Meanwhile here in Sweden, everyone's criminal record is public, and even available to search online. Unless the crime is something minor punished with a fine. It's really ridiculous, everything is publicly available online, like addresses, phone numbers, the cars or pets people own. Unless you have a protected identity, it's all available to everyone online. I tried to apply for a protected identity on account of being a public servant that is involved in making decisions many people very much dislike. But I couldn't provide a concrete threat so it was denied. It's like the system is still geared towards pre-internet times. The system itself in fact doxxes every resident in the country.
AreaSIX
joined 1 year ago
Jfc, a media outlet asks a presidential campaign a question, and the answer from the official spokesperson is "your phone must be fucked up." It's amazing how fast standards seem to be unraveling within the US political system. Even random student groups have better judgement in their communication with the media, this is like a spokesperson for a shitty frat house talking to Mother Jones.
Spent a year in the south/south east of Africa, and different variations of fermented maize beer were the most common alcoholic drink among locals.
Thobwa is the Malawian/Zambian version, while umqombothi is the South African one.
If so, then it's just as inaccurate and ridiculous to say that Uganda, India, Algeria and Morocco have regressed in their development. What part of that do you consider controversial? Are you unwilling/unable to have a negative attitude towards the current regime, while also acknowledging that they've done more to develop the country than the Pahlavis ever did? There's no contradiction at all in that in my view, those are just the facts. Iran has raised its HDI by +40% in the last 35 years, going from 0.577 in 1990 to almost 0.8 in 2018, with the international average for countries with high HDI being 0.75. Iran went from non-existent research output during the Shah's reign to being number 15 in the World, placing 4th in Asia after India, Japan and South Korea. All of this happened within the framework of the "theocratic shitheads", despite the existence of socially repressive laws, and not during the Shah's time when the laws were more relaxed and all of the West supported his regime in any way possible. He was just uninterested in channeling that support into things beneficial to the people of Iran, and suffered the consequences of that by steering the country into revolution. So just comparing a picture of a woman in a miniskirt in the seventies to the mandatory hijab of today and concluding that the country has regressed in general seems like the most uncharitable and shallow analysis possible. It's not helpful in understanding the World at all, and leads to foolish slogans like "they hate us for our freedom", which in turn leads to disastrous decisions like the invasion of Iraq.
I don't know why it should be so difficult to acknowledge that there are different degrees of bad, and the record suggests that the current "shitheads" are still far superior to the former. Nothing I wrote was meant to imply that the current regime doesn't do a lot of bad stuff, there are no governments that don't do bad stuff. To make sense of international politics at all, I think it's essential to be able to compare different degrees of bad and grade on a curve. Just pointing and saying it's all bad doesn't seem like the best of ideas to me. But to each his own.
Or look at the literacy rates. At the time of the revolution, so past when this photo was taken, less than 40% of Iranians could read and write. And let's not mention The Celebration of the 2,500th Anniversary of the Founding of the Persian Empire by the Western puppet ruler, spending millions and millions on a tent city for foreign dignitaries in the desert plains, while his subjects were living in abject poverty without access to education or health care. Let's just look at the mini skirt in the photo and wonder at the enlightenment of those days and the backwardness of today, when the literacy rate has more than doubled in 40 years for example. But they have hijab, therefore the society has obviously regressed. That's the measure for how advanced a society is, the length of the skirts of the few who are well off.
Hade aldrig hört luftlök! Det brukar stå supersolo där jag bor.
"Goddamn it! I don't know how to express myself unless through anger and personal attacks!"
Alright. I was thinking about bank holidays here in Sweden. They're generally off days for all workers here. You can choose to work, it's not like everything is closed. But that's a voluntary thing that your employer can't force you to do, and which is handsomely compensated on account of it being a bank holiday. So people in the hospitality sector for example generally seem to like these shifts and there's no shortage of volunteers to cover them. This is yet another area where the US system is raping US workers it seems.
As I wrote, I'm not arguing about the content of what he says, he's imo one of the most awful human beings around. What I'm saying is he doesn't seem to have lost a whole lot of his cognitive abilities as opposed to Biden. He spewed word salads loudly and forcefully the first time around, and he was elected based on that. The fact that the content of what he says is awful is a value judgement you and I make, to his supporters, him being awful is a feature they like, and him being able to be loud and forceful proves to them that he's able to implement his awful agenda if elected. Joe on the other hand would be a repeat of the second Reagan term when he was just a demented old man being puppeteered by those around him. Now, one might even like what those around him want to do, but in an election you're supposed to pretend that you're choosing an executive, not a puppet to be controlled by an unelected cabinet. Trump on the other hand gives off a forceful air like you said, which is exactly what his supporters want to see.
I don't even really get the criticism. The complaints are not on whether he's a liar or not, or whether his or Trump's policies are what you'd prefer. The complaints are about him not being able to express any of that in a comprehensible way on the day he was most prepared to do so on the national stage, on account of him being a fossil. Trump is a liar with a horrendous ideology, but he's very much still able to sell those lies and ideas to a very receptive crowd, because he's obviously cognitively much sharper than Biden is. He's still able to sell the tough guy persona while Biden is unable to sell anything to anyone at the moment. And it'll just get worse if he remains in the race.
"ingrained in the middle eastern mentality"? I'd have a look at my own mentality if I was this comfortable generalizing several hundreds of millions of people like that. It seems like you have disdain for both victim and perpetrator irrespective of which in your mind is which, because they're middle eastern. Weird.