Populists tend to reject political pluralism.
They claim they are the ONLY ONES representing the people™. The danger is they can start attacking the media, judges... claiming that the people™ are on their side.
Uncontrolled populism can lead to dictatorship. Even left-wing populism. Look at Venezuela.
Step 1. People are angry
Step 2. Some weirdo gets elected President
Step 3. He starts threatening judges who rule against him, urging his supporters to harass them
Step 4. He starts suing newspapers and journalists, calling them fake news
Step 5 Tells his supporters that black people eat pets and are part of a global plot to replace Tunisians
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/23/tunisia-kais-saied-racism-migrants-black-tunisians/
Step 6. Calls the opposition is the enemy from within. Says the opposition supports terrorists and must be stopped/jailed
Step 7 . One night, he sends thugs to surround parliament and arrest the opposition
Step 8. His supporters are happy and defend him
Step 9. Dictatorship
Welcome to Tunisia.
Americans are at step 6. They just don't know it. They are deers in the headlights.
Let's hope Trump is too dumb to successfully pull that off.
Hamas has prisoners, it’s the propaganda that calls them hostages. If you want to call them hostages, you should call the prisoners that Israel has hostages as well.
Actually, propaganda is what you are doing.
A hostage is someone :
1. That isn't sentenced for anything.
2. That can not be precisely located anywhere.
3. That doesn't know if he will be released or killed by his captors.
For instance, Nelson Mandela wasn't a hostage. He was a prisoner.
(A political prisoner is still a prisoner)
I hate this so much: why would Palestinian journalism be more “difficult to independently verify” than Israeli journalism?
BBC has experienced journalists inside Israel. They aren't allowed into Gaza.
The BBC has asked to be allowed inside Gaza, but Israel refused:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2025/short-film-launch-calling-for-gaza-access
https://reutersagency.com/media-centre/joint-statement-on-gaza-from-reuters-afp-ap-and-bbc-news
They are forced to rely on social media and free lancers.
I lived in Canada for a while. Quebec to be precise.
I would argue the biggest interference in the country is perhaps the United States.
All these newspapers belong to Post Media, a company owned by americans living in New Jersey.
One of the biggest lobbying organization in Canada is actually american. Microsoft Canada very aggressively lobbies the federal government, provinces and even the small cities. Because they want them to keep buying expensive Microsoft Office licenses and expensive Microsoft Windows licenses. They don't want Canadian institutions to use Linux or LibreOffice.
This is actually bad news.
Don't get me wrong. Joseph Kabila was a vicious kleptocrat who ruled Congo for too long.
But what makes him a truly extraordinary figure is that after mass protests and international pressure, he said he was ready to voluntarily resign. Most African leaders would rather burn their country to the ground rather than resign.
The international community and his successor promised Joseph Kabila that would not be prosecuted. So Kabila decided to leave office. There was an incredibly peaceful transition of power. No one imagined it would be possible in Africa.
There is one law that all political scientists agree about : Monarchies are the political systems the most likely to transition to democracies.
Why ? Because a powerful monarch like King Abdullah of Jordan can give up political power. He will keep his bodyguards, his big salary, his cars, his palaces. He will see no changes to his lifestyle.
Presidents like Vladimir Putin or Abdelfattah Sisi can't do that. If they give up power, it's over 💀
If dictators know that leaving power means their death, they will fight to death rather than resign.
Iran is a country with remarkably smart people.
But it's not the smart people who are in charge. It's the dumb ones.
About 40% of the Iranian population is dumb as a fucking rock. They are absolutely TERRIFIED of women who don't wear a veil. They have spent billions on militias slaughtering Syrians. They think old Mullahs are the most pure humans on earth. They hate homosexuals. They hate atheists. They banned dog walking (yeah really).
And it's these 40% idiots who are ruling the country.
Never let religious people in charge of a major country. It can only end badly.
(This is exactly what americans are doing right now by the way. The super religious crazies from the Southern States won power with Donald Trump. Now he is slashing science budgets to make them happy)
What exactly is Russia ? Russia is a gas station with nukes.
Luckily, they can count on millions of car-addicts and millions of plastic bottle addicts around the world.
If we reduced car dependency and encouraged people to use glass bottles, the price of oil would crash and Russia would feel pain.
He is a lying piece of shit. But I'm definitely not saying he is dumb.
I actually wrote "he is extraordinarily smart."
He is very good at hiring smart engineers and making them work like dogs.
He tells them BS about how sleeping at work will save the world and save humanity. He hires smart people then takes credit for whatever they produce.
A lot of these engineers are technically good but they have zero life experience. Musk love young people like this. It's exactly the kind of people he hired at DOGE.
I don't like him. He is a cunt.
But he is extraordinarily smart. No doubt about it.
He called himself the Chief Engineer at Space X. In fact, he doesn't know shit about engineering. He has no engineering degree. He just hires young engineers, make them work like dogs, and constantly takes credit for anything they achieve. Once they burnout, he kicks them out and replaces them.
He uses his celebrity to attract more young engineers. He actually has an entire team that visits engineering schools and tells young graduates "You have the ability to work for a genius and go to Mars. Wanna join Elon ?". Again, he knows nothing about engineering. He has a financial degree from the Wharton School of Finance.
Elon Musk presents himself as the founder of Tesla. Tesla was actually created by Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard. He simply invested in their company, fired them both, and sued them both. Then, he called himself the original founder of the company.
In exchange of a confidential legal settlement ($$$), Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard must agree to stay silent. A lie repeated 50 times, 100 times, 1000 times, becomes reality. So, many outlets now call Musk the founder of Tesla. Perception shapes reality.
One of the reason he bought X is to shape the algorithm. He has urged millions of dumb people to buy Tesla stocks. And it's working. Dumb people regularly see random accounts on their X feed praising Elon Musk as a genius. And these dumb people actually believe it.
The same way, dumb americans on X constantly saw random accounts attacking Kamala Harris during the 2024 election campaign. At no point did they find it actually suspicious ("Why am I seeing this content ?"). And it played a key role in the election of Donald Trump.
Before the election, Musk was asked how much money DOGE might save. “We can do at least two trillion” he said. At the end of the day, he didn't save shit. But he successfully fired every regulator that was investigating SpaceX or Tesla. That was his real goal.
Reuters and the New York Times published two very good investigations about how Musk knowingly sold defective cars:
🔵 https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/
You will never guess how Elon reacted 🙃
He started telling people on X :
Translation: "Please don't read quality journalism. That would be super bad for me."
This man is the proof that technical knowledge doesn't matter in business. If you are absolutely shameless and skilled at manipulating fools, you can be highly successful.
- Customer: My iPhone cable doesn't work. It's strange because I bought it recently 😢
- Apple: Have you considered buying a new cable ? It's only 22 euros 🙂
Apple is a corporation that makes 30% operating margins.
https://companiesmarketcap.com/apple/operating-margin/
That means that on average, for any product sold $100, they make $30.
Apple also hates open source software. They use their proprietary operating system to jail users. They force developers to pay huge fees. This is total abuse. Imagine if Microsoft suddenly banned Windows users from installing software outside Microsoft. Imagine if Microsoft required developers to pay them if they want to make software.
Fuck them.