i didnt saw one of these so here is the news

yesterday the russian government reinstated a law that makes it much more difficult for trans people to transition legally. i dont have words rn

I've seen an american wishing "people of Russia to successfully take the country out of the hands of the autocracy" And I cringe so hard

What is actually happening: a mercenary group of ex-convicts fighting against the army because of the attempt of dissolving it in the army system. It is the last attempt of the person in charge of hiring (illegally, though who cares) people out of jail to stay in power because "big boys" were refusing to let him sit at their table and now, when he gained too much power, they tried to get rid of him completely, so he turned on them.

I know what people like to call russians in the internet nowadays, but it is as far from "the nation getting the power into their own hands" as can be. It's literally new group of criminals fighting the old ones for being in charge.

So recently I spoke with my little brother who lives in Russia. We started talking politics, and then he dropped a bombshell - apparently, putin’s pet pigs translate and broadcast Fox News and Daily Wire to the already mindfucked public. I nearly had a heart attack when I heard him drop Ben Shapiro’s name

And, like a good big brother, I took immediate action to inoculate my baby sibling against this particular strain of brain rot (just in case, healthcare is important). Any chance at establishing decorum that Benny had was demolished the moment I brought up the endless amount of cringe he delivered throughout his unfortunate career. That WAP incident works as good as PrEP in terms of preventative measures

On a more serious note, keep in mind that both Fox and DW have such a great, flourishing relationship with a literal genocidal dictator that their content is translated and distributed through Russian networks. They snuck their way into an already polluted environment like that species of brain eating bacteria that folks had found in Texan lake

As a sweet cherry on top of this shit sundae, when my brother was talking about Carlson he said that:

1) his perpetually confused face was funny as fuck, just like his boner for the green M&M’s candy

2) his (and Ben’s) obsession with trans people is absolutely unhinged

3) he was creeped out by republican hyperfixation on guns

Kind of soothing to know that republican cringe is so off putting to non-Americans that propaganda becomes literally indigestible. Though to be fair, it’s not like any of these animated Madame Tussaud’s wax figures are capable of winning over my Marxist brother. Boy’s been reading leftist literature since he was in middle school

In the terrible winter of 1932–33, brigades of Communist Party activists went house to house in the Ukrainian countryside, looking for food. The brigades were from Moscow, Kyiv, and Kharkiv, as well as villages down the road. They dug up gardens, broke open walls, and used long rods to poke up chimneys, searching for hidden grain. They watched for smoke coming from chimneys, because that might mean a family had hidden flour and was baking bread. They led away farm animals and confiscated tomato seedlings. After they left, Ukrainian peasants, deprived of food, ate rats, frogs, and boiled grass. They gnawed on tree bark and leather. Many resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. Some 4 million died of starvation.

At the time, the activists felt no guilt. Soviet propaganda had repeatedly told them that supposedly wealthy peasants, whom they called kulaks, were saboteurs and enemies—rich, stubborn landowners who were preventing the Soviet proletariat from achieving the utopia that its leaders had promised. The kulaks should be swept away, crushed like parasites or flies. Their food should be given to the workers in the cities, who deserved it more than they did. Years later, the Ukrainian-born Soviet defector Viktor Kravchenko wrote about what it was like to be part of one of those brigades. “To spare yourself mental agony you veil unpleasant truths from view by half-closing your eyes—and your mind,” he explained. “You make panicky excuses and shrug off knowledge with words like exaggeration and hysteria.”

He also described how political jargon and euphemisms helped camouflage the reality of what they were doing. His team spoke of the “peasant front” and the “kulak menace,” “village socialism” and “class resistance,” to avoid giving humanity to the people whose food they were stealing. Lev Kopelev, another Soviet writer who as a young man had served in an activist brigade in the countryside (later he spent years in the Gulag), had very similar reflections. He too had found that clichés and ideological language helped him hide what he was doing, even from himself:

I persuaded myself, explained to myself. I mustn’t give in to debilitating pity. We were realizing historical necessity. We were performing our revolutionary duty. We were obtaining grain for the socialist fatherland. For the five-year plan.

There was no need to feel sympathy for the peasants. They did not deserve to exist. Their rural riches would soon be the property of all.

But the kulaks were not rich; they were starving. The countryside was not wealthy; it was a wasteland. This is how Kravchenko described it in his memoirs, written many years later:

Large quantities of implements and machinery, which had once been cared for like so many jewels by their private owners, now lay scattered under the open skies, dirty, rusting and out of repair. Emaciated cows and horses, crusted with manure, wandered through the yard. Chickens, geese and ducks were digging in flocks in the unthreshed grain.

That reality, a reality he had seen with his own eyes, was strong enough to remain in his memory. But at the time he experienced it, he was able to convince himself of the opposite. Vasily Grossman, another Soviet writer, gives these words to a character in his novel Everything Flows:

I’m no longer under a spell, I can see now that the kulaks were human beings. But why was my heart so frozen at the time? When such terrible things were being done, when such suffering was going on all around me? And the truth is that I truly didn’t think of them as human beings. “They’re not human beings, they’re kulak trash”—that’s what I heard again and again, that’s what everyone kept repeating.

  —  Ukraine and the Words That Lead to Mass Murder

Imagine that someone—perhaps a man from Florida, or maybe even a governor of Florida—criticized American support for Ukraine. Imagine that this person dismissed the war between Russia and Ukraine as a purely local matter, of no broader significance. Imagine that this person even told a far-right television personality that “while the U.S. has many vital national interests ... becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.” How would a Ukrainian respond? More to the point, how would the leader of Ukraine respond?

As it happens, an opportunity to ask that hypothetical question recently availed itself. The chair of the board of directors of The Atlantic, Laurene Powell Jobs; The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg; and I interviewed President Volodymyr Zelensky several days ago in the presidential palace in Kyiv. In the course of an hour-long conversation, Goldberg asked Zelensky what he would say to someone, perhaps a governor of Florida, who wonders why Americans should help Ukraine.

Zelensky, answering in English, told us that he would respond pragmatically. He didn’t want to appeal to the hearts of Americans, in other words, but to their heads. Were Americans to cut off Ukraine from ammunition and weapons, after all, there would be clear consequences in the real world, first for Ukraine’s neighbors but then for others:

If we will not have enough weapons, that means we will be weak. If we will be weak, they will occupy us. If they occupy us, they will be on the borders of Moldova and they will occupy Moldova. When they have occupied Moldova, they will [travel through] Belarus and they will occupy Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. That’s three Baltic countries which are members of NATO. They will occupy them. Of course, [the Balts] are brave people, and they will fight. But they are small. And they don’t have nuclear weapons. So they will be attacked by Russians because that is the policy of Russia, to take back all the countries which have been previously part of the Soviet Union.

And after that, if there were still no further response? Then, he explained, the struggle would continue:

When they will occupy NATO countries, and also be on the borders of Poland and maybe fight with Poland, the question is: Will you send all your soldiers with weapons, all your pilots, all your ships? Will you send tanks and armored vehicles with your young people? Will you do it? Because if you will not do it, you will have no NATO.

At that point, he said, Americans will face a different choice: not politicians deciding whether “to give weapons or not to give weapons” to Ukrainians, but instead, “fathers and mothers” deciding whether to send their children to fight to keep a large part of the planet, filled with America’s allies and most important trading partners, from Russian occupation.

But there would be other consequences too. One of the most horrifying weapons that Russia has used against Ukraine is the Iranian-manufactured Shahed drone, which has no purpose other than to kill civilians. After these drones are used to subdue Ukraine, Zelensky asked, how long would it be before they are used against Israel? If Russia can attack a smaller neighbor with impunity, regimes such as Iran’s are sure to take note. So then the question arises again: “When they will try to occupy Israel, will the United States help Israel? That is the question. Very pragmatic.”

Finally, Zelensky posed a third question. During the war, Ukraine has been attacked by rockets, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles—“not hundreds, but thousands”:

So what will you do when Russia will use rockets to attack your allies, to [attack] civilian people? And what will you do when Russia, after that, if they do not see [opposition] from big countries like the United States? What will you do if they will use rockets on your territory?

And this was his answer: Help us fight them here, help us defeat them here, and you won’t have to fight them anywhere else. Help us preserve some kind of open, normal society, using our soldiers and not your soldiers. That will help you preserve your open, normal society, and that of others too. Help Ukraine fight Russia now so that no one else has to fight Russia later, and so that harder and more painful choices don’t have to be made down the line.

“It’s about nature. It’s about life,” he said. “That’s it.”

I’m sick and fucking tired of US queers responding to the news out of Russia with “oh, we’re next” or even “America is just as bad.”

I’m non-binary, born a woman. I take testosterone that is covered by insurance. I’m legally married to a (nonbinary) woman despite the fact that my legal gender is female; that marriage is upheld at the state and federal levels.

Have I faced discrimination in my life as a queer USAmerican? Absolutely!

But right now in Moscow, police are raiding gay clubs.

In 2020 the Russian constitution was changed to define marriage as being between a man and a woman. There is a national movement against queer people; you cannot possibly compare that to, say, Florida or Texas passing anti-trans bans. Yes, those things suck and we need to fight them, but they aren’t happening at a national level. (Yes, I realize Republicans are trying. They haven’t yet succeeded. In Russia they have.)

Things are bad for our Russian community right now. Don’t you dare fucking minimize that by comparing them to the privileged lives of US queers, when I can get HRT in the mail, file a joint tax return with my wife, and sue somebody for not respecting my pronouns.

🇳🇱🇺🇸👨‍❤️‍👨 Rutte x Obama Gay Kiss Meme 👨‍❤️‍👨🇺🇸🇳🇱

Tonight, I'd just recently found this picture of Dutch PM Mark Rutte and 44th U.S. President Barack Obama kissing in the sky. Also, there's Russian President Vladimir Putin and Italian ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi at the beach in it, holding hands and looking at them up in a sky kissing.

This picture I found is originally from Bestweter.

Picture of Rutte and Obama kissing and Putin and Berlusconi holding hands and looking up in the sky at the beach from Bestweter - 4th September 2016

Round 1: Match 12 of 64

Why they deserve to be the ultimate wizard according to YOU:

Vermin Supreme:

Ran for US President. From Wikipedia: “He has campaigned on a platform of zombie apocalypse awareness and time travel research, and promised a free pony for every American”

“Wore a boot for a hat and I think ran for presidency as well? And his drivers license said “wizard” on it as one of his name. Chaotic wizard dude”

Rasputin:

“He "cured" Alexi Romanov by accidentally discovering that blood thinner would not in fact cure hemophilia, masterfully puppeteerd one of the largest land empires in the world, Would Not Die, and has a great song written about him.”

“Lover of the Russian queen. Russia’s greatest love machine.”

What a paragraph

- Timothy Snyder - The Road to Unfreedom

jessica kellgren-fozard on the recent homophobic legislation in russia (x)

I worked at our national election today, and apparently the largest voter demographics in Russia are, in descending order:

- crowds of state workers spawning out of nowhere at 8 am just to disappear just as easily after voting (because you know, voter coercion and what not)

- elderly women with disabilities

- mothers with children (probably the least predictable group here)

- basically what I imagine tumblrinas to look like

- giant men with very serious expressions (probably the vestigial remains of the LDPR electorate)

That being said there was basically noone voting. There were like 5-minute periods when all the 4 electoral districts in our school had no people voting at all. I'm kinda confused and I'm wondering if this trend will continue tomorrow.

Write me if you want to hear more about this "2024 presidential election in Russia" thing, I'll be back near the ballot boxes tomorrow

russia and israel had close bond

yep. they had a close bond, but I don’t think Israeli likes them as much anymore because of the Russian government’s condemnation of both Hamas and Israel.

free Palestine! 🇵🇸 🍉

Inspired by the "fairy vs walrus surprise" poll

(I replaced fairy with Greek deity because it is less broad and more people will be familiar with their common behavior.)

Would also be happy to see people's ranking of those options.

And this was his answer: Help us fight them here, help us defeat them here, and you won’t have to fight them anywhere else. Help us preserve some kind of open, normal society, using our soldiers and not your soldiers. That will help you preserve your open, normal society, and that of others too. Help Ukraine fight Russia now so that no one else has to fight Russia later, and so that harder and more painful choices don’t have to be made down the line.

  —  Zelensky Has an Answer for DeSantis

The Wagner Group mercenaries marched 800 kilometers across Russia, shot down planes and helicopters, took over a regional military command, provoked a panic in Moscow—troops dug trenches, the mayor told everyone to stay home—and then stood down. Yet in a way, the strangest aspect of Saturday’s aborted coup was the reaction of the people of Rostov-on-Don, including the city’s military leaders, to the soldiers who arrived and declared themselves to be their new rulers.

The Wagner mercenaries showed up in the city early Saturday morning. They met no resistance. Nobody shot at them. One photograph, published by The New York Times, shows them walking at a leisurely pace across a street, one of their tanks in the background, holding yellow coffee cups.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s violent ex-con leader, posted videos of himself chatting with the local commanders in the courtyard of the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District. Nobody seemed to mind his being there.

Outside, street sweepers continued their work. Early in the morning, a few people came to gawk, but not many. After Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a panicked speech on television, comparing the situation to 1917 and evoking the ghost of civil war, one man pushing a bicycle was filmed berating the Wagnerites and telling them to go home. The troops laughed him off. But later in the day, more people showed up, and the atmosphere grew warmer.

People shook their hands, brought them food, took selfies. “People are bringing pirozhki, apples, chips. Everything there in the store has been bought to give to the soldiers,” one woman said on camera. In the evening, after Prigozhin had decided to stand down and go home (wherever home turns out to be), he drove away in an SUV with crowds filming him on their cellphones and cheering him on, as if he were a celebrity leaving a movie premiere or a gallery opening. Some chanted “Wagner! Wagner!” as the troops emerged into the street. This was the most remarkable aspect of the whole day: Nobody seemed to mind, particularly, that a brutal new warlord had arrived to replace the existing regime—not the security services, not the army, and not the general public. On the contrary, many seemed sorry to see him go.

The response is hard to understand without reckoning with the power of apathy, a much undervalued political tool. Democratic politicians spend a lot of time thinking about how to engage people and persuade them to vote. But a certain kind of autocrat, of whom Putin is the outstanding example, seeks to convince people of the opposite: not to participate, not to care, and not to follow politics at all. The propaganda used in Putin’s Russia has been designed in part for this purpose. The constant provision of absurd, conflicting explanations and ridiculous lies—the famous “firehose of falsehoods”— encourages many people to believe that there is no truth at all. The result is widespread cynicism. If you don’t know what’s true, after all, then there isn’t anything you can do about it. Protest is pointless. Engagement is useless.

But the side effect of apathy was on display yesterday as well. For if no one cares about anything, that means they don’t care about their supreme leader, his ideology, or his war. Russians haven’t flocked to sign up to fight in Ukraine. They haven’t rallied around the troops in Ukraine or held emotive ceremonies marking either their successes or their deaths. Of course they haven’t organized to oppose the war, but they haven’t organized to support it either.

Because they are afraid, or because they don’t know of any alternative, or because they think it’s what they are supposed to say, they tell pollsters that they support Putin. And yet, nobody tried to stop the Wagner group in Rostov-on-Don, and hardly anybody blocked the Wagner convoy on its way to Moscow. The security services melted away, made no move and no comment. The military dug some trenches around Moscow and sent some helicopters; somebody appears to have sent bulldozers to dig up the highways, but that was all we could see. Who will respond if a more serious challenge to Putin ever emerges? Certainly the military will think twice: Perhaps a dozen Russian servicemen, mostly pilots, died at the hands of the Wagner mutineers, more than died during the failed coup of 1991. Nobody seems particularly bothered about them.

One day after this aborted coup, it is too early to speculate about Prigozhin’s true motives, about what he was really given in exchange for standing down, about where Putin really spent the day on Saturday—some say St. Petersburg, some say a dacha in Novgorod—or about anything else, really. But the flimsiness of this regime’s ideology and the softness of its support have been suddenly laid bare. Expect more repression as Putin tries to stay in charge, more chaos, or both.