only if the people on the other side are arguing in good faith, which a lot of them over on lemmygrad arent. they use textbook propaganda tactics and tow the kremlin line religiously.
Says the guy who posted “found the Russian”. I understand you’re trying to back up your CIA co-worker, but there is nothing to refute in the post I replied to, so you’re not making any sense. He just wanted to defederate from Lemmygrad (guess why).
I have alts for current affairs and local normal stuff; this one is supposed to be for hobbies like Tolkien and fantasy stuff but I keep getting dragged into other stuff lol.
No. Stop projecting Western pathologies onto your enemies. Russia certainly has its share of the Western mind virus, but so many of its cultures were not even considered White by Europeans. You could do research for the next year and try to compile all the evidence of Russia being against brown people and it couldn’t hold a candle to even 1 of the Western European states.
I’m sorry. Are you implying that the existence of ethnic violence within Russia is indicative of Russia being MORE against brown people than the NATO countries. The US who occupied Afghanistan for 20 years, bombed all of Iraq’s civil infrastructure, organized multiple coups, occupations, and pro-Western regime changes throughout the Islamic world, developed their own interpretation of Islam that was extremist and then trained Islamic extremist groups in terrorism and used them to achieve pro-Western goals? How about the brown people in India that NATO member Britain occupied, exploited, destroyed, and extracted from, and starved millions through a deliberate famine? How about the brown people France occupied, enslaved, and killed all through Africa? How about the brown people the Netherlands, NATO member, kidnapped from Africa and sold, occupied all around Africa and Southeast Asia? Belgium? Spain?
Every single one of those countries has ethnic violence within their own borders, but that’s not the primary indicator of how much harm they cause brown people. The US literally ran eugenics programs against various shades of brown people through the 1970s. Those eugenics programs were adopted by the Third Reich and used against many different people’s who were considered non-White, but in Mein Kampf the author literally states his aims to apply the US programs of industrial genocide and apartheid to subjugate the Slavs.
No, Russia isn’t MORE against Brown people. The enemies of the West are not merely worse versions of the West, despite what the propagandists would have you believe.
Hurdurr whataboutism! You found a research paper that literally states that there is no evidence of eugenics finding institutional roots that would indicate a flourishing of eugenics but instead focused on improving environment, social, and educational conditions of people so that people would become better people over time. Compare that to the actual forced sterilization of fully a third of the colonial US holding of Puerto Rico, the mass murder of 7/8s of the indigenous population in the Americas followed closely by the destruction of their environment and destruction of their social and educational behaviors followed by the forced kidnapping of millions of indigenous children and their subsequent re-education by physical, psychological, and sexual torture to remove their language and culture and turn them into obedient slaves of the white ruling class.
I mean, you’re a sick fuck if you think this paper is anywhere near capable of being compared to US eugenics, let alone what was going on in Europe at the time.
LOL, what goal posts? You’re just randomly throwing out what you think are logical fallacies as your solution to countering narratives that paint Western actions in a negative light? Try to define the “goal posts” and then show what you think moved. Because as I see it, the question is “who hates brown people more” and that means the goal posts are quite literally “who’s actions have harmed brown people the most”
These “goal posts”, you know the ones you set and rhetorically asked to provide evidence for…
“No. Stop projecting Western pathologies onto your enemies. Russia certainly has its share of the Western mind virus, but so many of its cultures were not even considered White by Europeans. You could do research for the next year and try to compile all the evidence of Russia being against brown people and it couldn’t hold a candle to even 1 of the Western European states.”
You said Russia’s negative treatment of PoC wasn’t even comparable to any Western European country. He sent back a report about mistreatment in Russia. And you changed the subject to whether Russia or the USA has been worse. I think that is what the person responding to you is referring to.
That is literally what comparable means, to compare. I compared Russia’s track record with the West’s track record. And showed that it was incomparably worse in the West than in Russia, because the West has been exporting it to hundreds of millions for centuries.
They are but they are more against NATO than brown people, so they’ll side with brown people to hurt NATO. I have a russian colleague that is the summary of Russia. I used to talk a lot with him and he was a racist and homophobic bastard, but he would act friendly towards indians and chineses because of political reasons.
Like alt-right politicians and gay people? It’s always weird to see them tweet something out in support of a gay couple until you see it’s about an incident involving migrants.
It’s so sad that you have to imagine your ideological opponents as paid shills of the government you know nothing about. It’s too hard for you to imagine that I’m actually a born and raised American white boy who went through the same indoctrination everyone else around me did and through self-crit, studying history, and engaging in dialog with people who challenge my deeply held convictions that I ended up disagreeing with your deeply held beliefs. It’s sad. I don’t need to imagine you’re something you’re not in order to understand why we disagree.
Some sanctuaries can work on rehabilitating bear cubs to look for their normal food sources vs seeking out human food vs staying with mom that won’t change what the cubs have already learned.
A fed bear is a dead bear. If the mom can’t be rehabed, they gotta put her down. It’s too dangerous to leave them alive - even if you relocate, they’ll just move until they find easy to raid people and become a danger. Black bears usually are fearful or wary of humans - if they lose this, they’re a danger to people and themselves (people often defend themselves against bears with guns that fail to immediately kill the bear. The end result is a bear that dies a slow and agonizing death.
Surprised they’re even trying rehab. It usually fails.
But seriously, if anything fucky is going on rn, my default is that Russia is behind it. Kinda sucks because it’s just another conspiracy theory, but it fits too well not to be true most of the time. The coups going on in Niger (and Mali and Burkina Faso before) are the most obvious examples. Less obvious is the disinformation campaign in Germany (and probably all over europe) against progressive policies atm.
I think it’s less about being against progressive policies and more about creating societal friction by supporting controversial figures and helping politicians that are pro-russia. The conservative/ alt right politics fit Russia, but more importantly those parties are often less critical of Russia (they don’t mind their anti human rights / free press autocratic tendencies as much) while also being underrated in the polls. Populistic anti-migration parties often aren’t taken seriously and rarely included in coalitions, but get a surprising amount of votes which can still be fairly useful to influence those countries.
You’re never confused because you let your CIA handbook do all the thinking for you. Everyone you disagree with is apparently a tankie. The word has lost all meaning (if it even had one beyond bashing leftists in the first place).
Those couple of ex-twitter employees that got fired for tweeting how much musk sucked should apply for this, get denied, and then sue X for their legal fees.
This is the most basic, logical, obvious question that would be asked, and would need to be addressed, in any hypothetical where such a potential law is being discussed.
Essentially, invoking such a term while being unwilling/unable to objectively and clearly define it suggests dishonesty/deception in the argument. Not that these negative qualities necessarily exist, but it’s perfectly reasonable to be frustrated in a discussion where party A uses a term, party B asks for a clarification/definition, and party A responds to that with a refusal to do so and a personal attack.
Perfectly valid questions that have clearly made some folks here uncomfortable.
There’s lots of these feel good terms thrown around when discussing gun policy that so many of those who use them can’t seem to (or aren’t willing to) clarify.
With many/most modern rifles available with a detachable magazine, ammo capacity isn’t a property directly linked to the weapon itself in any sort of concrete way. So with that caveat, how would you propose classifying weapons based on that property when it isn’t intrinsically linked to the weapon?
Further, how would you define “powerful”?
Even a small caliber like a 22 is perfectly capable of killing. A 9mm is a fairly low power round and is likely one of the rounds responsible for more human deaths than any other in criminal killings thanks to its widespread popularity. On the other hand, most big game hunting calibers are far more powerful than the rounds most associated with gun violence.
I’m not against addressing gun violence, and in fact I feel it’s an area in urgent need of attention…
…but as a gun owner and shooting sports enthusiast who is familiar with guns, it’s an area where I feel both sides of the issue argue past one another, one side with their blinders up based on dogma and partisan vitriol underlying their position…and the other side just as partisan…and wanting to make a bunch of laws with little understanding of the subject matter and no regard for any of the potential impacts of their proposed legislation.
I regularly get into debates with my (overwhelmingly liberal) friend group on this subject and I try to stay calm, rational, and open minded to show I’m not just coming from the standard position on the right of “don’t do anything about gun violence, end of story”…so my position is basically: I’m willing to consider any proposed legislation that fulfills three criteria… First, the proposed law must not create a precedent of infringing on constitutional rights without due process… Second, the proposed legislation must not make a criminal out of anyone who’s currently a law abiding individual in compliance with all laws, who does nothing differently after the law passes…and third, the proposed legislation must be such that it could have been reasonably been expected to significantly reduce or eliminate recent acts of gun violence had it been in effect previously.
If you can come up with a law that checks all those boxes, by all means, I’m interested!
But too often, the laws I hear discussed fail to fall into line with all of those conditions…and other than loophole-closing and background check laws, I have yet to hear any sort of a ban suggestion that does all three.
the proposed legislation must not make a criminal out of anyone who’s currently a law abiding individual in compliance with all laws, who does nothing differently after the law passes
Wouldn’t any new law about firearm sale, ownership, or use do this by definition? If it doesn’t change any legal things into illegal things, it isn’t doing anything at all. What kind of law can you imagine that would pass this part of your test?
But even if that were the case, just make it non-retroactive.
Other conditions aside for a moment, let’s say you want to ban all guns with polymer frames.
You could fulfill that specific condition with the provision that all poly frames currently out there are legal to own, use, and sell, but no more retail sales from manufacturers will be permitted.
Again, this is a nonsense hypothetical that wouldn’t make sense (then again lots of actual proposals aren’t much more realistic), but such a provision would ensure that everyone out there who’s already bought one of these guns wouldn’t be in a situation where they need to surrender or register their legal purchase now that it’s been illegal, or risk felony charges because they didn’t do so.
More to the point, many of these laws seem designed to create criminals where no criminals currently exist, as opposed to preventing crimes from happening.
It’s like trying to cut down on petty theft by requiring everyone to register all belongings, and then inspecting people’s homes and charging them with theft for everything in their home they didn’t register…then pointing to all those arrests as proof of the law’s success.
Not just the two sides are arguing past each other, they are arguing from wildly different viewpoints. So many urban and suburbanites argue very heavily for gun legislation and much more rural people argue against it. One side view guns solely as a weapon used against people and the other as a tool to hunt, kill nuisance animals on farmland, or protect crops/livestock.
The first isn’t familiar with firearms and frequently don’t want to get into the minutia because of their viewpoint as guns being solely weapons.
I’m all for reasonable gun laws, but I believe there are more important underlying issues that lead to many of these mass shootings that we as a society can address. The gun is a tool used because it is easy to get and use. But if we placed restrictions that made it harder other tools would be used to carry out the mayhem and destruction these people strive for.
Maybe it’s naive and idealistic to think we can address the societal issues that lead people to committing these atrocities rather than just make it harder for them to get the tool they use.
That is such a stupid whatabout. Even if you can’t get a universal definition for “assault weapon” you can at least get as far as “rifle that kills people.” With “woke” we have… “this offends me or makes me feel icky.”
That is such a stupid whatabout. Even if you can’t get a universal definition
I thought we were talking about defining terms? How is asking to define a term whataboutism?
you can at least get as far as “rifle that kills people.”
Any rifle that’s ever killed an individual is an assault weapon? That’s why non-crazies think the push against AW’s are stupid, because you just say dumb shit like that
Any rifle that’s ever killed an individual is an assault weapon?
I never even implied such a thing. You are being highly disingenuous by saying so. The suggestion was that it was a subset of rifle, which is more definition than you can give for “woke.”
Do you not understand what a subset is or are you just going to continue to accuse me of saying every rifle is an assault rifle when I already told you that’s not what I said? I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you aren’t ignorant, just dishonest. I would request that you stop being so now. Alternatively, I can just block you.
Do you not understand what a subset is or are you just going to continue to accuse me of saying every rifle is an assault rifle when I already told you that’s not what I said?
Then tell me what the fuck you’re saying dude. You’ve just found yourself in a losing position and are trying to back out of it. Tell me straight up, what’s an assault weapon.
It is, as I already said, a subset of rifle, which, again, is more definition than you can make for ‘woke.’ Now, are you going to stop putting words in my mouth and accept what I have now told you more than once?
No, my definition compared to the definition of the word woke is that it is a subset of rifle. Why is this so difficult for you? Do you really not understand concepts like comparative language and subsets or are you playing a very irritating game? Because, again, if it’s the latter, I’ll just block you and be done with it.
I’ve been very clear with what I said apart from the accidental omission of a single letter.
Are you suggesting that when people talk about restrictions on assault rifles that the restrictions should apply to all rifles, and that the term “assault” is completely superfluous?
Not trying to be antagonistic, but when you start talking about restrictions and regulations, definitions matter.
And having a discussion about terms you can’t, or aren’t willing to clarify and be specific about seems like a bad faith position. Or at least an indefensible one. Like saying we should lock up “bad people” but refusing to get specific on what constitutes “bad”.
Unfortunately, “assault rifle” is a term without a specific, clear definition, so when people suggest it as a distinction between weapons they want to regulate/outlaw/criminalize and weapons they don’t… it’s only natural that the next logical question is for a concrete definition, if only to establish a starting point for a reasonable discussion and establishing common ground.
Getting frustrated at someone for asking for clarification of a term being invoked as a key determining factor of a proposed law just makes it that much harder to have a conversation about it.
What are you even talking about? I’m talking about the fact that there’s a clearer definition for ‘assault rifle’ than there is for ‘woke.’ You know, the subject of this thread?
Except that despite your belief, if anything, your lack of ability/willingness to actually clearly and unambiguously define “assault rifle” indicates the opposite of your assertion.
I’m not defending conservatives here, no matter how much you may think otherwise; just pointing out that this assault rifle comparison is equally ambiguous and nonsensical.
The people who use the term “assault rifle” are unanimously using it to mean a gun that can shoot more people than you’d be able to with a hunting rifle, handgun, or shotgun in a short span of time
That’s specifically what they’re against
“Woke” is a grab bag of personal grievances that is meaningless other than the only universal common thread being “democrats are for it”
Any of various automatic or semiautomatic rifles designed for individual use in combat.
A military style automatic rifle or carbine that fires a shortened rifle caliber round or lower power smaller calibre round larger than pistol ammunition from a high capacity magazine.
From the Meriam Webster Dictionary
any of various intermediate-range, magazine-fed military rifles (such as the AK-47) that can be set for automatic or semiautomatic fire also : a rifle that resembles a military assault rifle but is designed to allow only semiautomatic fire
Those three definitions indicate very different specific firearms though, and all three have significant gray areas that are left open to interpretation.
Not that that’s a failing of the definitions, or even of the term…but it’s definitely worth noting within the context of a discussion about potential laws using the terms in question as a defining, delineating qualifier.
There’s also the very eyebrow raising last part of that last definition. Basically defining a weapon not by its function or capability but based on aesthetic qualities alone.
Again, if that’s the definition everyone agrees upon, fine, whatever… but the narrower the definition, the easier it’ll be to get buy in but the fewer weapons it’ll affect…whereas a broad definition might cover a lot more firearms but then you’re going to have a lot of objections to any legislation based on the increasing number of edge cases where a law impacts a firearm that it probably shouldn’t.
…of course this is all hypothetical, and it all exists in the no man’s land between the real gun control ideal scenario of simply outlawing all guns and requiring everyone to turn in all guns they own and totally disarming the population…and the hard-line 2A advocates who feel that 2A is the only gun law that should exist, and rather than restricting weapon ownership, laws should instead focus on the illegal acts done with the guns rather than the guns themselves.
He’s still the frontrunner for the Republican nomination by a wide margin, there is no one who is showing like they will compete, even after this most recent indictment. Republicans will still rally behind him if he gets the nomination. Unless his trials are ahead of the election, which they likely aren’t, nothing will change.
He’s a frontrunner from lack of options, not from appeal. Other potential candidates are too intimidated knowing that if they run against him, he will shower them with insults and innuendo daily and try to bully them into backing out.
Rent is inherently predatory and exploitative because it’s usually a commodity in a scarce housing market where the landowners can charge prices that generate a large profit margin over what it cost them. For example, a person who pays $1,500 a month to the bank for mortgage may be able to rent that out at twice the price, and usually to people who are economically insecure.
No it’s not. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s inherently predatory.
I have to move to a city for 6 months, should I have to buy a house and sell it during that time? I need to rent, it gives me the flexibility without having to shell out capital or get in debt to live.
As with everything, it can be bad, especially when the government restricts building of houses so much, but my buddy buying a house, fixing it up and renting it out isn’t malicious.
What’s your alternative to renting? Government owns all houses and gives them out for people to live in for free?
Having social housing or low-cost rental housing owned by the government with an option to purchase does not sound at all bad. My partner lived in England and her nan was in council housing. When she died my partner had an option to buy but didn’t. That house is in one of the most coveted locations in the city now.
Have you heard of the term the ‘projects’ - it’s provided housing, but many of the subsidized housing areas are more like a 3rd world country than our prosperous 1st world country. Is this the policy you’d like more of?
I would rather pay the cost of service to the government than my landlord’s mortgage
So you want housing as government controlled? How much? 100%? 80%? 50%? How much private residential property should be stolen by the government to achieve what you want.
How much private residential property should be stolen by the government to achieve what you want.
wow is that the best strawman you could come up with? Public housing shouldn’t exist because checks notes it is literally impossible to achieve without stealing existing homes? That’s how you’re gonna present your initial argument? Be better sporto
Just curious, why? What difference would it make for you? Many of these mortgages are government funded anyway. I don’t rent anymore but my government is far more inept and corrupt than any landlord I’ve ever dealt with. Just my experience though.
Well, paying an at-cost price would mean it is inherently cheaper as the government wouldn’t be trying to turn a profit, merely charge an amount that compensates for upkeep.
Many of these mortgages are government funded anyway.
But is still building equity for a private individual.
my government is far more inept and corrupt than any landlord I’ve ever dealt with
I have a say in my government though, at least theoretically. I think housing (at least primary housing) shouldn’t be a for-profit industry, so I advocate against it via my government.
My biggest head scratcher now that I’ve bought a house is “huh, my mortgage is locked in now, no matter what the market does… Why did rent keep going up if my landlord’s mortgages were locked in?”
I honestly don’t have a good answer, I could be looking at something perfectly explainable. But to me it seemed like they raised rent not because costs went up, but because they could. Why not. Everybody else is doing it.
My biggest head scratcher now that I’ve bought a house is “huh, my mortgage is locked in now, no matter what the market does… Why did rent keep going up if my landlord’s mortgages were locked in?”
Property taxes, market rate, costs to repair and maintain, interest rates increasing. How much money, beyond your mortgage, have you spend on your house since you moved in?
A few hundred a month less. I’m not suddenly drowning in money, obviously, but it’s interesting paying less for much more, and that money actually benefitting my net worth vs being flushed down the toilet
You weren’t actually asking questions to gain knowledge, you just want to hide the facts so it looks like you’re right. Home ownership is expensive, and for most people, isn’t ideal, renting is a huge need on our society so I don’t have to give up 50k cash right now, so I don’t have to pay 15k/yr in property taxes, a 20k water heater bill randomly and I can move next money if I want to. You being willingly ignorant to those don’t change the facts.
Mortgages are locked in. Taxes, insurance, utilities, maintenance/upkeep are not. All of those things have increased since I bought my house a year ago. Rental properties experience the same thing.
We got federal money for Covid and the commerical sector is doing well. Pretty sure the furnace is fine, but it isn’t like I have lived here for multiple years.
That’s not really reflective of the market in reality. Rent in a competitive market (I.E. anywhere people want to live) tends to hover around the cost to own, buying with 20% down, plus property tax and mandatory homeowners insurance required by the mortgage holder.
In fact, usually it’s cheaper to rent than it is to buy with only 20% down and good credit.
This is because people do this calculation, come to the conclusion “it will cost us a little more, but we get to own our dwelling, our payments eventually go to principal (though this is rigged by the banks too), and hopefully the market goes up and we get equity”
Yes, the market fluctuates, particularly in economic crisis. But it teeters back and forth based on the costs to buy and rent. Because if rent exceeds the cost to buy, investors snap up property just to rent it out, and that raises demand on real estate to the cost goes up.
I feel like this argument falls flat in the current bubble market where you can triple your housing investment in five years. I bought my condo in 2017 for $360,000 and today it’s worth $550,000. Even with property taxes, renovations, insurance, etc etc, I have made a killing on buying this property.
Your argument might make sense in a recessionary market like the 2008 subprime meltdown.
For someone to buy your condo today, they will be signing up for a mortgage whose monthly cost is near the going rent price. And most likely, more than the going rent price.
If they were to just buy and rent it out, they will likely be doing so at a loss.
The market going up or down after the purchase of the property is independent. It may go up, it may go down. That’s the gamble you make if you’re doing it as an investment.
Your experience happened to take place at an extraordinarily good time to already own property., and FOMO was certainly fueling the frenzy during the peak.
Whether that continues to be the case is unknown. Economists are all over the map.
It made you more rich on paper, but the reality is that you aren’t in the same boat as landlords. The reason is that if you live in your property in order to realize the profit on it you’ll have to sell it and move somewhere less expensive (i.e. somewhere likely less desirable).
Prices in real estate going up only really benefits real estate tycoons, the local government (depending upon location), and other side players in the market (e.g. real estate agents). For the rest of us, if you sell it just means that you have to turn around and buy in a more expensive market. Also (depending upon location, California properties aren’t completely re-assessed for taxes until they change hands) it hikes your taxes.
As a single property owner in California, I’m rooting for prices to drop so I can upgrade and still pay the same amount of taxes (or less).
The rates going up as fast as they have when prices are still high have killed buying as an alternative to renting in my city.
I feel for people who weren’t “smart enough” to buy during the pandemic, because unless prices, rates, or both drop dramatically, it looks like they may have been permanently priced out of buying and renting is only getting less affordable.
I agree. It sucks all around right now for anyone on the market to rent or buy. We’re all squeezed. Only people that had the luxury of owning and/or capital and foresight to invest are happy right now.
The wealth divide has only increased substantially.
But that doesn’t mean that rent is “predatory” except in the cases of long time owners hiking rates when their costs have stayed the same. The reality is that rent is closely related to the current cost of buying at any given time.
But that doesn’t mean that rent is “predatory” except in the cases of long time owners hiking rates when their costs have stayed the same. The reality is that rent is closely related to the current cost of buying at any given time.
Not all landlords are predatory maybe, but at least in this city the overwhelming majority of them are. They’re also like a half dozen corporations that hold most of the apartment buildings. They raise their rates dramatically like clockwork even though I’m in California and we have Prop 13 which holds their tax raises to very low percentage increases yearly.
I would say that for the most part, yes, it has a relationship to what it would cost to buy the same property…but it’s location dependent. You can’t (for the most part) buy an apartment here. It’s almost certainly the case (I’m only not 100% sure because a lot of the apartment complex holding companies are private) that they have low rate mortgages or no mortgages at all on the buildings, and they charge more and more as time goes forward despite their costs not really increasing.
We’re entering a neo-feudalistic economy and while yes, again, there’s some relation to the cost…a lot of it is just straight up greed.
My PITI for my mortgage is $3350/month. Mortgage is $28xx something. It’ll be nice whenever I can get that mortgage insurance off. I was renting an admittedly very nice 2 bed 2 bath apartment for the same before I bought. Now I have a 3x2 1000sqft rambler and know that, while the mortgage is high, it will be lower than rent in the next 5 years.
Russia at the center of a whole hell of a lot of the tension and strife that the world has gone through over the last few years.
He is trying to destabilize the West in hundreds of different way and average folks just don’t understand or actually would even believe. Far right candidates in Italy, France, the US and elsewhere. Stirring of the religious pot in Sweden and a few other Europeans countries. He has an army of Russian trolls online trying to spread misinformation and propaganda. The most obvious international meddling that he’s done is invade Ukraine, but there is just so much more.
This list is from 5 years ago and so much more could be added, but much of the meddling we won’t really know for years to come.
Any Western reporting about how much Russia “meddles” in the affairs of others is laughable because the US and the Western European powers have done so much more, for so much longer, and far more effectively. If the goal is to stop meddling, try dismantling the West first, then go after the smaller threats.
LOL. Entire families killed by US-trained death squads in El Salvador as a signal to indigenous people to stop political organizing inspires angst? OK.
I got some clown named @bigMouthCommie who responded to me who thinks he’s clever. It’s a 5year old account with no other posts except to reply to me. He asked for citations thinking I wouldn’t have any. I gave him a couple, but I know he’ll never even look at them.
I remember when it first started Worldnews on reddit was swarmed with all these weird accounts like that. Multiple years old with no activity until that day and then 8 comments supporting Russia.
To the credit of reddit mods every account I reported for taken down.
Yeah I don’t know how Lemmy works when it comes to that. I think with the upcoming US elections this kind of shit is going to explode here now that this site is getting more traffic. I really think people here are ill prepared for an onslaught of bad actors and I don’t think mods here have any way to stop it.
I can’t see them being able to do anything. Someone is going to have to add on something to the site that lets you mark accounts that are paid Russian shills that everyone else can see.
The russian federation makes Japan look like a communist utopia in comparison. It is crazy that people still can not seem to figure out that russian federation ≠ the USSR.
Worse than “edgy teen angst” is the “totally grown up” parroting of western propaganda as if it were the objective fact of the world. You remind me of the people who think conservatism is the new counterculture.
You have no fucking idea what that terms means. Whataboutism is when you say “Johnny stole a cookie” and I use whataboutism to say “But you killed the dog 3 years ago.” Whataboutism is not when you say “Johnny stole a cookie” and I say “But you invaded and occupied the bakery, killed the original owners, steal the ingredients to make your cookies, and issue predatory loans to hungry people so they can buy your cookies at price gouging prices.”
It is not whataboutism to call out hypocrisy. It takes a special form of brain rot to not see this.
It’s a wonder you can figure out how to navigate the world around you. The commenter was not making an argument, they were adding a list of facts about Russian meddling, none of which is up for debate. The argument is implied by the article to which the commenter was adding additional premises as supporting evidence. Again, no problem with those premises, they are supported by fact. The problem is with the argument made by the article, which is that we should care about Russian meddling and we should act, or support actions, to stop it.
This is argument is inherently relative and involves numerous relative claims. These claims can be that Russian meddling is distinct from other meddling, that it is particularly severe, that it leads to particular bad outcomes, that it is distinctly morally inferior, or meddling itself morally reprehensible and must be stopped.
But generally Western propaganda goes like this: that nation over there did a bad thing and we must stop them, we never do that bad thing, but if we do it’s for good outcomes, but if the outcomes are bad it was an accident, but if it wasn’t an accident than they deserved it. Basically the abusers psychological playbook. And West and their media arms play that game masterfully. In this case, Russian meddling is newsworthy and part of a larger trend of why we must defeat Russia, crush its economy, sanction its people, arm its enemies, and encircle it with military bases and nuclear capabilities.
Never mind the fact that Putin is in office because of US meddling. Never mind that US meddling has been more egregious, more comprehensive, has effected more countries, more of the world’s population, more land, more wealth, more children, has caused more death, more environmental devastation, and has gone on for far longer than Russian meddling. The US media never says the international community should sanction US billionaires because of US meddling that led to Putin, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, death squads, drug epidemics, etc.
Nope. None of that. Because the US doesn’t meddle in the affairs of sovereign nations, but if it does it’s for their own good, and if harms them then it was accident, and if it wasn’t an accident then they deserved it.
And you think I’m engaged in whataboutism? I think you’re a myopic Western drone who’s been indoctrinated since birth in a system that embeds orientalism, white supremacy, and global dominance into every single aspect of life from the time you were in grade school through all of your employable years, that your family raised you to succeed within that indoctrination because failing to do so would be worse for your economic and social outlook, and now, thanks to that indoctrination, you can’t even reason effectively about a basic thing like whether or not someone is deflecting by asking “what about something else” or if they are fundamentally attacking the basic premises of an argument that culminates in a call for escalating a proxy war with a global nuclear power.
Get your fucking head on straight and think for a goddamned second instead of imaging that anyone accusing the Western war propagandists of hypocrisy is engaging in whataboutism.
The problem is with the argument made by the article, which is that we should care about Russian meddling and we should act, or support actions, to stop it.
So, by your logic no one should care about anything any country does or does not do and global politics should become a mind your own business type affair?
I would also guess that you might just try and argue about how some meddling (ie russian) is fine though, somehow.
Hey, look at the guy making slippery slope arguments! It’s like he doesn’t actually know what fallacies are! No, fuckhead. The argument is that if meddling is a problem, fucking shutdown the West before you start worrying about the rest of the world. The West does 10x the meddling for 10x the death toll and 100x the extraction. Don’t focus on bit players. Worse, don’t focus on the enemies of the big bad, because then you’re just helping create the conditions for the things you claim to be against in the first place.
Nah, you just happen to be using terminology that is used by western propagandists in order to criticize someone who is pointing out western hypocrisy. Any time the west is criticized, it’s “whataboutism”. The term, by the way, was created during the cold war to also dismiss when the west was criticized back then. It really should’ve stayed there, and I’m honestly kind of surprised at how quickly people bought into cold war mentality again to scream about Russia (and China). At least “commie/pinko” got changed to “tankie” so there’s something new I guess.
Oh its much older then the cold war “Tu quoque” style arguments go way back. I would still call it out no matter where or who it was directed at.
This is a post about a country doing something shitty, to then excuse shitty actions with a “but look at what other country does” is not calling out hypocrisy but to in fact encourage and endorse those shitty actions.
I didn’t claim that style of argument was invented then, just the term. Turns out I got the invention of the term wrong, but it definitely was used during the cold war. Still, I see endless articles about Russian disinformation campaigns as if it was something unique to them. Instead of talking about disinformation in a post about disinformation, the only acceptable way to go about it is to instead make separate endless posts of American disinformation campaigns?
This is a story about a Swedish claim on russian interference in their internal politics with the assumed attempt of disrupting Sweden bid for NATO.
I hate to have to say this but making everything about the US is how you get a US centric world. I assume as you seem to think the cold war is still on (meaning russia is still the USSR) you would not have missed that the news cycle is full of US fuck ups, global missplays and dastardly acts. You seem to think that when there is an active war on in Europe and a European nation makes a statement about another European nation doing a bit of a nasty this is some how not the time for European issues but that we must now talk about the evils the US of A or the “west” in general has done before.
A lot of news pieces about Russia are in service of US-centric views on Russia. It’s called manufacturing consent and it’s been going on long before Russia even invaded Ukraine. Like it or not, global politics is US-centric because of the outstretched influence that the US has, from the many military bases to the vast economic machinations stretching its way into every nook and cranny of the Earth and even space.
Pretty sure the Greeks figured out that logical fallacy 25 centuries ago. Wikipedia says the particular coining of that term comes from the 1970s to justify IRA tactics.
I want a citation that it was “created during the cold war to also dismiss when the west was criticized back then.”
That’s literally not how whataboutism works. Whataboutism is when you deflect by pointing to a DIFFERENT thing that someone else is doing. When it’s the same thing, we just call it “naming hypocrisy”. The article is hypocritical, because The Guardian literally spreads Western propaganda including lies ALL THE TIME. So when the lying liars who lie tell you that there are other lying liars who lie, then the we can say “you’re a hypocrite.”
But that’s not even the important part. The important part is that the lying liars who lie in the West are lying are part of a very large and very long process of war mongering that has causes hundreds of millions to die for Western imperialism. So when the Western lying liars who lie tell you about other lying liars who lie, what they are doing is building a case for killing the lying liars who lie that are $OTHER, but they never agree that the same consequences should be applied to the lying liars who lie that are $WESTERN_COUNTRY_LIST[rand()]. So it’s worse than merely hypocrisy, it’s violent war mongering that kills innocent people.
Even better is when we compare the scope. The lying done by Russia is so small compared to the lying done by the West and has killed far fewer people than the lying done by the West. For example, the lying liars who lie from BRITAIN got 40% of China addicted to opium. When China decided to ban opium, the lying liars who lie from BRITAIN went back to BRITAIN where not only they run a drug dealership but they also own newspapers. They wrote lies about China and convinced the British Navy to attack China. The Opium Wars were literally launched by British drug dealers who owned newspapers and published lies. And who were these drug dealers? Ever heard of Forbes? Yes, Forbes magazine is part of the Forbes business empire that was built from fortunes made on building US railroads funded by the money accumulated by selling opium to China…
So fuck The Guardian and the lying liars they are. No one gives a shit about the lies of the Russians because the British and the rest of the West have been lying for 600 unbroken years and used those lies to kill 100s of millions of people around the globe and dominate 80% of the world’s population for a long time. Yes, the Russians lie, because that’s the fucking game that the West has put everyone in. It’s the only way to beat the West and no one seriously thinks Russia’s lies are worth getting upset about except the fucking war hawks. So when you repeat the propaganda, you’re participating in the war machine.
Someone claimed that, and I quote, “Russia at the center of a whole hell of a lot of the tension and strife that the world has gone through over the last few years.”
How is pointing out a much, MUCH bigger force in global geopolitics whataboutism?
So you want to dismantle the west, that is the most functional, equal and free region of the world and only then go after the “smaller threats” (that is f* Russia with its second biggest nuclear arsenal in the world, currently involved in a genocidal war to increase its territory, besides all the side conflicts from Syria to Niger). Just wow at your total delusion, that’s what speaking from a point of privilege is.
The West is the most dysfunction, unequal, and unfree region of the world. You are the one who is delusional. All you need to do is look at the US prison population, the amount of land occupied by Western powers, which country is the only country to drop nukes on civilians, the Atlantic slave trade, the occupation of India, the Berlin Conference, the Opium Wars, the Open Door Policy, the indigenous genocide, etc.
Why are there white people in the Western hemisphere? Dysfunction, violent expansionism, genocide, oppression. Why are there white people on Australia and New Zealand. Dysfunction, violent expansionism, genocide, oppression. Why are Hong Kong and Taiwan going through so much turmoil? Dysfunction, violent expansionism, genocide, oppression.
Where did fascism emerge? Western Europe. Under what conditions? Western liberal democracy. Who is voting against the condemnation of Nazis? The US.
What is the 5 Eyes alliance?
The Victims of Communism propaganda project struggles to reach 100M killed by Communism. It includes Nazis killed by the Soviets during WW2 and it includes births that the researchers claim should have happened but didn’t. The authors of the Black Book have denounced their own research. Meanwhile, the Western imperialist order has killed hundreds of millions. 70 - 80 million people indigenous the Americas alone. Millions died in a famine in India deliberately and knowingly created by the British occupiers.
The US has dropped so many bombs that the most bombed countries in the world are all bombed by the US. The US engineered multi-generational genocides through the use of nuclear and chemical weapons, mostly in the Pacific where it has no business being. The US illegally occupies Hawaii by it’s own laws! It sterilized 1/3 of Puerto Rico as part of its eugenics project that didn’t stop until the 1970s. It has never stopped forcibly kidnapping children and separating them from their families. They have been doing it since they landed on Plymouth Rock and they keep doing it to this day.
And then we have the sanctions regimes that have killed millions through collective punishment, starvation, denial of access to life saving medicines. For those it didn’t kill it stunted their growth, made them incredibly ill, traumatized entire nations of people. And these sanctions are not small. They have hit hundreds of millions of people and they last decades.
The West is sociopathic. It is “free, equal, and functional” for barely 30% of its white cis het male population. And unlike other countries, its sociopathy extends far beyond its own borders. Sure, the West oppresses non-white, non-cis, queer, non-men within its own borders to the tune of millions including vigilantism, rape, torture, mass murder, genocide, lynchings, police brutality, domestic spying, theft of property, displacement, deaths of poverty and neglect, active state oppression, etc. But the West has been exporting that shit for 600 years to literally 80% of the world’s population.
The West is the greatest scourge to humanity that has ever existed. It is the source of the supermajority of oppression that humanity has experienced. No one has done more harm to humanity and to the planet than the West.
And the fact that you think it’s the most functional, equal, and free region of the world speaks to your privilege, not mine. The wealth of the West was stolen from the rest of the world. Trillions of dollars extracted from Africa alone. When the Haitian slave revolt won independence from France, what did the West do? They levied a multi-billion dollar debt on them, and they made the calculation based on the market value of each black body on the island. France literally said “you owe us the money we bought you with” and the Western banking system agreed. To this day that debt still stands, it is in the hands of Citi, and they continue to make profit from the interest on it.
Nothing will help humanity more than the dismantling of the Western imperialist world order.
Russia at the center of a whole hell of a lot of the tension and strife that the world has gone through over the last few years. He is trying to destabilize the West in hundreds of different way
"I’m going to attempt to derail the conversation and distract from the main topic by pointlessly bringing up the United States, as if that somehow makes what other bad actors are doing completely okay! How dare you criticize other countries for doing shitty things! "
I think all leases should be month-to-month. Making it easier to move would help renters shop around, move if their landlord is shit, move if their neighbors are shit, move if they get a new job, etc.
Pakistan’s railway system has a poor safety record, with a series of deadly accidents in recent years a tragic reminder of the country’s ageing infrastructure and safety standards.
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