#politics

See tagged statuses in the local bookrastinating.com community

Hello, Mastodon! People kept telling us to give you a try, so here we are are. If you're looking for a podcast about Europe that

- isn't boring
- isn't just for people inside the Brussels bubble
- celebrates a Europe much bigger than the EU
- covers politics and policy but also European book, film and TV recommendations
- is rigorously fact-checked but doesn't take itself too seriously

We're the podcast for you!

Elon Musk offered to help Twitter engineers reinstate Donald Trump's account after they struggled with glitches, book says

"Engineers struggled to find the capacity to rebuild the account's social graph, a task requiring millions of pieces of data to be activated and updated, Zoë Schiffer wrote in "Extremely Hardcore."

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-offered-help-twitter-engineers-reinstate-trump-account-book-2024-2

George Monbiot offers a concise summary of the current state of :

'demands oppression. The more concentrated wealth & power become, the more those who challenge the rich & powerful must be hounded and crushed. In other words, economic inequality is mirrored by inequality before the law. You can dispense with all the other indices of democracy. The best measure of the health of a political system is who gets prosecuted'!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/02/plutocrats-powerful-laws-uk-rich-corporations

A reminder that modern elections are won through turnout not by turning the other side. Yes, messaging is critical but not because you’re trying to convince your opponent that you have a better plan. It’s convincing your own side that the election is important enough to warrant their attention.

Here's Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic) on the *permanence* of wealth disparity in the USA...
_________________

The factual: America is not a bootstrap-friendly land. If you have money in America, chances very good are you inherited it.

American wealth is now dynastic, perpetuating itself and growing thanks to a whole Versailles' worth of courtiers: money managers, lawyers, and overpaid babysitters who can keep even the most Habsburg-jawed nepobaby in turnip-sized million-dollar watches and performance automobiles and organ replacements for their whole, interminable lives.

But it's not just that the American rich stay rich – it's that the American poor stay poor. America is a world-trailing loser in the international social mobility league-table. If you change classes in America, chances are you're a middle class person becoming poor, thanks to medical costs or another of the American debt-traps; or you're a poor person who is becoming a homeless person thanks …

Scale with many poor and middle class people on one side being outweighed by one very rich person on the other side.

Pay attention to what's happening in this case: the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals just essentially ruled that it's fully legal to jail journalists for reporting leaked information, or any information they obtain from government officials without going through "proper channels."

This is a serious issue for in , and and we should hope the Supreme Court sets things right quickly. https://www.texasobserver.org/priscilla-villarreal-journalist-la-gordiloca-fifth-circuit/ via @TexasObserver

We should do the same in the US!

A wave of protests continues in Germany against the activities of far-right forces and the right-wing populist pro-Russian party Alternative for Germany (AfD)

More than 80 protests against right-wing forces were registered across the country over the weekend. According to Tagesschau, the day before, in Potsdam, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Foreign Minister Annalena Bärbock joined the protests.

I'm looking for change.

Elections will not bring it,

But seeking truth will.

Change doesn't come about from a fresh new ruler. Or even a tired old leftover. Because rulers don't effect change for good, for humanity.

Change comes when real people live with integrity, treating others as they wish to be treated themselves.

Your Kingdom Come canvas print -- https://2-steve-henderson.pixels.com/featured/your-kingdom-come-steve-henderson.html?product=canvas-print

Canvas print of an artwork by Steve Henderson depicting a woman standing at the beach, arms overhead as she looks at the sunset. A verse is written to the side.