@chiraag@mastodon.online2025-10-31 03:02:35
RE: https://mastodon.social/@br00t4c/115466530764478786
Amazingly, I agree with MTG here. Republican men are pathetic.
... Republican women are pathetic as well, but her point still stands.
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-10-30 10:05:59
The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, <strike>so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left)</strike> a lot of folks don't agree. I'm going to let the comments speak rather than editorialize myself..
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties <strike>rarely</strike> never actually get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
#USPol #NLPol
@Mediagazer@mstdn.social2025-08-19 11:43:11
Nexstar agrees to acquire Tegna for $3.54B in a deal valued at $6.2B including debt, expected to close by H2 2026; Nexstar plans to pay $22 per share (Kritika Lamba/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/en/tv-broadcaster-nexstar-acquire-rival-tegna-35…
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-10-13 13:07:49
OpenAI agrees to acquire 10GW of chips from Broadcom and co-design custom GPUs with Broadcom to run its AI models; sources: the deal is worth multiple billions (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-broad…
@markhburton@mstdn.social2025-10-06 17:37:43
'while the British government “may not agree with the flotilla’s mission, they have a responsibility to their citizens.'
“They have not said a single word in public,” she said. “It’s inexcusable. They are meant to care about international law.”
US and UK 'immensely let down' families of detained Gaza flotilla activists | Middle East Eye
@gwire@mastodon.social2025-10-15 13:13:36
[briefly holds bridge of nose] "No, I agree that there should be more Edgar Allen Poe memes, but kids aren't referencing Amontillado when they say 'bricked up'."
@jhamel@social.linux.pizza2025-09-04 10:55:33