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[Ukrainian Ranger]

They could have used diplomatic methods to appease Dudaev, or try to aim-bomb him, and only him, since he's the leader. Instead we see massive shelling of cities.

Hypocrytes...
Ukrainian army isn't even close to what Russian army did (and keeps doing) in Chechnya
Besides Strelok is a FSB officer... common... I just imagine Russia conducting negotiations with a known CIA agent that declared independent Kamchatka....

No, they're going to jail for being "deserters" and "traitors".

You are mixing that group with another (42 soldiers IIRC) that moved to Russia against their order earlier.

You see, it is never a desertion when soldier follows the order even if the order is to surrender

As for very Ukrainian thing to do... We value lives of our soldiers and civilians unlike one neighbor who never cares. It is not Ukrainian kind of strategy - hold the ground under heavy artillery and die there for your nation even it is useless strategically because we never surrender

And you know, whatever will happen, we will not forget about that guys like you forgotten all that guys that fought in Chechnya

[Sergarr]

Eastern Ukrainian have not kidnapped people en masse from the streets of Kiev, then asking for moneys to return them back home.

Eastern Ukrainians have not formed criminal bands that have literally massacred almost all other criminals in order to get it all.

Eastern Ukrainians have not murdered Western Ukrainians just because they were living close to their homes (there are still almost no Russians in Chechnya... there were quite a lot)

Don't compare Chechen to Eastern Ukrainians.

[MonkeyHead]

Moving our focus from big thing one to big thing two...

TV debate tonight on Scots Independence.

Anyone watching/interested/bothered enough to comment?

[10ebbor10]

Since we're taking detours anyway, have some information on Belgium.

3 out of 4 governments have been established, leaving just the federal government. It appears that we're going for the so called "kamikaze" or Swedish coalition.

Meanwhile, one of our other reactors just broke down (should be up in a week or two. Just an insufficiently oiled steam turbine) However, what is more interesting is that we needed to ask major companies to cut their energy use. This spells doom for winter, when we will decommission an equivalent amount of Nuclear generation, and some gas generation.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Eastern Ukrainian have not kidnapped people en masse from the streets of Kiev, then asking for moneys to return them back home.

Eastern Ukrainians have not formed criminal bands that have literally massacred almost all other criminals in order to get it all.

Eastern Ukrainians have not murdered Western Ukrainians just because they were living close to their homes (there are still almost no Russians in Chechnya... there were quite a lot)

Don't compare Chechen to Eastern Ukrainians.

Oh. In your version of the world Chechns are cruel animals and deserved total destruction of their cities, tortures, thousands and thousands of rapes and at the very least 1\6 of population being killed...

Good to know that "Eastern Ukrainians" are not animals in your books. "Western Ukrainians" probably are

[10ebbor10]

They work pretty well when an Earthquake happens, and they'll work in case of a terrorist attack.

[scriver]

I'm sorry to hear that Ukrainian Ranger.
What is your opinion of Obama's plans to spend a measly few million dollars next year on helping to train Ukrainian National and border guard Units "?
U.S. Plans To Train, Arm Ukraine National Guard In 2015

Isn't this the exact same thing that they did in Libya and it ended up not working?

The Libyan rebels armed themselves with equipment looted from military bases and/or supplied by the parts of the army that joined the rebellion. There probably was some arm-and-training involved, but as far as I know it wasn't on any broad scale (Nato-European strategy was mostly about keeping the government from being able to manoeuvre or use the airspace and letting the Libyans do the hard work (and suffer the losses). Libya's subsequent problems also stems more from a failure to establish a new authority and the various militia groups that formed refusing to disarm themselves again.

It appears that we're going for the so called "kamikaze" or Swedish coalition.

The what now?

[10ebbor10]

Belgium political coalitions have weird names. In this case, blue represents the liberal parties*, yellow represents the New Flemish Alliance, and the Cross represent the Christian Democratic Party.

The Kamikaze coalition is called like that because you're going to have a Federal governement with a Walloon minority representation, while the Walloon regional governement is made up from parties on the opposite political spectrum.

*Belgium political parties are color coded for your convenience.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Spoiler: That reminds me talking with Sergarr (click to show/hide)

 

Sergarr you should apply for a job in Russian Ministry of Foreign affairs.

[martinuzz]

Belgium political coalitions have weird names. In this case, blue represents the liberal parties*, yellow represents the New Flemish Alliance, and the Cross represent the Christian Democratic Party.

The Kamikaze coalition is called like that because you're going to have a Federal governement with a Walloon minority representation, while the Walloon regional governement is made up from parties on the opposite political spectrum.

*Belgium political parties are color coded for your convenience.

In practice, the Belgian system seems to still work pretty well...
It's characterized by brief periods of having an actual government in place, with a lot of dissatisfaction from the common people, relieved by longer periods of not being governed at all (because the political parties can't decide whom they hate least and would even begin to consider forming a coalition with), and the common people happily going about their daily business, while waiting for the politicians to decide with whom they can be dissatisfied next.

Belgium is just awesome like that

[Owlbread]

There was a big TV debate today in Scotland, the first one in the campaign thus far with politicians as senior as Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland and Alistair Darling, leader of the pro-Union Better Together campaign. Despite Salmond being the favourite to win the debate he actually lost to Darling (beyond reasonable doubt) due to his weakness on his answers regarding currency. This is something that never should have happened because Darling is an idiot. Darling certainly didn't come out of it very well (he became quite hysterical and never shut up about currency for the whole debate, effectively shutting it down), but he won. Salmond countered and held his own, but this was a debate that by all accounts should have had Darling "holding his own", not Salmond.

I think Mr. Salmond's general ineffectiveness and incompetence in this debate (again, very unusual - this is not the Salmond the Yes campaigners know) is very discouraging for our overall prospects. I think what has happened over the last few months, the last year perhaps, as I've watched men like Mr. Salmond fuck things up when they really shouldn't be fucking up at all, is that I have lost faith. I have lost faith in the idea that we have something up our sleeve to climb the polls - a rabbit to pull out of the hat. For the years in this campaign I have believed wholeheartedly that there must be some big strategy, some plan. Instead I now believe we are actually flying blind, and the only thing we have on our sides is time and chance. So yes, I have lost faith - all I have now is hope, which is a pretty odd feeling but probably for the better. Faith is an unhealthy thing to have, especially towards politicians.

Right now according to polling analysis we are sitting at 44% in average support rankings with 6 weeks to go until the vote. In my opinion it's more like 46%, given that the 44% number takes into account biased pollsters that have us very far back into the mid-30s. It is very possible to gain 4% even in something like the last week, or a few days before the vote, due to how many people will leave their decision to the last minute (I have encountered this going door-to-door).

If 44% is indeed correct, then we need to climb 6% (something that is quite doable) or gain 240,000 votes in total (Scottish electorate is 4 million). With 240,000 votes, Scotland could be an independent country. That's all it takes. That's like America's independence depending on the political will of Madison, Wisconsin. We're talking about very small numbers of people making a hell of a lot of difference. All of this is still possible - the problem is that's all it is. Possibility, there's no plan, no rabbit to pull out of the hat. As I said earlier all I can do is hope that chance is on our side, because that's all we have.

[vagel7]

Belgium political coalitions have weird names. In this case, blue represents the liberal parties*, yellow represents the New Flemish Alliance, and the Cross represent the Christian Democratic Party.

The Kamikaze coalition is called like that because you're going to have a Federal governement with a Walloon minority representation, while the Walloon regional governement is made up from parties on the opposite political spectrum.

*Belgium political parties are color coded for your convenience.

In practice, the Belgian system seems to still work pretty well...
It's characterized by brief periods of having an actual government in place, with a lot of dissatisfaction from the common people, relieved by longer periods of not being governed at all (because the political parties can't decide whom they hate least and would even begin to consider forming a coalition with), and the common people happily going about their daily business, while waiting for the politicians to decide with whom they can be dissatisfied next.

Belgium is just awesome like that

Belgium sounds like a horrible place to be a politician in.

[MarcAFK]

I'm sorry, but now I'm picturing the Belgian parliament as being somewhere between a cross of the wiggles, inspector poirot, and those colourful daleks from dr who, all fighting over wether to use rgb or yuv colour gradients in official parliament documents...

[Darvi]

I'm of the opinion that, provided you don't build a nuclear plant in an unstable (Politically and geologically) area, you're going to, in all likelihood, be fine.

unstable (Politically

>Belgium

[Lagslayer]

I don't keep up with Belgium. All I know is it SHOULD be unstable because nobody controls Belgium, but it's not turned into a civil war somehow.

They want to have a civil war, but nobody knows who is on what side anymore. When they go to sleep, their subconscious inner turmoil causes them to punch themselves.