Ah, got it. Thanks for the clarification.

Seems strange rooting for the anti-American candidate.

Then you didn’t read my comment. I’m not for or against a given candidate; I am squarely FOR fair elections.

Also, not every commenter here is American, or even pro-American: who are you to turn every comment into a measure of how pro- or anti-American a comment is?

EVERYONE has a right to their own opinion based on their own experience and culture, including non-Americans and even non-pro-Americans, and there’s not a goddamn “strange” thing about that at all.

This is absolutely hilarious and wonderful to see, for anyone that values fair elections. In the last month, Pakistan has jailed Imran Khan (the guy that just won) on what are possibly trumped up corruption charges, then convicted him and his wife on further “non-Islamic marriage” criminal charges, and even denied Khan’s party the use of their symbol, the cricket bat, in a nation where many do not read and rely on symbols to navigate ballots. The government even turned off phone and internet yesterday to try to fuck up the election for him.

And those are just the highlights of how diligently power brokers in Pakistan have been trying to get Khan out of the race and their own guy in.

What this article is saying is that because the people all came out and voted in droves, none of the rigging made any difference: Khan won in a LANDSLIDE in spite of it.

Remember this when people try to imply that one vote doesn’t matter. EVERY vote matters.

to offer some perspective from within the anti-war/Putin population

I am so grateful for your contribution in this regard, and you’re right, it’s often missing. But if there is any one single element that can stop wars, it is anything that can humanize the members of opposing sides to each other, make them see each other not as one homogeneous whole but as individuals like themselves, and in this regard every little piece counts. You are doing this too, and doing it well. When you write of Nadezhdin, you not only humanize him for us, but you also humanize the members of Russian society who have zero desire for either war or empire building, which is what Putin is set on.

I am also aware that when you, and others like you, try to add this valuable perspective in public forums you run the risk of being jumped by edgelords who will never get past “enemy = bad” and verbally attack you no matter what you say – and that’s above and beyond whatever risk you may be running from various governments just by posting. I think sometimes we are excellent at silencing the voices we most need to hear, and I am so grateful when Russian anti-war people choose to speak up anyway. I have nothing but the utmost admiration for that, knowing what dangers it can present, especially for those still in Russia.

Your English is perfect! I had no idea I was reading the comment of a non-English speaker until three or four paragraphs down. I know better than to press paragraph breaks on a Russian (I’ve known Russians and honestly we should be glad there are even separate sentences, lol) but the shorter you can make your paragraphs, separating them by single ideas or topics, the more readable they are to English speakers. And if they never change at all, you’re still golden.

I wish you and every Russian the nation you want, the leader who represents the people you originally thought you were getting, and the place in the world you were poised to have before a thief took it from you. Yours is a truly great nation, and I hope once again to see it thrive among all the nations of the world.

Great comment. Thank you so much for taking the time, it explains a lot. Especially the last paragraph, about what that number of votes in that particular set of circumstances really means. Спасибо.

No problem. Thanks for the link!

This could almost be called imeldific.

Were you intending to post a link, or . . . ?

LOL

For those who don’t get it, James Buchanan was the outgoing president in 1861, and

He was an advocate for states’ rights, particularly regarding slavery, and minimized the role of the federal government preceding the Civil War. Historians and scholars rank Buchanan as among the worst presidents in American history.

James Buchanan on Wikipedia

Some of us here are old enough to remember when everyone knew someone who had had polio, or had had it themselves. Our parents lined us up around the block for both the Salk and Sabin vaccines, even knowing that for some of these recipients, it would miss, or worse, cause harm. We all did it anyway. Because we all knew what the alternative was. When I was five, the smallpox vax almost took me out – but I never heard a word of regret, or uttered one myself, because the reality of a real smallpox infection is magnitudes worse.

For a few years, when Salk or Sabin were spotted in public, parents would literally hug their feet. This is not an exaggeration. They were literally considered human saints, and their vaccines literal miracles. Before the polio vaccine, anyone – especially the healthiest of the young, who should have been most immune to any illness – could feel sick in the morning and be paralyzed or dead by nightfall. If you lived, you often walked with a limp or a cane, and that doesn’t account for post-polio complications: you could “survive” polio and still have it kill you decades later. Older folks are STILL dying of post-polio complications today, in the same way that people who survived “the Spanish flu” in 1918-1921 succumbed to neurological illnesses decades later.

I don’t believe in the god part of it, but you can’t fault them for grasping for those straws. Because for all of human history until the last century or so, prayers were all you had left when the medicines ran out, and even getting anything effective to start with, including a diagnosis, was sketchy as hell. Everything from “bad air” (miasma) to “imbalanced humours” was considered valid disease theory.

We are SO much more privileged now than we realize. And the realities we don’t care to see are willingly hidden from us by the curators of the media we consume. Back then, news was deadly serious, almost sacred, and very highly valued. People didn’t fuck with it. Walter Cronkite was possibly the most trusted man in the United States, and everyone knew who Edward R. Murrow was long after he died in 1965. But today, it doesn’t even make a pretense at being news: it’s entertainment, even when it’s news. So who is going to show us the realities no one like to see and advertisers won’t pay to support?

So I already know what your fictional parents would say. I don’t have to guess, because polio survivors were all around me when I was a kid. And it wasn’t just vaccines; antibiotics did not really become widespread until after WWII in the US. Many, many people had living memories of the TB sanatoriums, and friends they’d had that died far too young, and how in many wars illness killed more soldiers on all sides than bullets ever did. Gene Tierney, a movie actress, was pregnant and got German measles from a fan on a USO tour; because of it her daughter was born profoundly disabled and lived most of her long life institutionalized. Scarlet fever, measles, all these diseases were still in living memory, along with their profound costs and legacies of pain.

So people did not dick around with illness, in the same way most of us don’t dick around with gravity tests off tall buildings, because it was far too often either outright deadly, or came with too many consequences to take chances with.

People did what they had to do to avoid getting sick, it was part of being a good citizen, and if you didn’t do it you were an embarrassment and a fool. It wasn’t just you doing it for yourself, it was literally what you owed to your community as a human being.

Had anyone said the anti-vax, anti-science shit some are saying today, they’d have become an instant pariah and outcast, and widely seen as the threat to the common good that they are.

Nah, you’re golden. I’m not the other guy you were talking to, but IMO, there is no error (even if there technically is) because the more people you get reading and talking about this, the better. Thank you for taking the time to post it.

I’ve been thinking for quite some time now that there are far more criminals behind the bench than there are in front of it, and this newly revised number of police-ordered informal gravesites only serves to prove the point even further. (I’m using “the bench” as a symbol for the entire US justice system and not just corrupt judges, but you probably get my point.)

Netanyahu said in a press conference he had told Washington that he objected to any Palestinian statehood that did not guarantee Israel’s security.

Bibi’s only insisting upon that point because there is literally no such thing in reality: there is NO arrangement between warring neighbors that can guarantee “security” apart from the willingness of the participants themselves to stand down. And even if there were, he’d never agree to it anyway. (Nor would Hamas, off in their Qatari penthouses watching from afar.)

Plus, of all the participants who would have to agree to stand down, Israel seems to be the biggest force and the side waging the most active battle of the war. That’s problematic, because why would any of the weaker participants stop fighting when the biggest force has no intention of doing so? Israel would have to stand down first before any of the rest, for the détente to be taken seriously by anyone else involved.

Thus, by demanding the impossible and refusing to settle for anything less, Bibi maintains the status quo (and his own power, as well as that of Hamas). Corrupt authoritarian asshole.

deleted by creator

I’m so bored of hearing about their self inflicted problems, the same ones over and over again.

But looking at your post history, when it comes to news, you ONLY comment on US news.

Talk about self-inflicted problems. If you’re so bored with US news, move on and read news you’re actually interested in.

If even a small fraction of Russia’s nuclear arsenal is functional then they are still incredibly dangerous

Agreed, but it’s 50/50 as to whom. They can’t even afford to turn the keys at this point, lest that unmaintained shit blow up before it leaves Russian airspace – or, more likely, doesn’t even get off its Russian launchpad.

If he could have, he would have, but Putin knows if he even tries he unleashes full MAD.

I’m not saying he won’t or never would, just saying that for all the threats and saber-rattling, he’ll only do it when he himself is already damned.

LOL

Jesus, that almost sounds like sanity.

Media is all about elevating opinion to the level of proven fact these days.

As an aside, the one thing that shocked me the most throughout the runup to the referendum is that everyone involved knew that it would gut the Good Friday Agreement by putting a hard border back into Ireland, but NO ONE talked about it. NO ONE.

Whenever Ireland was brought up during Brexit discussions (rarely) it was dismissed, as rapidly as possible, as one of those things that would be resolved after the passing of the referendum – along with every other reasonable concern that got shoved aside in the run up – and of course never was, along with the rest of the shit they swore they had a plan for and of course did not.

Because they had no answer, not even a hint of a clue. The Troubles simmered for several hundred years, the Good Friday Agreement ended them – and the pro-Brexit crowd literally could not have cared less what Pandora’s box they would be opening in Ireland by putting a hard border back in.

It is ONLY because of the Irish people on both sides of that border, and NOT Westminster, that The Troubles have not begun again. The Irish themselves have kept the post-Brexit peace in spite of Brexit, with zero shits given by the pro-Brexit crowd at any point before or after.

edited to add: I know there is a lot more nuance to the GFA than simply a hard border, I am speaking only in terms of how Brexit could easily have brought back hostilities, etc.

Then you’ll love the song. It’s by the British quartet The Kunts, with Kunt on vocals, Carsehole on lead guitar, Rubber Johnny on bass, and Fucksticks on drums.

Here’s the lyrics because the subs are shit:

The Grand old Duke of York
He said he didn’t sweat
So why’d he pay 12 million quid
To a girl he’d never met

He’s a sweaty nonce (Nonce)
He’s a sweaty nonce
You know it’s true that Prince Andrew
Is a sweaty nonce

Pizza Express in Woking?
Mate you gotta be joking
Pizza Express in Woking?
Is he having a laugh?

The Grand old Duke of York
Young girls he’d like to pork
So his pedo friend would traffic them
Then pay them not to talk

He’s a sweaty nonce (Nonce)
He’s a sweaty nonce
You know it’s true that Prince Andrew
Is a sweaty nonce

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFu8P7teOt8, and you’re welcome.

It’s not a left or right debate, it’s about civilization! The big issue needs to be resolved: platforms are not neutral, the algorithms reward the extreme, the grotesque, the destructive, the aberrant, the chaotic. And this is paid for! There are people profiting from the degeneration of society.

– Silvio Almeida, Minister of Human Rights and Citizenship, Brazil

I don’t think it has ever been said better or more concisely. I’m sorry that people have had to die for it to be said, and that more will die before it is ever corrected. But that guy gets it.