https://nos.nl/artikel/2561959-belgische-geneeskundestudent-die-schuldig-is-aan-verkrachting-wordt-geschorst

They changed it though. Now they are saying she wanted him to be ineligible to practice medicine.

It is quite safe. What I heard about this case is that the victim was happy with the outcome.

They met at a party, she was drunk. He said he asked consent, she said he raped her. There was no evidence or allegation of force, just that she couldn’t have consented in her drunken state.

He had a clean record.

He got convicted and ordered to pay €3500 and if he commits another crime, then this one will count too.

She was satisfied with the outcome. She especially wanted recognition that it was rape.

I think this is a good outcome. If he ever rapes someone again, he’ll be a serial rapist and get the book thrown at him.

And on the flipside, I find it difficult to throw the book at people under the circumstances in these kind of cases.

Not in the US, but it would make more sense to spread it out over multiple years to avoid the tax.

Genocide is not just about numbers. If the Bosnian genocide qualifies as a genocide, then Gaza definitely qualifies too.

In my view, the Gaza genocide is also worse than the Holocaust in many respects. For one, most Germans didn’t know about, or support, genocide, nor did the Nazi’s have any kind of democratic mandate.

Whereas in the US and Israel, this is the first time a democracy is committing genocide with popular support.

By all accounts, China isn’t killing Uyghurs, but re-educating them.

The Uyghur genocide is better described as a cultural genocide, not a real genocide.

It is still awful, still bad. But it doesn’t involve large scale murder and it doesn’t meet the criteria used to qualify as a legal genocide.

In contrast, the Gaza genocide is definitely a genocide, as was the trail of tears.

I have only seen them online. I figure they are trolls or bots.

But I do think that China has a better human rights record than the US and Israel.

They are still evil in how they treat Uyghurs, Tibetans and democracy activists. They definitely use torture on dissidents.

But it’s not that difficult to be better than slavery, genocide, war and colonialism. And the US and Israel also use torture.

So maybe I am the tankie that OP refers to.

Not all religions claim to know everything.

Yes, the ones that do tend to be violent and oppressive, so I understand the criticism.

But many religions are more about searching truth, learning to love each other and have community. And their followers definitely tend to be modest and have a “I don’t know enough” mentality.

I once read an article many years about how arsonists were burning expensive cars in Berlin. The journalist indeed reported that they would light barbecue starters under the tires.

If I recall correctly, they would even place it a little bit further under the car (i.e. not the outside) so that any passerbys wouldn’t notice anything until the tire was properly burning.

This was before Tesla’s though, which have a sentry mode

With the more recent cases, I have read that they smash the windows and throw Molotov cocktails inside, but I think that would draw a lot of attention and make alarms go off.

On the other hand, I think this method might have less risk of the sentry mode filming.

The US still holds about $100B in oil money it stole from Iraq.

But it actually stole way more, perhaps more than a trillion, which Iraq had to pay to private US contractors. The American taxpayers and soldiers got fleeced in that war, too.

Also the post-WW2 world order heavily favours their economy.

Their allies buy their debt, and their weapons. They give access to theiir markets to US companies, and support US wars around the world. They invest in the US economy in an unbalanced way that favours the US economy.

And all of this was in exchange for US security.

Thanks for posting.

That war cost a million Iraqi lives (calculated by excess deaths). And not to forget all the others killed by the sanctions in the 90s and the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s, where the USA actually allied with Saddam and egged him on to start it.

For Iraq, the USA truly was the evil empire.

I read that Ubuntu is trying to solve this with the Snap Store.

But to be honest, I’m just not the target demographic for that.

I honestly think if the EU had continued with rolling out Mandrake and SuSe to public sector employees 20 years ago, Linux would be dominant today. Microsoft lobbied hard to stop it.

And I think the way forward will be to have a handful of big customers making the switch. Either China or the EU will probably drive this.

Maybe Huawei might sell MacBook alternatives based on Linux. Or the EU might revisit that old SuSe/Mandrake strategy.

I agree, except that I wouldn’t classify Israel as a top intelligence power.

Their dependence on the USA is immense.

For European purposes, Egypt (Suez) and Turkey (both Bosporus and the land link to Asia) are the most important regional allies. Both or very populous and could become a new source of cheaper labour, now that Eastern EU countries are becoming more expensive.

Iran, Iraq and the Gulf countries are important as long as we can’t have Russian and/or American fossil fuels. But even then, Turkey and Egypt are the broker between us and them.

We will have to see.

Apple can charge $400 more, but if Samsung doesn’t, then they will lose market share.

And the EU is still one of the worlds three biggest markets.

So I am not really concerned.

And worst case, I switch to a Fairphone, which might not be bleeding edge, but it is still a better phone than my previous gen flagship Samsung or the flagship iPhone that came before it.

I see it as just running 2 years behind.

Also, when it comes to Russia, Ukrainian intelligence is top notch due to historical ties.

But TBH, I do think Europe needs to find a way to make peace with Russia and with the Middle-East, specifically Turkey, Egypt and Iran.

They are our direct neighbours. The cold war idea that we could have a powerful friend across an ocean, while having strained relationships with our direct neighbours just isn’t going to be a good strategy going forward.