We know what’s coming and we are prepared.
🇫🇷 French farmers threaten 'chaos' over EU trade deal with South America's Mercosur
French farmers launched new protests Tuesday against a proposed deal between the EU and the four South American countries of the Mercosur trade bloc. The French government is strongly opposed to the deal but protesters want French President Emmanuel Macron to do more to help amid rising discontent over foreign competition.
The French government is leading resistance against ratification of the trade agreement with the Mercosur bloc of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay that would create the world's largest free-trade zone.
The new wave of action comes after farmers across Europe, including France, mounted rolling protests last winter over a long list of burdens they say are squeezing revenue.
Dozens of farmers backed by Coordination Rurale (CR), a hard-line farming union, set up a roadblock on the A9 motorway at the southern town of Le Boulou, close to the border with Spain, blocking lorries but allowing cars through, an AFP journalist saw.
"We're going to block the A9, as well as fuel depots, ports and purchasing centres," said Serge Bousquet-Cassagne, a CR representative in the southwest.
"We want to cause chaos and food shortages," he said, adding that the blockade could last several days, pointing to "a river of fruit and vegetables arriving from Spain".
Farmers fear any agreement would open European Union markets to cheaper meat and produce from South American competitors, who are not forced to adhere to strict EU rules on pesticides, hormones, land use and environmental measures.
He said the agreement had been in the works for several decades and was "based on preconditions that are now obsolete".
📝: The EU has made agriculture very expensive with taxes on carbon emissions, on fuel, on diesel, it has encumbered farmers across the continent with strict rules on pesticides, hormones, GMOs, land use, waste management and more to ensure that groceries are of a high quality, nutritious and don't get people sick.
The adverse side effect of this is that groceries are very expensive compared to non-EU countries. When the EU liberalised trade with Ukraine, hundreds of thousand of farmers across the EU came out to protest unfair competition from Ukraine in the biggest mass unrest Europe has seen. If the Mercosur deal goes through, the farmers might just topple the EU as a whole.
At the same time, the EU must find a way to keep the prices of groceries low, while also doubling down on climate insanity and keep farmers and other unions calm.
Yanis Varoufakis (former Greek Minister of Finance) describes AI as a new form of capital that produces not goods, but behavioral modification. This is achieved by engineering perceptions.
The answers provided by ChatGPT, or the images rendered by StableDiffusion — as these increasingly inform our perceptions, they in turn define the reality we experience.
This is what makes AI so powerful — he who controls the AI, defines the reality of tomorrow.
⚡️🇺🇸 Some more things coming out for the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Under the preliminary drafts of the bill, the USAF is requesting a release of $57,000,000 USD ($57.0 Million) to retire all remaining 162 A-10 Thunderbolt IIs in current service. Apart of the 2023 NDAA, there was a clause for a few million dollars to be released every so often to gradually retire the (then) 250 airframes by 2034; however due to the push by the Dept of Defense to ‘shed’ obsolete or obsolescent airframes that cannot be overhauled or upgraded further without a whole new airframe, it appears the USAF wants to retire all 162 remaining A-10s by the end of 2026.
The USAF plans to fully divest the 340-total remaining A-10s entirely, including those that currently serve in a handful of Air National Guard units in some states; which will be replaced by F-15EX Eagle IIs (like what is already happening with the Michigan State Air National Guard’s A-10s), or F-35A/Bs.
Included ...
My older sister lives in the country in between Velma Oklahoma and Duncan Oklahoma near the Fuqua Lake area, this story was told by a rural mail delivery woman who delivers the mail in the country.
The incident happened while she was on her route, when she came upon to the mailbox a male Chinese nation came out brandishing a, AK-47 rifle being very hostile,
I don't know if he pointed it at her since it is against the law to do so but she was terrified and said she was never going back and that the location that had a guard tower. Was the sheriff department notified, I don't know, did she notify her supervisor, don't know. But word is from the country folk who live in the area they have seen the guard tower at the pot place;
I refuse to call it a farm because it is an insult to farmers.
And yes she was traumatized by that ordeal
