I have to disagree here. The carpenter would ultimately had a similar quality of life with empire or without… Life in the west would be very different for sure, but i would not qualify it as worse. Consumerism would be replaced by a far more sustainable lifestyle and we would have replaced our incentives based on GDP long ago, but does not mean less quality of life, just a more just one.

I hear you Cowbee! I’ll be be reading that wiki page latter on today. But again, the regular European carpenter does not benefit from an “exploited” cheaper iron ore in the form of cheaper nails… Not even from cheaper wood, if anything, people will appreciate more wood and hire more carpenters to fix wood cabinets rather than dispose after being worn out… It is a complicated economy…Companies like Ikea do indeed benefit from exploitation, but not the Slovenian carpenter with a market with cheaper wood and cheaper nails.

Now, you could go with　that Ikea does benefit, so that those companies pay taxes that the carpenter will ultimately benefit from… I could see that, but, again, we know that these large corporation do not pay their fair taxes, let alone, compensate for the negative externalities they create, so i do see no net benefit to the average EU citizen on the exploitation their countries participate on.

That would be nice to debate, but I hardly see how that is possible. I see you posted that the EU does colonialism in Africa… The EU per se, only finances some NGOs that may have some hidden agenda but hardly substantial in those countries. The other EU’s domain is to assign free trade agreements with the poorest countries, but I don’t think it is conditional and hard to see as malicious. Now, the EU is clearly now exercising power well beyond its mandate and, what it is worse, for evil… Gosh, it is now even blatantly violitig it is own laws. What I do see exercising colonialism is by some member states, usually correlated with its own GDP and that they now shield themselves behind the EU flag.

That is what many “anti-colonial” gets wrong… they see it as a “white” vs “colored”; it is power against powerless. A carpenter in Slovenia does not have anything to do with colonialism in Africa, Americas or Asia, neither does a farmer in Salisbury or a fisherman in Bilbao… but their white vs colored argument is gold for the architects of colonialism since it shovels that carpenter, farmer and fisherman toward the powers be just for the skin color. Let us remember that groups of people, before embarking in colonialism, did not have any problem abusing and killing the neighbor. Racial distinction only became far more prominent in recent history.

When a neighbor to one side of your home actively participates is genocidal intent, and the other neighbor in the other side also does the same but he smiles at you and even lends you a cup of sugar when needed… I am sorry, but there is no “lesser evil” here… I will vote for anyone but any of them, even if there is no chance it will make a difference now!

However… that is not a ‘wasted’ vote, but actually an extremely important one… although for a longer term, for following elections. If Democrats see that they loose an election because they loose 3% of typical votes to a third party, they will try to accommodate the concerns of that 3% next time around. If that 3% keeps voting Democrats, there is no incentive to change. The same applies for the Republican side. If the big political parties don’t address that still, magic can happen, out of the blue, that 3% can become a 13% movement and donations start coming and in two or three years you have a chance of introducing a capable third party… either way is a win.

No voting, in theory, should have a similar wake-up power as a vote for a third party, but in reality it does not… in the mind of politicians it a much costlier vote to get to it ends usually dismissed as a lost cause; they don’t take much reading into 25% or 45% absentee vote… but 1% vote loss to the other side or a third party is watched as a hack, specially in highly polarized elections when it is hard to compensate that 1% loss with voters from the other side!

So mark what is your critical red lines and if no major party respects them, do vote for anyone, anyone that does, no mater how small… don’t try to do short-term political engineering since political parties have thousands of people far more capable than any of us at doing political engineering and start throwing around catchphrases such as “lesser evil” or that the other side is “fascist/communist” that is solely designed to leave you parallelized.

Finally, it is the problem of political deception. When it is so blatant in both sides, the same principle applies, vote for anyone, anyone that has not lied on your red lines so far, make your mark that you are sick of deceptions so politicians know they have to address it. Again, don’t try to find the lesser evil while indicating your neighbor that smiles at you, that you are okay tolerating with his crimes and deceptions.

I have to give it that the Fedora distros are a slightly bit superior to Ubuntu variants but for those that value some degree of not favoring corporate US (IBM/Red Hat) that provides AI resources for Israel’s military to do what it is doing… Myself I tried to like Mint, I really did… but could not… not just it is old-fashioned looking but has limitations with scaling and others.

Now, I do recognize for the initiators is it great! Now, for those that find Mint ugly I recommend TuxedoOS… I find it as good as Kubuntu but without its known limitations with flatpaks. Yes, TuxedoOS was created for Tuxedo laptops but they left it open to use it with others so no problems at all and very well maintained. Now, you may want remove the Tuxedo app that they installed just to free some resources… a 10-seconds thing to do. Drawback is servers in Germany so a bit slower updates than usual for most.

Countries like Baltic countries, Germany, Scandinavians and France (their leaders at least) are probably wondering if to simmer the drums till next US election, go all in themselves or change course with the head high. Europeans, rightly so, are not buying it and will not join any armed group even if constricted… and those leaders know it… so the dillenma is either to wait or how to get out. With Trump back, I was hoping, European leaders, in their highly antagonism to Trump, would reverse course, at least with Gaza… but not so… if Trump, does indeed reverse course… my gosh… The EU will be insignificant and a pariah in the global stage for decades to come.

As someone who publicly predicted Trump’s wins in both 2016 and 2024 (I live in the most representative county there is!) I can tell you Americans are fed up with war expenditures abroad (even they do benefit the US in the short run!). Specially with the Ukrainian so, even if a Democrat would win in 2028, he/she would not pull off tens of billions on aid to any country… that, it is going likely to be a heavy issue in next elections and even demand a commitment no for massive aid packagers. I think they will even include Israel in the restrictions.

There are some, and well know by the West in other to appease some EU region that cannot easily accommodate for the sanctions. Do you really, really, think is would it, in any shape or form, even noticeably by Moscow? Their economy is much faster growing with respect the EU and far more diversified in customers than 4 yrs ago (they need now to do it also in types of exported goods). Fr sure, Russia would like to normalize relations with the West, but if you give Moscow the choice of 5Billions trade in the West for the cost of 1Billion from Asia, he will chose to maintain the Asian one without any further thought.

It is so pathetic… I thought Russia was in maximum sanctions for 2 yrs already! These “leaders” do know better though, they just generate these acts with the hope something will get posted on their heavily subsidized media (it has been a decade since any publication can survive without being subsidized).

Russia is desperate to move one, Ukraine still in their delusion, but coming to terms with the reality, US wants to move on and the EU (north only) wondering how to maintain the war flame alive for 4 yrs and hope for a new Biden in 4 yrs. It won´t happen, here, in the US, people are increasingly getting tired of the billions spend abroad even in Israel, let alone in Ukraine (even though it most of that aid is in US weapons and services that Ukraine pays with the funds the EU gives). But yes, Macron does care that Russian-speaking in Donesk that for 11yrs have been disposed of all representation, cut from all social services and bombed daily will rejoin Kyiv like nothing happended.