PugJesus

PugJesus , 7 months ago

One hopes his nationalist leanings with regards to minorities and the military are just necessary political compromises to survive in the environment he's in. I wish him and the NPP luck, for what it's worth.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

Homelessness in no way has gone away, and in fact grew 7%, to 8,300 in January, according to the same federal count.

Oh, good, who needs to address a problem when you can ignore it?

PugJesus , 7 months ago

Pack it up, folks, real life has out-noncredibled us yet again

PugJesus , 7 months ago

Why does this article make the US sound like a battered wife in the situation?

I have terrible news for you.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

I hope any informants in Mexico are demanding their pay in something other than rubles lmao

PugJesus OP Mod , 7 months ago

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41737330

Turns out it was a sting operation, unfortunately.

PugJesus OP Mod , 7 months ago

The Sovs were actually great at first. Moved Russia from a very backwards country on the matter to as open as France. Just didn't last - like so many things in the Soviet Union, it was not sustainably built on popular sentiment, and it could not resist a change in opinions from the ruling class (or rather, a change of rulers in the ruling class - hi Stalin).

PugJesus , 7 months ago

There are no friends in politics, but even so, Macron remains an especially rancid pig fucker.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

One wishes that Macron had that kind of moral fiber.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

Nate Silver isn't worth listening to.

That being said, I have my contingency plans laid out.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

I find this a far more compelling view. Trapping the equipment of enemy paramilitaries seems a very strange hill to die on to paint as a war crime. On the other hand, the haphazard distribution of the pagers and the lack of care taken to minimize civilian casualties absolutely suggests this was a war crime - just not for the reason of trapping communications devices.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

I imagine him with a little straw for a snorkel

PugJesus OP Mod , 7 months ago

I don't believe it was meant maliciously - more a manifestation of the common cultural casual sexism that leads women to often be defined by their husbands or male partners, regardless of their own talents or achievements, simply as a matter of perspective.

PugJesus OP Mod , 7 months ago

Why was she so legendary? Most the art I’ve seen by her is just ok, nothing epic.

Art is highly subjective - modern artists who become famous typically do so because of novel approaches to their material rather than raw technical proficiency. Frida Kahlo was pioneering in her usage of folk culture and surrealism, combined with a (if you will pardon the fact that 90% of my comparisons go back to my obsession with Rome) verism-like dedication to detail, while (in a very un-Verism like manner) hewing to a distinctly stylized form.

PugJesus OP Mod , 7 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Bit more of a pioneering thing. The "Seinfeld is unfunny" sort of thing, where something is so groundbreaking that it just gets widely adopted going forward and then isn't always seen in a pioneering light by casual observers. We live in a blessed time for artistic styles, in that incredible amounts of human history and creativity are at our fingertips to experiment with, combine, refine, and distort. We owe that rich artistic heritage we enjoy to innovators like Frida Kahlo. (edit: swapped the last letters initially lmao)

PugJesus , 7 months ago

I doubt as much as it is commonly feared, considering the level of hysteria (or euphoria, from some corners) about the imminent fall of Western hegemony that has been present for at least as long as I've been alive...

... but yes, our double standards are deeply damaging to the international order we claim to back.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

Regardless of the 'level' of the offense, attacking a sovereign state under false premises remains deeply damaging to the claim of backing an international rules-based order. We should be able to hold ourselves to a higher standard than "Not genocidal like Russia".

PugJesus , 7 months ago

And something that should have landed the people that lied, in jail.

Or with a necktie courtesy of the Hague.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

Can't speak for the West in general, but the US still enjoys very high approval ratings amongst the population of much of the 'Global South'.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

South Carolina executed a man on death row on Friday, days after the key witness for the prosecution came forward to say he lied at trial and the state was putting to death an innocent man.

Absolutely vile.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

I'm very much a dog person, but dogs either insta-love me or are insta-terrified of me. Not sure why.

Cats, though? I've never met a cat that didn't like me. And while a cat is fine too, I've always found it a bit odd since I'm not exactly the biggest cat fan out there. They are cute little bastards, though.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

We're basically internet elders just by recognizing it. The sages of the web.

PugJesus OP , 7 months ago

I don't know but I hope it's 'Good Dude'.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

Regardless of his guilt, the death penalty should only be levied when there is no other viable option. This is a travesty.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

when Mossad is awful

but sometimes they hit awful people and you just can't bring yourself to care

PugJesus , 7 months ago

I seem to remember the violation of sovereignity and death of civilians being a the very fucking reason Israel declared war in the first fuckin place.

Well, yes, but I'm well past expecting Israel to behave with basic international decency. Not unlike Russia.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

Me, waking up and having another reason to hate farmers: "Must be a day ending in y"

PugJesus , 7 months ago

The Arctic is the northernmost point on Earth and includes territory belonging to eight nations: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Canada, the United States, Iceland and Russia. All except Russia are NATO members.

tbf, that wasn't true before the current phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/51ff6d5e-fa59-4459-b508-f5a899b3a4ea.jpeg

For real, though, from a purely realpolitik perspective, what a fucking disaster this has been for Russia. Fuck them, though. And fuck them even harder than they're currently getting fucked, until they get the fuck out of Ukraine.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

It's the most 'mainstream', for better and for worse.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

In 1916 France and the UK create the Sykes-Picot secret agreement with agreement of Russia and Italy to divide the middle east in a way so they would never be able to pose any threat and could be easily manipulated into their spheres of influence, by cutting through areas of ethnic and religious affiliations.

Sykes-Picot didn't concern Afghanistan in the least.

108 years later on Lemmy “Afghanistan actively rejects civilization”. It’s just unfair to say such a thing when so many civilizations have contributed so much to ensure Afghanistan would never be able to be politically and economically stable.

In this much, there's agreement - Afghanistan has never had a foundation that could be regarded as politically or economically stable, and the constant attempts to convert it into a politically or economically stable state have been utterly unsuccessful because of the actual conditions of the country.

PugJesus , 7 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Or maybe the two decades-long invasions did extreme damage and brought insane brutality to a poor population?

Would you like to elaborate on the situation of Afghanistan before 2001?

The middle class, the opposition to the Taliban, were growing.

Funny, then, that they didn't put up the least bit of a fight when the Taliban came knocking.

Not everything is down to economics.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

Yes not everything is down to ecominics, the bombs and bullets are probably a more significant factor. Being unable to feed your family is bad, burying your family is worse.

And burying someone else's family for local disagreements is even worse.

And yes, the middle class Afghanis can’t put up a fight for many reasons, one of which is that they largely stopped existing. The moment they are locked out of their personal and business savings, they become poor desperate Afghanis.

Would you like to elaborate how the US freezing assets after the Taliban overran the country and seized control of its institutions stopped the Afghani middle class from putting up a fight against the Taliban from overrunning their country?

If the US hadn't frozen the assets, what would have happened is that the Taliban, then controlling the levers of government, would have had access to them. But even if we assume that wasn't an issue, what the fuck is the middle class supposed to do in the midst of a mass offensive by regional Islamist warlords? The development of a middle class is essential to democratic development, but it's not a wall against the use of all force - the middle class alone doesn't fight or lead wars. The middle class is glue; an ongoing war is a fucking sledgehammer. Feeding the Afghan middle class all the money in the world after the Taliban offensive started up wouldn't have changed that.

Can you explain your disagreement or argument? I dont understand what you are getting at, and “elaborate on pre-2001 afghanistan” is a very broad topic.

The two-decades of US occupation were not some outbreak of brutality which damaged Afghanistan. Afghanistan had been in far greater unbroken turmoil since the early 1970s, and the Taliban regime which preceded the US invasion (and, now, has resumed) is far more brutal. Even the Mujahideen government which preceded the Taliban was more brutal than the US-backed national government. Afghanistan's essential problems are not something that can be chalked up to "Bad things happened in the past five historical minutes".

This isn't a matter of happenstance - Afghanistan is simply not in a good position to become a functioning state - not culturally, not demographically, not economically. The ethnic conflicts are too deep and the imbalance of power too pronounced - every goddamn attempt at making a firm national government has utterly failed because the realities on the ground favor extreme decentralization of power, and not in a democratic sense - in a 'local elites and ethnic loyalties' sense.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

Oh, in that case, yeah, we are mostly in agreement. I would argue that both the Sovs and the Americans attempted to form a firm national government, that both the monarchy and the Afghan Republic preceding them also attempted it, and the Taliban has (twice now) in their own grotesque way attempted the same. The Mujahideen were more interested in just not falling apart into civil war again, a very 'symptomatic' government of the 'leave the locals to their affairs' attitude that Afghanistan governments struggle to fight.

I don't think I would say it's impossible or prevented completely, but I would say that it's... definitely not something that any one factor can fix or resolve. Whatever route Afghanistan takes to modernity, it will take... considerable overhaul, and that's something only the people of the region itself can make progress on.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

We're safer under this present system. And then, probably just as important, is now we are upholding our obligations to the Constitution of the United States and the rights of us as individual citizens in this country. We are deemed to be innocent until proven guilty. Bond is only set to make sure that you appear in court. So, when we talk about these things, we're talking about somebody who has not been adjudicated guilty in a court of law yet. So, the assessment of how dangerous they are to us — and whether they're going to reappear for court — is what we should have probably been doing all along.

PugJesus , 7 months ago

The bill passed 231 to 189, with 16 Democrats joining Republicans in voting “yes.” The Democrats who voted in favor represent some of the most extremist pro-Israel Democrats in the House, as well as some of the most conservative in the caucus, including Representatives Ritchie Torres (New York) and Josh Gottheimer (New Jersey).

It's too bad I'm already boycotting Israeli products so I can't double-boycott them for this bullshit.