RunawayFixer

I doubt that any evidence will ever be enough for republicans, I expect that they would just move the red line again, they know that Putin's Russia is their ally too.

I can only see evidence that is really salacious or visceral work, something like Russia's 1980s kompromat on Trump for example. Everything else would need a bit of explaining and the right wing media would then be able to muddle it.

Trump's presidency was such a travesty, that without Roger Alles successful transformation of the media landscape, no other politician could have been seen to support Trump. But since Roger Ailes media plan has been brought to fruition, republicans know that facts are now optional.

2 Belgian news sources in English, so aimed at foreigners: https://www.brusselstimes.com/

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/ (Flemish government broadcasting agency)

Rtbf, the Belgian french broadcasting agency, only has news in french.

If you want more Belgian news, then you could try opening them with a translator. If it works. https://apache-be.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

I like the documentaries from apache (independent website) and Pano (Flemish tv documentaries, so I have no idea how you would translate this). They are fact based and critical, which now is apparently considered "leftist", so maybe this is what you are after. https://apache.be/ https://www.vrt.be/vrtmax/a-z/pano/

Hln.be is the most popular Flemish news site + paper. Populist and centre right, fairly far to the right probably. The comment sections on the site are often unhinged, but good if you want to get a taste of what some Flemish people are thinking.

RTL.be is the same thing in Wallonia (same owner even after an acquisition), but I think it's relatively less popular.

Some other news sites from the top of my head: De Standaard (center right + elitist = culture snobs, I know, I read it daily for the longest time). Het nieuwsblad (same news as De Standaard, but less words, same owner). De Tijd (center right, with an emphasis on money).

Most (according to RTL all) old walloon news papers were saved with money from the walloon government and are rumored to have lost their independence. But I don't know myself, I only ever read one incidentally when passing through.

De Standaard has always been cvp aligned, with a bit of Flemish activism (AVV VVK was on the front page for most of it's history), so centre right I'd say. De Morgen has always been aligned with the sp, so more centre left.

There is no national broadcasting, each region's broadcaster acts on its own and treats the other half of Belgium as if it is a foreign country. The vrt and rtbf might share a building in Brussels, but that does not mean that they work together across the hallway :)

Official regional broadcasting is the mouth piece of whomever controls the political appointments, which is the government parties. In the past that lead to a situation where the vrt news department was mostly controlled by cvp appointees and political interview/documentaries programs by sp appointees, which also forced them into a situation where they had to scratch each other's back to cover for each other. I don't know the current division of appointments, but I think nva is now the big honcho inside the vrt. So like you said, they're supposed to be neutral, but in the end barking up the wrong tree can still kill their career in the blink of an eye.

Plenty of articles on Trump his private meetings with Putin. A short one: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/us/politics/trump-putin-meetings.html

The CIA circumstantially complaining and warning their agents of an increase of dead informants: https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/575384-cia-admits-to-losing-dozens-of-informants-around-the-world-nyt/

Apart from leaking, Trump also erroneously declassified secret documents, leading to the disappearance (and likely deaths) of some informants. Best case was that the western agency was able to extract their informant in time, but that still means that there is 1 less informant. Here's one case, but there were more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/17/russian-sources-disappeared-after-trump-declassified-ex-spys-evidence-uk-court-told

Trump his public obeisances towards Putin are also clearly recognizable as such. Trump Putin meetings are not meetings of equals, but one is clearly there to do the bidding of the other.

Put 1, 2, 3 and 4 together and there are many who believe that it was Trump who purposefully gave top secret information to his master. Including basically all western spy agencies, who now no longer can trust the USA with secret information. Trump is a traitor and everyone knows it.

I found that Qwant gives decent results in my native non English language, results similar in quality to Google, but way better than DDG which often just gives English results.

It's based on a Russian law that was used to destroy independent ngo's and since the current Georgia regime is a Russian puppet, the long term intent in Georgia is probably the same.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_foreign_agent_law

I didn't read every little bit as well, but that was my take away as well. I saw an emotially invested CEO who could not bear seeing his baby dragged through the mud, and so he wanted to provide a counterpoint to what he saw as misinformation and accusations, but in a polite professional manner. My first instinct would be that he would have been wasting his time with that, but seeing as his comments got posted and they make a more convincing level headed argument then the accusations, maybe it was worth it.

What is the flag within Luxembourg? I can' make it out.

Edit: I'm guessing Portugal.

Even without climate change, working in the sun in the afternoon at that latitude and altitude, was always a bad idea. Sevilla in Spain is more northern than this and they're famous for their afternoon siesta, but that siesta is actually also present in many other countries with similar climates. And those people have been doing this for millennia, no climate change needed.

That they managed to convince so many people to completely vote against their own interests is a testament to the power of propaganda. And you don't have to be spiteful, stupid and/or uneducated to fall for propaganda, it helps a lot obviously, but there are still many progressive and/or smart people who fall for it as well.

The combination of spreading "alternate" facts through complicit mass media AND indifferent addictive social media is something that Goebbels could have only dreamt about.

To understand how people can become so misguided, I recommend reading or watching a few testimonies of people who lost a loved one to alternate fact rabbit holes. It's similar to losing a loved one to a cult, only now it's much more widespread than ever before. I did a quick search and found a testimony from an Irishman that is a good read: https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/171w3kb/my_dad_is_falling_down_a_farright_rabbit_hole/

And for people who did not fall for "alternate" facts propaganda, to put all this history and background into words is not easy, so it's easier and especially quicker to call people who have joined the far right cult, stupid and hateful. The cultists are stupid because they have fallen for the lies, and they are spiteful/hateful because hate is a large part of the far right cult. The far right cultists might not always have been stupid and hateful, but they sure are now.

Not until I searched for "restaurant town name" and got as results tripadvisor.com, tripadvisor.co.uk, tripadvisor.ch, tripadvisor.fr *5, ... ;)

But in another search it did way better than duckduckgo. So it's not perfect, but definitely good enough to try as main search for a while :)

Just gave it a quick test drive it and it's pretty promising, thanks for the tip.