I can understand why governments would push for something like this after 9/11, though it of course goes without saying that this is a totally unacceptable violation of someone’s basic rights. It also goes without saying that governments always want more control over their citizens, but what exactly are they so worried might happen, right now, in 2025 or the near future?
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EU is fasttracking the Fourth Reich. Can’t have totaliarism without complete communication control.
European elites are worried about losing control, and they are responding by restricting freedoms.
The Palestine/Gaza issue is one concrete example: European elites are very pro-Israel and pro-Genocide. But they have completely failed to control the narrative and European populations are not as pro-Israel as their elites.
They might also be getting cocerned about people finding out that elites routine participate in sexual abuse of children.
I don’t see how any regime can maintain legitimacy if normies finally grasp the scope of the issue.
They are prepping to rule by force, fuck your consent.
They will rape children and jack shit you can do about it.
Gaza
Does Israel have that much sway over Europe? The Germans are perhaps still motivated by guilt over the Holocaust, to the extent that they’re willing to look the other way while another one is being committed. Makes sense, right? 🤦 Pure insanity.
Denmark decided against banning genital mutilation of boys (girls are thankfully already banned), just after Israel said they’d view it as antisemitic, and would take economic steps against Denmark if they (we) banned it. The danish government went into a complete fucking panic and shut down all talks about banning it.
For some retarded reason, the world actually gives a shit what Israel thinks…
Please don’t tarnish your quality comments with ableist slurs so I won’t have to regret needing to remove them.
europe, despite its efforts to keep up appearances, has been lieutenants of the american empire since bretton woods. they reap the benefits of american empire and in return they never question or undermine it
Honestly I’m not entirely convinced the Germans ARE motivated by guilt; it seems to me more that they’re not happy with the image they created among their (perceived) peers and are now trying to create a new image to be seen by. They want TO BE SEEN as having overcome their past and become better for it, but the idea that they’ve fundamentally changed is a joke. They committed atrocities in Namibia for example but have never paid reparations to the people there, and of course why should they? Other European countries rag on Germany for the holocaust, none of them give a damn about the atrocities committed against the Herero people.
They bend over backwards for Israel because they don’t want to be mocked as Nazis; they want to continue viewing themselves in the same lofty position they see other Western European countries in.
This. I always side eye people when they rag on Japan for not being publicly repentant about WW2 atrocities. I never hear Europeans tip toe and apologetic about Africa and especially not Asia. Americans are verbally repentant about slavery but not Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, … Native Americans are mostly ignored and native Hispanic may as well not exist. Afghanistan and Iraq are referred to mostly as a waste of time and money rather than as terrible atrocities committed by us. Zero concern or feelings of responsibility for latin American imperialism by the US. Presumption of practically any immigration Muslim men of being problematic but little to no concern for the imperialism of their homelands that made them want to leave
I get annoyed at leftist meetings where people get annoyed at immigrants and their children for being successful because they must have come from money for their family to immigratr to the anglosphere or Europe. What money are modern people thinking people from Afghanistan came here with. The families from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia that came in the 70s-80s. China didn’t really become wealthy until the last couple decades and most Chinese people in the US are from before the 90s. Insane poverty back then. Very interesting times in the west these days. Conservatives are crazy but leftist are starting to get a bit xenophobic and ignorantly presumptuous and blaming of immigrants in my opinion too. I’ll add that I don’t hear resentment about immigrants being successful from the former Yugoslavian states from back during the Yugoslav wars in the 90s
“To any Westerners losing sleep over the situation in Ukraine: Just pretend it’s happening in Africa.” —Sergei Lavrov (paraphrasing)
Are those people actually leftists? Because they sound like liberals, not socialists.
Not truly leftist but in times of frustration people look for a group to feel acknowledged so even if they’re not an ideologue, they’ll comingle and the not true leftist, opportunistic “leftist”, outnumber the ideological leftist. Has to be watched out for in caution of them hijacking organizations to drum up a populist anti-immigrants/racist movement that adopts some leftist terminology for marketing.
Corporate/imperialist Republicans courted evangelicals for votes but didn’t want to enact policy of evangelicals until evangelicals took over enough of the party positions. That’s a caution for socialist commingling with labor activist that are really just about their paycheck rather than being about labor. I’m all about labor unions but I know labor unions are filled with people happy to pull up ladders and scapegoat out groups
German philosophy professor: Guilt Pride: A German Vanity Project Conquering the World
70 years of propaganda has its roots deep in generational beliefs that any criticism of Israel’s actions as a nation state could only be rooted in their ethnicity and religion and therefore must be countered.
No one wants to criticize privacy-invading “think of the children” laws for fear of being seen as a pedo or pedo-enabler, and likewise no one wants to stand up against Israel for fear of being seen as a Jew-hating antisemite.
I see the parallels, but is it really causal? I feel like this was going to happen given the state of net neutrality in general with or without Gaza.
In terms of “why?” it’s not causal on its own, but in terms “why now?” I believe it is. It’s the two-by-four that broke the camel’s back.
That’s a good point. I’ve been thinking of it as a natural progression of the anti net neutrality/“protect the children” pushes we’ve been seeing in the states. Tbh I thought it seemed more in character for a government like the UK.
it was always going to happen eventually, but the situation with gaza lit a fire under its urgency and you can see it happening for yourself as the west is capturing moderation on all centralizated social media platforms via appointing of idf & isreali officials/officers.
It’s the frustration of European elites who realized that they can’t control the narrative anymore. Gaza is one prominent example, but not the only one.
You expect this scenario to somehow be an exception to
?
It’s not so much that Isreal does, but for all intents and purposes Israel = America. It’s our colonial outpost in the Middle East, an “unsinkable aircraft carrier”, and as Joe Biden said, “if Isreal didn’t exist, we would have to invent it”. And as much as Europeans don’t want to believe it, most European countries are American vassal states. Look at the pictures of all of your leaders gravelling at Trump’s feet and literally calling him “Daddy”.
Gaza is only the beginning. They are also preparing for mass unrest at home as standards of living worsen. Just this week the German chancellor said Germany “can no longer afford the welfare state”, meanwhile they are spending record amounts on arms. They are preparing for millions of climate refugees at their borders.
You should expect and prepare for a lot more Gazas all over the world in the future. Your leaders are.
It’s partly because of the guit of holocaust, but also because they just don’t personally want to lift a finger regarding Palestine. It’s a toxic mixture of inbred zionism, cold geopolitical calculus, appeasing the US in trying time in transatlantic relations, and neocon hubris. They maybe can bend to appease their own populations, but they really are not prepared to stop Israel and they would much rather help them. They just want the genocide to happen, but quietly and out of sight and no protests.
But it’s not really just Gaza. They do this because of Ukraine, rising cost of living, European humiliation in from of Trump, falling economy, their own unpopularity, etc… They are fearing the upheaval and people getting ideas when Brussels doesn’t seem to have any of it’s own. Remember that these are the same people who though that the end of the soviet union was the end of history and they are the culmination of humanity. They cannon accept being wrong or stepping down at this point.
I think the question isn’t “why are Western countries afraid of Israel” or “why does the West fear its citizens criticizing Israel,” but “what are Western countries planning to do in the near future (especially with the climate crisis) that requires them to support Israel and learn from it right now?”
Authoritarianism, and Russia wanting more blackmail material.
it looks like they’re just realizing that they can push it this far and people won’t really fight back about it
Fascism or at least the police state politicians are getting a lot of funding because information is profitable.
Totalitarianism.
People outside Europe doesn’t understand how our governments are speed running getting a totalitarian government. More and more aspects of anyone’s everyday life are getting controlled everyday.
Here they are already starting a system of garbage bags with nfc tags to have our garbage controlled.
At the end of the day they are thirsty for power and control.
Sounds like a great way of getting people to throw their garbage in any place other than the bag…
Which country is it?
Spain. They have started in some regions. And they are aiming for a national implementation in a few years.
🫂
Because there’s a surge of fascism and they think they can get it
We are realistically looking at losing between 200 million and 1 billion people over the next 20 years due to climate-change induced famine and heat stroke. Those are realistic estimates. More optimistic scenarios could make that number less, more pessimistic ones could reduce it. We are on the eve of what future histories may refer to as the Great Hunger.
Even for those lucky enough to not live in regions being rendered uninhabitable, the quality of life for the average citizen is collapsing. The developing world will experience mass famine. The developed world will experience food prices not seen since the advent of mechanized agriculture. Home prices will continue to become more unaffordable, as more and more homes are destroyed by rapidly increasing natural disasters. In the US, tens of millions of homeowners are going to have their primary asset, their homes, rendered completely worthless after they become uninsurable. Governments can try to prop up the insurance market if they want, but not even national governments have the resources to subsidize an insurance market in an era of spiraling natural catastrophes.
Leaders around the world see a future of chaos, famine, and strife. Really all the Four Horseman are coming out. In developed countries, leaders fear millions of desperate poor people from developing countries trying to cross their borders. Internally, they fear violence by their own populations, who are seeing their standard of living rapidly collapse.
The borders are being locked down. The walls are going up. People everywhere are being increasingly surveilled and controlled. Political leaders might be cynical enough to deny climate change for political gain, but that doesn’t mean they’re ignorant to the actual future we’re running headfirst into. Technology is also advancing, allowing “mass shooter” type individuals to potentially cause much larger acts of destruction in the future.
Most governments would prefer to maintain power by actually improving the lives of their citizens. That’s the safest and most moral approach. But in a world of rapidly spiraling climate change, governments simply are not capable of on improving the lives of their citizens. They can’t even maintain the standard of living their citizens already have. So, the leaders have to turn to more brute force methods to retain control. Best to be loved. But if you can’t be loved, then at least be feared.
Who’s “we”?
https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population
“The world’s population is projected to continue growing for the next 50 to 60 years, peaking at approximately 10.3 billion by the mid-2080.[sic]”
Those projections assume agricultural yields have no effect on human well being or numbers. They don’t factor in climate induced bread basket collapse.
Oh I don’t dispute that we can only reach and sustain such vastly inflated populations without significant fossil fuel inputs, I just want to know your source. Are you implying the UN forgot to take agriculture into account?
Yes. That’s exactly it. They assume business as usual. And your source is a landing page, not an actual source. And even then, that site doesn’t discuss any effect of climate change on population projections. You just blindly linked to the UN’s population agency.
For every degree of Celsius warming, farm yields of major staple crops decline 16-20%. We’re already at 1.5C warming, and the rate of warming is rapidly increasing. We’re looking at another 0.5-1.5C increase by 2050. There’s no way this doesn’t lead to mass famine on a Biblical scale.
This paper in Nature predict 4-14% in total global food production by 2050 due to climate effects. And these are using the RPC models, which we’re learning are far too conservative in their predictions. I’m sure if everyone in the world went vegan tomorrow, we could absorb a 10% decline in agricultural production, but not a chance in Hell of that happening.
As far as the UN, they do work on climate change, but their population projections don’t factor it into account. Here is a link to the 2024 population prospects summary
When you pull open that PDF, you won’t find mention of climate change being incorporated into their methodology at all. As far as I’m aware, the UN’s figures are purely based on population pyramids, demographic factors, birth rate projections, etc. Demographers don’t like looking at factors beyond just population numbers, gender mixes, and age distributions. Other things, like war and economic policy, can certainly affect population numbers, but those are generally considered too unpredictable to properly model. The population projections you see are purely demographic models.
As far as I know, agricultural yields are never even part of their methodology. They look purely at what ages people are and how many children people of different ages have. They generally assume that resources will be available for those who want to have children. Do you have any evidence that they do take climate effects on agricultural yields into account when making their numbers?
Good, we can’t sustain even the 8 billion useless eaters we have now. I welcome a decline to 4.
A decline by means of heightened education, better quality of life and available contraception like we see in developed countries would be nice. But this is going to be nasty, famine and wars - you don’t want that, no one wants that.
I don’t want to be fat and old, and yet…
They are gearing up for war.
Another tactic they could use if their rule gets challenged.
Authoritarianism
For those here who didn’t know specifics, as far as I know the EU has announced in July 2025 guidelines, set to come into effect until 2026, that seem to basically be the same as the UK online safety act:
https://www.eunews.it/en/2025/07/14/the-eu-launches-an-online-age-verification-app-pilot-project-in-five-member-states-including-italy/
https://www.mlex.com/mlex/articles/2368265/online-services-get-up-to-12-months-to-apply-age-verification-eu-guidelines-say
https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/redirection/document/118226
These guidelines say, among other things, check the last link: “Where the provider of the online platform has identified medium risks to minors on their platform as established in its risk review […] and those risks cannot be mitigated by less restrictive measures. The Commission considers this will be the case where the risk is not high enough to require access restriction based on age verification but not low enough that it would be appropriate to not have any access restriction […]” And “Self-declaration is not considered to be an appropriate age-assurance measure as further explained below.”
If you don’t want the Online Safety Act in the EU, call or e-mail your representative now. If you enter your country here, it shows a list: https://fightchatcontrol.eu/#delegates As far as I can tell, unless it’s reversed this will be coming soon. The clock is ticking.
My representatives don’t care. They want it. They are the ones thirsty for power. The only solution is to completely remove them from power. Any letter sent to them is nothing more than toilet paper for these people.
Still worth reminding them some of us will vote them out unless they walk this age check nonsense back. If thousands of people do so, it can be relevant.
Centralization tends be self-reinforcing. Social unrest might cause the public to demand more safety measures, which usually come at the expense of freedoms. I’d also wager that the lower the level of trust in government is, the more they want to impose control and authority.
And in the EU specifically it is because lobbyists have been working overtime to try and pass chat control: https://borncity.com/win/2023/09/27/european-union-which-lobby-organizations-are-behind-the-plans-for-chat-control/
If you didn’t know, it seems like the EU has actually announced a copy of the UK Online Safety Act for 2026 too, as far as I can tell: https://leminal.space/post/25089051/17854998
Another factor is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Late capitalism has to keep finding more and more shameless ways to squeeze regular people as the easy money recedes. Lobbyists are pushing harder to lock people into a few big services and subscriptions so they are forced to yield more personal data and spending money.
I feel it’s the same vibe with return to office policy in Canada.
These things seem like they come from absolutely no where with no legitimate reason and then all of these executives are on board making it happen.
Like what the fuck is going on
If you’re talking about Toronto and Ottawa, as far as I heard, a huge part of the reason is Downtown businesses are struggling now that way fewer people are commuting Downtown.
But the solution to this is not RTO. If your DOWNTOWN of all places isn’t self sufficient I don’t know what to tell you other than your municipal policies are failing. Just let people live in the office buildings. “Oh they’re too wide and you’ll have to make the units narrow strips that only have a tiny sliver of window on one side” Do that then. Tons of people would still live in those because Downtown should be the most desirable place to live.
Yes 👍
Some people would be willing to live like that. But the rents per ft^2 or m^2 would be abysmally low. And renovating the buildings would still be very expensive. It may be physically possible to turn those deep floor plate cube farm skyscrapers into housing, but it isn’t financially possible. The money would be better spent tearing the buildings down entirely and just building entirely new residential buildings from scratch.
Ok so how exactly have all these companies all agreed to do this at the same time. That’s not strange to you?
In the worlds of the immortal George Carlin: it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.
I don’t want to just dismiss this as “business as usual.” What stands out to me is how coordinated the return-to-work push was. Sure, we know there’s a “big club” of elites who share similar goals. But sharing goals isn’t the same as acting in lockstep.
Think about it: I can join a fitness club, but that doesn’t mean all of us show up on Wednesday wearing the same outfit. There’s a difference between belonging to a group and receiving instructions that lead everyone to move together.
That’s why I think this deserves more attention. The inference here isn’t just that the wealthy share values or face the same incentives it’s that they communicate and coordinate globally in ways that go far beyond coincidence. And that, to me, is a much bigger story than just “rich people doing rich people stuff.”
Do you think the ultra wealthy don’t associate and communicate with each other? Why wouldn’t there be private Signal chats composed only of billionaires? It’s not about shared incentives. The “club” part is very literal.
It’s kind of crazy to me how you’re casual with this. First I don’t think it’s a signal chat. What it is though is definitely something we should be talking about. This is Bilderberg type collusion but on a level we can see literally
It’s all rigged, we are cattle
We always use to like say it but holy fuck it seems like a whole new thing. The way these things spread it is freaky.