I read about these a couple of months ago, they seem pretty interesting. But yes, also quite common.

liberated

Russia is imperialist and I don’t trust any of their “referendums” in the occupied regions of Ukraine, given that Russia rigs elections (that’s a video of ballot stuffing in Russia).

could you please also explain to me how being unable to leave your country where you can be kidnapped on a street at any day and sent to die is not considered slavery

I do think there is a point to make here. Ukrainians should be free to leave their country if they want. But anyway, I strongly disagree with your view that Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine is “liberating” anything or anyone.

you need to be serious about inflicting permanent harm on politicians

I don’t think you phrased that in the best way… I hope you mean punish them at the ballot box

I think centrism can win elections though. In my country, the UK, elections are usually won by whichever party captures the centre ground. Keir Starmer won in the UK this year by being centrist. Previously David Cameron and Tony Blair were pretty centrist, and both won multiple elections.

No I didn’t know until you tagged me. Seems like they’ve had a strange reaction to my post. I think what I said in that post is true but I will admit I’m wrong if somebody can prove so. Here are a couple of articles which seem to back up what I said:

Regarding the invasion of Crimea in 2014: “Incognito Russian soldiers appeared throughout Crimea… The Kremlin initially claimed the soldiers were local “self-defense” groups but later admitted they were professional Russian soldiers”.

Regarding the invasion of the Donbas in 2014: “A London-based digital forensics agency says it has gathered an enormous body of evidence that Russia’s military was deployed in the August-September 2014 fighting around Ilovaysk, in eastern Ukraine”.

The strain on Ukraine is immense though, as the article states. Ukrainian men are told to fight. They’re being bundled into vehicles by military recruiters (it’s often vatniks making this point, but that source is a US-government-funded media company).

I would absolutely like for Russia to withdraw entirely from Ukraine, but surely the human cost needs to be taken into account. I don’t think Ukrainians should be forced to fight. And maybe potential soldiers would be more willing to fight if Western support was better than it currently is - Zelenskyy is always requesting more weapons and the West just drags its feet.

Maybe those views constitute more than the fringes when it comes to the Tory party.

Why do you assume that Chinese tech isn’t back-doored by the Chinese Communist Party?

There seem to be multiple different cases of the PRC trying to hack the West.

Maybe something that hurt Kamala was her use of top music stars… maybe average Americans feel those celebrities are out of touch with average people. I saw this on BBC News:

a Republican at one Trump rally… said their candidate had completely “reimagined” the Republican party from its country club voter stereotype to appealing to working class families, while the Democrats had become the “party of Hollywood”

Criticising a government is not racism.