AfD getting stronger

Daily Life, Swiss News and General Topics
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Brussels orders X to hand over documents on algorithm

Brussels has ordered Elon Musk to fully disclose recent changes made to recommendations on X, stepping up an investigation into the role of the social media platform in European politics. The expanded probe by the European Commission, announced on Friday, requires X to hand over internal documents regarding its recommendation algorithm. The Commission also issued a “retention order” for all relevant documents relating to how the algorithm could be amended in future.

The move follows complaints from politicians in Germany that X’s algorithm is promoting content by the far right ahead of the country’s February 23 elections. Musk has come out in favour of Alternative for Germany (AfD), arguing that it will save Europe’s largest nation from “economic and cultural collapse”. The German domestic intelligence service has designated parts of the AfD as right-wing extremist.

From here.

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Good…! They can start repaying all the money Germany gave them.
Looking at you Greece and Italy, especially Greece and looking at you especially hard.

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The problem was that at least part of the money given to PIGS states was used to buy stuff from Germany.

The old George Best quote of „Booze, birds, fast cars, the rest just squandered“ comes to mind…

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And the rest was used to bail out those who lent money to Greece :slight_smile:

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Given what Meta has just admitted, shouldn’t they ask them as well?

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I am always puzzled by the appeal of a “strong leader”. Churchill was the big exception and in times of peace he was a failure. The Russians have suffered ever since Ivan the terrible and when they did get a chance with Gorbi, they threw it away. European carnage is down to strong leaders over the centuries, I think without exception. The Swiss model is not so stupid, no leader, no problem

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110

yep, shudders me every time I hear or read it.

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I suppose it is how we are wired as a species.
Tribal leader, head man, chieftain, King, Big Brother, emperor, Duce, Führer, Hegemon, whatever you want to call it, we will always look to a leader.
Now I believe that Gorbachew was the right leader at the right time for the dissolution of the UdSSR but he was internally regarded as weak and that he lost the CCCP to the west.
It did not help that “The West” took the remains of the UdSSR to the cleaners leaving an economic vacuum during the Boris Jelchin years. All this paved the way for another strong leader, our buddy Putin.
One could say that Putin was enabled by American predatory capitalism.

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my wiring must be totally messed up.
Glad it is though.

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People are always looking for these things: security, direction, purpose.
Even if they think they aren’t looking, they still gravitate towards these pillars.

Kings (together with churches) provided that for a long time (until they didn’t anymore) - but it goes way back right to our primeval ancestors, I believe most primate species have some sort of group-leader.

Anyway, people are wired to want someone at the top that can - at times - tell them what do do, and why.

Now, if you take a step back, Germany hasn’t had such a person at the top for quite some time - some might argue the last one was Helmut Schmidt.

Angela Merkel was, in retrospect, pretty famous for just coasting along, trying to upset nobody and follow trends determined by opinion polls.

Her successor thought doing the same was a recipe for success. Then came the SMO…

People are starting to realize that the time to coast along has ended.

The appeal of people like Elon Musk is that he has built companies that give people a purpose beyond making money (for the owner…), a higher goal.

For Tesla, it was de-carbonization of individual transport, for SpaceX it’s nothing less than making humans a multi-planetary species.

As for AfD - well, they want to provide direction, purpose. But it’s not quite there. Too many weird members and representatives with revisionist understanding of history. Nobody needs those.

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A YouGov poll from a few days ago shows 76% of Germans believe Elon’s interference in their election is unacceptable

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I think that they will lose the election, of course, hopefully… But they will come close enough to spend the next legislatur doing a bit of navel searching and by the elections after next they will have learned to reign in the crazies, that is when I am worried.

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That is absolutely laughable. If you’d have compared to coal or lignite I would have agreed. But wind…?

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I guess Ovomaltine refers to SF6-Gas in wind turbines.

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Then he should also mention it is equally used in most other power generation methods apart from solar. It is not used in the Wind turbine but in the switchgear.

Its use is being greatly reduced generally.

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Is this a justification for attacking Ukraine? The West took to the cleaners all of us, yet not everyone will attack their neighbours because the transition from communism to capitalism has failed too many people and we’re still suffering from the mistakes made in the '90s.
Russia is not exactly the victim here. Russia too pursued its interests in the region. It is still doing so.

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120

Well… yes… no… in part.
Putin did not attack Ukraine just for shits and giggles, you know my opinion on this. He did it to stop the Krim from falling under western influence which would have happened if Ukraine had stayed on the pro-west course it was, or is, on.
Perhaps it all could have been resolved via treaty and diplomatically, and for a long time i believed that, perhaps I still do, but then again he could have seen nato as being weak and unwilling to get involved thus giving him a chance to solve the problem with a Blitzkrieg.
Clearly that has failed and now we have the Salad.

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The war was almost certainly avoidable, Stoltenberg is on record saying that Russia sent Nato a draft of the treaty they wanted. Also recall that Biden and Putin met in Geneva in June 2021, at that time Russia had already positioned some 100k soldiers along the border.

Putin has also confirmed the 2022 Istanbul peace talks. While the war had already started, only relatively few had already been killed by then. But warmonger Biden couldn’t have that.

The US never had a problem with other nations paying the price for their expansionist politics, remember SecState Madeline Albright saying “this is a price we’re willing to pay” on the 500k Irak children the US sanctions were predicted to kill in the 90ies.

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ROFL

As to the election that this thread is about, the AfD and BSW positions on Ukraine alone are for me so disqualifying that anything else they platform does not even matter. Not that there is anything worthwhile anyway, in particular in the AfD.

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I had a discussion t´other daay, doown´t pub.
The general thought is that the AfD started out as a real alternative to the established parties, a counterweight to the overbearing big parties but by now that they have been overtaken by the right wingers and populists and Make-Germany-great-agan crowd. Even those who wish to be able to sing “Erika” in public again are wondering what the hell happened.