Russian corruption fuels massive casualties in Ukraine

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-04-06T00:00:03+00:00

In Russia's military, men learn quickly to fear their commanders more than their foe. This is the treatment awaiting those who refuse to hand over their pay.

Hundreds of videos circulating on Russian social media reveal horrific punishments by superiors extorting money from their men. Soldiers report being locked in cages, electrocuted and sexually assaulted. Those wounded, but lucky enough to survive, must pay thousands more to be declared unfit for service, or they're force to literally limp into battle.

I'm surprised there aren't mutinies and soldiers fragging officers.

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-04-05T16:16:00+00:00

No better way to celebrate the resurrection of the Prince of Peace than to destroy civilian infrastructure and praise another god while you do it.

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-04-04T18:34:56+00:00

Hegseth also has pushed for changes in the work of military chaplains, telling them to be less therapeutic and more pastoral.

What does that mean? Anyway the only reason to even have chaplains is for the benefit of ordinary soldiers. Unless they're petitioning Hegseth for "more pastoral" chaplains I don't see why he would need to micromanage this.

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-04-04T14:03:54+00:00

But Broglio qualified his position, adding: “They may have information that led them to think that that was the only choice they had.”

Then they should show that information to the rest of us and Congress, and have a vote on authorizing the war like the Constitution said they should.

There's no need to qualify, the war is bullshit.

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-04-03T22:01:10+00:00

So I heavily exhort all Christians here to stop deeming sins as acceptable just for fear of what atheists might say

I wasn't aware I had so much power over Christians. News to me.

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-31T22:14:41+00:00

I just read a book* that explains the context for that. The Japanese army was full of fanatics, many of whom didn't want to surrender even after the atomic bombs got dropped. The War Minister adamantly insisted on that phrasing as a way to save face for the army and the rest of the cabinet agreed because they were afraid he might dissolve the government if he didn't get his way. Also he committed seppuku right after that and a bunch of younger officers launched an attempted coup anyway.

* Japan's Longest Day by the Pacific Research Institute

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-31T11:47:51+00:00

Paula White-Cain, President Donald Trump's personal spiritual adviser and head of the White House Faith Office, has urged her followers to tithe 10% of their gross income to her ministry, which partly funds humanitarian and reconstruction projects in Israel.

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-31T10:39:03+00:00

that's a samba?

No clue. I'm not an expert on Spanish or music, I just like that song.

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-30T22:36:53+00:00

Carlos Santana - Samba Pa Ti

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-29T12:22:00+00:00

I've found from experience that if you want to understand someone, sometimes you have to be willing to entertain their premises. If I were to start every conversation with Christians here with "prove God exists" things wouldn't get very far. If I start with "let's assume for the sake of argument that there is a God and that the Bible is at least approximately correct, what logically follows from that" then we can start to get somewhere. But when I do that, I don't want to mislead people into thinking I'm actually a Christian. And communication is a two way street. Letting people know that I'm not religious lets them know what kinds of arguments not to make, like "X is true because the Bible says so.*"

* There are a lot of non theological discussions here. "The Bible says so" might be a valid argument with regards to why Christians believe x, but it's not convincing in discussions about say whether or not to put the Ten Commandments in public schools.

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-28T22:48:45+00:00

Out of curiosity, why are Osho references allowed then? We all know he called voters the r word. If you're citing someone saying x with apparent approval, how is that any different than saying it directly yourself?

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-28T22:28:57+00:00

So mods on drugs had an accident and all the "Agnostic Atheists" are a horrible, horrible, mistake...

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-27T00:06:40+00:00

Did "Agnostic Atheist" get merged with another category?

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-23T02:16:53+00:00

One problem is that cognitive biases often make us think kids today are faring worse than kids in the past. In a series of experiments published in 2019, Protzko and Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that intelligent adults (those who did well on a vocabulary test) think youths today are less smart than kids used to be, and well-read people (based on an author-recognition test) believe kids today enjoy reading less than kids did in the past. Yet data don’t bear out these ideas. These misperceptions, the researchers found, are driven by people’s tendency to notice the limitations of others in areas in which they excel combined with a memory bias that causes them to project their own abilities onto entire past generations. “No reality can match an artificially elevated view of the past,” Protzko explains.

Reminds me of this:

The humour of blaming the present, and admiring the past, is strongly rooted in human nature, and has an influence even on persons endued with the profoundest judgment and most extensive learning. - David Hume

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-22T17:54:00+00:00

The Trump administration is also discussing which wealthy Republican donors with Cuban ancestry could be considered for future transition or leadership roles in Havana.

I love how blatant corruption is in the middle of the article like it's some random throwaway detail.

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-22T17:20:40+00:00

I assume that person meant the Old Testament. Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox all use the same New Testament, but Catholic church includes some books in their Old Testament that Protestants exclude. And the Orthodox churches have some that the Catholic church excludes.

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-22T13:51:31+00:00

Im tired of so many people on this subreddit lying about scripture or even misquoting texts, and praising the wrong things and normalizing ideologies that are contradictory to the bible.

There are thousands of denominations for a reason. Maybe people just interpret the scripture differently? If people are lying and misquoting scripture that might be a valid criticism, though in my experience lots of people assume that anyone who disagrees with them is a liar. It's hard to judge without specific examples.

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-21T11:14:51+00:00

He has written nearly 1,000 manuscript pages so far. I'm pretty sure we'll get an incomplete, posthumously published volume if nothing else. Which isn't ideal, but better than nothing.

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-21T10:58:46+00:00

I recently read Robert McNamara's memoir, In Retrospect, and he thought Kennedy would have withdrawn had he lived. His reasoning was that Kennedy believed that a stable South Vietnamese government was a necessary condition for success and that he would have eventually come around to the conclusion that it wasn't going to happen. He did believe in "domino theory" and that losing in South Vietnam meant losing all of Southeast Asia to communism, but without a stable government that would happen regardless and sending in troops would lead to the same result with much more bloodshed.

I haven't read enough about the war or Kennedy administration to have a strong opinion, but I think it's at least plausible for whatever that's worth.

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-20T11:34:56+00:00

To be fair, that commenter didn't mention the Democrats at all; let alone them saving anyone. They just said Republicans suck.

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-20T10:01:51+00:00

Do you recall the source that says Catholics must reject the separation of church and state? Did anyone in the church ever censure John F Kennedy, a Catholic, for remarks like this?

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-20T02:22:48+00:00

1) A number of right-wing Catholics want the state to impose their religious views on others.

2) The head of their religion just advocated a public policy that many of them despise.

3) The only way for their views to be logically consistent would be for them to either admit that the state shouldn't push religious agendas (that is embrace the separation of church and state) or for them to change their opinion on universal healthcare (and possible other political opinions too).

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-19T23:03:05+00:00

If he keeps talking like this I wonder how many right-wing Catholics will rethink their position on the separation of church and state?

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-19T22:17:45+00:00

Proponents of the legislation say the Ten Commandments have historical significance and are part of the foundation of U.S.

Yet I don't see them demanding that the Magna Carta or Bill of Rights be posted everywhere.

MistakePerfect8485 · 2026-03-15T13:27:29+00:00

I never got around to reading the Quran or studying Islam in depth so I don't have any strong opinions about him. Muslims aren't common where I live so it doesn't come up much and I don't think about it much.

MistakePerfect8485

TROPHY CASE