u/Commiunism

Yes, nothing gets me going like innocent proletarian blood spilled in bourgeois conflicts like these

Calling it right now: it's a nothingburger as nothing ever happens

Lithuanian here who signed the petition like a year or so ago.

There's a decent chunk of Lithuanian gamers, but social medias and spaces that they inhabit are primarily in Lithuanian language such as Facebook, Lithuanian gaming groups on Discord/TikTok and things like that. Rarely there are some odd Lithuanians like me who venture out to the English speaking web to sites such as Reddit, but there's no guarantee the initiative will be found or if the person will care enough to sign it.

Granted, take what I say with a spoonful of salt as I don't actively seek out or look for Lithuanian digital spaces at all, this is based on my experience with friends and acquaintances.

Gonna have an unpopular take here, but pornography and sex work under our current system shouldn't be celebrated as a "bastion of freedom", given how it's selling access to one's body and sexuality as a product. Even if they agree to it consensually, the choice happens in a world where money decides what people can or can't do, if one is going to survive or not. This makes the concept of "real consent" complicated, because the need of money, much like the need of food or essential goods can force people into doings they wouldn't freely choose if survival wasn't on the line.

Given this, one could definitely consider it commodified rape - it's not necessarily violent like forced rape, but it's still shaped by money, power, and pressure in a system where people's bodies get turned into things to be bought.

The law does suck ass and shouldn't be supported though, the issue stems with a system where our survival depends on money (with selling your body being a way to get by) and not individual morals. I fully agree with Yidit when he says that it'll just cause sex work to become more dangerous by moving it underground.

Signed it, but I wonder how much of an actual problem is it in the EU. Whenever I hear of conversion therapy, it's usually from within US.

Love me some opportunism to appease reactionaries and get them to vote for you. Many such cases!

Though to be fair, the exact same sentiment is here in Lithuania, people hating Ukrainians cause they earn more while doing less or so the narrative goes, and it's one of those issues that people complain about but don't actually expect to be solved. Whoever gets into office likely won't act on their campaign promises to put "poles first", unless they really want to play into the whole "nationalistic hero batting for the cultural community of the nation" shtick.

Oh I absolutely agree, my comment was mostly just a joke.

But that would mean I'd have to start supporting JD cause he finally did something good.... (i dislike organized religion)

That's never gonna happen, especially in Germany where the historically largest parties (both socdems and conservatives) can be essentially boiled down to "nothing ever happens". Hell, I even doubt that Die Linke would be able to do much if they were somehow magically the majority in the government.

If we're talking about the big, rich EU counties, then yes. But for poorer ones, EU has genuinely fucked some of them over via imposing austerity and offloading debts onto the working classes of those nations, often via strong arming.

Greece is an explosive example of this, being fucked over by their incompetent government, sure, but also by Troika who literally strong armed them into taking bailouts fully knowing they wouldn't be able to pay them thanks to extreme austerity measures, leading into an even deeper crisis. When Greeks elected anti-austerity parties who resisted, Troika cut off Greek banks from emergency funding, leading them into a collapse and offered an even more predatory deal afterwards. Even when looking at the more successful crises (Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Cyprus), it's debatable whether or not Troika did more bad than good with their imposed austerity.

Wall of text, blah blah - EU is still overall good, don't get me wrong, but it's idiotic to say that they're free from criticism and anyone who does so is just deep in the propaganda.

Not exactly accurate - the student protests are aligned with the opposition to Vucic, but the opposition is so incompetent, rather than taking the leadership role or supporting the protests directly, they're mostly sitting at the side lines and cheering.

This because once it gets political, government accuses them to be agents/sponsored/influenced.

Already happened, but the government says so much shit that nobody really cares.

This would be nice to hear if Linux versions of Civ games weren't always complete garbage