He will now be held in a grim adult detention centre [article later notes he was sentenced to a juvenile facility]

a top performing student at school

no scrap of evidence for this was produced

a hellhole adult detention centre [in the same sentence where the article notes he’s going to juvee]

If this was a story about, say, a January 6 defendant, these types of editorial decisions would jump out at people as an obvious sign of significant bias. Pull the exact same rhetorical tricks against a Bad Country, though, and most simply accept it at face value.

Arseny Turbin, who committed his alleged crimes when he was just 14, has been branded as Russia’s ‘youngest terrorist’ following his conviction…

Judge Oleg Shishov in Oryol found him guilty of ‘participation in the activities of an organisation that is recognised as terrorist’…

[His mother] said ‘We will appeal the verdict….we did not expect this outcome at all.’

There was a trial – “no scrap of evidence” is a bald-faced lie.

If your theory (which really would have no scrap of evidence behind it) is that this was a kangaroo court, why would his mom be talking about appeals, and why would there be an appeal available in the first place?

Real reporting would have been, at minimum, getting a trial transcript and evaluating the evidence yourself. Or finding a Russian lawyer who was familiar with the proceedings and interviewing them. But of course MSN didn’t do any of this, because this isn’t reporting, this is propaganda.

I think you have a little of that, and a little of this showing that the giga-rich didn’t get that way because they are these perfect human multi-specialty geniuses like they all claim.

Sure, maybe they’re pretty bright in one or two areas. Many successful people are. But they also do real stupid, shortsighted shit like this all the time. They got as rich as they did not on merit, but on family wealth, luck, and exploiting the labor of others.

Today, Biden could:

• End all U.S. military support for Israel
• Veto any bill that contains one cent of funding for Israel
• Publically call a genocide a genocide
• Direct U.S. agencies to cancel contracts with companies that work with Israel, citing existing U.S. human rights laws
• Join the ICJ case against Israel
• Arrest Netanyahu’s son Yair, who’s just chilling in Miami
• Direct the National Guard to protect anti-genocide protesters
• Clean house at the State Department and other NatSec agencies to fire the people who have supported this genocide most vociferously
• Use the vast overseas surveillance power of the U.S. to document Israeli atrocities

How quickly would this stop?

And that’s not even considering options like a decapitation strike on the Israeli government, which should absolutely be on the table to stop a genocide.

Pick one: Russia is running on fumes, or Russia should have won a year ago.

The coherent opinion here is that it’s a slow, grinding war and the side that has lost more and more territory as it continued will continue to do so.

This has been the narrative since shortly after the war began. All that’s happened since is Russia has slowly advanced.

Taking everything you say at face value, the options for Ukraine are:

1. Take a deal that maybe you can’t trust, but it at least gives you time to breathe.
2. Keep fighting, and with the war going how it is eventually lose more than what you’ve already lost.
3. Attempt to draw other states into the conflict so that you have a shot at what might be considered a victory, likely years more down the road under the best of circumstances.

There is no justification for 2, and 3 is highly unlikely – if other states haven’t entered the war already, they’re not going to do so now.

This isn’t capitulation, this is cutting your losses while you have something left to hold onto.

Do you have anything of substance to add?

:smuglord: “you’re from Hexbear” isn’t an argument

Even assuming Russian shells are lower quality (and you have absolutely zero evidence of that), a shitload of weapons that are lower quality can still beat you.

Since taking office in 2021, Biden has yet to meet the Dalai Lama. As a candidate in 2020, Biden criticised Donald Trump for being the only US president in three decades who had neither met nor spoken to the Tibetan spiritual leader.

It’s laughable to cry “whataboutism” when discussing international politics. Comparing how countries act in similar situations is one of the foundations of international law.

Which politicians, and what is your source for popular opinions in Hong Kong?

The ur-gooner

One of the principle contradictions of capitalism is that any capitalist who thinks of heading off long-term problems gets replaced by one who can juice up the numbers in the immediate future. Who cares about sustaining a great position when you can make a shitload of money next quarter?

Love how you counter concrete, material facts like “guaranteed housing, employment, and childcare” with fact-free scare mongering like “political pressure” and “control over the media.”

There’s never any analysis about what this shit really means. “The fucking stasi” gets thrown out there like “the boogeyman” without even a thought towards how the U.S. security state violently repressed a nationwide movement against police violence in 2020, or how right now that same security state is violently repressing people protesting the genocide we’re supplying. You’re supposed to belive the stasi is the worst thing possible without ever digging into how it functioned, and certainly without asking how it compared to other states.

See also:

A new book by Kristen Ghodsee, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that women have better sex under socialism.

If that sounds strange to you, consider this: A survey of East and West Germans after reunification in 1990 found that Eastern women (the socialist side of Germany during the Cold War) had twice as many orgasms as Western women.

What in the world accounts for such a wide gap?

According to Ghodsee, it’s about social safety nets. If, she argues, you build a society that supports women and doesn’t punish them for having children or devalue their labor, it turns out they’ll be happier and have better sex.

But it doesn’t matter how many studies or surveys or policy differences you point to – some guy always has an old relative whose story outweighs everything.

Here’s what could happen next

I’m guessing a lawsuit, weird that’s not even mentioned

You got bodied and took it like a piss baby

grow up, get a job, buy a calculator

“The only people who struggle with housing costs are stupid children”