196
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
196 points (95.4% liked)
Europe
1509 readers
330 users here now
News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in !yurop@lemm.ee. (They're cool, you should subscribe there too!)
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
(This list may get expanded when necessary.)
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the mods: @federalreverse@feddit.org, @poVoq@slrpnk.net, or @anzo@programming.dev.
founded 4 months ago
MODERATORS
They are not assholes. They are in fact very smart and steadily moving towards their goal.
They are reducing applicability and efficiency of the means they themselves don't need. Their crimes are done the old-fashioned way, plus when you are a high-ranking official or a businessman or a politician, who'll even try to investigate you if you've done nothing clearly wrong?
By the way, I'm not saying it's a sign of some USSR 2.0 . Rather mafia becoming stronger. Well, look which people hold high posts in EU institutions. They are almost openly mafia tools.
You just described people looking after the interests of number 1 at the expense of others. We call them “assholes”. That’s the appropriate term for what you describe.
(btw, this is orthogonal to intelligence… there are smart assholes and there are stupid assholes).
O-okay, but then it's too weak a word.
Citation for what?
You're going pretty far calling all(?) influential EU politicians "mafia tools" whose deeds will not be investigated. I see that there's a certain lobbyist influence and surely a bunch of other corruption, affecting a number of politicians. But there's a lot less actual mafia influence and scandals are in fact uncovered regularly.
UvdL is an obvious mafia tool, Borrell too, Ylva Johansson is connected to a few things with clearly negative effect, that chat control of theirs included, and Kaja Kallas is a not too remote relative of Anton Vaino, who is the head of Russia's AP, and I've read they are not on bad terms.
Which would make sense with more mafia influence, not less.
I am still unclear on your definition of mafia. Do you count every lobbyist as "mafia"?
I'll try to illustrate what I mean and I'll also use examples of how the term "mafia" is usually used:
Prosecution usually means the judicial system is working. E.g., OLAF prosecuting the head of Frontex is imo a good sign, not a bad one. (Also, no, that guy isn't "mafia", he's just corrupt.)
No, I count Ilham Aliyev and Anton Vaino and Putin and Lukashenko as mafia. For European politicians connected to them - in the general meaning of the word, as in abusing their posts to help criminals kill people. For example, in Artsakh.
Italian mafia I actually consider beneficial against such people.