You put coke as an example of a drug that "even doing safety once will absolutely ruin your life." That is word-for-word DARE propaganda.
The research cited above suggests putting even heroin or crack in that category is a stretch. I'm going to put a lot more weight on that than on anyone's anecdotes.
That's just flat-out untrue about coke, not even an argument. Like DARE, the fact that you're wrong on that and lumping it in with scarier-sounding drugs shows (at minimum) you aren't actually knowledgeable about these drugs and their effects.
Even with those scarier-sounding drugs, there's research suggesting they're more demonized than destructive:
Dr. Carl L. Hart, Ziff Professor at Columbia University and former chair of the Department of Psychology, is one of the world’s preeminent experts on the effects of so-called recreational drugs on the human mind and body. Dr. Hart is open about the fact that he uses drugs himself, in a happy balance with the rest of his full and productive life as a researcher and professor, husband, father, and friend. In Drug Use for Grown-Ups, he draws on decades of research and his own personal experience to argue definitively that the criminalization and demonization of drug use–not drugs themselves–have been a tremendous scourge on America, not least in reinforcing this country’s enduring structural racism.
Dr. Hart did not always have this view. He came of age in one of Miami’s most troubled neighborhoods at a time when many ills were being laid at the door of crack cocaine. His initial work as a researcher was aimed at proving that drug use caused bad outcomes. But one problem kept cropping up: the evidence from his research did not support his hypothesis. From inside the massively well-funded research arm of the American war on drugs, he saw how the facts did not support the ideology. The truth was dismissed and distorted in order to keep fear and outrage stoked, the funds rolling in, and Black and brown bodies behind bars.
Drug Use for Grown-Ups will be controversial, to be sure: the propaganda war, Dr. Hart argues, has been tremendously effective. Imagine if the only subject of any discussion about driving automobiles was fatal car crashes. Drug Use for Grown-Ups offers a radically different vision: when used responsibly, drugs can enrich and enhance our lives. We have a long way to go, but the vital conversation this book will generate is an extraordinarily important step.
The liberal attitude is that constitutions matter. A leftist approach is looking at the material reality created by how a constitution (and other laws) are enforced.
You care more about posting etiquette than you do about Canadian parliament applauding a Nazi.
This story has circulated widely enough (I see multiple articles on BBC and CBS, among other outlets) that they had to issue an apology. I don't believe you haven't heard of it, but if you really haven't, what does that say about where you're getting your news/what draws your attention?
If one doesn't know high school-level history well enough that "this guy fought against Russia in WWII" doesn't set off a million alarm bells, they have no business being in government.
If their defense is "I was told to clap like a seal, I did, and it turns out I was applauding a Nazi," same thing.
Do you have even the slightest problem with Canadian parliament applauding a Nazi? You and a bunch of other people here seem to think litigating how to post is more important than the actual issue.
Here's the news story if you missed the dozen other threads on it and the discussion elsewhere in this thread. Let me know if you need anything else spoonfed to you.
The Canadian parliament gave one of these Nazis a standing ovation within the past week.
The point is that who that guy was should be no surprise to anyone, because this all has been public knowledge since (at least) Windows 95.
This is relevant context to the recent incident of the Canadian parliament giving a standing ovation to one of these Nazis.
Holy shit, read what you respond to
At least three things are required for any mass political change to happen:
- A critical mass of people taking proactive, organized action.
- A chunk of people who may not be organized, but who will join a proactive, organize action.
- A chunk of people who may not take proactive steps, but who aren't going to go to the mat for the old regime.
2 and 3 are probably the most important -- they're essentially the difference between an interest group and a mass movement -- and probably the hardest for modern intelligence to stop. They try (look at social media astroturfing and legacy media influence), but your propaganda line can only deviate so much from reality before people reject it. Other comments address accomplishing 1 despite interference.
The guy criticizing Canada for knowingly admitting Nazis is somehow a Nazi?
Sharp as a cue ball, this one
"I'm lazy" is your argument here? Even the blurb from the start of the article says this immigration happened in 1950.
Did history start yesterday? Are we ever allowed to discuss the background of current events?
I explained why in the comment you responded to, read that lol
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed.
If you're going to rules lawyer, do it well.
This is very obviously relevant to a recent news story that has had several posts here already.
This is relevant context to the recent incident of the Canadian parliament giving a standing ovation to one of these Nazis. The "narrative" here is that that it's abhorrent and no one in the room has an excuse to plead ignorance as the presence of Nazis in Canada was well-known at least 25 years ago.
There are countless examples of U.S. police misconduct that was ordered by superiors, and plenty more that was done with their full knowledge and tacit approval.
Take your shit back to reddit
So you were just doing reddit contrarianism, got it.
If you want to actually assess Soviet vs. American policing the way to do it isn't to find a (poorly sourced) example of Soviet police misconduct, because you can find endless examples of the same from American police. Instead, you'd have to look at how the police typically act(ed) in each country. You might start by looking for something to show Soviet police were armed with more military equipment than American police, for example, but you'd be looking for a while.
...so you're saying you supported the USSR?
Yeah, the crimes of the U.S. are always spoken of as history, despite no one ever being held accountable and the existence of a clear throughline from the people and institutions of decades ago to those of today (shit, sometimes it's the exact same people!).
Where to begin?
First, for the sake of argument, let's assume every word in that excerpt is uninpeachable historical fact. Taking it as fact, it is no worse than what the U.S. has done at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, that blacksite the Chicago PD used to disappear and torture people, etc., to say nothing of the horrors of the many dictatorships the U.S. installed and propped up throughout the Cold War. If you see this conduct as some moral event horizon you should want to burn the U.S. to the ground. This is not whataboutism, this is asking if you really give a shit about this stuff, or if it only offends your sensibilities when the Bad Countries do it.
Dispensing with the assumption that the except is proven fact, let's examine the reliability of the sources (I'll spoiler this section to not clog up the thread, but suffice to say it doesn't look great):
spoiler
- Lidia Golovkova: A search for "Lidia Golovkova historian cv" doesn't turn up anything. Nor does the alternate spelling "Lydia." Searching her on Google Scholar returns no articles she authored. She appears to be a real person -- looks like she attended a conference organized by "The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia" in 2002 -- but I've found nothing that would speak directly to her credibility as a historian, or lack thereof. She appears to be cited fairly regularly (sometimes in academia, more often in articles like the one you quote from), but it also looks like she's cited in the same breath as noted hack Robert Conquest (example). Generously, she might be associated with positions only a minority of historians hold. Less generously, it looks like she's doing motivated reasoning and pop history, like Conquest.
- Sukhanovskaya Prison: Special Facility 110: Found a few mentions of this book, but no English translations. Two mentions in particular (here and here) both cite Russian-language editions. It's odd how many of the same English excerpts can be found with a "cursory" search, despite the book at minimum not being widely available in English. Looks more like quote mining/citation hunting than all of these authors actually assessing what they're referencing. It would be difficult for English speakers to evaluate, for instance, whether this work is consistent with information from USSR archives that were released after the country fell (a major turning point in Sovietology which separated serious historians from propagandists; see Conquest).
- Open Democracy: Funders include the Ford Foundation, which has a long tradition of funding anti-communist activity and a corresponding political motivation, to say nothing of its well-documented ties to covert U.S. anti-communist programs. Hell, one of the architects of the CIA served as chairman of the Foundation! Open Democracy is not some neutral organization; there's a clear political bent.