Your sarcasm is not appreciated, but yes, Haiti was created by European colonialism. No one is defending that. The answer isn’t more European colonialism. Western nations can provide the money to help, but some other nation that is more culturally similar needs to provide the boots on the ground. Do you have a better idea, Captain Sarcastic? Remember that the comment I was responding to asked why the US isn’t sending peacekeepers.

1. Haiti is not strategically important.

2. Haiti is a failed state. It isn’t just a matter of re-establishing peace. The whole society has to be re-built.

3. The US invested billions and billions and BILLIONS of dollars and a ton of social capital trying to rebuild a failed state in Afghanistan and it didn’t work. Not only did it not work, but the US has got nothing but scorn for it. No one thinks it would be any better in Haiti.

The US had a moment of glory when it won WW2 and then rebuilt both Japan and Europe into world class economic powers. Of course, those were highly civilized, sophisticated, and industrialized states and so America’s job was easier. Places like Afghanistan, Haiti, and most of Africa…not so much.

Any Western government would be crazy to set foot in countries like that. Maybe send some humanitarian aid, but otherwise stay the fuck out. Let their cultural peers help them out.

Sorry about that. I missed the reference, though I see you’ve updated your comment with the link. Anyway, yes, electoral reform is desperately needed.

Its a good idea, though the application is somewhat limited. Most government business is complex, boring and technical, but direct democracy is feasible for a few issues that the public is invested in. The US, at least, already has some direct democracy in the form of ballot questions. However, too many ballot questions would be exhausting and virtually no one would be able to keep up. No, we have representative democracy for good reason. Rather than direct democracy, we need electoral reform. Various forms of proportional representation might tick your boxes, or perhaps something more radical like non-geographic elections.

In addition to the other answers here, the mode doesn’t work with continuous variables.

What’s your suggested alternative to democracy?

alias shortname ‘flatpak run longname’

I believe the reasoning is the same as the US went through with 9/11. It obviously wouldn’t take billion of dollars to retaliate proportionally to October 7. Just like it wouldn’t have cost a trillion dollars to retaliate in kind for 9/11. The cost escalates beyond all proportion when the goal is not just to retaliate in kind, but to eliminate the possibility of such an attack happening again.

What VPS service do you use/recommend and what’s your monthly cost?

It could be the overly popular and ambitious general scenario, or it could be the scenario of the meddling politician who is incompetent in military matters causing major losses of men and materiel. History has examples of both.

Unfortunately, the lack of progress in the war naturally leads to internal frustration and conflict. The West could certainly help if we would stop using Ukraine military aid as a political football.

If you believe Ryan Evans from War on the Rocks quoting confidential sources, a rivalry has developed between Zelensky and Zaluzhny. Apparently, Zelensky fears that Zaluzhniy may challenge him for the presidency. Also, military analysts think that some of Ukraine’s poor military decisions have come from Zelensky, not Zaluzhny, which is bound to create some tension.

Starts at about 17:45: https://open.spotify.com/episode/12e2WYSgm9smWYgSZN1UwT?si=0YBQ32UgS6W2776dXggN9Q

Biden should call their bluff. Letting Abbott and DeSantis make these little shows of defiance using actual troops and law enforcement personnel only emboldens the right. That has to be a red line.

It’s a warning shot.

If Masterson was brainwashed by the Church of Scientology and they appointed a lawyer who turned him into their sacrificial lamb, one would think that he could plausibly play the victim card. If the government was interested in going after the bigwigs at the CoS, he might be able to get a good deal. Masterson is not particularly important in the grand scheme. A case against the CoS that would finally take down someone big, whether the head of the CoS or a big celebrity like Tom Cruise would be amazing. Even better would be to dismantle the whole rotten enterprise.

In Canada, Alberta has this same notion that they got a raw deal in federalism and that secession is the answer. They are the Texans of the north: conservative, religious, oil-rich, strong capitalist rhetoric (though there is plenty of corporate welfare, of course). But Alberta is a fully landlocked province of a few million people with not much else besides oil. And, get this: they want to secede because they supposedly can’t get any new oil pipelines built to the ocean in Canada. Did I mention that they are landlocked? What a bunch of morons.

Agreed. Musk was a good hype man back in the day, but now he is a liability. It seems like Tesla would be better off without him at this point.

Deoodorant is the gift you give to those around you. So, if someone needs deodorant so bad that they need to steal it…I’m thinking you should just let them have it.

You nailed it. The Dems should win overwhelmingly given how divided, useless and repugnant the Repubs have been for the last decade. Unfortunately, the race is closer than it should be.

Too many leftists make the lazy assumption that half of America is a bunch of racist, homophobic cretins. There is a kernel of truth behind that assumption, in the sense that rural communities tend to be small-c conservative, more religious, more homogenous, and less keen on cultural change. But Trump is none of those things, so what gives? The real answer to the rise of Trumpism is alienation.

I live in a pretty rural area. Just a couple of decades ago, millions of people in flyover states could easily get decent, secure factory or resource sector jobs right out of high school. All those jobs created vibrant communities, but now most of those jobs are gone and there is little chance of those jobs coming back. The vast majority of regular blue-collar folks don’t really give too much of a shit about hot-button cultural issues like homosexuality or Palestine or abortion. They may not like those things, but those issues are peripheral to the main issue, which is having a well-paying, secure job that doesn’t involve sitting at a desk all day. They know in their bones that is was the corporate establishment, in cahoots with the “liberal” elites in the boardrooms of the coast, that got rich by shipping all of their jobs overseas. And they are fucking pissed off about it. I completely agree that a real labour-oriented populist like Bernie could have done well in the rural states, but instead we got Trump, who is a fake narcissist populist who is just riding the wave of alienation.

This blackmailing of Biden by threatening to facilitate another Trump presidency is such bullshit. As Biden has rightly said, democracy in America is on the ballot, and that is a far, far, FAR more important issue than a temporary flare-up in a decades-long conflict in the Middle East. Biden has to appease moderates if he is to prevent Trump from winning. He, therefore, doesn’t want to engage in a MAJOR foreign policy shift that would scare moderates and distract from Trump’s legal woes. You don’t have to love Biden or the Democratoc Party, but Biden has been doing politics practically forever, which, if nothing else, means that he knows better than anyone on Lemmy how to beat Trump. Don’t make perfect the enemy of good.

Got caught smoking a joint? Slavery for you.

Pissed off a cop? Slavery for you, too.

I don’t think slavery being the punishment for crime is the defense you think you think it is. It’s fucking barbaric.

Oh yeah, and don’t try organizing for better conditions either. The leaders of the 2018 prison strike in the US were tortured via indefinite solitary confinement.