“NL seems to have lost faith in the market,” …

… says finance minister who has never worked in the private economy.

Just stumbled upon a new research identifies human rights abuses in battery supply chain – [archived link]:

Research from Infyos has identified that companies accounting for 75 per cent of the global battery market have connections to one or more companies in the supply chain facing allegations of severe human rights abuses […] most of the allegations of severe human rights abuses involve companies mining and refining raw materials in China that end up in batteries globally, particularly in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China.

The research company Infyos says that supply chain changes are needed to eliminate widespread forced labour and child labour abuses occurring in the lithium-ion battery market. It would be interesting to know what Mr. Sanchez says about this.

In other news this week, the Spanish PM is quoted saying he doesn’t want “a war, in this case, a trade war.” So what does he say about China’s support for Russia in its war in Ukraine, Beijing’s aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea against the Philippines, against Taiwan, Japan, Australia, and other Asian neighbours?

Ah, sorry für den Doppel-Post, das habe ich nicht gesehen.

Then click on the link and tell them your opinion (but let us try to be polite and not say ‘fck you’ and 'sht’ and things like that :-))

@wurzelgummidge@lemmy.world

He was convicted for rioting

No, just read the article. He was arrested on June 12 at a train station

wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times”, and a yellow mask printed with “FDNOL” – the shorthand for another pro-democracy slogan, “five demands, not one less”. June 12 is a date associated with protests in the city in 2019.

Your comments are fabricated, you’re posting biased quotes without providing a source. This does not contribute to a good internet culture.

This quote is not from the article. Where is it from?

And this person was wearing a t-shirt. He was convicted for wearing a t-shirt.

They don’t sink the boats, they are increasingly trying to keep them away from the border:

Europe Expands Virtual Borders To Thwart Migrants (February 2022) – [archived link]

If it were legal to deliver rescued migrants to Libya, it would be as cheap as sending rescue boats a few extra kilometers south instead of east. But over the last few years, Europe’s maritime military patrols have conducted fewer and fewer sea rescue operations, while adding crewed and uncrewed aerial patrols and investing in remote-sensing technology to create expanded virtual borders to stop migrants before they get near a physical border.

“The main reason is because the E.U. wants to step away from having proactive naval operations,” says international relations researcher Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, in Norway. Physical encounters with migrants involve at least two forms of legal jeopardy that European countries are trying to avoid: an obligation to rescue seafarers and, once they are on land, an obligation to evaluate any seafarers’ claims of asylum.

In the last five years, Europe has bestowed massive new regulatory and spending power on the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, known as Frontex, which has in turn issued contracts worth hundreds of millions of euros to major engineering firms for remote border-control hardware, software, and know-how. Europe’s research initiatives, treaties, and contracts reveal an interest in peering across the Mediterranean into North African countries and dissuading or preventing migration at its point of origin. Meanwhile, legal scholars and civil-society groups are asking whether a hands-off border can really keep Europe’s hands clean.

Francesco Topputo, an aerospace engineering professor at Milan Polytechnic, Italy, who has worked on satellite-based surveillance research, says that the fate of migrants detected by his system isn’t up to him: “I would say that it’s not the decision of the technicians, of the engineers…it’s our job to give the information to the authorities. It is a problem of the entire society.”

I’m from Europe and I’m kinda getting tired of reminding people from the US that your blind patriotism is just that…a blind spot that is used against the US citizens on every corner.

For starters, I/m from Europe, but my friends from the U.S. might not need to be reminded where they live, they know that themselves. And we are all tired of this whataboutism all over the place. There is a lot of criticism on the U.S., the surveillance there, and Clarence Thomas. The thing is that in these posts, there are no whataboutisms, no one commenting, “but in China …”.

As an addition:

• In 2015, two years after kicking off its massive Belt and Road initiative, China launched its “Digital Silk Road” project to expand access to digital infrastructure such as submarine cables, satellites, 5G connectivity, etc. In a report published this year, the UK-based human rights group ‘Article 19’ argues that the project is about more than just expanding access to Chinese technology, but rather to export its brand of digital authoritarianism across the word. Here is a brief article about it where you can also download the 80-page report (April 2024): China: The rise of digital repression in the Indo-Pacific – (Archived link)

• There is also an interesting first-hand research about how Chinese people cope with constant surveillance in their country by Canadian researcher Professor Ariane Ollier-Malaterre (March 2024): Digital surveillance is omnipresent in China. Here’s how citizens are coping (in French: La surveillance numérique est omniprésente en Chine. Voici comment les citoyens y font face)

As an addition:

• In 2015, two years after kicking off its massive Belt and Road initiative, China launched its “Digital Silk Road” project to expand access to digital infrastructure such as submarine cables, satellites, 5G connectivity, etc. In a report published this year, the UK-based human rights group ‘Article 19’ argues that the project is about more than just expanding access to Chinese technology, but rather to export its brand of digital authoritarianism across the word. Here is a brief article about it where you can also download the 80-page report (April 2024): China: The rise of digital repression in the Indo-Pacific – (Archived link)

• There is also an interesting first-hand research about how Chinese people cope with constant surveillance in their country by Canadian researcher Professor Ariane Ollier-Malaterre (March 2024): Digital surveillance is omnipresent in China. Here’s how citizens are coping (in French: La surveillance numérique est omniprésente en Chine. Voici comment les citoyens y font face)

I guess they can’t say much in this case. Maybe a bit whataboutism (chat control? Google does the same?), but you can’t defend this imo.

Thanks for this.

Maybe you know Total Trust, a documentary.

Total Trust is an eye-opening and deeply disturbing story of surveillance technology, abuse of power and (self-)censorship that confronts us with what can happen when our privacy is ignored. Through the haunting stories of people in China who have been monitored, intimidated and even tortured, the film tells of the dangers of technology in the hands of unbridled power. Taking China as a mirror, Total Trust sounds an alarm about the increasing use of surveillance tools around the world – even by democratic governments like those in Europe. If this is the present, what is our future?

If you speak German, you can watch it on Arte TV, but it is only available 3 more days.

Just a short article by Australian scholars (March 2024):

Could spending a billion dollars actually bring solar manufacturing back to Australia? It’s worth a shot

The government will spruik jobs in the regions, especially where retiring coal plants such as Liddell in New South Wales will take jobs with them.

But there are other benefits. We could take better advantage of the talent and research knowhow in Australia to begin building next-generation cells.

If we can kickstart a viable solar industry, it would help us unlock other parts of the green economy. Cheap and plentiful solar power could make it viable to crack water to make green hydrogen or make green steel and aluminium.

Many of these initiatives have to be set in train now to gain the benefits in five or ten years’ time. Today’s announcement is just the start. But in a sun-drenched country, it makes sense to aim for the skies.

This is a typical Axel Springer article, nothing but hot air.

They are citing a “diplomat”, a “second diplomat”, a “UK government official”, and “EU officials”, all anonymously, but heavily critical supporting a narrative suggested by the headline.

Then, at the end, there comes the first name, citing Anand Menon, director of the UK in a Changing Europe think tank, who says that “Brussels should wait […] before passing judgement …”

Yeah, and journalists should research information before publishing articles.

Addition: A friendly reminder that Axel Springer signed a deal last year with OpenAI on licensing news for model training for its ChatGPT. Whenever one uses OpenAI/ Microsoft’s ChatGPT, they yield something that is powered by a large amount of such Axel Springer ‘news’.

I don’t know exactly how Estonia handles this in detail, but it means that each buyer only gets a fraction of what they want to buy. Usually large funds get a bit more than retail customers as it is the case also here according to the numbers.

It means that Estonia is considered a trustworthy creditor.

Ah, never mind, you’ll bear with it (/satire, just to be safe).

A few numbers more:

Annual inflation in August 2024 was 9.05%, around the same level as in July 2024 when it was 9.13%.

Annual inflation rates in Russia this year (2024):

• January: 7.44%
• February: 7.69%
• March: 7.72%
• April: 7.84%
• May: 8.3%
• June: 8.59%
• July: 9.13%
• August: 9.05%

The slowdown in inflation in August was expected and is explained by the seasonal decline in the price of fruit and vegetables, according to Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) which these statistics all come from.

In January-August 2024, prices increased by 5.25%. In January-August 2023, prices increased by 3.70% (again, the data comes from Rosstat).

(It is noteworthy that the Jan-Aug 2023 rise of 3.70% is already high.)

As the article also states:

“The shortage of (labour) resources may lead to a situation where economic growth slows down, despite all the efforts to stimulate demand, with all that stimulus accelerating inflation,” Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina said over the summer.

[Edit typo.]

I’m wondering whether Mr. Sanchez has also discussed Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and other human rights issues when he was in China to negotiate China’s Envision investment of $1 bn in Spain a few days ago?

Because we don’t want a war. Neither a trade war nor a war in Taiwan, Ukraine, nor anywhere else.

Ja, aber wie kann man denen helfen, denen es nicht gefällt? Ich befürchte, dass das auch in Russland die meisten Eltern ablehnen …

I would expect the head of a government agency for psychological defence to be citing own sources and investigations, or, at least, from respected research organizations, rather than from an “influencer,” not matter who this is. The fact that Lauren Southern is far-right figure makes the thing even worse. (And, not to forget, a government official should not use Twitter at all.)

One reason may be that in Romania there is a law that prohibits shooting down drones in peacetime, but they’re gonna change that it seems:

Romanian lawmakers plan to consider legislation at their current session on enabling Romania to shoot down drones invading the country’s airspace in peacetime.