>In germany we just saw very public rigging of an election for the federal high court of justice.
Not familiar with that but I imagine that is going to be a controversial statement.
Using Russia as a subject is interesting. A western audience is probably a lot less defensive against the idea that Russia rigs their elections. The video looks interesting.
(That's partly why Germany is getting infested with Nazis again. You can go to jail for calling them out.)
I'm not sure if it's fair to call it rigging, but there was a massive smear campaign against a judge nominated for their constitutional court. Leading to the nomination being withdrawn when it really should've been an appointment as usual. Which is likely the first massive step toward Germany politicising one of the foundations of their democracy, similar to how the USA supreme court seems like it's red vs blue when looked on from the outside.
I'm guessing this conference is rather left leaning, which is why they'd called that rigging, but there wasn't election fraud. It's an issue of course, since this means that rich people can essentially buy massive influence on the German democracy by clever use of social media and lies. Which may seem like the norm to a lot of people on HN, but that's not how it has traditionally been in Germany.
It's not just the outside who see it that way!
It's now alleged that this was caused by a disinformation campaign targeting MPs of that party.
https://www.volksverpetzer.de/analyse/brosius-gersdorf-union...
not really
but compared to what seems to be happened nearly daily in the US it really is not a big deal
but compared to what is supposed to happen it was a big deal
which seems to be a common trend, being very pissed of about what happened in German politics, then looking to the US and being "they did what now!?", oh it seems things are still fine here
Quick scan of my social network just confirms the same: anyone extremely agentic, intelligent, or educated I know has either left, is in the process of leaving, or is considering leaving.
Last person out of Nigeria can turn the lights off.
Or, to be blunt: a syndicate of evil clown politicians have seized control of the ship of state, looting it of anything not bolted down, and murdering anyone who challenges them.
Fixing it is an extremely high-cost endeavor, so leaving is just the only logical option if you have a potable, in-demand skill.
Perfect example would be 1940s China vs. modern China. Same people, but went from a pre-industrial hellhole to a technological superpower because the gov. deliberately invested into creating a sustainable STEM pipeline and creating a nation where their talented young people are happy to live and work. Nigeria isn't doing any of that in any significant capacity.
On the population angle, Nigeria's politicians have a thing for fudging population numbers and realistic figures are closer to 120M to 140M, vs. the 240-260m Western demographers take at face value. I explained in detail in this comment here. [0]
Of course you will never hear about this because we are not Poland or Hungary, we did not have the audacity of voting the way they did :)
Since unsubstantive/indignant rhetoric tends to attract upvotes, generic dross like often floats to the top of threads, choking out any actually interesting discussion. Therefore please don't post it.
From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."
"Please don't fulminate."
Sounds like elections in both Russia and the US are rotten these days. Curious to note which party has no desire to rectify these issues.
And Trump has even made statements which can easily be interpreted as admission[0].
But it doesn't matter.
[0]https://www.c-span.org/clip/white-house-event/user-clip-trum...
echelon_musk•1h ago
kwanbix•1h ago