It’s amazing. Somehow China is currently managing to keep both Pakistan and India onside. I wonder how that came about…

Thanks for the insights!

Won’t they have the same issues though? It’s inherently difficult for large organisations (such as DHL, UPS, FedEx, …) to change processes to comply with regulations at very short notice. With de minimis exceptions stopped, that should affect all parcels coming into the United States no matter which company carries it.

Can someone who actually has the misfortune of living or having lived in Russia recently explain how widespread the use of this messenger is? I was under the impression that Telegram, despite also being a deeply problematic service, was the most popular chat tool there, even if the regime has been trying to discourage it recently. Can anyone give a first hand account?

My parents, who are now in their seventies, got life long multiple entry visas for the US back in the 1980. They were traveling through the Pacific and had a few beers with some people they met and mentioned that they needed to stop over in American Samoa. As it turns out one of these guys was the American ambassador to this minor Pacific nation, who granted them life long multiple entry visas. They haven’t been to the United States ever since but I guess these visas are now likely to be up for review…

As a Dutch person living abroad (even though only in neighbouring Germany) it’s true that our directness is sometimes seen as impoliteness. Most Dutch people I know mean absolutely no offence and just say out loud what they are thinking. Somehow many other countries prefer to skirt around uncomfortable direct communication.

I even understand much better why Germany fell prey to fascism at the time. Germans had gone through two million KIA, major territorial losses, a once in a century pandemic, hyperinflation, crippling economic war reparations and a once in a century economic depression in the span of less than twenty years and yet only a third of them voted for the fascist in the last free election. Keep in mind that democratic tradition was not firmly established in Germany by that point. Meanwhile US citizens have gone through a major economic crisis in 2008/9, a major pandemic and and increase in egg prices and suddenly more than half of voters there chose the fascist.

So we’re now at the stage where people risk being arrested without a charge by goons unwilling to properly identify themselves and then being killed because of that?

The current situation in the United States is eerily similar to 1930s Germany in my opinion. We’re probably just a few months away from political opponents being picked up on made up charges or even disappeared straight up.

As it turns out, it really didn’t have to. Brazil simply respected agreements instead of unilaterally reneging on them at short notice. If the World Cup ever comes to Brazil again, I’d recommend pulling a Qatar and just nodding along until two weeks before the tournament starts and then just changing the rules according to what you believe is correct.

We’ll have to wait for a full analysis first. However, Boeing is known for having lackluster quality control that has led to accidents in the past. If the company is indeed responsible for the crash, I fear that the current UD regime will likely do everything within its power to shield it from consequences.

Yes, the family reunification for people with this status has been a controversial issue in Germany for years. While some people end up with a refugee status similar to other countries, many others are recognised as “with subsidiary protection status” or even plainly have their application rejected altogether. Critics have long since advocated for an end to family reunification for people without full refugee status. Some have even proposed cutting social payments to non refugees like several other EU countries do. For now it’s only this somewhat limited measure, which is still controversial among the left. My personal prediction is that with far right political pressure increasing the current centre government in Germany will continue to develop its refugee and asylum policy more in the direction of Denmark and less in the direction of Merkel.

Canada used to be the largest source of international visitors to the United States by a large margin. I suspect that Canadians especially will take, on average, quite a bit of convincing to travel south of the border now.

The sender of the goods was a company from Spain, and the recipient was from Azerbaijan.

I’m sure these legitimate businessmen could perhaps consider transporting their wares via Turkey and Georgia? You know, along the well established transit route for commercial cargo between the EU and Azerbaijan.

Europe got lucky there. While I’m happy that Romanians chose wisely in the end, the margin is still very worrying for our future.

With initial, preliminary results from actual votes being counted now coming in it looks like Dan only has the slightest of leads thus far. Since this only includes votes from within Romania it now looks likely that the votes of Romanians living abroad will swing the election in favour of Moscow. It seems incredibly frustrating that people not living in the country get to (perhaps) change the outcome of the vote for the people who actually live within the country and therefore need to live with the consequences.

He is Catholic after all. Luckily I live in a jurisdiction where it’s legal to refer to the Catholic Church as a “cult of child fuckers”, which seems a very accurate description in my opinion.

He seems to be better than the last guy when it comes to Russia’s war. That guy really thought it was the fault of NATO/Ukraine/whoever…

The difference between a unilateral decision that blindsided the cult leader and a coordinated decision where the messaging is supposed to divert any future blame away from the cult leader is easy: was the person supposedly at fault fired? No? Then it’s all just talk, since the overall outcome nicely aligns with the policy goals of the red team.

I don’t want to excuse Netanyahu here. He certainly belongs behind bars in my opinion. However, he only holds a part of the world hostage rather than all of it. I see him on par with folks like Kim Jon Un or Mohamed bin Salman rather than Trump or Putin.