All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Tendrin]

This supreme court justice will go down in historical infamy, along with the Roberts court more broadly.

Justice Samuel Alito is evidentially toting around an old grudge.

At a Thursday night event at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, he had harsh words for the two conservative justices who joined the majority in Bostock v. Clayton County.

The 2020 opinion said that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sex-based discrimination, extends to gay and transgender workers. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, in which he was joined by the liberals and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Speaking via a video feed Thursday, Alito called Gorsuch a “colleague and friend,” but said that grounding the decision in the text of the 1964 law was “in my view indefensible,” according to the Washington Post.

“It is inconceivable that either Congress or voters in 1964 understood discrimination because of sex to mean discrimination because of sexual orientation, much less gender identity,” Alito said. “If Title VII had been understood at that time to mean what Bostock held it to mean, the prohibition on discrimination because of sex would never have been enacted. In fact, it might not have gotten a single vote in Congress.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opini...aaf9e43487e372

[CSTowle]

There's no reason to hold back or whisper behind closed doors anymore. They're the majority, and can take turns (if they like) being "the reasonable one" while the other 5 roll back rights and decisions at will. There's no polite pretending to care about civil rights for other human beings when you're no longer required to recognize them as human beings or to feel shame for not doing so. And it's not going to change anytime soon. Tough reality to swallow, but it's here and there's no choice in the matter (not a pro-choice pun).

[WestPhillyPunisher]

This supreme court justice will go down in historical infamy, along with the Roberts court more broadly.



https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opini...aaf9e43487e372

The problem is that Alito, Roberts, Thomas, and just about every Qpublican currently making life hellish for everyone who’s not white, male, straight and Christian could care less how history will remember them. That’s why they’re doing all the evil things they’re doing without so much as a shred of guilt or conscience, because they just plain don’t give a shit about going down in infamy. Hell, they might even see that as a badge of honor. And that mindset won’t change either.

[Dalak]

The problem is that Alito, Roberts, Thomas, and just about every Qpublican currently making life hellish for everyone who’s not white, male, straight and Christian could care less how history will remember them. That’s why they’re doing all the evil things they’re doing without so much as a shred of guilt or conscience, because they just plain don’t give a shit about going down in infamy. Hell, they might even see that as a badge of honor. And that mindset won’t change either.

Sadly I agree with you. It doesn't matter what happens after they are retired/dead as long as they did their best to fuck things up for their chosen targets.

[Panfoot]

Given how Republicans are targeting education now, they won't have to worry about how history treats them because the real history will no longer be taught.

[JB]

I haven't seen mainstream confirmation yet but it's being reported overseas that Russia announced it will cut energy supply to Finland starting tomorrow.

Also being reported by RIA that Russia's State Duma deputy has proposed to put "Poland next in line for denazification after Ukraine." Wtf...

[Tendrin]

All Russia has is endless belligerance at this point.

[seismic-2]

Also being reported by RIA that Russia's State Duma deputy has proposed to put "Poland next in line for denazification after Ukraine." Wtf...

Poland is a member of NATO. The only way that Russia (plus Belarus) could "de-Nazify" Poland without initiating an all-out war against every country in NATO would be for them to provide support to an insurgent movement within Poland itself which would overthrow the existing government and replace it with one that aligns the country with Russia / Belarus. This is the same type of operation that Russia has been conducting in eastern Ukraine and in eastern Moldova for years.

[JB]

From yesterday so I guess they decided to move forward with cutting energy supply.

Moscow warns Finland over NATO bid as Ukraine says Russian ship damaged
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe...es-2022-05-12/

Moscow warned Finland on Thursday it would face consequences as it seeks to apply for NATO membership "without delay" and Ukraine said it had damaged a Russian navy logistics ship in the Black Sea, where there has been renewed fighting in recent days.

Finland's plan to apply for NATO membership, announced on Thursday, and the expectation that Sweden will follow, would bring about the expansion of the Western military alliance that Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed to prevent.

Abandoning the neutrality they maintained throughout the Cold War would be one of the biggest shifts in European security in decades.

Moscow called Finland's announcement hostile and threatened retaliation, including unspecified "military-technical" measures.

"Helsinki must be aware of the responsibility and consequences of such a move," said the foreign ministry.

Russian officials have spoken in the past about potential measures including stationing nuclear-armed missiles on the Baltic Sea.

[JackDaw]

They lost so many of them because the leadership does not value their lives at all. Their motto after all was "There are many of us" (or something like that, I'm translating).

The English version often used is “we have more men than you have bullets”. (It would be interesting to know what the correct literal translation of the original Russian saying is.)

But effectively the Russian capacity to spend life prodigiously has seen them to success fairly often. They saw off Napoleon that way and played the largest single part of seeing off Adolf Hitler.

All countries have been blighted with ruthless rulers from time to time, but Russia I think has been spectacularly unlucky with some of theirs…by their standards Putin is a moderate and successful ruler.

[JB]

Russian Power Flows to Finland Suspended as Payments Fail
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-payments-fail

“Unfortunately, we are forced to note that for the volumes which have been sold on Nord Pool exchange since May 6 funds have not yet been credited to our bank account,” RAO Nordic Oy said in a statement on its website on Friday. Lacking cash income, the company isn’t able to pay for power it’s buying from Russia and said it’s “forced to suspend the electricity import” starting May 14.

There’s enough electricity in Finland even without imports from Russia, according to Fingrid Oy, which operates the country’s transmission system. Those flows have recently accounted for about 10% of total consumption in the Nordic country, it said in a separate statement.

[AnakinFlair]

Here's his Tweet.
"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users"

Looks like he was given incorrect information on the number of spambots
or
Since he was looking for money to help him fund his buyout, maybe he couldn't find it
or
He was trolling all this time?

I bet he was trolling.

[Reviresco]

Texas and Florida trying to outdo each other in government interference of businesses so they can "protect" poor little Republican snowflakes. I suspect this will last as long as it takes for the lawyers to file another appeal. Alternatively, I can't wait for the porn sites to deluge conservative sites with their ads.


https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/13/tech/...law/index.html

Texas residents can now sue Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for allegedly censoring their content after a federal appeals court sided Wednesday with the state's law restricting how social media sites can moderate their platforms.

The 15-word ruling allowing the law, which had been blocked last year, to take effect has significant potential consequences. Most immediately, it creates new legal risks for the tech giants, and opens them up to a possible wave of litigation that legal experts say would be costly and difficult to defend.

Texas's law makes it illegal for any social media platform with 50 million or more US monthly users to "block, ban, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression."

[Catlady in training]

All countries have been blighted with ruthless rulers from time to time, but Russia I think has been spectacularly unlucky with some of theirs…by their standards Putin is a moderate and successful ruler.

Is there some list of the worst people in history that could be considered objective? Maybe by number of deaths they caused?

What I can think of on the top of my head:

Genghis Khan
Mao Ce-Tung
Lenin
Stalin
Hitler
...and now Putin

That would be 3 for russia.

Any other suggestions?

[Catlady in training]

Is there some list of the worst people in history that could be considered objective? Maybe by number of deaths they caused?

OK, this looks pretty comprehensive, although they are listed by individuals, countries and regimes together, so it's hard to quantify it for people only:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._by_death_toll

And Putler doesn't reach the top yet, far from it (hopefully it will stay that way). I would still put him on the list, but Im obviously not impartial.
Also, sad to see how much of it happened fairly recently.