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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   25162 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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Now this is getting interesting

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13124393/Ukraines-spy-chief-says-Alexei-Navalny-died-blood-clot.html

Today, however, Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine's GUR military intelligence service, suggested his death could be down to natural causes.

He told reporters: 'I may disappoint you, but what we know is that he really died from a blood clot. And this is more or less confirmed. This was not taken from the Internet, but, unfortunately, a natural [death].'

That makes no sense. Why would the Ukrainian chief of intelligence exonerate Putin and also put an egg on the face of all of the western allies that pearl clutched so hard? What are we missing?

Honestly, whether Navalny was killed by Putin or not barely seems to matter to me, he's killing enough people in totally out-in-the-open ways (like a war of conquest) that one death more or less doesn't change the moral calculus.

I think people seize on deaths like this as an excuse to talk about that moral calculus, because they're rare and unusual enough to be newsworthy (or narrative-matching enough to be newsworthy). But whether the connection is real or not doesn't change much, I would think.

They are rare. Today's autocrats have nothing on the autocrats of 50+ years ago who imprisoned or murdered large swaths of their citizens and political opposition with impunity. Social media, smart phones, and the 24-7 news cycle means much more scrutiny on world leaders. And also the rise of the US as a 'world police'.

And yet China has the camps of Xiangjin for Uyghurs and barely got a sternly worded letter. I think the opinions of the world community are generally only important when the rest of the world doesn’t have as much to lose from doing the right thing. Any fear of backlash is probably overblown.

And yet China has the camps of Xiangjin for Uyghurs and barely got a sternly worded letter

Anti-chinese media in the west tried to meme those into another holocauster but their problem is nobody in the west cares about muslims, especially not Muslims in china.

Nobody not in the West cares either.

The Muslim world loves Chinese money way more than opposing the oppression of Muslims there.

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