Romanian here. Discussions of cancelling the election happened way before the cyberattack. AFAIK for the first time in a very long time the largest two parties did not win and they started panicking and scrambling to re-do the vote count.
Any person in any country with a bit of inteligence could also tell you that this guy did not used ZERO funds in his campaign as he declared , so if you are his fan go pray he will not go to jail for fraud or treason, but probably politicians already have their jail cells upgraded for their fat asses, he will write some book and get out a bit faster.
This is not remotely true, Ukraine can't retake what it's lost they have no men left. If it were true Zelensky wouldn't be contemplating ceding territory to Russia. It sucks but Ukraine lost in 2014 when the world let Crimea get annexed with no response.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/zelensky-says-for-first-...
You're extremifying.
You could have said "they don't have enough people". But instead you had to dial it up to "they have no men left".
No matter what is actually happening on the ground -- you definitely won't be able to make heads or tails of it, if you keep confounding yourself with rhetoric like this.
The realities of war are not LGBTQ-friendly.
My male cousin has not been allowed to leave the country for almost 3 years. His wife is in Germany.
That line had nothing whatsoever to do with this "people"/"men" nonsense. I was referring simply to the quantifier.
What’s the difference between those two?
The former suggests a situation which is quite dire, and that is certainly accurate in regard to Ukraine's current situation. The latter (if taken at face value) is essentially totalistic, and objectively misleading. That doesn't mean that that was their intent, of course. But to my ears it comes across as an overly emotionalized and in any case muddled characterization of the situation.
Kind of like when, say, a startup is going through rough times and someone says "everyone's leaving" when really it was just their friend and a couple other people who have left.
There's a word for this expressive style, btw: "histrionics".
I'd argue the situation is quite dire and the, arguably fatalistic, phrasing is not incorrect here.
Men are not allowed to exit the country, and I know personally quite a few cases where males, who were in no real fighting age or condition, were literally picked up on the street and sent to the front. With handcuffs and aggressive force. In my former hometown.
So, staying in your analogy, "everyone's leaving" is rather correct, with the modifier "...who has enough money or sheer luck". "But they're still there" feels like nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking.
In that sense I appreciate your clarification as well.
As one datapoint I’d love to hear a convincing argument, and really don’t have a strong opinion on who will win. If you make a more trustworthy argument for why Ukraine will lose, I promise I’ll read it
Edit: truthfully, this is the most convincing argument I’ve seen so far https://manifold.markets/chrisjbillington/will-ukraine-win-t...
Edit: wow, somehow I wasn’t even close, I’m like three generations off
And what does this have to do with your male cousin?
GP's comment was:
> You could have said "they don't have enough people". But instead you had to dial it up to "they have no men left"
which I, mistakenly, as GP pointed out here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42349533, assumed to be a play on "there are also women on the front". Which there are, but in vastly fewer numbers.
You're right that there are men still living in Ukraine, Zelensky is still alive after all. However, the manpower situation has been pretty bleak for a while. [1] I'm in regular contact with people in theater and I'm not far off in saying 'there are no men left'. Russia is still advancing albeit slowly. We'll likely have new borders in a few months. Almost time to update your globe.
[1] https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2024-03-16/ukraine-v...
Best to luck to whomever in your in contact with.
I won't be changing my globe for anyone, however.
Thanks, hopefully they'll be home soon. I've been mowing his grass for nearly 3 years, hardly a commensurate sacrifice I must admit.
Isn't their rate of advancement a lot faster than a year ago?
The first week of the war was a "fast" advance. Even this "accelerated" rate is basically on par with WWI.
His campaign landed better because of his palatable way of speaking and saying a lot without saying anything, as most people that voted for him were not really aware of his positions on any serious subject.
Romania does not have free speech like the US, we have protected speech and there are some sympathies which are simply illegal, whether you agree with it or not.
- Pepsi contains nanochips that enter your body
- water isn't actually H2O
- capitalism is communism, there is no difference
- everybody accepted that Covid exists, there's no such thing, there never was
He got booted out of one of the other far right wing parties when he publicly praised Romania's 1930s-1940s fascist/nazi dictators as "heroes, who maybe did some bad things, but a lot of good". He has refused to diaavow them every time he has been asked about them.
One of his major campaign leads wears Romanian nazi symbolism (think the Romanian equivalent of a swastika). The other one often posts about those same dictators, especially in commemoration of their deaths.
He has started one of his speeches with an exact quote from one of said dictators.
This is beyond all of the insane conspiracies and religious mystic declarations, from seeing aliens to "C-sections interrupt the divine cord", "water is not just H2O, it is information, that is why they bottle it to keep this information contained", and so many more.
One of these, perhaps?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Romanian_fascist_symbols....
If you could provide these symbols (in Romain) that would be very helpful. And if it's not too much trouble, a few keywords (in Romanian) of that speech so I can look it up.
Not doubting you in the slightest, but these don't seem to be easily searchable (and I'd appreciate your take).
- The leader with the legionary / Iron Guard pin (what I called "Romananian nazi movement" pin) [0] (the man on the left is wearing the top Iron Guard symbol as a golden pin, the man in the center is Călin Georgescu)
- Wikipedia entry on this movement [1]
- The copied speech fragment from marshal Ion Antonescu, the Romanian military dictator that allied with Hitler [2]
- Wikipedia entry on Ion Antonescu [3]
- if you want some keywords on the people here, you can search for Eugen Sechila [the person with that pin], neo-legionari, Antonescu, Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu (the leader of the legionary movement in the 1930s and 40s, whom Călin Georgescu was praising)
[0] https://www.bursa.ro/calin-georgescu-apropiat-de-neolegionar...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Guard
[2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eoE9zQ16b0A&pp=ygUiY8SDbGluIGd...
No, not "because he had a rally at MSG".
But because of the things he said at that rally.
Do you understand the distinction?
It's also definitely not true that most of the people saying he's a fascist are saying he's "a Nazi"; that's an overdrawn distortion. And a lot of these people with concerns about his rhetoric don't even necessarily think he's a fascist per se; though they do find a matter of concern that he seems to at least be channeling fascist rhetoric.
Whether you agree with them or not is beside the point. What seems much more significant is that you seem to have a weirdly muddled (and hyperemotionalized) view of what people actually think about Trump, and why.
I'm very grateful to live in Romania and have a lot of things about the US that I disagree with, but I understand it's a different country with a different history & culture.
This is what it sounds like. Everyone's talking about "democracy vs Russian interference" but I think it's realpolitik.
The top two candidates who were to compete in the final election were Georgescu (a lunatic) and Lasconi (SRU, a moderate outsider). Lasconi was second only by a small margin to Ciolacu (SPD, current president).
Immediately after the first election, the court (mostly consisting of SPD) ordered (EDIT: one) controversial recount they blocked almost everyone from seeing. Some suspect the plan was to declare a miscount and get Ciolacu into second place. Then the first election would not be rerun and the final election would be Georgescu vs Ciolacu.
Except if it came down to them there's a good chance Georgescu would've won, since people would know SPD corrupted the results. And Georgescu really is a lunatic, so perhaps SPD decided they'd rather have Lasconi then him.
Except now it seems SPD hasn't fully decided this. This election seemingly gives them one more (albeit small) chance, while still ensuring Georgescu won't win (unless he out-votes even someone like Lasconi, but I can only hope not. Georgescu makes Trump look like Abraham Lincoln).
The recount was ordered after two complaints were lodged, one which was rejected and the one that was accepted was from another contender in the first round of elections. Only one recount was performed. Only 4 of the 9 members of the court were proposed by PSD (SPD), 4 were proposed by PNL and another by UDMR.
> Except now it seems SPD hasn't fully decided this. This election seemingly gives them one more chance
While they do have another chance, the fact that they were at the wheel while this happened, and the fact that their candidate was in 3rd place even after the recount will not help them in a new election.
You forget to mention that PSD/SPD and PNL are running the government together now, and UDMR (minority hungarian party) will ally with anyone who gives them a few government positions. Usually with SPD.
In Moldova, where lots of people have Romanian citizenship as well, Lasconi received 56.5% of the vote, while Georgescu received 3.11% of the vote.
On which note, was there any reuse found in comparison to the campaign in Moldova?
I'm predicating this on Georgescu's anti-NATO stance (that said, I don't really follow EE politics that closely).
Georgescu's stance wasn't super well known to most of his supporters and it's not what was being pushed, he's mostly flag-waiving, talking about sovereignty and God, not really saying much of substance, but he's palatable if you don't know his views and he was something fresh compared to the other candidates that were more known, thus giving him a boost among anti-establishment types.
He's not completely new to the scene as he was touted as potential PM by a minority political party at some point, but they also distanced themselves from him to clean up their own anti-EU image.
As far as I can see, modern Romania appears to be ruled mostly by the Social Democrats whose candidate came 3rd and was disqualified from the second round. They also appeared to have roots in the Communist era, is that right?
Can we say that this move was to save the Social Democrats? Who were supposed run agains't the liberals and win I guess, but this pro-Russia candidate came from nowhere and the 2nd round turned into pro-Russia vs pro-West, right?
The Social Democrats haven't won the presidency in decades and their current candidate sunk them in this election process even though he was sure to win, but some missteps he took associating himself with people connected to a huge real estate scam sunk his campaign.
Whether this move helps Social Democrats (PSD) is unlikely, as their current candidate is still just as unpopular and would most likely not win.
You are correct that because of this Russophile candidate the runoff turned into a pro-EU vs pro-Russia fight.
There's also tremendous amounts of anti-EU propaganda on social media which they're subjected to and most people in today's age don't bother fact checking anything so they just trust whatever's showing up on their screen.
These are the messages that were used on TikTok, an open pro-Russia message would have been buried quickly.
France is another case where the main ruling parties (PS, LR and even ENS) have lost legitimacy but they paint the newcomers in ascendancy (RN, LFI) as both "useful idiots of the Russians" and "antisemitic". Then the President decides to break norms and not follow the will of the people in his choice of PM (typically should go to the party with most votes in assembly) - and faces no reprimand from the institutions.
Both of these are tests what needs to happens so Europe remains tied to NATO and the US. But these are both symptoms of a decaying order.
If the results were 30% centrists, 30% leftists, 40% RN would you be calling for a RN PM?
But no, he chose a personal ally who nobody liked.