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[smjjames]

Does Poland normally get to choose who is the head of the NATO centre in Warsaw?

The new rightwing Polish government has used military force to remove the head of a NATO centre in Warsow, and replaced him with a friend of the political party.

what.

what is that move even supposed to do?

Read the previous part, the Polish PM has been filling in positions with party loyalists. Which smacks of corruption really.

[martinuzz]

Yeah, they also fired the head of the anti-corruption unit that was formed by the previous government. I guess he found out some things that they didn't want him to officially report

[Bouchart]

This could mean Poland getting kicked out of NATO.

If they don't kick Turkey out of NATO for instigating the Russians they aren't going to kick Poland out of NATO.  Not that NATO is doing a whole lot of good these days, anyway.

[smjjames]

This could mean Poland getting kicked out of NATO.

If they don't kick Turkey out of NATO for instigating the Russians they aren't going to kick Poland out of NATO.  Not that NATO is doing a whole lot of good these days, anyway.

Why would they kick Turkey out for defending their airspace? Yes, it was a dick move, but it's not a comparable situation.

Also, my question asking whether Poland usually gets to choose who is the head of the NATO centre in Warsaw didn't get answered, I don't think.

[ChairmanPoo]

Sicily is not a nation, no... And I was thinking of modern Western Europe, to be honest

Else we might as well include Mussolini, the Russian Tsar, maybe Stalin...

Stalin died of a heart attack, not assassinated, and I am looking at post WWII.

So he was assassinated by entropy? Poor personal habits may have also participated in the daring act.

Aye.  His habit of arresting and/or killing anyone who looked at him funny, including some hundreds of doctors in the months before his death (on charges of conspiracy to assassinate Soviet leaders, no less), meant that no one was willing to risk arrest and execution in order to check on him when he did not come out of his room at dawn as was his usual wont.  The only person to dare did so only in the late evening, after which he had likely been suffering the aftereffects of a stroke and internal hemorrhaging for at least 12-18 hours.

Well.. we're talking about a 74 year/old man living in the fifties. Of course, we don't know how bad it was, but  even today an intracerebral hemorrhage is pretty bad, and back then they were not exactly swimming in modern medical technology. Most likely he would not have recovered from it anyway.

[Morrigi]

FYI, it technically wasn't a NATO installation, and NATO has said that it's an internal Polish matter.

[smjjames]

FYI, it technically wasn't a NATO installation, and NATO has said that it's an internal Polish matter.

Oh, so Poland does get to choose it's NATO guy?

Also, huhwhat Dennmark? http://www.politico.eu/article/denmark-wants-to-seize-refugees-valuables-crisis/

and

http://www.politico.eu/article/danish-mep-quits-party-over-refugee-confiscation-plan/

Contraband stuff like drugs I can get, but wanting to confiscate valuables other than stuff needed for a modest standard of living like cell phones (though I'm under the impression that most of the refugees are pretty poor) or sentimential items? Really? Pretty sure the US doesn't do that kind of thing.

[martinuzz]

(though I'm under the impression that most of the refugees are pretty poor)

Seeing how just paying a smuggler to get you drowned costs around 5000 euros per person, you can be sure that most immigrants that make it to Europe do not come from the 'poor' class. They were at least middle class, if not rich, to be able to afford to get to Europe in the first place.
We don't get the real poor immigrants in Europe. Those are either stuck in Turkish / Jordan refugee camps, or are being killed and raped by whichever militia finds them first.

That being said, well, I suppose it's possible that a lot of those former middle class refugees spent their last financial means on the journey, so yeah, I guess those would be the 'nouveaux pauvres' now.

This Danish idea though, sounds rather harsh. Now if someone arrives with two suitcases full of bar gold, I'd say sure, confiscate most of it, to contribute to the Danish welfare system. But taking people's family heirloom rings and iPods? That's inhumane. Might just as well pull their golden teeth while you're at it.

[Helgoland]

So the Spanish election is over. Results.

[Strife26]

Too complicated; didn't get past the graphic.



  Not too complicated for the semicolon, though

[smjjames]

So the Spanish election is over. Results.

Lol at the "death to the system" party when they're trying to get into the system....

Also... *is jealous of the successful multi (as in more than two) party system going on there*

Too complicated, didn't get past the graphic.

That's because we're used to having just a two party system where it would be two colors, with maybe one or two of some other color.

Edit: The congress of deputies is their version of the House of Representatives. Edit2: Actually, no, it's their parliament, though it sort of sounds like a mixture between a parliamentary system and our system.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Basically, the most popular center-right and center-left parties had a simultaneous disintegration into two separate anti-corruption revolt parties, one left-populist and the other liberal democratic.

[SaberToothTiger]

In other words, stuff is happening, emigration and immigration is happening, Spain is punched in the face and Poland gets rekt by Poland. Standard stuff, really.

[Sergarr]

Today is the birthday of Stalin, the leader who has came to power in Russia backwards, defeated, half-destroyed and having gone through chaos of civil war, and left with Russia industrialized, victorious and rebuilt.

While he certainly has done a lot of bad things to Russia (the chief among them was the overfocus of the system on himself, which caused USSR to catastrophically self-destruct within a single generation after his death), but he's still a symbol of progress from the ashes among Russians, and even now, despite all the anti-Stalinist propaganda of the government and opposition during the last 25 years, people still remember the almost-legendary time when their country was rocketing forward into the future at a breakneck pace, despite everything and everyone else.

Spoiler: "Two cloves for the comrade Stalin", seventh annual iteration, privately organized event (click to show/hide)

Discuss.

[Strife26]

Stalin is objectively one of the worst people in history, and his continued veneration by segments of the Russian populace is disquieting.