A Russian citizen living in America who supported Ukraine by donating money to them was warned by her partner that going back wouldn’t be safe. She said “nah, it’ll be fine” and was arrested shortly after in Russia.
This is very sad, but you didn’t know they’d be mad about that?
I suspect the process is very simple, add the name and passport number details to be pulled over at the border. A notification to take someone aside and then call police to arrest srems simple enough and something that is videly practiced in an authoritarian countries. Where was a plane was forced down and a anti government person was arrested a couple of years ago? Wasn’t it Belarus?
They took her phone as soon as she got there. Then they went through it for the next few weeks looking for reasons to arrest her and use her as a bargaining chip. They probably do this arbitrarily to pretty much everyone in her position.
In mother Russia you don’t go to jail for your crimes, crimes go to you for jail.
I was born in the US to a Russian mother. She moved back to Russia when I was a toddler, and I lost contact with her in my adolescence. I have recently been determined to find her. I have not been able to make any progress on the internet, but I think I would have more success if I go in person and ask around her small town. I have been wanting to do this for the past 2 years. Yet, I’m not stupid enough to go to Russia right now even if it means that my mother may pass in the meantime. If I have a great reason to go and still don’t, I don’t know what’s up with these people that think they’ll be fine and go just to hang out. wtf.
I really hope you’ll have enough time to meet her one day. I’m a Russian living in Germany (always have). I’ve made “peace” with the fact that I won’t see my grandparents again. And only if we are very lucky, my daughter gets to meet her grandpa.
Every now and then, I meet other Russian moms on a playground or so. Then they’re telling me how they went to Russia through Turkey (or plan to) - with their infants or toddlers - to visit family. The dads usually stayed in Germany to “be safe”.
My immediate thought is always, man, how are they not scared. After all, God knows. They might be held back in Russia. They might have their kids held back. They might even end up in prison. Aren’t they scared? Don’t they care?
Then, after a while, I usually realize the thing. They’re apolitical. They don’t care what’s going on. They care as far as how it has inflicted their lives, how it made travelling harder. What a shame Grandma has a harder time getting a visa to visit. They don’t care about the dangers of travelling because there is no danger for them. They will be fine. They have never thought against, let alone voiced anything about their country’s current situation. They have not ever partaken in any demonstration for Ukraine, they have never donated a cent to Ukraine, not even to OVD Info. There is virtually no danger to them, they are the kind of citizens the regime likes. They don’t care, they don’t oppose and if they did, the inconveniences it would cause to actually do something are too big. Go vote on March 17? Nah, that means standing in line. Putin will win anyway, why bother.
Everyone who stayed in Russia had their future taken. There are kids being bombed, orphanages being destroyed in Ukraine, and they care about how much of a hassle it is to fly through Turkey.
I understand the pain of not seeing your relatives again. I really do. But it should be more than a hassle for you. It should be dangerous. If it isn’t dangerous enough for you, you have not done enough. Do your fucking part.
(Any moms in Leipzig who want to meet up and yell obscenities about Putin?)
Yeah my sympathy to her and her loved ones, but we shouldn't give a single thing in exchange to get her back. Every western country has their absolutely highest DO-NOT-TRAVEL-TO warning for russia. She had to actively work to get around every roadblock just to get there. Sorry, but we can't save you from yourself
While I’m not going to blame Biden for the economic situation right now since his policies look more like they’ve cushioned us against a much worse economic situation by pumping money into state-side manufacturing, I absolutely fucking HATE how out of touch economists are these days. They look at productivity (the value of which barely gets to workers), the stock market, or at spending that’s driven by debt and rich people, and say “everything looks fine. Oh, most of you can’t afford to eat, or get a job? Sounds like a personal problem.”
If the conclusions that economists come to are so consistently out of touch with the experience of the average person, maybe they should fix their fucking outlook criteria!!
I think it was another post on here that had a bunch of [good] economists write a paper stating that if the inflation formula had accounted for borrowing costs like they USED TO, the inflation numbers would match much more closely with public sentiment, after having topped out at 18 fucking percent at the height in 21/22.
And of course there’s how, at the height of the pandemic, they blantantly changed the criteria for what counts as a recession at all to say “no worries guys, everythings fine” when we were absolutely in a recession based on the old criteria.
American culture has an absolutely horrible relationship with metrics.
For “the economy” the metrics are profits of corporations. Because back in the day that would generally translate to employee pay, number of employees, and how much money was changing hands.
But metrics should never be the final thing you look at, it’s just an indicator.
Like, if your engine light isn’t on but black smoke is pouring out from the engine…
It’s probably best to look under the hood at what’s actually happening.
But because our economy is based of wealthy investors, and they just care about the metrics, people game the metrics and come up with this rosey view of how things are.
Regular Americans don’t care about the metrics that are being gamed. We’re looking at the crazy person who’s driving a car around that’s obviously on fire. When they wave at us like everything is normal, it’s not reassuring, it makes us think that person has no clue what’s going on, and it’s probably not a good idea to let them keep driving
That’s not just America. The whole world is addicted to a school of economics that “models” reality without ever actually studying it.
Most economists basically operate in a world of frictionless spherical cows moving in an infinite vacuum, and then from this try to infer useful data about the expected price of milk.
Most economists basically operate in a world of frictionless spherical cows moving in an infinite vacuum, and then from this try to infer useful data about the expected price of milk
Recession is coming. What we are seeing is how capitalism works. Businesses are squeezing as much profitability as they can out of existing products. The stories you see about record profits drive those actions. As long as they are making money, they push the strategy. The stories we are just starting to see about price cuts (like Target lowering grocery prices and the likes) are early indicators that corporate profits are peaking and adjustments need to be made to continue sales before revenue falls off a cliff.
People suffer when they get priced out of purchasing power. Businesses will suffer when they squeeze the market too hard, which is where we are. Unfortunately, people are going to suffer on that side, too, as businesses cut jobs to try to stem the bleeding.
We are in for a few fucked up years regardless of who gets elected in the next presidency. It takes a long time for real changes in the economy to show up. A lot of what we are dealing with is from the money flooded into the economy during Covid (under both Trump and Biden) and the swings in pricing due to loss of supply chain and the stickiness of pricing associated with its return.
if the inflation formula had accounted for borrowing costs like they USED TO, the inflation numbers would match much more closely with public sentiment
Last year, they actually put out a report stating that inflation was back to normal “when you discount the costs of groceries, power, housing and fuel” 🤦
You know, just minor luxury items that everyone can choose to forgo if they want to!
This is a great little misleading factoid -- the missing piece being that inflation is also back to normal if you do include the cost of groceries, power, housing, and fuel.
The fact that they're excluded from the usual metric isn't some weird economic misleading-metric plot (although, those certainly exist). It's just that the CPI usually excludes those items because their prices can swing around in ways that are different from the ways that the baseline price of everything else swings around. But, if you include them in the analysis of what's happened since 2020, the answer doesn't change at all.
So you’re saying that groceries, power, and housing are NOT more expensive now than in 2020? Is that seriously what you’re trying to make people believe??
the CPI usually excludes those items because their prices can swing around in ways that are different from the ways that the baseline price of everything else swings around.
The most basic things that everyone needs, the things that especially the working poor spend the vast majority of all income isn’t itself the baseline for the CONSUMER price index?
That’s as fucking useless to gauge how regular people are doing as measuring the overall economy by GDP and stock prices, then! 🤦
So you're saying that groceries, power, and housing are NOT more expensive now than in 2020? Is that seriously what you're trying to make people believe??
I am saying that their prices have gone up pretty much by the same amount as the general CPI, including a huge spike upwards in 2022, which means that looking at the CPI without them is exactly the same (in this particular case) as looking at the CPI with them.
Stop. Read again.
I am saying that their prices have gone up pretty much by the same amount as the general CPI, including a huge spike upwards in 2022, which means that looking at the CPI without them is exactly the same (in this particular case) as looking at the CPI with them.
Makes sense, right? Or no? I'm happy to talk in a little more detail if you want.
Here are the numbers. It's complex, obviously, and some commodities will spike way, way up, or drop below 0% inflation and stay negative for a while. But it actually happens that if you average it all out, CPI with everything is right now more or less the same as CPI with the normal stuff excluded. Good things to highlight to see it are "All Items" or "Less Food and Energy" or "Shelter". Between those three, it'll give you a pretty good picture, and they all behave pretty much the same - a big hump after Covid from supply-chain shock and corporate greed, i.e. the situation Biden came in with, and then reducing steadily back down as Biden's policies got ahold of it.
Makes sense? Or no? Like I say, I'm happy to talk about the details.
Making an exception for one organisation, pressured by politicians, would be harmful. BBC has the following policy about neutral reporting:
We don’t use loaded words like “evil” or “cowardly”. We don’t talk about “terrorists”. And we’re not the only ones to follow this line. Some of the world’s most respected news organisations have exactly the same policy
We can continue to see Israel’s playbook here. Any criticism of their despicable actions (was genocide ever mentioned in the article?) gets converted to antisemitism.
I hope the protestors keep it up. Force the media outlets to say the word genocide. Don’t let them ignore what’s going on with the Palestinians.
It’s an awful thing to do to the greater Jewish community to leverage antisemitism as a political defense. It’s diluting a concept that has plagued the Jewish people for millennia.
It’s an awful thing to do to the greater Jewish community to leverage antisemitism as a political defense. It’s devaluing to a concept that has plagued the Jewish people for millennia.
It’s also increasing the blind hatred of all Jews.
Yep. I am no friend of Israel by any stretch of the imagination, but one can’t help but notice how all the old Jewish stereotypes are beginning to rear their heads again in discourse related to the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Israel is committing genocide. Antisemitism is on the rise. Both these things are true, but the latter should not excuse the former, and the former should not invalidate the latter.
A poster on news not too long ago posted a photo claiming the terrorist in Australia who stabbed a bunch of people was “Benjamin Cohen.”
Just so people know, anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish bigotry are not tolerated in this community. We do not tolerate any form of bigotry here.
The funny thing is that abusing the accusation of anti-semitism to deflect valid criticism of the actions of the nation state of Israel could itself be considered anti-semitism as it can be harmful for anybody who is a Jew.
I love reading about how Korea and Japan are both having this problem and in each it boils down to: people are struggling to survive under capitalist oppression and refuse to bring children into the life of oppression
I’m laying here in bed until the last minute required for me to great ready to rush into work to attend meetings for 7 hours then come home and do actual work for another 5 to keep up with workload. Yes I’m as tired as you
How about go to 3 hours of meetings and work 5 hours? If they object, ask them when you’re supposed to get all this shit done in your 8 hour day. Don’t give them your labor for free…
They help me by getting my work close to done, which keeps me employed, which keeps me fed. If I started only doing 8, I’d be on a pip in weeks and unemployed in a month or two.
I’m just saying, I used to be more like you at the beginning of my career, until I had a new coworker come in years ago that would leave 6 hours into his day if he was done with work, and no one but me noticed or cared. So I started doing the same and stood my ground in other small ways, and have been a lot better for it. Obviously it depends on your company and direct supervisor, but like you can at least start by working less and seeing what happens.
I’m not sure why people took exception to this. The Korean government literally makes it impossible for foreigners to access certain services. Japan allows landlords and businesses to reject serving any foreigners, and will arrest any non-citizen for the crime of being outside of their dwelling without their passport in their pocket.
For South Korea this is unlikely to be the case. If you actually listen to the women, you’ll learn that starting a family means becoming second class citizens, dogged by oppressive institutions and terrible mother-in-laws (which is a cultural problem too). It’s common in many places. The men aren’t better off either, the insane competition is stressful, alienating, and prevents them from actually experiencing family. Yes, this is also common in many places.
The problem is capitalism and conservatism, two sides of the same coin.
At this point, even if either wasn’t so racist, I don’t think they’re in a position to suddenly receive millions of immigrants and properly integrate them into their societies.
“Integrate” isn’t the goal, population replacement is. This is specifically why the governments DON’T want immigrants–they are afraid of losing cultural purity.
I think you misunderstand. I’m saying that what the governments don’t want to do is allow for replacement even if it’s the only solution. There is no integration, people enter and they remain themselves and their culture. This means that the country will change and evolve, which is scary for purists. In 25 years they would be vastly different places but based on the original cultures.
When I read stories like this, I think about another story about a bear whose bile was extracted for industrial use. The extraction is extremely painful for the animal. They’re kept harnessed to the extraction machinery. This particular bear managed to escape its harness. And the first thing it did was to kill its own cub. So that it wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. This happened in China by the way.
Israel literally told Gazans to go to Rafah to be safe. They said it was a safe zone.
And the IDF was operating elsewhere, not entering Rafah at the time.
Now they’re supposed to leave Rafah.
Yes, that’s how it works. It’s like how sometimes during road construction, the construction crew might route you into a different traffic lane. Doesn’t mean that lane will remain safe to drive on forever.
You might ask where Israel thinks Gazans are supposed to go. The answer is- nowhere. They’re supposed to die.
Now this is just plain false, since it doesn’t look like you actually bothered reading any details about it. Israel did in fact tell them where to go.
Terrorist group Hamas is shooting rockets from there, so of course Israel isn’t going to ignore it completely. If Hamas stopped hiding behind civilians, the entire area would have been left alone.
Why is it kill counts? Because over 13,000 children have been killed in this war. I suppose you’ll claim all 13,000 of them were Hamas soldiers. Even the babies.
Sure, put words in my mouth. You’ve yet to answer why you’re justifying rockets fired at Israeli civilians just because they’re mostly being stopped, while condemning rockets fired at Hamas.
Oh very easily. I said Hamas is shooting rockets out of there, and your immediate reaction is “so what IDF killed more people than Hamas, so it’s fine”
You’re admitting to being on the wrong side without realizing it. IDF has been the instigator committing what the rest of us call terror attacks on civilians for decades and you are incapable of acknowledging that makes them bad guys.
You’re also incapable of acknowledging that both sides have civilians which needs protection.
Because you only think one group of civilians are human.
Oh right, instigators with holy leaders that say murdering Jews will get you to heaven, and government officials that pay your family using international funds if you go and kill Jews. Oh wait.
You’re also incapable of acknowledging that both sides have civilians which needs protection.
Sure they need protection. One government does all they can to protect their civilians, the other stripped them of resources and instead choose to go attacking others using those same resources needed for life.
So you’re ignoring that much of the Israeli government says they want to destroy everything, wipe out the entire people, saying that not even the children are innocent, etc?
Neither government protects civilians.
Hamas don’t care at all.
Israel knew about the attack in advance but didn’t care to protect their own. They also don’t give a shit about Palestinian civilians. You’re actively lying if you claim Israel cares about civilian safety.
Quoting a couple extremist politicians and claiming is the entire government is like saying the entire US government is subservient to Russia just because Trump sucks Putin’s dick.
Hell, some of the Arab politicians in the Israeli government might give you quotes on quite the opposite of the narrative you’re driving.
For over 100 years zionists have been terrorizing and committing genocide there. They killed or pushed out the Muslims, they disenfranchised the Christians until they left. They’re currently clamping down on Jewish people who don’t believe in Zionism.
They have always pushed. Every treaty, every agreement. Every legal attempt to stop the violence has been ignored, or discarded under paper thin or faulty pretenses. Terror is often the last resort of a people who have no other options. (Unless western nations give you billions of dollar in weapons and force other nations to recognize your presence, then you can call it statecraft!)
For zionists and for Israel, the goal has always been to paint the land red with non-believer blood and to destroy every bit of culture that isn’t ‘theirs.’
That’s why they bomb mosques and universities. That’s why they bomb infrastructure. That’s why the West Bank has been split into tiny enclaves. They’re choking the life out of the land so they can plant the seeds of their hollow society on barren soil.
That’s great fiction you’re writing there. Too bad you show no actual understanding of the region. It’s almost as if you get your info from outlets peddling anti-Israel hate, since their governments failed to wipe it and all the people in it off the map repeatedly.
Nah, he’s got to go, but the amount of misinformation about anything related to Israel is absolutely ridiculous. Especially in places like lemmy, where you have 3-5 people flooding the whole place with propaganda that’s then lapped up by people who get all their news from lemmy posts.
Misinformation like multiple Israeli newspapers quoting Israeli ministers who spoke in public and checking it against other public information which you can look up
You haven’t even offered any counter information. You’re just accusing people of lying or not researching when they’re the ones pulling out actual graphs, figures, and historical facts.
How did you know?!? I have to admit, my beliefs were really hard to come by. I almost didn’t have them!
I read Exodus when I was 13 and I believed it. A few years later, a history teacher challenged me to write a research paper over Israel for my IB history class, so in spring of 2002, I had to work so hard to find anti-Israel propaganda. I didn’t really find any in news media, but I went to the school library, and those people are absolute radicals!
They had books from the 1960’s that discussed Jewish settlers forming militias and attacking “moslem” civilians and burning their family farms. It totally blew my mind that Ben Gurion coordinated terror attacks on British officials in the region, so Britain would withdraw and let the Zionists massacre Palestinians - which they did within weeks of Britain formally withdrawing from Palestine in 1948.
Finding all those anti-Israel accounts of things they actually did was a lot of work!
Yet you’ve offered no comment that wasn’t surface level. When pressed, you fell back on insinuating others were uninformed or intellectually lazy. Claims you failed to substantiate.
Your comments lack substance. Your positions lack support. You fail to engage intellectually, and the embarrassment you feel at being outclassed is palpable and plainly visible.
You are naked and shameful.
I never said Hamas was not in Rafah. In fact that’s the opposite of what I said. I did say it was designated a safe zone. Now they’re moving the safe zone to a new area and the people with it.
Extremely honorable of Hamas to fire 350 meters away from the nearest populated area. Difficult to find an empty place within such a densely populated area.
Also great targeted attack hitting only israeli Nazi soldiers and no civilians.
Extremely glad to see Hamas follow international law so well.
Are you saying that there’s anything wrong with this very targeted attack from Hamas, against a base of Genocidal Nazis, which was not launched from a civilian area, creating zero civilian casualties and only military casualties?
Hamas did exactly what you asked of them here. What is your problem with it?
Yes, that’s how it works. It’s like how sometimes during road construction, the construction crew might route you into a different traffic lane. Doesn’t mean that lane will remain safe to drive on forever.
That’s a bad analogy. The construction crew direct you to a safe place while they repair the rest of the road. There’s nothing being repaired in Gaza. It’s just being systematically destroyed.
Or claims to. I am not sure that he’s a true believer so much as an authoritarian who wants to hold onto power and escape justice by pulling the hatred/religious extremism lever that helped him get where he is (he literally marched calling for Rabin’s death prior to the assassination).
Some important context here is that this is an effort to deal with terribly behaving British tourists, since the same bylaw also bans walking around nude or only in underwear. In addition to just being terrible tourists generally, there’s a history of British tourists treating Spanish beaches like their personal vacationing grounds and not a different country where other people live and speak a different language.
The British and German tourists have a tight grip on Mallorca for example. A tiny, wonderful island, packed mainly with tourists from both nations during summer .
When i lived in Brazil, i observed the same on the island of Florianópolis and tourists from Argentina.
When I was in Mallorca when I was 12 I literally didn’t hear a word of Spanish over the course of the 2 week holiday. Ok, granted, I spent 1 week in the hotel room sick and watching One Piece on TV (also in German) but I’d say a whole week in Playa de Mallorca and only hearing perfect German was wild.
Almost as wild as when I opened that plastic bell pepper in a souvenir shop and there was a dildo inside. Like, why. Why would you want to have sex with a bell pepper. Why did they have red ones and green ones but no yellow ones.
Yeah sexy souvenirs are the worst. A colleague from work ( long time ago ) returned from thailand, with a t-shirt saying something like: I’m a Thai Sex Tourist - proudly wearing the t-shirt on his first day back to work.
Back to Mallorca, it is possible to evade most mass tourist activities though. I stayed once with my ex there and we took a posada in the normal center of the city. Since most tourists go the same places, always, we could quickly find some bars and restaurants where locals went.
Some had that “oh no alemanes, sigh” expression on their face, when they noticed we were german. But hey, absolutely understandable.
The posada was also almost empty, just another guy hearing football commentary in Spanish 24/7.
We had fun times. Most locals open up, once they figure that you’re not from the mass tourist group.
Absolutely agree. Mallorca has so much to offer apart from Palma, and it’s a disgrace how they massacred that city (and island). I am happy there are protests now.
I remember back then (it must have been like 2003) it was offered to my parents at a travel agency. I even remembered how they called home to ask my sister and me whether we would like to go since they knew we both were kinda anti Mallorca (since we then also didn’t know about the beauty of the other parts). We still agreed because it was a really cheap deal and we were like lower middle class back then, so a good deal’s a good deal. I’m still grateful because I would have never travelled to that tourist place by myself, and I would have never been scarred for life by that dildo. I think it was the first time I saw a sex toy in real life. There were still some really cool memories and moments, and even having diarrhea and watching One Piece for a week was pretty chill.
On the topic of t-shirts, I found a kid’s shirt saying “sample text” under the drawing of a cat at a flea market yesterday. Not too related to what you mentioned, but I hail that shirt so much and needed to share.
I also support the protests. It didn’t have to come that far, mallorquines are very tolerant by nature. Them protesting means things must have gotten worse over the years.
So, you did but the shirt? Made a good deal? What color is it?
It’s grey and looks very cheap, like Kik style, with some glitter. It was actually a free clothing swap so it didn’t cost anything. My two year old likes cats right now so it has a lot of potential to become her favorite shirt. It gives me “precise dwarf bravery” vibes but by now these companies produce them on purpose. I am cherishing this shirt because I found it in the wild and it is very obviously an actual mistake. Especially since it’s a toddler shirt.
The only thing that I don’t like about that shirt is that it doesn’t come in my size.
I’m not sure if your colleague wore the shirt as a joke or in all seriousness. I kind of hope the latter, simply because its genuity would save the cringe.
I’m actually not sure, like before the vacation he kept talking about planning to have lots of sex there, at the same time he was going together with his wife.
Then he came back and walked around in that shirt telling everyone how exciting the vacation was.
It was all very comical, but at the same time he really was the stereotype of the kind of guy that does this kind of trips irl.
The only thing that I don’t like about that shirt is that it doesn’t come in my size.
She’s just not ready for it yet, but I’m sure your two year old is gonna love it
This has been on my mind every time the DNC tries to position themselves as a party for the people. As far as I’m concerned, they showed their hand, and apparently they thought no one would notice.
We can be so much more creative than that. There are mountains of actions we can take in addition to voting to change things.
Why should we accept that the only people we can vote for are evil? Every US election has been this way for at least 20 years now. One less than the other everytime (depending on perspective) but if the only options are widely seen as evil, we must do something to change this.
We don’t have to accept it—that’s what primaries are for. But there are people out there who lose the primary and then they just don’t vote—that is the time people should choose the lesser of two evils. Simply not voting is just giving up the tiny shred of control you actually have.
Of course, if you feel strongly about a candidate, it is a good idea to make calls, put up signs, or anything else to help them win. But, as we saw with Bernie, even a massive grassroots effort isn’t always enough.
We don’t have to accept it—that’s what primaries are for. But there are people out there who lose the primary and then they just don’t vote—that is the time people should choose the lesser of two evils.
No. They should not. Stop lecturing people who are fighting something better and start lecturing the people voting for absolute trash in the primaries.
He also won the Wisconsin primary and the Michigan primary in spite of the DNC leadership and propaganda machine being firmly behind Hillary from the beginning.
As I see it, he won the nomination. More people voted for him, and the super delegates fucked it all up. The party even admitted this back in 1982 that their intention is to prevent “outlier candidates” from securing a nomination. The Democratic Party is very undemocratic until we can toss superdelegates altogether. I say that, but it doesn’t appear to have worked for the Republican Party either, they just shrug and toss out all the votes regardless of who won in their caucuses. Look at Ron Paul in Iowa 2008, obviously won by a large enough percentage to eliminate the margin for error…but fuck it. Iowa’s Republican chair handed it over anyway and when the news was published he just “resigned” and the damage was already done.
That sentiment that it scares them though, has happened before to BOTH parties. 1890 had both parties on the run as we were embroiled in shooting battles against law enforcement due to working conditions and pay.
This. I’ll be the last one to defend any of these megacorps but folks calling it greed are being reductive. These are publicly traded companies which means their loyalty is to their shareholders and their #1 goal is to make them more money than they made them last quarter. So it’s more than greed, it’s their job within this capitalist system. They have to do that every quarter for as long as they exist. The only ways to do it are to increase revenue or decrease costs. If they can’t make enough money they have to fire people. That’s the world we’ve built.
But it’s not only about making more profit than last quarter, but also the amount the profits increased by has to be higher than the amount they increased by the quarter before last. That’s how you end up with companies seeing record profits and still laying people off. They made more than last quarter, but only 2% more. The quarter before they made 3% more so now people have to go. It’s insane.
“We have a constitution that lays down the laws for us. As a republic, the individual is protected. So the minority can be protected. It’s not just majority rules.”
"We don’t like that the majority that we don’t agree with rules. We want a christofascist theocratic dictatorship where the minority we agree with rules.
That’s the thing I’ve never understood about the “tyranny of the majority” folks, they’re just arguing that we should do what fewer people think is the right thing to do and that seems objectively worse. If a majority of people disagree with you then you either work to change their minds or be introspective and see if you need to change yours. Sometimes you’ll have to suck it up and deal with the fact that neither of those options will work but that’s just the way it is. There is no alternative that works in the long term.
I believe in the rights of the individual, which is why I support free health care, education, and housing for all, so that every individual has a chance to succeed, no matter where they come from.
Right, but the tyranny they’re taking about is other people having rights, and other people getting education, and other people getting healthcare, and other people having opportunities, and other people getting to vote. It isn’t that they are losing anything. They just don’t want people they think are inferior to be equal.
Yes. I love the, “The US isn’t a democracy, it’s a Republic!” crowd. A Republic is a form of representatives democracy. The majority elects representatives who then vote on behalf of their constituents. They speak with such confidence but are completely wrong.
EDIT: The definition of a republic is, “a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.” Ancient republics may have been different but we don’t live in the ancient world. Not every country that calls itself a Republic is a Republic. The DPRK and Republic of Iran, for example, are a dictatorship and a theocratic autocracy. They are not republics.
The People are the citizens of the state not the white people, or the Christian people, or the Republican people, or the people you agree with. The People are all of the people. It is only a Republic if every single citizen has the right to vote and equal access to the ballot box. If you are trying to disenfranchise people who don’t vote the way you want them to you’re not a Republican, you’re a RINO.
The People may only exercise supreme power if they freely and fairly elect their representatives. If you’re trying to limit the number of polling stations in areas where people don’t vote the way you want them to, or to stop counting of ballots before every ballot is counted, or to make it difficult to vote by mail, or early, or on Sunday you are not a Republican, you’re a RINO.
In a Republic, every citizen has the right to vote, their votes all carry the same weight, and they have equal access to the ballot box. If you don’t have those things not only are you not a democracy but you’re not a republic either.
I always wonder what type of Republic they are aiming for. The PRC? Or the Islamic Republic of Iran? The French or German Republic? I guess given their religious leanings they would prefer the Theocratic/Iranian style of Republic.
Just a technicality: Not all republics are democracies. A republic could be an oligarchy or a theocracy. The main division is between monarchy and republic.
The definition of a Republic is, “a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.”
If the people don’t elect their representatives and president then it’s not a Republic. The DPRK, for example, is not democratic and is therefore not a Republic. Autocracies are republics in name only.
I suppose it does depend on which definition one is using. The more academic definition puts them as contrasting with monarchies. With that, the DPRK and other autocracies world not be a republic, not due to a lack of democracy but due to a lack of representative-based government. “Representative” here meaning multiple individually who are ostensibly representing the public interest (frequently, this is someone that they fail to do).
What makes a republic democratic or not is HOW the representatives are appointed. In a theocratic republic, they could be appointed by the state church, for example.
No. That’s the defining factor of democracy which is derived from the Greek words “demos”, meaning “the people”, and “kratos”, meaning “rule”. That is “the people rule” or “rule of the people”.
Republic is derived from the Latin phrase “res publica”, meaning public affair. A republic does not, by definition, need to be democratic, just a form of government where representatives hold the political power to conduct affairs for the people, rather than being explicitly granted it by heredity or “divine mandate”.
That is not to say that non-democratic republics are a good, desirable, or have any sort of track record suggesting that they are good for their citizens. Just that the semantic meaning of words is important.
Could the US, and conservatives have been bleating for decades be a republic and not a democracy? No. The US Constitution clearly lays out that the system is intended to be a government of the people, for the people, making democracy a required component under the US Constitution.
Note this pic I’m posting stops before the 2023 event and all that has come since, so you can just mentally tack that on. Absolutely tragic. I can’t imagine why they and their parents might be inclined not to trust Israel or Israeli colonizers.
Edit: Updated, higher resolution graphic, and link to source if you’d like to see it with less jpg.
Right? Israel straight up announced it would keep Palestinians out of the port. To secure aid that was already vetted in Cyprus. There is no reason for that unless they’re planning to block delivery.
It’s because the port is a forward operating base and entrenches the annexation of Northern Gaza. They built a road splitting Gaza into two and are shooting anyone who approaches it. Add to that the US wants warships present to defend the oilfields it’s just been liscenced by the occupation forces.
This is, and always was, about money and ethnic cleansing. Fuck israel, free Palestine.
Didn’t you hear? Israel sent a “credible certification” it wasn’t committing war crimes to the state department. Who is now breathlessly pushing news updates saying there’s no evidence Israel is committing war crimes with US weapons. That “credible certification”? A letter written by a high ranking government official.
Every citizen of a democratic country, who is still inside Russia at this point, is a potential hostage and bargaining chip for the Russian government. There’s no independent press or judiciary in Russia and the Russian government has no morals and few scruples. If they need a hostage, they’ll take one.
Griner (a basket ball player convicted to 25y in prison for petty charges) was exchanged for Viktor Bout (the person on whom the movie Lord of War was based).
The Russian laws are also a minefield of post truths and petty rules, so it’s not hard to find some kind of charge against any individual. Basically everyone will be breaking the law in some way in Russia and the crooks in the Russian government can decide when and where to go after someone.
Thank you. It’s so disappointing that people still give Russia the benefit of doubt. And thereby the people in the US and Europe who want to turn our countries into post-fact dystopias.
Yeah at this point if you're still there, there should be no bargaining for you if/when this happens. So fucking stupid to give that country any benefit of the doubt.
Saw an interview with some Americans living in Moscow and all I could think was “Jaysus lads, you must have been dropped on your head as a baby a few times to still be there at this point”.
Like I’m sure day to day it’s fine, but you’re instantly a bargaining chip if Putin wants one.
theguardian.com
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