If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, landlords and financiers.

Still rings true, just replace English with the Americans

I mean Ireland's entire economy is based around letting US companies avoid taxes in the EU, so there's quite a bit the United States could do to fuck that up.

It's really cool that NYC now regularly gets inundated with wildfire smoke. Some small brushfires are burning across the George Washington Bridge and it's smoky as hell outside.

Combination of Ireland finally tacking to the right on immigration which Sinn Fein is not willing to entertain and this:

Sinn Fein’s problems have been compounded by scandals including a lawmaker who quit over the party’s handling of a complaint of harrassment against him, how it dealt with a senator who inappropriately texted a teenager, and controversy surrounding staff who gave job references to a former colleague under investigation for child sex offences.

Per: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-07/ireland-election-sinn-fein-struggles-in-polls-behind-fine-gael

That's exactly what has happened. Sinn Fein is basically imploding at exactly the moment where they had a decent shot at actually winning an election for the first time ever. Irish politics for the last century has been the ruling party switching from a centre right wing party to the exact same centre right party with a different name.

Nah unfortunately that match is being held at a "neutral venue" that has yet to be decided because UEFA realised if Maccabi ultras were allowed to run up against Çarşı (the ultras of Beşiktaş) they would straight up get killed.

Furthermore, in October 2024, the EU and G7 partners agreed to collectively provide loans of $50 billion to support Ukraine's urgent budgetary, military and reconstruction needs, financed by extraordinary revenues from immobilized Russian sovereign assets. The EU will contribute with $20 billion.

In July 2024, the EU made available the first $1.6 billion generated from immobilized Russian assets, of which $1.5 billion was channeled through the European Peace Facility for military support and $109 million through the Ukraine Facility for energy support.

Per https://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegations/united-states-america/eu-assistance-ukraine-us-dollars_en?s=253

I have to imagine it's the latter. Trump is the deals guy, he knows how negotiation is supposed to go if nothing else. He loves dealmaking just for the love of the game, even he's not stupid enough to start with his best offer.

Alright so now that we're done with the "most important election of our lifetimes" let's get back to Operation True Promise 3 posting

Oh yeah, I completely forgot about that. They're still funding Ukraine via the interest on that giant horde, too. Insanity.

Imagine labeling your opponent a fascist that will be the end of American democracy and then peacefully handing over to them the power of the entire state apparatus

That would be the point of contention, yeah. I suspect the actual negotiations (if Russia was willing to entertain them) would eventually end up with Ukrainian neutrality.

Yeah agreed, I don't think in its current form Russia would agree, but it does provide a framework that can be negotiated from to actually get to a position of what Russia wants.

Rumours of the Trump proposal for ceasefire in Ukraine are being thrown around. Some highlights:

The proposals all break from Biden’s approach of letting Kyiv dictate when peace talks should begin. Instead, they uniformly recommend freezing the war in place—cementing Russia’s seizure of roughly 20% of Ukraine—and forcing Ukraine to temporarily suspend its quest to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

One idea proposed inside Trump’s transition office, detailed by three people close to the president-elect and not previously reported, would involve Kyiv promising not to join NATO for at least 20 years. In exchange, the U.S. would continue to pump Ukraine full of weapons to deter a future Russian attack.

Under that plan, the front line would essentially lock in place and both sides would agree to an 800-mile demilitarized zone. Who would police that territory remains unclear, but one adviser said the peacekeeping force wouldn’t involve American troops, nor come from a U.S.-funded international body, such as the United Nations.

This actually seems like a ceasefire agreement that Russia might agree to? Or at least a start to negotiations. We'll see what happens but if this is the attitude Trump is going to take with negotiations he might actually be able to deliver relatively quickly. Obviously the EU and Ukraine will not like these terms, but they're vassal states for a reason.

Per the WSJ

That day was honestly so glorious. Still one of my favourite memories of this site. Waking up, seeing that anybody who upvoted transphobic shit got the boot, my goodness what a purge. So beautiful.

Your decisions at the beginning really helped shape this site's culture into what it is now in the best possible way. Like Stalin, after your departure a pile of rubbish was heaped on your grave, but the wind of History sooner or later swept it away without mercy.

Oh fuck you're back too???? Welcome! Another legend returns.

The legend returns. We've attempted to hold to TC69 Thought, welcome back.

From what I can it's almost certainly not true. There's no one central database for Order of Lenin recipients (there were thousands given out throughout the years, scattered about the archives of the Soviet Union), but seems like most of the Western businessmen getting Orders of Lenin were from the 20s when they heavily contributed to technological develop of the newly created state during the NEP. Given that Boiardi would've gotten the award during/after WWII, when there's not really any records of the USSR giving out Orders of Lenin to Western businessmen at that time, I'm pretty confident that this is not real. All that said, Boiardi did contribute heavily to the allied war effort, and many of his factories worked round the clock to produce rations for the USSR during lend/lease starting in 1942, and that is well attested.