- A party for millennials
Across Europe, party strategists are trying to determine which arguments resonate with the young or the old.
Now, there’s a party for the millennials: not the generation of voters born around the turn of the last millennium – but those hoping to ring in the next one, in the year 3000.
Alongside mainstream parties like the Christian Democrats and Socialists, voters in Germany can choose from a host of options dedicated to vegetarianism, humanism and animal rights.
Or they might plump for an even more special-interest party – dedicated to biomedical research into rejuvenation, or stopping the ageing process entirely.
The website of the Partei für schulmedizinische Verjüngungsforschung says it will invest €40 billion a year of EU cash to give an “unlimited healthy life for everyone,” promising Europeans the chance of a lifespan of thousands of years.
Who wants to live forever? I guess we’ll find out in June.
I saw posters for that when I visited Germany a few weeks ago. Weirdest party poster I’ve ever seen
“Where do you want to live in 800 years?”
Note the name “schulmedizinische Gesundheitsforschung”. That word means something like scientific medicine. They clearly chose it so people don’t think they’re an esotericist party. But the strange thing is that Schulmedizin is a word coined by antivaxxers and natural healing folks. It’s only ever used as a slur by those people. Using this word put me off them even before I read about their ludicrous fantasy goals.
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[Argentines struggle with austerity measures – DW – 05/09/2024]
Ok, it is op-ed about UK, but I think it could apply anywhere.
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The main result is completely unsurprising - the incumbent President Nausėda is facing off against Prime Minister Šimonytė, and Nausėda is going to win by a landslide, just like in 2019. He’s not great, but also largely unobjectionable, so - whatever.
The more worrisome part is that the nutjob candidates got almost a third of the total vote. Vėgėlė, who entered politics as an anti-lockdown and anti-vax activist during the pandemic, got 12.4%. Žemaitaitis, whose anti-semitic comments got him thrown out of the parliament, got 9.3%, showing that those comments and the “victim of the system” narrative he cultivated afterwards probably doubled his popularity. And Vaitkus, who straight up sounds like he got all his political views from a Russian trolley factory, just an incoherent mess of conspiracies and useful idiocy (for example - EU should invite India and China to join instead of Ukraine, and North Korea should join NATO), got 7.3% in total, but in some mostly Russian-speaking districts his share was as much as 60%.
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Unrest continues in the wake of the inconclusive election where a major party was banned. People now desperate for basics.
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But on April 14, Netiporn died from cardiac arrest while in custody awaiting trial. She had been imprisoned since January 26 and charged with royal defamation, also known as lese-majeste, for conducting public opinion polls about Thai royal motorcades, among a slew of other charges.
Even from detention, she continued to protest. She had been on a hunger strike for more than 110 days in protest against the bail conditions faced by democracy protesters.
“What did Bung do? Nothing. She just wanted democracy and to reform the justice system,” Emilie Palamy Pradichit, the founder and executive director of Manushya Foundation, a Thailand-based rights group, told Al Jazeera.
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Yeah, this is Not Good, no matter who the shooter turns out to be, and whatever their motivation.
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“ New Delhi:
India and Pakistan have issued advisories for students in Kyrgyzstan urging them to stay indoors amid mob violence against foreign students.”
“Kyrgyz police said they had mobilised forces in the Central Asian nation’s capital to quell the violence, in which hundreds of Kyrgyz men attacked hostels housing Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi students.”
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Some background on President Raisi…
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