dreamwriter

"The horror of this system is not that there are only sadists there. The horror of this system lies in the banality of evil." [ ~ 20:00]

There are maybe 10-15% sadist there, Mr Yashin said, people who torture you and get pleasure from it. "Most of the FSIN employees are ordinary people who just play by the rules."

In other words, the system isn't just stocked with total monsters, but there are sometimes glimmers of humanity shown by the people there.

People had to write up reports about minor violations as excuses to keep him in solitary, 15 days at a time then another to put him back in.

"I spoke to the people writing reports about me.... [They said] 'how can I refuse? I'm an employee, my boss told me to do it..'."

We see that the russian prison system and the Russian state as well as any repressive authoritarian state relies on ordinary people who are "just following orders ".

He also says they did not feel responsible for this reason.

This is what the system relies on

Cornerstone of dictatorship is people just doing their jobs

When you are facing disaster, catastrophic world events, everything seems horrifying. But there's always something good-- good people emerge from the woodwork and try to help as much as possible.

I was disappointed (to say the least) that trump didn't even seem to register the photos of Ukrainian POWs during the oval office meeting with President Zelensky. Since this is an issue close to my heart, it makes me frustrated and angry. it's also central to the russia-Ukraine war-- it shows how russia treats people it captures. Ukraine isn't "just" fighting to keep russia from taking its territory -- it's fighting to keep it from doing that to its people. So people should not resist-- then what? become more of what russia is-- which doesn't let people be free to speak their minds on threat of imprisonment and torture?

Anyway, today i watched a video posted by gulagu.net in which the founder Vladimir Osechkin was interviewing a Ukrainian former POW. Toward the end, he mentioned the oval office meeting, and he thanked President Zelensky for showing the pictures. The highest office in the land DOES care about it enough to show it to the US president! he does what he can, even if he can't control how others react to it.