prosecuted for their massive tax fraud amounting to billions; only a few scapegoats have been convicted.