Why is this an open letter rather than an EU petition? They should make a petition here, then it’d have more visibility, it’d be legally required for a response to be laid out if it passes the threshold, and people like me would happily sign it knowing exactly who has my personal info.

https://commission.europa.eu/get-involved/engage-eu-policymaking/petition-eu_en

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Did anyone seriously expect it to be a real wall with Rober sitting in the driver’s seat?

I know someone who got had by a spearfishing call. They knew all the details about his phone contract, sounded 100% legit. The scammer got thousands of dollars in prepaid SIM cards from his account.

After the police investigation, turned out that the scammer was actually a former employee of the phone company who downloaded a copy of the customer list when he got fired.

The EU has multiple “second class” membership options. Multiple non-EU countries are in Schengen, even more have no visa requirements.

Multiple countries have trade deals with the EU, including Canada (as soon as CETA gets fully completed).

I enjoy the “Canada can into EU?” memes, they’re fun. It’s also really nice that in this period of insanity we can help each other.

That said, yeah. A trade agreement that drops basically all friction, bilateral visa agreements that make travel and business easier & cooperation on military purchases would be the ideal scenario. There’s a ton of things the EU and Canada can help each other with without Canada becoming a member.

There is strong legal backing to this. Romania bars anyone with ties to or rhetoric similar to the Iron Guard (Romanian fascists) from running. Georgescu has strong ties to them, and he’s not even the only politician barred from running due to this for this election (Sosoaca).

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Turkiye also has a large military industry looking to sell to the EU, a large military, and wants control over the black sea (which involves weakening Russia), and wants to be as friendly to the EU as possible to eventually get that coveted EU membership.

Yeah, an opportunistic authoritarian, but a useful one in this dire emergency.

Oh, they absolutely do. As far as I’m aware though, the people Ukraine got out ASAP to any country that would have them were women whose husbands were conscripted and were the caretakers for multiple children.

As we all know, women are incapable of fighting. When we fire a gun the recoil breaks all our bones!

I know, military service is the final boss of sexism, but that’s still how it is in Ukraine. There’s some murmuring they may be expanding their conscription to women of fighting age without children, but it is still the case that women are exempt from mandatory military service.

Not really. These are refugees. Women, children, and disabled people primarily I’d imagine. What’s actually going to happen is that after arrival in Ukraine, they’ll be moved to Poland/Romania/etc to keep them out of the line of fire again.

The only thing this does is disrupt their lives again for no reason.

Don’t worry, we know. We wouldn’t be re-arming like crazy if we didn’t. The general vibe here in eastern Europe is one of worried, resigned determination. I’ve never seen pro-EU rhetoric this popular before in my life.

If it was intended to be a dump and pump, it’s not going to work. Companies aren’t going to reestablish supply chains just to get rugpulled later. More important than price and quality is consistency. Just the uncertainty alone will have an effect for years.

In this brave new world, we are all Gaullists.

Make all the “France surrendered” jokes you want

It’s so weird to me that France has been a military force that has oscillated between a force to be reckoned with and the most powerful land force in the world since the 17th century, but you lose one war to a blitzkrieg with an overconfident military leadership…

As an eastern European who knows what it’s like to have an angry belligerent neighbour next door, I feel for you. I don’t have much to offer other than hoping you and yours continue to be ok, and hoping that nearby countries in similar situations can organize somewhat to help eachother.

I’d be very interested in more recent stuff. As I mentioned, the last time I seriously looked at this was 3 years ago, in the opening stages of the war. It’s very possible that new methods have been developed, people’s opinions have changed over time, or both. If you could possibly throw me some links to more recent papers, I’d greatly appreciate it!

It’s really hard to find on Google considering this was an academic paper from 3 years ago, but generally the big problem with polling in Russia is that for obvious reasons Russians are scared to give their honest opinions. If asked over the phone what they think of Putin, every politically neutral Russian and even some anti-Putin activists will say they approve.

From memory, the methodology they used was to give 3 propositions unrelated to Putin (less contentious policy decisions) and the respondents were only asked how many of the statements they agreed with, not which ones. Then they did the same thing again with 4 propositions (4th one being if they approve of Putin), then a 3rd time (this time with the 4th one being if they disapprove). With those 3 datasets, you can then essentially subtract the 3 unrelated propositions from the 4th one they actually cared about, all without requiring the respondent to actually state their opinion on the phone.

Is this situation the same for support for Trump in the US?

I haven’t gone too in-depth into this, but a quick search show a 50/50 split in favorable vs unfavorable opinions of Trump. Last time I took a look, serious pollsters who found interesting ways of measuring support for Putin in Russia without endangering those participating found generally a 33/33/33 split between those in favor of Putin, those against, and those with no opinion (part of the intentional depoliticizing of the Russian population).

So, I guess it’s vaguely accurate to say there’s more people that dislike Trump in the US compared to Putin in Russia, but also more people that like him.