Building is nothing. Human lives is everything. Even one death is more than enough for our bloody “leader” to rot in hell.
Sincerely yours, Russian fellow.
You are right about that. I would add that non-human lives are also valuable. I especially believe animal suffering is terrible, ours and others. We are enough to help humankind and also repair injustices to and help other beings.
What I wanted to comment is that I felt this image intensely because it is kind of symbolic. It represents the beauty we are capable of, the way we can be brought together by beliefs and dreams, all destroyed by greediness, selfishness, and unnecessary violence. It is tragic. It is not the value of the building itself, which is debatable, but this I explained.
Why is this shitty country song being targeted by the news? There are so many other country songs with lyrics like this, and there are plenty even more troubling. Sick of seeing this headline. We’re giving attention to something that doesn’t deserve it, and it sucks.
Because it’s recent and CMT took action. Nothing new here.
I’m a liberal redneck, got a country list on Spotify.
“Country Boy Can Survive”, strikes a chord with me, not hellishly racist. I get it.
I like “Song of the South”, I feel much of it, but the name itself is a dog whistle. If you listen to the words, well, things got better with FDR? 🤷🏻♂️ Make of it what you will.
“Indian Outlaw” is catchy, zero hate, could even be called positive. (Not by me.) Seems damned offensive to a Native American. Done with that one.
“Try That in a Small Town” is kinda OK, on its own. I get the sentiment. We small town folks take care of ourselves. Because we have to. OTOH, the video and backdrop, Jesus Fucking Christ, he might as well have said kill invading n****rs.
Anyway, different songs from different times. Now is not the time to release shit like this and try to claim… Whatever the fuck he came out with. I’m exhausted.
EDIT: LOL my God. The song and video were worse than I remembered. Song isn’t even catchy, even with the video off, it’s just dreck. And change that from “kill invading n****rs” to “kill all libs/woke/whatever”.
This country lib is armed, for whatever that’s worth.
Reeeeal grand of the Guardian to criticize the lyrics of someone’s song when they never called the Black Lives Matters rioters uh rioters. Insane hypocrisy from some leftist media.
Those are oil companies. They operate within the bounds set out for them. If there is an externality present, some kind of positive or negative effect not captured in the market price of what they're selling -- say, that burning oil produces carbon dioxide -- it's not the job of the company to address that, but of market regulators. If a company did refrain from extraction, another company would just step in -- a competitive market specifically should not allow any one company to withhold a resource from the market; a company that did that would have monopoly power. As it stands, market regulators have a market says that companies should extract oil, so that's what they're doing.
If sale of oil doesn't incorporate the cost of carbon emissions, or if oil shouldn't be sold at all, that's an issue for the regulators.
A company getting yelled at is going to make some polite noises and brush complaining people off, not because they're not doing their job, but because restricting global oil consumption is not their job.
You want to complain at someone, complain at market regulators, because they're the ones that are responsible for taking into account said externalities, not the companies that operate in those markets.
You'd yell at a company if the company were breaking the laws that have been put in place for it, or something like that -- if BP were smuggling black-market oil or something, then that's an issue with BP. But as things stand, they're acting as the system intends.
Regulators are never going to regulate unless the public gets mad enough at those companies to do something like vote against every politician that props the anti regulatory environment that benefits those companies at the cost of the world.
Correct! Regulators are going to vote to do whatever benefits the oil companies, because the heads of the companies have the money and don’t care about their fellow humans or the planet.
These companies have lied, withheld info and done everything they can to shape public image and the legal ground they are standing on.
they are not as helpless and subject of others as you paint them to be. They act internationally. Appeal to a single nations law will not curb their actions effectively enough.
There have been so many targeted projects to weaken the publics understanding of climate change as a whole and activists personally. It's high time that these companies reinvest their record breaking profits into fixing the problem they have a large hand in creating.
I agree with you except for the fact that oil companies have known about climate change for many decades and have actively paid for pseudo-science studies and other disinformation, plus lobbying, to minimize regulation and maximize profit. So they can go fuck themselves for that.
This is an Olympic gold medal level of willful ignorance that honestly isn’t believable. This post is just too naive to be from a real person. Oh, companies just operate within a market that they have no influence on, do they? They’re just subject to regulation crafted by others, the poor dears. Please.
We desperately need regulation for people and workers in extreme temperatures. We'll be dealing with more and more of it as times goes on so the protections need to be in place.
There was an interesting study done on a city hear me which said that the lack of trees and general built design of the area had made the city's temp go up by between 2-5C. Which is a big difference!
Trees and green in the US southwest a pipedream tbh. The only way that could possibly be achieved is by siphoning off a ridiculous amount of water from another location. Call it as it is. The US Southwest isn’t built to sustain human life.
There has been talk of diverting water from the Mississippi river (or was it the Missouri?) and somehow transporting it across the continental divide to the southwest. Terrible idea, I might be worried if it wasn’t so far outside the realm of possibility.
In my opinion, the only solution, although radical, would be to make motorists’ lives a living hell (charging for road or parking lot use, lowering speed limits to increasingly slow levels, removing on-street parking lots, prioritizing bicyles and buses, reducing bus fare prices, and converting excess parking lots to new neighborhoods) that public transport (i.e. metro and local commuter trains) and bicycle paths can be considered to reduce road traffic with the budget allocated to making new roads or maintaining currently existing ones allocated to improving the public transport system and even providing a bicycle route network that can allow us to follow in the Netherlands’ footsteps.
The pertinent lesson to be learned here is that democracy (especially non compulsory voting democracy) is about engagement. It’s not just about political conversation (although that’s important too) but getting out and doing something. Don’t just assume someone will do the hard yards for you. Register and go out and get others to register. If necessary join a political organisation that reflects your politics or start one. Be involved in local politics. In short: get off your arse and do something.
Braxton said in the lawsuit, which CBS News reviewed, that Newbern had not held an election “for decades.” Instead, “the office of mayor was ‘inherited’ by a hand-picked successor,” and that mayor then chose town council members, again without an election. All prior mayors have been White residents, the lawsuit said, even though about 85% of Newbern’s population is Black. Only one Black person has ever served on the town council.
Braxton was allegedly the only person who qualified for the position of mayor, according to the lawsuit. Stokes "did not bother to qualify as a candidate," the lawsuit said, even though he knew Braxton was planning to run. No candidates qualified for town council positions, either.
Braxton was elected mayor by default, making him the first Black mayor of Newbern in the 165 years since the town was founded.
That's an important bit of context, they still didn't have a proper election.
They did have a proper election. There was only one candidate, so he won. Then they had a second, improper election where only the previous council was allowed to qualify for office or vote.
Legally yes, but part of the article makes it sound like there was a regular election between two candidates with everything you expect and the winner is being denied. That's not the case and we don't know how the citizens actually feel about this. It did, after all, take decades for someone to do this.
Not that any of this should have ever happened in the first place, they should have just run the elections normally.
Yes, but in this case a different (much dumber) system had been established for decades without objection it seems. That's different than just having regular, official elections with just one candidate, which is what they should have done in the first place. We don't know who would have won if it was a normal, two-candidate election.
This going to court is a good thing because a) anyone could have filed the paperwork and won by default, including someone who would abuse the position and be really terrible for the town and b) this is certainly the end of the unofficial-official system they've had and might bring bad stuff to light. But keep in mind that the article's coming on very strong because they mostly cite the prosecution.
Yes, I'm sure they haven't held an election in 165 years because the 85% black population all agreed it would just be a waste of time. Are you serous?
There actually was a regular election- the incumbents just declined to run a candidate against Braxton. Are you suggesting we should cast doubt on that result until the incumbents agree to qualify a candidate (so, never)?
Yes, I'm sure they haven't held an election in 165 years because the 85% black population all agreed it would just be a waste of time. Are you serous?
What are you suggesting happened? Nobody seemed to give a shit for decades even though the situation seems clearly in favour of whoever actually decides to go through the official channels. It sounds like everyone has just been completely apathetic to who's running the town, including the 85% black majority.
There actually was a regular election
What I mean by "regular" is the kind of election where people go out to vote for one of two or more candidates. Someone winning by default doesn't say much about what the people want, except that they, once again, don't seem to really care.
I'm suggesting that what happened with this election may have happened in the past.
When he approached Stokes for information about running for mayor, Stokes allegedly gave Braxton "wrong information about how to qualify" for the election, and did not provide public notice to residents about the election.
just weeks after his election, Stokes and his council members Gary Broussard, Jesse Donald Leverett, Voncille Brown Thomas and Willie Richard Tucker allegedly "met in secret to adopt a 'special' election ordinance." Notice of the meeting was not published, and the group set a special election for Oct. 6, 2020.
No notice of that election was ever published, according to the lawsuit. Because the election was not publicized, only Stokes and his council members qualified.
you wrote:
It sounds like everyone has just been completely apathetic to who's running the town, including the 85% black majority.
Does it? It actually sounds like a white minority council bends over backwards to keep themselves in power by ignoring opposition and holding private special elections.
What I mean by "regular" is the kind of election where people go out to vote for one of two or more candidates. Someone winning by default doesn't say much about what the people want, except that they, once again, don't seem to really care.
Don't confuse oppression with apathy.
Stokes and his council allegedly changed the locks for a third time, and according to the lawsuit, Braxton and his council have not had "uninterrupted access" to the building since April 2021. This meant that in November 2022, he could not help set up voting machines for Newbern's most recent election.
They will not let them hold elections. Read the article before you "innocently assume" these people "don't seem to really care".
I don't see how a small group like that could truly oppress them, especially in an age where everything can easily be documented with video proof and when this case seem clear cut. Someone could have done this ten or twenty years ago. Running a small campaign on the platform of "fuck those racists" should be simple enough in a town with an 85% black majority, but that wasn't even necessary here because that clique's so dumb.
Anyway, I've made my point, you can have the last word.
I don't see how a small group like that could truly oppress them
That's wild because it's literally explained in the article and then quoted by me here. It's the part of my posts you keep ignoring.
Your questions are not unanswered- the white minority council has evidentially maintained power by ignoring elections and by holding private special elections, like they did in 2020, and by also refusing to allow elections to take place, like they did in 2022.
The only point you've made is that reading the article is not a requirement to comment on it.
I think the whole reason that they didn’t field a candidate against Braxton is precisely to get people casting doubt on the a validity of “won by default”.
There is a process to hold office, everyone has a pretty good idea of what that means. They can’t plead ignorance.
So, the title of this article might as well be “Company Obeys Laws of Country They Are In”. Sure, the laws suck and the company sucks, but… why is this a story?
Before the Russian invasion, I’d always thought Ukraine was a beautiful country. Never been to either country, while I did notice similarities in the architecture and culture, they still had distinct enough flourishes that set them apart. Really, destroying holy sites and places of worship is a very dirty move in warfare. Doing such destroys morale. This cathedral looks like an immaculate place to visit while it was in tact. I hope places like it can be restored soon.
news
Active
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.