My argument is and continues to be that the Ukrainian government is more accountable to it’s population than the Russian government. Therefore the Ukrainian government must value the opinions of the Ukrainian population more than the Russian government values the opinions of the Russian population.

And I, once again, have explained why this doesn’t matter because the draft has nothing to do with democratic input. You refuse to address this.

You’re argument about Syria is a red herring fallacy.

Your*

And no it isn’t.

I’ve been arguing that the more authoritarian a government, the less accountable the government to their population.

Do you know what MARTIAL LAW means? What the hell are you even talking about? Take a step back - you are arguing that Ukrainian draft officers are having to beat and kidnap men to send to the front line because Ukraine is more accountable to its people. I am arguing that it is necause they have a manpower shortage. You are ridiculous.

You’re asking questions we have answers to and you seem to have totally missed some key facts.

Ukraine is under martial law and has been since the invasion. There are no elections, they’ve been cancelled due to the needs of the state. There is no concern of the government being replaced.

Ukraine isn’t a proper democracy but a “hybrid”, e.g an oligarchy anyways. The popularity or unpopularity of policies doesn’t translate into political outcomes so easily or transparently.

But your argument about authiritarian regimes is faulty. We just saw the complete opposite of that in Syria. Authoritarian regimes do not necessarily command loyalty and they also live in constant fear of popular unrest or dissatisfaction. In fact, there are many analysts who point to Putin’s current domestic policy choices as desparate attempts to placate the Russians that have lost something due to the war.

I’d prefer you respond to my arguments instead of rehashing what’s already been discussed. Or we could just stop here.

And I was disagreeing with you on that point, so I don’t know why you challenged me on the very first point you made, which I agreed with.

I don’t agree that the democracy index is really a quantifiable measure as it has several arbitrary criteria, but you could just assert that Ukraine is more democratic than Russia anyways, which is a matter of common sense.

Your argument that “democratic accountability” has something to do with it doesn’t make any sense and doesn’t follow. Ukraine has a draft. Drafts are drafts, there is no “democratic” objection to being drafted for war. Russia also drafts men as needed and the process looks quite similar sometimes, but in Ukraine it has become a severe social phenomenon.

This is how it went:

You said Ukraine values its manpower more than Russia.

I agreed with you, and added that it is because they have less manpower.

You then brought up some democracy index like that was relevant to the topic.

I inferred from this that you were explaining that you believe they value manpower more due to their hybrid regime versus Russia’s authoritarian regime and disagreed with you on that cause.

You called my inferrence a “strawman” and then asked for evidence against your first claim, that I agreed with.

Please read more carefully.

“Hybrid regime” is just a fancy name for oligarchy, and the argument that Ukrainian state cherishes the lives of its military aged men is a bit silly. Democratic states and authoritarian states are equally as capable of using human lives as currency when they view a war as existential. They weigh that against demographic and economic concerns. That’s all.

Only because they have fewer men. Have you seen the draft gangpress measures? People are being sent to be cannon fodder, under-equipped and underprepared.

Again, I have no clue what you’re talking about. I’m not going to live in a hut in the woods and neither are you.

Do you think you’re being insightful or something? That’s not even true, states sometimes compel and coerce firms for that information even when it may harm the profit incentive through reputational damage.

Almost like it has less to do with security and more to do with securitization of economic competition.

Planned obsolescence isn’t even in my top 10. The worst things about Big Tech are existential, like its use for mass espionage and murder by evil regimes.

As a true centrisy, for every “Six Days in Fallujah” I want one “Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque”. Fuck the ADL.

If I was being honest I’d add “literally anyone whos firm has any connections to a NATO government” but then I’d be called a consoiracy theorist. But as for GCC, that’s a more direct threat to lives of dissidents.

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It needs A) same functionality B) ban all forms of racism, especially Zionism and C) refuse investment from undemocratic nations like GCC or China

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It’s like nuclear fusion, always just around the corner…

Anyone who uses Arabic-language social media has encountered this. They used to ban you for just making reference to “Al Aqsa” (Arabic name for Dome of the Rock) because their algorithm deemed it terror-related. They banned the word “shaheed” (martyr) too even though in Arabic it’s commonly used to refer to loved ones who died an untimely death, even in accidents. It’s also a name, which is hilarious because a member of their oversight board said in an interview that after they banned the word one of her coworkers named Shaheed had to explained that this was nonsense. Researchers did an experiment where they ran pages that used uncontroverdial Arabic keywords that would get censored, then do the same for Hebrew (including #death_to_arabs) which were left up and even gained traction.

You can blame Meta to some degree, but the chief issue are US federal institutions that use notices and scare stories aimed at making risk-averse firms shut down anything deemed anti-American (which essentially means anti-Israel.) Just recently they’ve been sending FBI agents to knock on journalists’ doors if they publish the leaked Vance dossier and give them a “friendly reminder” that it may have been leaked by Iran. Even when the journalists mentioned it in their reports on the dossier.

That’s fair, I’m also bored with the topic.

1. They were also fined 2,500 USD each.

2. The case against them that most relates to what you’re talking about is in Michigan. They’re charged in accordance to a Michigan statute that bans deterring voters through “corrupt means or device”, referring specifically to disinformation that the two individuals specifically engaged in and their stated goals. That’s a world of difference from having a social media platform whose policies cultivate a userbase that seeks to get out the vote for a candidate and whose owner uses as a platform to advocate for that candidate. The case is actually going to the supreme court because the statute may be overly-broad.

3. You haven’t provided any evidence or compelling argument that what they or Musk do falls outside of 1A protection. It seems to me that you’re implying that media institutions with a slant towards a political actor or party during an election is violating campaign laws? Please clarify.

4. Invoking 20511 implies you believe pro-Trump disinfo on X posted by thousands of users constitutes “intimidation” of prospective voters. 30101 makes the “X support for Trump constitutes campaign finance fraud” argument look ridiculous:

(B) The term “expenditure” does **not include-

(i) any news story, commentary, or editorial distributed through the facilities of any broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, unless such facilities are owned or controlled by any political party, political committee, or candidate;