Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

[smjjames]

I'm sure every country has had an idiot of a president/prime minister (or monarch if you want to go past the 19th century) at some point.

As a person, he is certainly a nice guy, but as a politician, he was horrible at it. Then there was Dick Cheney.

[Loud Whispers]

One of the greatest criticisms leveled at Tony Blair was that he turned us into the USA's lapdog, taking us into Iraq and Afghanistan and so on. Some pretty strong anti-American sentiments developed among the fucking everyone.

ftfy.

The UN monitors that were/are there are saying that human rights violations are increaing in Eastern Ukraine and in Crimea. Naturally, the Russians are claiming rights abuses by Kiev. However, in this chaotic situation, it's entirely possible for human rights violations to be commited by both sides.
The CNN sites comments are 99% trolls as well.

Assume idiocy before malice, if CNN will put Ukraine in Pakistan I doubt the comments show any better cognitive functions than yahoo comments.
Also its not that hard to find video of pro-EU Ukrainians joking in front of tortured captives or pro-Russia ones storming buildings and shooting soldiers etc. So you can bet on everyone uskng the chaos to settle old scores.

[scrdest]

Some of my far-left colleagues in the Scottish Independence movement are currently bleating about "Fascists" in Ukraine.

One fellow said the other day: "I don't think the Russian government is the most benevolent. But I'd rather live here than under Banderist regime in the Ukraine". He also complained about how "twice in last three elections, Ukrainians elected pro-Russian president. On both occasions, he was forced out at gunpoint by Nato." He also said this: "today, the Ukrainian fascist junta regime will ban the Communist Party. Impeccable democratic credentials on show there, lads."

Then again, he also said that the bombings in Volgograd were organised entirely by US funded Saudis in a bid to undermine Russia. He's so blinded by his loathing of the USA and NATO that he doesn't see the big picture. People like him get swept up in the facades all the time, when in my opinion the reality has little to do with NATO or Russian Imperialism and far more to do with Russian and Ukrainian organised crime.

Well, Kremlin's propaganda and foreign far-left go waaaaaay back, and even further back we have Potyomkin.

[Helgoland]

Yep - I read a book once called "Utopia and mythos of the world revolution", a collection of articles from two major magazines/newspapers/written media outlets of the Comintern published between I think 1921 and 1940. The amount of flipflopping they had to do... Oy vey.

[misko27]

 Yeah there's a fair amount of support for Russia among some far-leftist groups. Can't understand why Russian nationalism is better then Ukrainian, but whatever. It's partially contrarianism I think.

Bush nearly destroyed the US economy towards the end of his second term. Sure he tried to fix it, with little success, and the wars were pretty much what nearly crashed the economy (and taking the world economy with it) and drove the debt up.

And then the republicans played 'kick the can down the road' and then 'chicken' with the debt ceiling

Hey woah woah hey. I'm not familiar with any arguments that the wars crashed the economy (debt? Yes. Economy? Nope).

[smjjames]

Well, the wars contributed to the debt and the debt didn't help the economy either. I probably oversimplified it in what I said earlier.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

So, terrorists claim that they killed and wounded 650  Ukrainian Soldiers, while they lost eight

Their list includes:
285 Right Sector members (lol)
120 National Guard soldiers
more than 90 Soldiers from anti-terrorism special forces
40 Paratroopers
50 Academi soldiers
and the best part: 25 CIA and FBI agents

Link in Russian

[Sergarr]

That's stupid and he should know better than to exaggerate like that.

[Sheb]

TTIP?

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partenrship. Nevermind that it's not so much EU vs. US as coroporation and their pet politicians on both sides vs. the population on both sides, many on the left and far-left sees it as yet one more exemple of the US going all imperialists.

[XXSockXX]

Yeah there's a fair amount of support for Russia among some far-leftist groups. Can't understand why Russian nationalism is better then Ukrainian, but whatever. It's partially contrarianism I think.

Well, the European far-left (and the far-right) are rather anti-American. The left parties that come from a communist angle don't like the US because they oppose capitalism, while they have historical ties to the USSR. The ones that have ties to the peace movement don't like the US because of Vietnam, Iraq, etc and are against any interference in foreign affairs (a sort of hypocritical pacifism). So it's partially contrarianism (against NATO, perceived US imperialism, capitalism, Western values in general), partially they buy into the Russian propaganda that portrays the Ukrainian nationalists as fascists (and anti-fascism can get pretty radical).
The far-right is a bit more torn, some sympathize with the Ukrainian nationalists, some with Russian imperialism (not because they like Russia, because they like imperialism/authoritarianism), and for the most part they dislike NATO/EU/US, capitalism and Western values too.

[Darvi]

Even if that were true, how the hell would they identify the victims. Especially the US agents.

[Sinistar]

I'm pretty sure they found written orders signed by CIA on them. And dog-tags. Everyone knows Americans always have dem dog-tags.

[/badsarcasmahead]

In more lighthearted news: Russians shave beards in Eurovision protest

It's probably more of a fringe thing than anything, but still, is it just me or is this absolutely hilarious? AND actually has a contra-productive effect of what they are trying to do?

"Hey guys, this (wo)man has a beard, let's shave ours and prove that beards are totally over-used as a masculine symbol, hooray for metro-men!"

Could be just me though.
Anyways, a beard is fine too.

[Loud Whispers]

I literally just sent my farewell message to the eurovision 2014 thread before coming here.

Just saying, posting eurovision in the europol thread is sacrilege and I will send the Danish presenters after you. Good news though btw.  Still won't stop the danish though. Prepare to recieve nul points kiddo, my network of ugly people singing on top of ladders are tracking you down as we speak.

[Sinistar]

Not the ladder people and their horrible Ode to Joy cover.

Have mercy. Anything but that.

[Loud Whispers]

Once the ladder people start going they can't stop until the song is done! You brought this doom on yourself!
(In all seriousness, posting eurovision in a politics thread is like shouting Santa is dead into a school via a megaphone. We do our best to keep the story alive, if not make the eurovision apolitical than at least try our damndest. I'm going to pretend this is a political beard problem masquerading as a scientific beard intrigue, or the other way around now that I think deeply on it. It is the theory of natural selection combined with the theory of beard selection and beard saturation. The more men in a populace have beards, the less sexy they become and the less likely it is to attract slavic girls using the charm, beauty and butter. Because the West had just recovered from gillette spam advertising that the only sexy beard was a shaved one, the west has had in increase in beard saturation and so doesn't really find this anything special, especially since western media that caters to female demographics mostly prodded the beard with fascination and adoration. The opposite is almost entirely true for Russia, and so we shall see a decrease in beard saturation. Russia is perfect for measuring trends in beard saturation, as their leaders show a linear trend in beard thickness).