Amid a growing partnership between China and Russia, Mandarin has been growing in popularity across Russia as a foreign language of choice, a trend Putin said was due to developing contacts across economics, politics and society.

Putin, who speaks fluent German but has also taken lessons to improve his English, said that pupils should not forget the importance of English.

Russian, English, Tatar, German and Chechen are the most widely spoken languages in Russia, according to the 2022 census. While Mandarin is spoken far less, it has been growing swiftly in popularity in recent years as a foreign language.

English is the world’s most spoken language with about 1.5 billion speakers, followed by Mandarin Chinese with about 1.1 billion speakers, and then Hindi, Spanish, Arabic, French, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian and Urdu, according to Ethnologue, a language research centre.

IMO: tribal thinking.

It comes down to “they do not think like I want them to or they won’t agree with me, so I will downvote posts.”

Controversial topics are even more downvoting just to downvote.

The self-built echo chambers are already constructed; self-censorship and anything outside of their views and sources are dismissed, labeled, and smeared so as to not think about the information being shared.

It happens everywhere; the status quo is welcomed, while anything outside of it will seem controversial or extreme.

Edit3: improved wording a bit, and added info below; forgot to add this edit

Legalize and regulate.

I share this view with other issues our society faces as well.

Edit: forgot why.

Why:

Sex work as well as drugs will never be outlawed or enforced fully; looking at drugs, it is used as an excuse to jail the working class for slave labor as well as other things when you follow the money.^[1]

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.^[2]

Edit2: added a reply to question; fomat to seperate quotes

“A man chooses. A slave obeys.”

“We all make choices, but in the end… our choices make us.”

Quotes are by Andrew Ryan.

Andrew Ryan is a fictional character in the BioShock video game series developed by Irrational Games. He serves as the secondary antagonist in BioShock, and also appears in its follow-ups BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea.

“Que Mala.”

Well, that can also be said for those that consume MSM vs. those on social media and the internet.

There are also groups that voted for Obama, then turned around and voted for Trump.

Obama: Hope.

Trump: Drain the swap.

They might have learned to never trust a politician at face value.

Or, hear me out:

Maybe, just maybe, it is due to the continuation of the status quo, similar to warmonger Hillary Clinton.

IMHO: Always help out the working-class people if you can; the homeless and’middle class’ are the working-class.

You don’t have to let them in your home or do too much, but I would offer them a box with food, plenty of water, and a basic care package.

We all need to make time to join in helping our local communities. 1 hour a year is much more helpful than 0 hours a year.

Mantra:

“We should focus our actions, time, and resources on Direct Action, Mutual Aid, and Community Outreach… No War but Class War!”

It was known by people that read and listen to independent journalists. Good to see main stream media finally talking about this possibility.

Here are some short videos where it is mentioned:

1. Hostage families accuse Israeli army of killing loved ones [06:22 | JAN 30 24 | The Grayzone] https://youtu.be/h9iFiuqkmbE
2. Prof Mearsheimer: IDF killed a ‘good number of Israelis’ on October 7 [01:33 | DEC 18 23 | Middle East Eye] https://youtu.be/iZlQOjq4EvM

The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate discuss new allegations by family members of Israelis held in Gaza that the Israeli military is deliberately killing their loved ones in order to prevent a prisoner swap and prolong the war.

Renowned scholar Professor John Mearsheimer recently asserted that on October 7th, it was the Israeli regime, not Hamas, responsible for the deaths of many Israelis. He also delves into their official “Hannibal doctrine,” which involves the controversial practice of killing their own people.

This was not the first order given by the division with the intent of foiling kidnapping even at the expense of the lives of the kidnapped, a procedure known in the army as the “Hannibal procedure.”

This is the procedure when an enemy invades Israeli territory, upon which a division commander can assume extraordinary authority, including the employment of heavy fire inside Israeli territory, in order to block an enemy raid.

“Everyone was shocked by the number of terrorists who had penetrated the base. Even in our nightmares, we didn’t have plans for such an attack. No one had a clue about the number of people kidnapped or where army forces were. There was crazy hysteria, with decisions made without any verified information,” he continued.

“Everyone knew by then that such vehicles could be carrying kidnapped civilians or soldiers,” a source in Southern Command told Haaretz. “There was no case in which a vehicle carrying kidnapped people was knowingly attacked, but you couldn’t really know if there were any such people in a vehicle. I can’t say there was a clear instruction, but everyone knew what it meant to not let any vehicles return to Gaza.”

Over all the months that have passed, the IDF has refused to say whether this procedure was employed against civilians who had been taken hostage. It now seems that even if the answer is positive, the question may have been only a partial one. The actions of Hiram may have simply been congruent with the way the IDF operated that day.

Government censorship will cause TikTok’s services in the US to shut down, which will result in most users moving to another social media platform.

I think most people already use multiple platforms, so the only difference will be the time they put into their new main social media.

Thank you.

Rejecting science, no good.

You have the science, good!

Do you have kids or pets that like to play with the toilet paper roll?

If yes, then Under.

If no, then Over.

Props, keep up the good work!

I will try and do the same, hahaha

Awesome!

Thanks for the additional information, about INSTC!

New of BRICS and going away from petrodollar, it will be in the history books, if allowed.

Interesting news keeps coming out.

India has been ramping up purchases of both coking and thermal coal from Russia since Moscow redirected exports from EU countries and offered substantial discounts to Asian buyers. Despite its efforts to expand renewable energy projects, India continues to rely heavily on coal as its primary source of power generation. Huge increase in Russian coal exports to India

Consulting firm Yakov and Partners (formerly McKinsey Russia) has projected that India will surpass China as the top buyer of Russian coal within the next decade.

Moscow is seeking to both ensure interconnectivity throughout the INSTC and launch regular freight shipping lines, President Vladimir Putin has said. The volume of goods shipped via the INSTC is expected to almost triple over the next seven years. The Russian leader has suggested establishing a logistics hub for the corridor on the African coast.

Nice!

Some may say, hobnobble…

Does not sound as good as yours though, hahaha

What about the Hobble…, half-hobbyte…?

Glenn Greenwald breaks down the recent Reuters report that revealed how the Pentagon launched a disinformation campaign to discredit the Chinese Sinovac inoculation.

About Glenn Greenwald:

Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times best-selling books on politics and law. He broke the Snowden leaks in 2013. Greenwald currently hosts a political commentary show for Rumble called “System Update.”

About SheerPost:

Born four years ago in the disarray of the pandemic, ScheerPost has matured into an award-winning highly credible top news source on the most important issues of our time at a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes. Alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and we are one of them, proof being that with decidedly limited resources, we have attracted readers from around the world who have viewed our content more than 13 million times. We are honored to have your support to continue doing this work.

‘Saved’

Thanks for reminding us and for letting us know, I will have to make time to set one up for myself!

Chinese President Xi Jinping is on his first trip to Europe in five years, which is likely to be dominated by Russia’s war in Ukraine as well as economic strains between Beijing and Brussels.

The first stop will be France, with Xi due to hold talks in Paris on May 6 with French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, before travelling south to the Pyrenees.

After that, he will travel to Serbia and Hungary, two countries that have maintained close ties with Russia despite its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

But the trip also comes amid a deteriorating global security climate, with the war in Ukraine now into its third year and at least 34,683 Palestinians killed in Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza.