Heh, we use velo as well. And yeah, we don’t really stigmatise dialects that much either, though depending on how much dialect you use people might find it unprofessional.

It’s kinda funny, I’m Flemish and a lot of French loan words (ambriage, merci, nondedju = nom de dieu to name a few) are mainly used in dialect, and therefore don’t make you sounds sophisticated or worldly at all.

Meh, as a native Dutch speaker auxiliary verbs feel really utilitarian to me, and not particularly fancy - like you said, that’s highly subjective.

As for cases, I didn’t say Latin or German had the most, but just that I think they’re fancy and that Latin has them while French doesn’t.

For one, Latin has more fancy rules than French. I guess the subjunctive is probably something English speakers might consider fancy, but Latin has that too. Latin has more times that are conjugations of the core verb (rather than needing auxiliary verbs), has grammatical cases (like German, but two more if you include vocative) and, idk, also just feels fancier in general.

I’ll admit it’s been years since I actually read any Latin and that I only have a surface level understanding of all languages mentioned except for French, but this post reads like it’s about the stereotypes of the countries rather than being about the languages themselves.

And for a lot of those countries, China is easily the lesser of two evils. Says more about us in the West than about them though.

Russia, Iran and China are regularly correct when they’re criticising the West tbh. It’s an easy way to score points that can’t really be countered.

The simple fact is that journalism requires money, and that money comes from advertisements in the case of free online publications. This title isn’t unreasonable, it piques your interest to click the article, and the article informs you exactly about what you expected.

I don’t really have an issue with this.

Also, what a lot of people seem to be missing is that this only works because of rampant hypocrisy among traditional parties. They promise time and again to make life better, to make work pay, to do this and that but they always fail because they’re neoliberals - whether they are lying or just fundamentally wrong doesn’t really matter.

This then allows far right wingers to swoop in and use a lot of the same underlying logic the traditional parties use, but without the hypocrisy. They just need to swap the hypocrisy out for hate towards minority groups.

This is a lot easier than the alternative left wing parties offer, which is fundamentally not aligned with the traditional parties in the West.

That’s the thing though, right? Something needing a change doesn’t imply any and all changes being good.

Truly no way this could enforce and whitewash discrimination.

Average policeman

I’m not saying it’s a leap - I’m saying that it’s not proven, which would have to be the case for it to be qualified as a genocide.

There’s also a difference between murder with premeditation, murder without premeditation and manslaughter - all three are the death of someone at someone else’s hands, all three are crimes, but that doesn’t make them the same thing. Intentionality matters in law.

The intent is a crucial aspect of the definition of genocide, which was internationally ratified in the Genocide Convention. Suddenly ignoring that when it’s politically expedient is hugely problematic.

I also want to emphasise that something not being a genocide doesn’t mean it can’t be horrible, a crime against humanity or anything else. It’s not a defence in any way, but a matter of using the correct (legally accepted) name.

It’s been a while since I read about this, so I don’t have any sources on hand I can point to right now. The core point is that there isn’t really any proof that the Soviets’ goal was to eliminate Ukrainians as a group, which is the main requirement to classify something as a genocide.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the Holodomor didn’t happen or that the USSR isn’t to blame, only that the intent wasn’t to eradicate a people.

I hope that’s a decent starting point for you to read up on this, in case you’re interested.

Most historians don’t consider this a genocide, so this is a purely political move. If Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine this wouldn’t have happened.

The interesting thing is, the USSR did commit a genocide in Ukraine, the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, but this one isn’t recognised because it’s less known and therefore less politically expedient.

It’s legitimately scary to see how many governments disregard historical analysis to score some cheap “dunking on Russia” points, thereby hollowing out the actual definition of what a genocide is. Like, there are a thousand legitimate ways to condemn Russia, including an actual genocide, so why do this? It’s baffling and frustrating.

…yeah, but they’re still the oppressor and have killed far more Palestinians than the other way around. Focussing on sensational stories like this to ignore the actual dynamics of oppression is exactly what I’m warning against.

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Palestinians support Hamas because they want to see the apartheid state that oppresses them fall, not because they support the status quo lmao.

That’s what I’m saying. Pro Israel people loooove bringing up stories like this to pretend Israel being a violent apartheid state is actually justified.

Hmm yes, the oppressed people in the Gaza Strip have an interest in maintaining the status quo. I am very smart, yes.