Uncle Volodya says, “When people complain of your complexity, they fail to remember that they made fun of your simplicity.”
Nolan Peterson, perennial Ukraine optimist and is-the-glass-half-empty-or-are-you-not-listening-to-me guy, feels like the country has turned a corner. Yes, by God, things are looking up. Ukraine might not be able to look forward to EU membership, but hey! It has visa-free travel, so if you have enough money for a vacation, you can go to the EU and see what it would be like to live there. Ukraine might not be able to look forward to NATO membership, but there are a few NATO troops in Ukraine training the country’s soldiers so that they can get a feel for what it would be like to be a NATO soldier, sort of. I mean, apart from getting paid, and stuff.
And the country’s GDP growth might be an anemic 0.2%, the Balance of Trade might have been relentlessly negative for more than a year, so that Ukraine is digging itself into a deeper hole every month by buying more than it’s selling – worse yet, nearly all of it with borrowed money – and the Government Debt to GDP ratio might have more than doubled from Yanukovych to Poroshenko. Running the economy is like juggling flaming tar. But never mind that. Sit down for a minute, because Mr. Peterson has big news, the kind of news that is going to make you want to pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile. You’re going to want to jump in the air – proof, incidentally, that you are not a Moskal – and click your heels together.
Ukraine now has Christmas.
Yes, isn’t that great??? Petro Poroshenko the inspirational leader, moved by a compulsion to give his countrymen a gift that all could enjoy, signed it into law – December 25th is now a public holiday, just like it is in the west! Now Ukrainians can experience – vicariously, at least – the joy of sharing a holiday with the west: not like those bearded Orthodox wierdos. In fact, that’s what makes it the best! Russia doesn’t have it!!
You might think I’m being sarcastic, but I assure you I’m not. Establishing an ever-more-obvious difference between Ukrainians and Russians who share the same genetic makeup is sufficiently important to Mr. Peterson that he put it in the headline. In Ukraine, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. And a lot less like Russia.
I suppose we should have expected this, because it’s the kind of thing westerners – especially Americans – do in their eagerness to spread their culture of consumerism. The Moscow Times, a western-oriented newspaper with an American editor, based in Moscow, mounted a spirited campaign for a couple of years to get Hallowe’en to catch on in Russia, and was scathing in its denunciation of the government and the Orthodox religion for their resistance. I don’t really understand why this is so important, but it just seems as if the ‘democracy activists’ believe if they can get foreign populations to adopt western commercial holidays – which virtually all of them now are – they will respond more readily to exhortations to throw themselves into the kind of ridiculous spending frenzy holidays in the west imply, and docilely allow themselves to be managed by corporate advertising.
Holiday surveys in America predict the average American will spend between $950 and $1,200 on Christmas shopping this year. Some can afford it. Quite a few can’t.
Well, in that respect, Americans and Ukrainians are already just like brothers. You can sort of tell from the throngs of eager shoppers you can see in the picture accompanying Mr. Peterson’s smug article. At first glance, I would say Santa has his work cut out for him. According to state statistics, the average monthly wage across Ukraine in July 2017 was $276.00 USD. Right off the top of my head, I’m going to predict the average Ukrainian will not be spending a minimum of $950.00 on Christmas, because that represents almost three and a half months’ wages.
A big part of consumer research in the west is dedicated to finding out where people spend their money, and then developing advertising which will persuade them to spend it on targeted products instead. So what do Ukrainians spend their money on? Well, mostly – some 94% – goes on food, transport, essential goods and communal services. According to a popular Ukrainian news site, Ukrainians have only 6% of their wages available for savings. Or…er…Christmas shopping. Gee; what a dilemma.
Say; you know, maybe there’s a lesson here. Maybe Ukrainians don’t need to be herded into aping westerners’ consumer habits quite yet. Perhaps they don’t need to be pawns in a one-upmanship game where western ideologues take a poke at Russia and then giggle behind their hands, waiting for a reaction. Maybe they need help breaking out of a system in which the country’s 50 wealthiest citizens control 85% of the nation’s GDP – because their president sure as hell isn’t going to help them there. Maybe instead of just blindly pumping money into the country without any accountability, so that much of it ends up in wealthy citizens’ offshore accounts and shell corporations, they need local agencies distributing aid money directly to small businesses and farmers and tradesmen under conditions of strict oversight and monitoring. Maybe the grinding noise of being crushed by poverty is making it hard for them to hear the jingling of sleigh bells and the prancing and pawing of each little hoof, if you get my drift.
Instead, westerners busy themselves thinking up ways in which Ukrainians can show that they are different from the dirty Russians, which plays into the fantasies of a tiny fraction of the population, and those the most ideological and least stable. Instead, westerners invent barriers which caused Ukraine to lose the Russian market for its goods which was more than a third of its GDP. In their minds, western ideologues are still missionaries, going amongst the heathen to save their souls for the real God. And he’ll likely have them soon enough: Ukrainians’ life expectancy has faltered and stumbled, and they are dying faster than new Ukrainians can be born. If it were happening in Russia, it’d be ‘a death spiral’, because the Russians are our enemies and we like to think about lots of them dying. We don’t talk that way about our friends, though, so it’s a big mystery, although Ukrainians themselves have a pretty good idea why.
“This is a serious problem for the country,” Alex Ryabchyn, a member of Ukraine’s Parliament, told The Daily Signal. “People are dying due to bad living conditions, declining environmental standards, or the war. Another problem is that the most active workforce is considering emigration..More people are dying than are being born in Ukraine. In 2016, every birth in Ukraine was matched by 1.5 deaths, according to a January report by the State Statistics Service of Ukraine.
Where did we learn that? Why, from Nolan Peterson; the same guy who thinks a little ho-ho-ho is just what Ukrainians need to chase away those winter blues.
“They are Man’s and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”
Charles Dickens; A Christmas Carol
The Kremlin Stooge 
A meeting was held today behind closed doors between Munchkin Klimkin and Lavrov.
This is the first bilateral meeting between Sergei Lavrov and Pavlo Klimkin as foreign Ministers of the two countries, and the first personal contact between the ministers over the past three years.
See: Главы МИД России и Украины начали первую за три года встречу
What a bloody shower above!
I wonder why Western hacks do not find Klimkin’s short stature as hilariously funny as they do Putin’s?
You’ve got to admit, those Yukie Femen activists have got style!
Пышнотелая активистка Femen устроила акцию в палаточном городке Саакашвили
Buxom Femen activist staged an event at Saakashvili tent camp
She’s holding a paddle and on her dugs it reads: “Pete”, “Mike” and on her gut is written: “Go paddle up your arses!”
Well done there, you chaps, for removing such an eyesore!
Well, it is a little chilly for al fresco. In the interest of public health, an’ all.
Interesting feature of one of the above photographs is the pile of bricks and half bricks behind the woman.
I presume they are for lobbing at the cops if need be.
I remember seeing a similar pile of bricks in the Tate Gallery, London, but that pile in London was a “work of art”.
I love how many people are able to blame Russia for all of Ukraine’s serious problems. So according to this guy, the bloodletting in the Donbas is cutting down Ukrainian youth like grass on a hot summer’s day. Kind of like having a Battle of Antietam but all year round. Wow. Talk about introducing a minor factor into the equation. A country of over 42M people is being bled white by a conflict that has killed about 10,000 over 3yrs.
32m according to the count by the loyal deputy in the article cited in my post supra.
I work in the orange tower next door — Mercury Tower.
Upper Volta with missiles?
A gas station masquerading as a country?
Does it have elevators? Do the lights work? What ’bout heating?
When I was there on a “sightseeing” trip, it was “conveniently” raining so we could not get a good view but if we did I bet we would have seen the thousand of dissidents in barbed wire enclosures who built those “towers”. Pretty sure that was the case.
Yeah, built by slave labour it was.
I have been working their for several years now and up to 2016 there was a huge, double-deck workers’ city along the river embankment made out of prefabricated cabins.
It looked OK: bathrooms, dormitories etc. The workers were nearly all from the “Stan” republics or Turkey.
there, FFS, not their!!!!!
A classic example of Russian fakery – their poor command of English always lets them down, and there’s always a little mistake in there that lets us know we are being trolled by the Russians.
No, I shouldn’t of wrote “there” if I was British cos the British don’t know no grammar now innit cos they stopped teeching it in the 70’s cos its boring, innit.
Just look at what they write in there comments in newspapers.
The lifts in Mercury Tower are so fast they leave your arse on the ground floor when you lift off.
ME and the Great Arse elevator?! 😉 Roald Dahl would turn in his grave…
Presumably they return you to your meagre 6’7” stature on descent?
6’2′, as a matter of fact, oh ye from the land of poison dwarfs, or Giftzwergeas those friendly Fritzes used to call the Cameronians, who were based there.
(above) Cameronians heading for Minden centre for a bevvy.
“There” being the city of Minden.
That “Poison Dwarfs” [Giftzwerge] tag was coined by the Minden Burgermeister, who said in April 1962 that the presence of the Cameronians on his patch was ”a visitation upon the city, nothing short of poison dwarfs”.
The Burgermeister’s comment followed a mass brawl in the Coliseum bar between local youths and men of the Cameronians battalion that was then based in Minden, which altercation resulted in the arrest of 17 soldiers. Two of the Cameronians were court-martialed.
At first, none of this attracted much interest in the UK, but a few months later the British press took up the story after the term “Giftzwerge” had been used by local witnesses during investigations and after the Burgermeister had used the same turn of phrase.
Interestingly, shortly before I headed off into exile in Mordor, I worked and lived with some Canadians in in the south of England, in Hastings, Sussex,.
One of these Canadians was from Yukon territory, from some place which always seemed to cause some mirth amongst his fellow-countrymen, but whose name I cannot now recollect. Anway, this Canadian lad was of Scottish descent and he still had relatives in Scotland whom he had never met but who had still kept in contact with his family. He had never been to Scotland and he intended to visit the place and his Scottish relatives.
So our contract ended and we both headed north from Hastings: I to my northwest England home patch and he further on to Scotland. We journeyed north on the same train from London and parted our ways at Wigan, Lancashire. Before leaving the London-Glasgow train, we agreed to meet a week later in Lancashire, where he would break his return journey to London so as to have drink with me.
A week later, I was waiting for the arrival of the Glasgow-London train at Wigan station. The train arrived, and off got my Canadian acquaintance.
“So, how was Scotland?” I asked him.
And no word of a lie, he answered: “Fine, but they are all dwarfs!”
All your beers are belong to us.
Wenn der Whisky billig ist
Mangelnde Nächstenliebe zwischen NATO-Verbündeten
29. Juni 1962
In Minden sind NATO-Kameraden aus Schottland in der Elisabethkaserne untergebracht: „The Cameronians“. Und schon am Eingang künden lackierte Holztäfelchen vom Sieg in den Schlachten des Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieges an der Somme und am Rhein. Ein berühmtes Regiment. Bloß ein bißchen unruhig. Im Jahre 1961 gab es zwischen den Cameronians und den Mindenern 148 Fälle mangelnder Nächstenliebe. In diesem Jahr sind es bereits 65.
Beispielsweise: Da kehrt ein Arbeiter von der Nachtschicht heim, begegnet drei Schotten und landet im Krankenhaus. Oder zwei italienische Gastarbeiter kommen von der Nachtschicht, begegnen drei Schotten und landen in ärztlicher Behandlung. Oder es kommt wieder einmal zu einer Schlägerei in dem Nachtlokal Collosseum. Schwerer Sachschaden. Aber draußen werfen die unermüdlichen Cameronians auch noch einen Personenwagen um. Und von diesen und anderen Heldentaten dringt der Ruhm nach England.
When the whisky is cheap
Lack of brotherly love between NATO allies
29 June 1962
In Minden, NATO comrades from Scotland are housed in the Elizabeth Barracks: “The Cameronians”. And already at the entrance, lacquered wooden plaques announce their victory in First and Second World War battles on the Somme and the Rhine. A famous regiment. Just a little restless. In 1961 there were 148 cases involving a lack of neighbourly friendliness between the Cameronians and the Mindeners. There have already been 65 this year.
For example, when a worker was going back home from the night shift, he met three Scots and ended up in hospital. Or two Italian guest workers going home from night shift come across three Scots and land end up having medical treatment. Or there is once again a brawl in the Collosseum nightclub, resulting in serious damage to property. And outside, the tireless Cameronians also throw a car around. And the glory of these and other heroic deeds reaches England.
I daresay it reached Scotland and Northern Ireland and Wales as well!
Little Poison Dwarf
It’s just like the Ryugyong Hotel (or the Hotel of doom).
Reuters via Global News: Thousands of ISIS fighters left Syria in secret deal with U.S., defector says
More evidence that the Russian accusations are correct. What is interesting is firstly, that this is being published, and secondly, that it does not show on Reuters’ main page.
It would be true to form. As the US military likes to say, “leave no one behind”.
I wonder if they dumped them in the ocean like OBL.
Oh, but surely that was ‘debunked’ conclusively, so that there could be absolutely no doubt that the US version was the correct one? After all, everybody – or everybody on the side of the west – believes activists and other witnesses to be absolutely credible so long as their story supports the preferred narrative. It’s only when they go off the reservation that they become crackpot eccentrics.
My personal position is that the Kurdish ‘defector’ could certainly be lying now, since he has admitted to lying before. Although I believe the version of events he cites now is accurate, it would be hypocritical to assert that he must be telling the truth now when he has an established record of lying – much like Rodchenkov, whose story has changed so many times it is not possible to know when he is telling the truth – although this is the standard applied by the western media every day; if we like what he says, it’s true. If not, he’s lying.
IIRC, the Russians provided evidence of a substantial withdrawal of ISIS forces under the US watch. And since the Western coalition was, beyond a doubt, using ISIS for regime change, it would be expected that this asset would be inventoried for possible future use – possibly in Syria, Libya and certainly Russia to whatever degree possible.
Yes, I was being partly sarcastic, since one of our commenters was raucously mocking on the subject, as if only idiots would believe it. There were liberal doses of the “It’s all a CIA plot, don’t you know?” and so on. But it would not be at all surprising if it were true, and in fact it would be hard to accuse the USA of pretty much anything that it had not already done a time or two. But a favoured technique nowadays is to laugh loudly at any suggestion that the USA is up to something or has several games running at the same time, and dismiss whoever suggested it as a tin-foil-hat conspiracy nut.
Most of the original ‘Free Syrian Army’ was not Syrian, and though shameless regime-change whores like Newsweek and Time tried to portray them as local bus drivers and bakers and taxi drivers and accountants who were just mad as hell and weren’t going to take it any more, they were really mostly Libyans under the command of Abdelhakim Belhaj, as he was the original commander of the Free Syrian Army.
So if it’s “true” — and this is likely, because the Western Reuters agency reports this story — why then those computer games graphics in a Russian MoD Tweet?
Yes, that’s an extremely interesting question. I daresay we will have an answer soon, since the Russian Defense Ministry also wants to know how those got in there.
Of course, it could be just that Reuters is a well-known source of disinformation. Or that Putler hacked them and implanted his own insidious subtext. Look for Cyrillic in the metadata: the Russians never remember to erase that.
Fair enough, and there is probably more dishonesty in the pipeline…
Canada is buying second hand F-18s from Australia:
Neuters: Canada scraps plan to buy Boeing fighters amid trade dispute: sources
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-boeing-fighterjets/canada-scraps-plan-to-buy-boeing-fighters-amid-trade-dispute-sources-idUSKBN1DZ2W2
…Instead, the Liberal government will announce next week it intends to acquire a used fleet of older Australia F-18 jets, the same kind of plane Canada currently operates, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation.
The move underlines Ottawa’s anger at a decision by Boeing to launch a trade challenge against Canadian planemaker Bombardier Inc (BBDb.TO), which the U.S. giant accuses of dumping airliners on the American market. ..
…Two sources also said Australian military officials had been in Ottawa late last month for talks.
One source said that by buying the Australian fleet, Canada would save money as well as avoid the need to train its pilots on a new aircraft or spend money on a new supply chain.
Officials had previously said that if the purchase went ahead, some of the Australian aircraft would be used for spare parts….
####
How does Putin do it? RT? Sputnik?
The Russians probably hacked our online Amazon purchase order in the checkout, and changed the text from “I hope we did not offend you with our token show of resistance, and in return for not embarrassing us we will pay a couple of extra millions for our American F-18’s, thank you very much” to “Not if the world were flooded with piss and you lived in a tree, Uncle Sam. Put another shrimp on the barbie, because we’re going down under for our planes.”
Boeing will be pissed off, but it’s probably not that big a deal in the great scheme of things, and they will shrug and write it off as just business. I’m in favour of it, because I don’t think Boeing should be rewarded for its bullying, but I cannot refrain from posing the question of whether Boeing will consent to service them or whether they will make us get them serviced by Australia. They both came from the same source – Boeing – but you never can tell if they might be looking for an avenue to show their displeasure.
Is the proposed Gaza-Cyprus-Italy gas pipeline feasible?
Preliminary considerations:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/What-It-Takes-To-Get-A-Pipeline-Built.html
That’s a very useful reference; thanks for it!
Russian readers may be interested in my survey of the history and present geographic distribution of Russian IQ at Sputnik and Pogrom.
https://sputnikipogrom.com/science/79791/russian-iq/
And I would like to remind to Russian readers, that as of July 2017 RosComNadzor have banned Sputnik&Pogrom site as extremist and issued the warrant of its blockage for propagation of the extremism.
Anatoly Karlin, thus, is calling for Russian citizens to ignore the ruling of the lawful authority.
Your call. Karlin? He’ll run away to his Pindostan the moment he smells the fire. But what about you?
That’s right!
In Mordor, you cannot link to the site posted in Mr. Karlin’s comment above.
No basic freedoms here!
But why are Russian readers advised to link to the above site. I thought Mr. Karlin was resident in the Empire of Evil. Does he not know the site has been blocked here for several months?
There are things called VPNs. Some are free (e.g. one comes inbuilt with the Opera browser).
But here is a link to a pirated copy.
You know, Tolya, a prostitute flashing her tits in order to advertise the “commodity” could still be charged with public indecency.
You are this whore.
These Daring Contrarians MUST get the word out about their exciting IQ studies!
Otherwise, the bydlo will never know, that some humans are genetically superior to others.
It’s a revolutionary idea! Nobody ever thought of it before, or even mulled over the possible consequences of such a theory….
Euro 2020: Wembley to host seven matches after Brussels loses right to host games
Wembley is one of 12 venues hosting Euro 2020 fixtures
Wembley will host seven games at Euro 2020 after Brussels lost the right to host matches for the tournament.
Belgium’s capital city has been ruled out as a planned new stadium is still to be built and Uefa have not received the necessary guarantees.
Wembley was already scheduled to hold the semi-finals and final but will now also host three group games and a last 16 tie.
Cardiff and Stockholm had also been in contention to host the extra games.
England’s national stadium is one of 12 venues across Europe hosting Euro 2020 games.
Speaking in Nyon, Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin said the decision of Uefa’s executive committee had been unanimous as waiting on Belgium was deemed “high risk”.
“We don’t know if they can build a stadium or not,” Ceferin added.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/42270759
No need for me to go abroad to watch the Euros then…….
Yes, cos Londonstan ((c) Melanie Phillips -Jerusalem and London) is so safe.
Actually the word “Londonistan” was coined by French Intelligence! The French were dismayed as to why so many radicals were operating in London, despite repeatedly warning their British counterparts.
Why France lived in fear of ‘Londonistan’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1359305/Why-France-lived-in-fear-of-Londonistan.html
The obvious explanation, was that these radicals were free do as they liked was that they had the tacit support of the British authorities.The UK as matter of policy always coordinates with Islamic radicals to attack governments HMG does not approve of. Perfect example being Libya, were hordes of Islamic radicals who gained asylum in the UK, traveled to Libya to overthrow Gaddafi when NATO began its war of aggression.
Rebels living in England claim UK government let them travel to Libya to fight Gaddafi – even though they were subject to counter-terrorism orders – as investigators probe Abedi’s visits to Tripoli
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4540822/Rebels-went-Libya-MI5-blessing-amid-Abedi-probe.html#ixzz50gZozoFT
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Melanie Philips would do well to focus on her own Jewish community – who have set up their own paramilitary police and imposed Talmudic law on areas of London from Friday evening to Saturday evening.
Meet London’s strictly Orthodox crime busters
https://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/features/meet-london-s-strictly-orthodox-crime-busters-1.24014
Plans for a new Jewish ‘eruv’ zone across Westminster ringed by fishing wire strung from 51 18ft telegraph poles spark fears of ghettoisation and terrorism
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4114570/Plans-new-Jewish-eruv-zone-Westminster-ringed-fishing-wire-strung-51-18ft-telegraph-poles-spark-fears-ghettoisation-terrorism.html#ixzz50gamB0iR
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Some musings that is becoming a hypothesis: The entire sexual misconduct drama of the powerful being brought to heel by resigning or withdrawal is orchestrated for one purpose – to force Trump to resign or to lay groundwork for impeachment. Russiagate is losing credibility and Trump has bought some breathing room with the tax cut for the wealthy and the Jerusalem thing.
Look who was fingered – Hollywood celebrities who may have agreed to take one for the team. Look who was not – Bill Clinton, a true rapist and abuser of uncounted women and possibly girls. And the multi billion dollar porn industry which can rightfully be called an underlying factor in sexual misconduct and the objectification of women is hardly mentioned.
Look at how fast this witch hunt developed and where it started – Hollywood. Look at Roy Moore facing abuse claims that for 30 years or so were never mentioned. He may be a scum bag but why the focus now?
Weinstein, Franken, etc. are collateral damage or agreed or were coerced to play their part.
Like the gay card played before the Sochi Winter Olympics, a media campaign orchestrated for the purpose to bash Russia, this campaign has no other purpose than to get Trump and to dissuade anyone who may try to pick up the torch for the deplorables and their values. That is my story and I am sticking to it!
Unlikely, I think – Weinstein would never have voluntarily let go of the clout he had developed in Hollywood just to get Trump, who will doubtless be decisively gone in the next election anyway. The press simply decided to make a meme of sexual assault because it was evident it would sell newspapers and get page-views. And along with those whose lives were traumatized by abuse, it has – predictably – attracted the attention of the militant feminists who think the world would be a lot better place with no penises in it, and their grandstanding has fed into its own story because that always makes men angry. Eventually it will burn itself out for another few years until some incident rakes it up again. But those who were burned by it are finished forever, and forever in some cases is a long time. I can’t think of too many guys who would consent to lifetime ostracization for the ‘team goal’ of getting rid of Trump. Especially when there are plenty of unscrupulous skirt-chasers and power-abusers who went unremarked and who will continue unscathed.
It’s just one of those stories that started with a single incident and snowballed, but I don’t see any connection to Trump – rather, there are quite a few who are deliberately trying to draw a line from Weinstein to Trump, saying if the former, why not the latter?
Wondering what, er, Woody Allen makes of the current witch-hunt against Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and various other media figures, and why despite stepdaughter Dylan Farrow’s accusations of sexual abuse against him he remains untouched.
@ Jen:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/12/09/pers-d09.html
The article really nails down some of the deeper political and social implications of this current lunacy :
“Each day, the “Me Too” movement, described by its cheerleaders as a “national reckoning” or “national conversation,” takes a new victim. Transgressions that may have occurred as far back as a half-century ago are being recalled and deemed worthy of brutal punishment. Shameful rituals of allegations and pathetic apologies are being enacted. Long careers are ruined in a matter of minutes. The accused in many cases are men in their mid to late seventies, some of whom have records of decades of distinguished contributions to the arts. They are not even informed of allegations against them until after their dismissal. Asking to substantiate the veracity of an accuser’s claims is proof of “rape apology” or outright guilt.
Senator Al Franken announced his resignation Thursday after coming under immense pressure from the Democratic Party. Even Senator Joseph McCarthy was not forced out of the Senate, although his anti-communist witch-hunt violated the Constitution and claimed hundreds of victims. The Senate took the exceptional decision to censure McCarthy for his crimes, but left the Wisconsin Republican at his seat until his death in 1957.
Franken’s resignation has prompted a series of self-congratulatory comments that display a striking absence of democratic consciousness.
The Washington Post’s Ana Marie Cox wrote an article December 7 titled “Al Franken isn’t being denied due process. None of these famous men are.”
“Let’s not dither about the dangers of proclaiming guilt or innocence,” she writes, arguing that only the guilty, the complicit, or the political right-wing hide behind claims of due process violations.
The New York Times editorial board celebrated Franken’s resignation Thursday afternoon, writing: “We are in the middle of a stunning and welcome cultural shift… We are witnessing a long-overdue moral reckoning that—dare we hope?—could drive real change.”
The mindless media whore dupes of the Dems and other tools of TPTB are sowing the wind…. As long as a POS like Bannon can rally troops to support a fellow POS…..American misogyny and sexism is alive and kicking….
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/mystery-money-floods-alabama-senate-race-s-final-days-n827731
Margaret Wente had a great column in the Globe and Mail a few weeks ago, but I can’t find it now. Essentially, she said women were not going to like what she was going to say, but that one of the casualties of activists’ relentless push for women’s rights was ‘the relationship’. Once upon a time, a man had to court and marry a woman if he wanted reliable access to heterosexual sex. Oh, never mind – I just found it; you’d do far better to read her version than me trying to paraphrase her. This is the operative paragraph:
In a nutshell, over the past few decades, the traditional relationship exchange has broken down. It used to be that men and women each had something the other really needed. Men needed access to sex. Women needed access to resources. Men couldn’t get steady access to sex unless they had resources to offer, so they worked hard for them. The partnership between men and women was a grand bargain that (usually) left both sides better off.
For men, sex was traditionally expensive. The price tag was a long-term commitment to provide for a woman (and children). But today, sex is cheap. And that changes everything.
Internet porn now gratifies many fantasies for men; if they feel the need for an actual partner, there are plenty of liberated women who are not interested in any strings, and are just looking for a fling.
But what effect is the Weinstein affair going to have on that dynamic? A relationship scene which was already dismal just got worse. What started as evening the score has morphed into a witch hunt, with baying activists screaming for more scalps, and women itching to carve a notch on their gun and bring somebody down. Here’s Wente again;
The post-Weinstein era will be a better place for women. But there will be losses too. The ordinary, garden-variety banter of the office will be lost. Colleagues will be walking on eggshells, afraid that ordinary gestures of teasing or affection – including all kissing, touching, hugging, flirting and almost all kinds of humour – might be misconstrued and give offence. Men will no longer meet with women behind closed doors, alone. Casual informality and warmth will be replaced by stiffness, anxiety and prudishness. The world will be a slightly colder place. And that’s too bad.
Well, you can’t have your cake and eat it. And as much as I like to try to be fair to everyone, I have noticed a minor phenomenon – if a woman is attracted to you, sexually-charged banter is cute; it’s just what she wants to hear, as long as you keep it light and teasing. If she’s not, you’re a creep and you’ve just crossed the line. But how are you going to know if you don’t try?
I think a lot more guys are going to opt not to try. And the ‘No means no’ crowd are going to get a lot less chances to say No.
From what I have seen in my experience in the office-place, the real “sexual harrassment” is not a matter of teasing or flirting, or even touching. It’s not about sex at all. It’s a matter of vicious office politics conducted by both genders, and involving gossip, slander, cliquism, old-boys clubs, old-girls clubs, cafeteria ostracism, back-stabbling, and the like. It’s about dominating others, sucking up to top management, and securing a position as the boss guy’s “right-hand” man.
This is the world of “Information Technology”.
Well, that’s just my experience, possibly it’s abnormal and not typical..
Not my current job, by the way, I think the Fates finally smiled on me, I finally managed to secure a job on The Planet of Nice People. It’s not a perfect job, by any means, but it’s way better than before – yay!
Yes we’d like to think that women at work would take heed of what happens to managers and others discriminating against others on the basis of gender, race, age, religion and marital status … but it seems that in some workplaces, women act as if anti-discrimination policies give them carte blanche to dish out discrimination to men – as though having been discriminated against entitles them to victims’ revenge – and even to other minority groups who would also have benefited from the anti-discrimination legislation. I once heard of a case of a public library in Sydney (it happened back in the 1990s) in which two male librarians were denied job opportunities by female-dominated library management – the whole episode ended up in court and in the newspapers.
I blame Ms Greer, your fellow-countrywoman, for all of this!
🙂
It’s not just women – it’s activists of all stripes, for all causes. When they perceive a moment of weakness, they push hard to carve out a better position for themselves, to the exclusion of everyone else.
Let’s say you and I work at a company that employs a hundred people. Ninety percent of us think gay jokes in certain circumstances are pretty funny, although we all claim to have nothing in particular against homosexuality. Ten percent of us – approximately representative of society as a whole – are gay, and find the practice insulting and oppressive. Activists among the latter group take their grievance to management and threaten to take it to court, and the administration chief gets fired. New company policy mandates that any expressions of so-called humor at the expense of homosexuals will result in dismissal. Ten percent of the workforce just got preferential legislation at the expense of the majority. Is that how democracy works?
Let me make myself clear – I am not advocating in favour of gay jokes. It’s just an example of behavior a minority finds ‘triggering’. And there is no doubt that sexual assault should be treated as a crime. I’m not aware of what other transgressions Mr. Franken might have to his discredit – and I understand there were some – but getting a humorous-to-some picture taken in which he is pretending to squeeze some girl’s boobs while she is asleep is no more traumatizing than those pictures some of us have had taken when we were abysmally drunk, surrounded by empty bottles and bearing rude slogans scrawled in lipstick on our foreheads. That alone should not result in him having to leave office.
At the same time, there should not be some ridiculous expectation of sexual favours in return for perfectly routine courtesies rendered to women, or the expenditure of money on drinks and dinner. I knew a girl once, a shipmate of mine, who was propositioned for sex from a man who had given her a drive home from the Annapolis Valley to the city of Halifax – where he also lived – a distance of about a hundred miles. When she said no, he negotiated for a blowjob. I’m not kidding. I could not get drunk enough to behave that way, and to the best of my understanding he was not drinking at all. It just seemed like a fair exchange to him.
So let’s break it down. At the time, it would probably have cost – at the most – twenty bucks in gas in a reasonably-efficient car to drive that distance, an act in which the driver gained 50% of the benefit. At the same time, it would probably have cost him at least $70.00 for sex with a pro. So purely in economic terms, he expected a 600% discount from someone who was almost a complete stranger. Nice work if you can get it. And that’s putting what was probably a moderately frightening and deeply disturbing experience in purely economic terms. Putting it in terms of how shitty it probably made her feel would not be possible for me, because coercing me for sex would not be very challenging for most women. I have to confess to having some parameters for appearance – even disgusting pigs can be honest – but my standards are pretty liberal.
So that was a very wandering way of making the point that activists – who are often a pretty anti-social crowd anyway and, in the case of ardent feminists, probably could not care less if they never spoke to another man as long as they lived – leap to exploit current events to gain advantage for themselves and others just like them. In that same case, it is decent and courteous men (and there are some) and normal heterosexual women who pay a good part of the price.
I should probably mention that that entire argument could be tossed straight out the window to someone who has been sexually assaulted – they just want it never to have happened and, since that is not possible, to see someone justifiably punished for it. You can’t really reason with somebody in that position because a large part of their capability to dispassionately reason has been severely – perhaps permanently – damaged.
Some of the MeToo cases detail reprehensible behavior for which the severest punishment is barely adequate. Some are little more than bandwagon-jumping. But the media tornado and the relentless charge toward Who’s Next is ensuring all infractions are being treated with the same bloodlust. Instead of thinking “At least that guy got what was coming to him”, women are being encouraged to think, “Hmmmm….has any man I know ever done or said something which deeply offended me?”
A credible false flag (and this is one but with an indirection) needs to have credible victims. For example, a credible military false flag needs your own military victims. The victims would have no forewarning of their “role” and would be regarded as collateral damage easily justified for the strategic objective. I agree Weinstein probably did not go along but he certainly gave credibility to the false flag – see, one of our own West Coast liberals was caught and has paid the price.
Franken’s speech yesterday specifically referred to Trump remaining in office for allegedly far worse misconduct than his own conduct that forced him out of office. Just another false flag sacrifice toward the much larger goal of removing Trump and, I think more importantly, cutting down the political power recently acquired by the deplorables
As Jen noted, the witch hunt seems selective, Woody Allen seems immune so far. The elephant in the room, Bill Clinton, remains immune as well.
The speed and specificity of this witch hunt (mostly crude comments and minor inappropriate touching) seems to be customized for Trump. No allegations of marital infidelity and no accusations of forcible rape (Bill Clinton comes to mind on both matters), just crude behavior which is all they can find on Trump.
Notice little focus on corporate big rollers and the wealthy in general? Its mostly on entertainment and political player. Trump fits in both of those categories.
I agree it fits Trump like a custom jacket, and there is no doubt the Democrats would try anything to get rid of him. But Al Franken – another diehard liberal who loathes everything Trump stands for – is likewise not a good example of someone who agreed to take one for the team. All these people must know Trump will be taillights in the next election – why is it so imperative to ruin so many careers to get him out now? Besides, I don’t know that they actually have anything on Trump except for disgusting and degrading language when talking about women. Do they have a forced-sex witness waiting in the wings? Not that I’m aware of.
Trump needs to grovel or be utterly humiliated to destroy him and the movement that put him in as President. If he survives for four years and the country is in reasonable shape (admittedly a big assumption), then the deplorables will be emboldened. Got to end this rebellion of the rabble NOW!
I maintain that the single most significant thing about Trump’s election is that he came from outside the political class. The political class does not want that ever to happen again, and consequently Trump’s presidency must be seen as a cascading series of disasters. The electorate must flee back to the welcoming arms of the political class, which is not interested in working for a living.
I would add that Trump’s message resonated with the deplorables. Take Mark Cuban, he is outside of the political class but could be easy for the coastal elites, their wannabes and the servant-politicians to feel really good about. The ultimate target is the upstart deplorables. They momentarily forgot their place as retarded dinosaurs waiting to become fossils.
And Trump might have been a real threat, had he kept any of his campaign promises. But he was immediately forced on the defensive, and has been trying to please his tormentors ever since. So the brief window of opportunity in which anyone might become president – like the American Dream says – has probably closed.
Here’s one of those heartwarming yooman-interest stories that will toast the cockles of yer ‘eart; convicted financial criminal and IMF head Christine Lagarde met with unconvicted pork-barreler and Mossack-Fonseca calendar-boy Petro Poroshenko today, and the two experienced corruption engineers discussed the subject of corruption, one with which both are very familiar. Only last year, Christine Lagarde walked away from a multi-million dollar payout to one of Nicolas ‘Sarko the American’ Sarkozy’s businessman friends without so much as a smack on the wrist, and Poroshenko continues to rake in the moola from his (declared) 99 businesses that he promised he would sell if elected….let’s see…that’s three years ago, now. Just a reminder – when Poroshenko’s name led the list of 11 wealthy Ukrainians who showed up in the so-called ‘Panama Papers’, the Ukrainian parliament and its agencies refused to investigate him. This was preceded by a maudlin defense of Poroshenko in Politico, in which co-authors Adrian Karatnycky and Alan Riley (both of the Atlantic Council) insisted Poroshenko was ‘an innocent’ who was being maliciously characterized by “Ukrainian reporters and civic activists with little experience in investigative journalism.” If that made you laugh, you’ll choke like you just swallowed a chicken foot when you read the next line: “They do not have a legal background or business education, and have never worked for established Western media, where the right of fair reply to allegations is generally upheld.” Tell me when was the last time you saw someone accused in the American press get to exercise the right to fair reply to allegations. That’s almost invariably limited to a triumphant shout of “He denies it!!!” Politico should rightly have won Whore of the Year for that travesty, and many other outlets reported that it was hard to imagine how the president could expect to be taken seriously.
Anyway, I almost forgot what this was all about – Christine’s trip to the woodshed with Poroshenko, where they had a ‘constructive and open discussion’ (I can just imagine, between two crooks like those), a stock phrase which is probably on tap in government speechwriting software, on the subject of Kiev’s attempt to pass a controversial law which would limit scrutiny of government officials by the Anticorruption agency. And Poroshenko’s government backed down – for now. This led to solemn celebration by Ukraine’s sawed-off celebrity, Afghan-Ukrainian Mustafa Nayyem, the famed “Father of the Maidan”. He apparently did not read the Politico story, or seem to have any apprehension of how hard the west has worked to prop up Poroshenko and ignore his moneymaking. Since this approach failed, Kiev promptly fired the head of the Anticorruption committee. Look for him to be replaced by some bobblehead who will be stricken with selective blindness when it is politically expedient.
And the band played on.
Very witty.
The expression “phrase bank” was used by a teacher acquaintance of the list of approved comments to be mined as appropriate for production of the reports on the “progress” of assorted adolescent Huns, Vandals and Goths.
From Fort Rus:
MAJOR: On-camera confession – Ukrainian BUK shot down MH17
Could be a false flag ready to be “debunked” and “prove” that the Russians did it.
And guess what?
Right on cue, only a few hours after the above revelation was made, Bellingcat moves in with an “it-was-the-Russians-what-done-it” foray:
Совпадение? Не думаем: «Расследование» Вellingcat появилось всего через несколько часов после откровений экс-майора ВСУ
Появившийся в отчете организации генерал Ткачев с 2012 года не покидал свое место службы в Екатеринбурге и к Украине никакого отношения не имел [видео]
A coincidence” We don’t think so: Bellingcat “investigation” appears only a few hours after revelation made by former Ukraine major
Having appeared in a report made by [the Bellingcat] organization, General Tkachev never left his post in Ekaterinburg and had nothing to do with the Ukraine whatsoever [video]
The forgotten Bellingcat group has launched yet another “investigation” into the case of the downing of Boeing flight MH-17 from the Donetsk skies. This time, Bellingcat has decided to tie in Colonel-General Nikolai Tkachev, Chief Inspector of the Central Military District, to the downing of the Boeing.
Representatives of Bellingcat argue that at their disposal they have recordings allegedly made on the day when the Boeing was shot down. Two people are talking in the recording. One of them, according to the “investigators”, is Nikolai Fedorovich [Tkachev], using the call sign “Dolphin”, and the second is Sergey Nikolayevich, with the call sign “Orion”.
In order to provide a foundation for their investigation, Bellingcat representatives even embarked on an open provocation: they extracted a sample of his [Tkachev’s] voice, promising that it would be used as part of an interview about a Suvorov [military] School, and then disappeared. The expertise was provided by the National Center for Media Forensics at the University of Colorado, in Denver, USA, and at the Lithuanian Forensic Science Center by local experts. At the same time, however, not one expert has dared come to the conclusion that “Dolphin” and Nikolai Tkachev are one and the same person: no matter how much these specialists may have wanted to do this, they have restricted themselves to formulating in their conclusions certain degrees of probability or coincidence.
Characteristically, this new “investigation” by Bellingcat appeared just hours after a former Ukraine armed forces officer had spoken about the movements of a column that had been transporting, amongst other things, a “Buk” unit, by which the Boeing could have been shot down from the area where, according to “Alamaz-Antey” experts’ calculations, a ground to air missile was launched.
Yeah, nobody should be surprised. There should be lucrative job offers for that Bellingcat team, though – their researchers can assemble a picture in just a few hours that it would normally take skilled researchers weeks to pull together. I’m sure it’s just because they’re the best, better than people who have been doing it for years with lots of expensive equipment at their disposal.
Then again, in these days of double-cross and counter-double-cross, Bellingcat’s ‘analysis’ could be deliberately clumsy, to discredit an individual who is telling the truth. But if he is, it’s a wasted effort, because he really doesn’t know anything. It does look like a deliberate distraction, and not even a very good one.
Russian general rejects allegations of being involved in downing MH17 as stupid
See!
He denies everything.
Say no more!
Well, only one thing to do, isn’t there? Proceed to a trial, right away! I can’t wait to see Bellingcat’s evidence.
Could be, and even if it’s not, he’d have to have a lot better evidence than that to convince anyone, and a lawyer would tear it to pieces. He has no first-hand knowledge of anything, he saw the plane disappear just like everyone else who was looking at an air-traffic or air-search radar. Afterward he spoke to some people who he characterized as being thick as bricks, who said they moved a Buk. From where to where? Did he personally see these stupid people, who might well have been mistaken, moving anything? Did anyone say anything about shooting anything down? I’m sure he has more than this, because it would be hard for anyone to form a belief based on what he has said so far, but gossip is not evidence. I’d be wary of it if I were Russia. As you suggest, whenever there is pressure on Ukraine to do something, it spits out a fake and waits for Russia to jump on it, then squeals that it is being slandered by Russia. The ‘international community’ would like to proceed with a trial, but they’ve got nothing except reams of newspapers which insist they have ‘incontrovertible evidence’.
Per a piece in the NYT no less as reported by Russia Insider, the missile fired from Yemen did successfully reach the Riyadh airport and missed a runway by a few hundred meters. The five (5) Patriot missiles fired to engage the Scud; all missed despite a lot of bragging of a successful interception. The Patriots may indeed intercepted the missile body but the warhead had already separated and continued on.
http://russia-insider.com/en/they-lied-again-us-patriot-missiles-still-can-not-take-down-soviet-scuds-1960s/ri21876?ct=t(Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014)&mc_cid=78f8414b30&mc_eid=a823e96fe3
I would think that every effort would be made to obscure a successful attack. It would be a major PR disaster if the airport were forced to be closed out of fear of another attack and a huge setback for the Patriot marketing campaign.Hard to believe that the Patriot could be so inept so perhaps there is more to the story.
I note that several recent stories indicated Syria successfully shot down Israeli missiles fired toward Damascus.
Sackur on BBC “Hard Talk”.
Clearly, Sackur thinks Sobchak is not a real oppositionist: the charlatan “lawyer” Navalny” is the real deal, a serious candidate against the corrupt Putin and his “regime”.
https://twitter.com/Elshad_Babaev/status/937763965593153536
I mean, everyone in the West knows that Navalny, “the outspoken Putin critic”, has huge support in Russia and that the Dark Lord is scared shitless of him.
So he prefers a dangerous nationalist racist over the daughter of former corrupt mayor of Moscow? Has he not thought this through? If Navalny gets his way, the Caucasus will be cast adrift from the Russian Federation and they will all then go to the UK which will by then be open for more low cost immigrant labor. Ramzan, fancy being mayor of London?
Ksenia’s daddy was mayor of St. Peterburg. And then when they turned the heat on him for corruption, he flew off to France to seek treatment for a heart condition. He said getting this treatment was a matter of life and death. He left Russia and entered France illegally.
In France, he received no treatment whatsoever. He stayed in France for 2 years, from 1997 to 1999.
In 1999, Putin became prime minister and gave Sobchak an amnesty.
One year after his return to Russia, Sobchak unexpectedly dropped dead — of a heart attack, some say: others say the Dark Lord done him in — with poison.
Well they would say that, wouldn’t they?
Ooops! Brainfart on the city. My bad.
For a moment you had me confused, I thought you were referring to Yuri Luzhkov when you said corrupt mayor of Moscow.
ghacks.net: Disqus commenting platform sold to big data and analytics firm Zeta Global
https://www.ghacks.net/2017/12/06/disqus-commenting-platform-sold-to-big-data-and-analytics-firm-zeta-global/
Big data and analytics company Zeta Global announced that it has acquired the commenting platform Disqus.
Disqus is best known for its commenting system that sites all over the Internet use. It is a third-party system that webmasters embed on sites. Disqus offers analytics, monetization and other services on top of the actual commenting system.
Data is stored on Disqus servers, and the company has been criticized for its user tracking activities. The company suffered two major security breaches, one in 2013 and another in October 2017. A snapshot of a database containing 17.5 million user email addresses, login dates and sign-up dates was copied according to Disqus in the latest breach….
####
More at the link. Check the comments.
All your comments belong to marketers. Yet more proof that convenience is the enemy of security and privacy. Fortunately there’s this thing called the Coral Project which is an open source alternative (see comments): https://www.coralproject.net/products/talk.html
From what I have seen, Disqus is a cesspool of unbelievable proportions.
Next step for Rodchenkov: https://lenta.ru/news/2017/12/08/fifadoping/
Rodchenkov says he will give FIFA “overwhelming evidence” about use of doping in Russian football (soccer). Aim for Rodchenkov is to remove the World Cup of 2018 away from Russia.
There is going to be a lot of pressure put to FIFA to remove the tournament away from Russia. The pressure is of course going to come from Washington.
Rodchenkov is the perfect tool for them. He has been a gift from the heaven (or in this case, hell) for the US empire, far better than Edward Snowden was for Russia. While Snowden had some pretty damning information about the US intelligence and spying services, the mainstream media ignored him or shrugged it off. Shit happens. Boys will be boys.
But Russia is not America. Mainstream media hates Russia and will eat Russia alive if given a chance. Russia will not be forgiven things that are forgiven to America. International organizations are controlled by America and their vassals.
Russia has two alternatives:
1. Denounce the Western imperialism and boycott the Olympic games, while trying to create its own and more fair sporting events.
2. Cave in to Western demands and face another humiliation
Unfortunately Russia seems to have chosen the latter.
You missed out nuking Washington D.C.
Oh, and doing a “wet job” on Rodchenkov, of course.
Why don’t you offer a tender?
Are you stupid? I previously said it would be incredibly stupid (and wrong) for Russia to go after Rodchenkov. What I said was that it would be a perfect opportunity for the USA to go after him because it would be so easy to blame it all on Russia. More demonization, more isolation, more sanctions etc.
Do you not think it rather rude to ask someone on here if he/she is stupid?
If you said what you write that you previously said and I knew nothing of it, that does not make me stupid, does it?
Who said Russia is going after Rodchenkov? Is he dead, or something? And what’s their alternative? Apparently passivity is like a red rag to a bull for you, and real men of action would DO SOMETHING!!! But if they did that, it would be incredibly stupid. I’m confused, Karl. Do you actually have a plan beyond “whatever Russia does is wrong and stupid”?
Karl’s solution for everything that is wrong in the world:
FASCIST REVOLUTION!
And Russia has itself to blame as well for breeding traitors such as Rodchenkov, willing to sell their own country for money and good life in the West.
As long as there are people like Rodchenkov in Russia the West will use them to hurt Russia and its interests.
How the fuck can “Russia have itself to blame?”
Will the possible prohibition of that soft-arse championship being held in Russia be the straw that finally breaks the back of this loathsome, corrupt regime and then the long-suffering Russian people, who have yearned for freedom since time immemorial, will at last be able to enjoy their lives to the full, drink Coco-Cola when and where they wish, and Big Macs and enjoy Catholic Christmas, St.Valentine’s Day, Hallowe’en, Thanksgiving Day; enjoy freedom of worship, the right to hold “Gay” parades etc., etc?
Is there light at the end of the tunnel at long last?
Do tell!
“How the fuck can “Russia have itself to blame?””
As I wrote, for breeding traitors such as Rodchenkov. And many more before him. And likely many more after him as well.
So “breeding traitors” is a unique feature here?
My god! How shall I live if there’s no footy here next year.
Life will be even more unbearable, hard to imagine though that may be.
So how would you suggest Russia put an end to this endemic “breeding of traitors”?
Do you think this tendency to breed traitors somehow reflects the not-quite-so-normal- human nature of Russians?
“Do you think this tendency to breed traitors somehow reflects the not-quite-so-normal- human nature of Russians?”
I don’t know, but at least here in Finland the so-called Fifth Column is nonexistent. Russia has a lot of people, often rich and influential, who wish to harm their own country.
I think even you admit that in the 1990s Russia was largely governed by such a people.
It could be that Russia is so ethnically diverse that it is hard to create a homogenous society where the majority feel they belong to. Often the hardest critics and ill-wishers are the Russian Jews. Many of the North Caucasus Muslims feel more patriotic about North Caucasus than the whole Russia. And nowadays Russia also has problems with Ukraine and there are millions of Ukrainians living in Russia.
In Finland we have just 5,5 million people and 93-94% of them are ethnic Finns. This is the way it should be. We don’t have a lot of different groups here pulling things for their own directions and creating ethnic discord among people.
You’re like a caricature of yourself, Karl; I should have known in the end it would boil down to the ethnics. Or maybe you just enjoy making people look up the same information over and over, because I’m sure you know well that Russia’s population is over 80% ethnic Russian and has held steady at that for decades.
What about Rodchenkov, the Tatar? Oh, whoops! He’s not a Tatar, he’s an ethnic Russian and white from head to toe. The reason it’s often the elites is not because ethnics who are not racially-pure Russians are the top of the food chain in Russia. It’s because the elites always feel like they should be running things instead of the government. What better model to draw them than the United States, where the elites do run things? Especially when it whispers seductively in their ears that it sympathizes with them and sees their potential to be great leaders – what a pity their own country does not! WADA and Washington bought the Stepanovs, and bought Rodchenkov. All three of them are white Russians from the majority, not a Chechen or Dagestani Muslim among them.
What do sports doping and gold-digging have to do with ethnicity? You’re just trying to make the points fit the curve. As usual.
The ethnic ressentiment factor is certainly there, but probably not central in a country that is 80%+ Russian. The US has fewer problems with traitors, despite being far more diverse.
I think the main factor was the Soviet Union destroying all moral and ethical values, which was most visibly displayed in the crass materialism and completely apatride behavior of the post-sovok elites – that is, in the generation most infused with sovok values, having known nothing else.
Apart from the West offering a better deal in material terms, it was also much “cooler.” Meanwhile, any loyalty to the idea of the old, true Russia was foreclosed by the joint sovok/Western century long demonization campaign against it.
This is being (very slowly) changed for the better since Putin, but frankly this is a process that is going to last decades. Decades that Russia may not have.
My children are intensely patriotic and always stand by the festive table at midnight, New year’s Eve, and sing the National Anthem at the end of the address to the nation made by the president.
They know all the words. So does former CP member Mrs. Exile.
And don’t forget, my children are of “mixed race”, as the Finnish commenter might well say, they being half-human.
My wife and daughters are going to the UK at the New Year. I prefer not to: I had enough of the place last August/September. My children have only visited the UK three times in all: in 2007, 2010 and 2016.
Each time they were there, I asked them if they would like to live there. Without any hesitation whatsoever, they said “No!”, and were always glad to be back home.
This strange behaviour of theirs must be because, though half-human, they are also half half-wit-Russian.
I guess Karl just doesn’t like people to have the freedom of expression to propose different ways of doing things and he prefers to live in a society where people are told what to believe and how to behave. If the government of such a country decided one day that everyone should go jump off a cliff like panicking buffalo, and over 90% of the people agreed with that decision, I suppose Karl would agree to such collective suicide and expect the other less-than-10% to submit to that course of action as well.
Yep. Totalitarian fascism. That’s Karl’s game.
Thank goodness not all Finns are like him.
Karl is a disgrace to his ethnic group and to his race as well.
According pro-Western media Johan Backman is an example of Finland “breeding traitors”.
The Kremlin’s Voice: Johan Bäckman
https://www.stopfake.org/en/the-kremlin-s-voice-johan-backman-2/
Bäckman does really hate Finland, he just likes Russia. This is his biggest “sin”.
So he is not comparable to Russian Fifth Column who hate Russia.
I take your point, Backman isn’t comparable to Russian fifth-columnists; who have an atavistic and visceral hatred for Russia.
Russian ‘fifth columnists’ rarely have an atavistic hatred for Russia, either; they have an atavistic love for money and power. Alexey Navalny is just a small-time crook bigged up by the west to pretend there really is an opposition, and creatures like Sobchak can be bought with flattery; the west unvariably portrays her as witty and smart as a whip, and she already has plenty of money.
I think “breeding traitors” is a reference to Karl’s belief that Russian DNA is deeply flawed making them lesser humans. The mere act of reproduction of Russians is tantamount to breeding traitors, mentally defective and the cowardly.
Whereas Finnish DNA is vastly superior, and yet they only have around 5 million souls carrying Finnish DNA.
Barely 4 million more than the minimum allowed to even have a titular nation.
I reckon that “superior” DNA breeds itself out of existence, sooner or later.
Probably because it’s too picky.
Deeply flawed from being too varied. Whereas Finnish DNA is better because it’s more “purebred”, that is, not varied enough. Which explains why there are about 40 inherited diseases that occur only among Finnish people due to phenomena like geographic, cultural and linguistic isolation, genetic bottlenecks and the impact of the founder effect on small communities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_heritage_disease
I thought Finns were into reindeer if you know what I mean….
(sorry)
You had better hope no reindeer find that offensive, or you could be the next one tearfully apologizing before being run out of town.
Patient Observer may find his house being picketed by Santa’s reindeer on Christmas Day.
Yep, and only a lump of coal in his stocking.
I heard a rumor that Rudolph is thin-skinned and quick to take offense…
Down with Patient Observer!!! Off with his head!!!
Oh….sorry. I just got…kind of…caught up.
Ah, yes; of course – I should have thought of that. Human nature doesn’t have anything to do with it, no, of course not. It’s Russia’s fault that Rodchenkov turned out the way he did – there’s just something about ‘this country’ that turns everyone into a traitor sooner or later.
Well, the west should just back off, then – sit on its hands. In another 20 years or so, everyone will be a traitor and all the traitorous Russians will be in New York, living in CIA-furnished apartments and driving the latest Lexus. Putin, too. And Russia will be empty, except for western oil companies. Peremoga!!!!
What is it, do you suppose? Something medical? Something in the water? What is it about the country that inevitably makes its people want to betray it?
Some traitors flip for ideology, religion or moral conscious, These guys flip for money and there is no other place better for money than the West – instant acceptance, no questions asked and lots of places to spend it and to rub shoulders with their ilk.
Good riddance to that sort. I wish our elites had someplace to traitor to but we are the home of all monetarily-driven traitors whether from other countries or from our own citizens.
Karl appears driven by a desire for dominance and money so his position is consistent with his beliefs. I sort of respect that – no pretensions of morality or empathy.
“I wish our elites had someplace to traitors”
Yes, that is one half of the problem. There are not that many countries that the Western traitors could escape without being extradited back. Maybe Russia and China, but not many people in the West are eager to move to Russia or China.
I meant that the West is the final destination of money-driven traitors – no other place on earth that worships money and those that have it more than the West. We need a hyper-West where money is even more valued to draw such folks but seems highly improbable to ever happen.
Yes, even the countries where westerners hide their money to avoid taxes are not places they want to live. But then wet ends like Luke Harding refer to Russia as the ‘Mafia State”. Which, between Russia and the United States, is more a mafia state?
Did you ever think why that is, Karl? Maybe it’s because those who sell out their country don’t automatically win favour and respect in Russia and China. Snowden is a bit of an exception, because the USA itself confirmed everything he said was true by its frantic attempts to get its hands on him. And if everything he said is true, he did the world a public service. But is he living in a palace and driving a Mercedes? I don’t think so. Could Russia afford to treat him like a King? Sure it could. It could afford to fly him in Burger King or Chicken-Fried Steak and Biscuits every day if he was pining for western food. But it doesn’t, because Russia dosn’t make a business of shopping for western malcontents the way the United States shops for traitors in Russia. For those who crave power, they flatter them and refer to them as ‘opposition leader’ and pretend like the Kremlin shivers in fear of them. For those who crave money, well….no problem.
That kind of behaviour is actually repugnant for some countries.
I suppose the fact that Rodchenkov was motivated by money and his desire to be a big shot – and possibly revenge on Russian sports authorities if his bragging about how he’s taking down Russian sport on video camera turns out to be genuine – counts for little in Karl’s determinist view of Russians: always breeding traitors like Vladimir Lenin who allowed Finland its independence when the Finns agitated for it in 1917.
What’s different between you and the western media, Karl? Don’t you always show up whenever there’s bad news to be broadcast, and portray Russia’s reaction in the most ridiculous light? You revel in Russian humiliation, and really you’re right in there with all the NATO-lovers in Finland who relish every rebuke to Russia. No problem there; you’re free to have your own opinion and your own desires vis-a-vis global foreign policy. But stop concern-trolling; it isn’t fooling anyone. And Washington is ruining international sports in order to pursue its dominance agenda. Can’t happen soon enough to suit me, so you’re not breaking my heart. Once that’s gone, what does it have for its next tool? LNG? Please.
No, I don’t “revel” in Russian humiliation. It bothers and sometimes infuriates me too.
But I can see the facts and Russia is still in many ways too weak and vulnerable for a country of its size and resources. The Lenin’s commies did too much damage to Russia for it to recover fully, maybe ever. What should have been the Russian Century turned out to be the fight of survival for Russia, largely because of Bolshevik revolution. The idiot Lenin destroyed Russia’s farmers (Lenin even bragged about killing millions of kulaks, with kulak meaning an independent farmer) and capitalistic class, and threw Russia into terrible famine in the 1920s and an economic misery that lasted for seven decades. Soviet Union, with far more fertile land than any other country in the world, had to import grain from the West for the rest of its existence because Lenin killed the Russian farmer.
The Soviet Union never could overcome the harm that Lenin did to it, and it was the biggest reason for its downfall. The Soviet Union could never truly compete with the USA if it could not feed itself. It was a doomed battle from the beginning.
Yes, the Soviets made some great achievements too with the biggest one being defeating Nazi Germany in WWII. But still, the century that should have been prosperous and generous for Russia turned out to be a constant fight for survival and losing the economic war against the West.
At the end Russia also ended up losing Ukraine and Belarus, two countries that Lenin created. Ukraine was Russia before Lenin. So was Belarus. Lenin also gave southern part of Russia to Kazakhstan (btw, you guessed it, Kazakhstan is also Lenin’s creature).
So the big part of the most fertile and best of Russian land does not belong to Russia anymore. Thanks to communism, Russia lost Ukraine and Belarus and Kazakhstan. And now, for the great delight for the West, Russia and Ukraine hate each other and this hatred is not going to go away for generations. Russian people are split into groups who hate each other.
A hundred years ago Russia had it all, but it took just one Jewish revolutionary who killed the one man who could have saved Russia for the coming Bolshevik revolution, civil war and Lenin’s reign of terror: Pyotr Stolypin.
So forgive my pessimism and cynicism. Russian history and even current events show that Russia is a country where bad things just seem to happen and things often go worse they they should.
We can hope that this century is better for Russia. But those geographical, economic and human losses that Russia suffered in the last century are very hard to overcome.
Now you’re just hoping to wind up yalensis. Blaming communism for Ukraine’s independence is quite a reach. Good luck with that, though. I don’t have all day to waste in circular arguments for which you have no substantiation at all. Your position is that in order for Russia to prevail, it must be more powerful and ruthless than all of the west combined, and that is never going to happen. So I guess the west will triumph. We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?
“Your position is that in order for Russia to prevail, it must be more powerful and ruthless than all of the west combined”
Sort of, yes. I’m afraid there are not any external forces in the Universe who reward good nations and punish bad nations. I actually believe in God, but the world history proves that there is not any external “guidance” where good are rewarded and bad are punished.
Countries must to create their own fortune and look for their own interests. Nobody else is going to do it for them. This is one reason why Russia lost Ukraine. While the US ambassador and high politicians were supporting their side in Maidan, the Russian ambassador was nowhere to be seen.
What I mean is that the best man won in Ukraine. And Russia was not the best man.
I find this approach simplistic. Real-life matters like this aren’t sports competitions where there’s one winner and one loser. And the question is, if the United States and Europe “won” in Ukraine, what did they actually win? What real benefit are they deriving from Ukraine? So far, the “losers” (Russia) have lost influence in a country that was always deeply dysfunctional in the first place, so never really benefited them much. In return, they’ve once and for all solved the problem of Crimea that was inherited from the collapse of the SU. On the other hand, the “winners” now have to “own” a country that’s become a complete embarrassment, and have to funnel in wave after wave of money to keep it from completely disintegrating. Meanwhile Russian business continues to pursue its own economic interests in the country, investing in the sectors where it is worthwhile to do so. Even if we accept that the situation is at best a mixed bag for Russia, how in the world are the Western countries “winning” here?
” And the question is, if the United States and Europe “won” in Ukraine, what did they actually win?”
Good question. Here’s my opinion.
1. The West prevented Russia and Ukraine from re-integrating, probably for our lifetimes.
2. The West prevented Russia from gaining an access to Ukraine fertile farmland. Fertile farmland will be highly valuable in the future with the still fast-growing world population and global warming.
3. The West created one more hostile neighbor for Russia.
4. The West created another country with cheap labor and lots of natural resources that it can pillage. In fact the Western companies have already gained an access to Ukrainian farmland.
5. The West killed trade between Russia and Ukraine, forcing Russia to spend resources in replacing Ukrainian manufacturers needed by its economy (well, this was not all that bad for Russia)
6. The West killed cultural links between Russia and Ukraine, further fastening the separation of Ukraine from Russia.
7. The West created a pretext war economic war and sanctions against Russia.
8. The West created another platform for its military bases that it can place near Russia in the future. Too bad for them that they lost Crimea though. This is one thing that Russia did right, taking back Crimea.
And what did the West lose? Pretty much nothing.
Ryan made an excellent point, regarding Crimea.
The over-reach of the West gave Russia a one-time chance to return this stolen jewel.
Which, thankfully, it did, and in perfect Beau Geste fashion.
Like Martin Luther King used to say: “Keep your eye on the prize!”
A lot of the “advantages” in that list are really just claims about the way the West hurt Russia by interfering in Ukraine, so they don’t really address the point I was making before, which is that hurting an enemy only has at most tactical value as a means toward the end of securing some national interest of one’s own. Saddam Hussein was certainly an enemy of the United States, but when the US picked him up and threw him against the wall, the only real winner was Iran. As an aside, although I disagree with the claims regarding some of the harms to Russia, and I think some others are overblown, I don’t deny that the Ukrainian situation has been less than ideal from a Russian point of view. I just don’t see how this has given the West any opportunity to advance any of its own interests. But two of the points did address advantages to the West, so I’ll touch on those.
4. The West created another country with cheap labor and lots of natural resources that it can pillage. In fact the Western companies have already gained an access to Ukrainian farmland.
Cheap labour is only beneficial if its in a context of a country that’s well-run enough for that labour to be exploited. There’s certainly no shortage of cheap labour in Africa, but it often doesn’t benefit Western financial interests, because the poor state of those countries’ legal frameworks, infrastructure, etc. create costs that outweigh the possible savings from labour costs. So far, this seems to be true of Ukraine as well. There’s not some big rush to establish factories in Ukraine, or any sign that such a rush is coming. Especially at a time when cheap labour in South and Southeast Asia is more plentiful and readily available (as a result of improving legal frameworks and infrastructure in the relevant states) than ever, it’s not clear what advantage there is to the West in securing cheap labour in a corruption-ridden Eastern European state where the bribes you need to pay to get out of bed in the morning will wipe out your profits for the day.
As for farmland, there’s little the West needs less than farmland. Every Western country pays substantial sums of money specifically to get their farmers to produce less, keeping prices up. Competition from Ukraine that would tend to drive down prices in Europe and North America is the last thing these countries are looking for. Farmland is of much more interest to China, which is already starting to move in to scoop up what it can.
8. The West created another platform for its military bases that it can place near Russia in the future. Too bad for them that they lost Crimea though. This is one thing that Russia did right, taking back Crimea.
It’s not obvious to me how much of a gain this really is. Every one of Russia’s neighbours from Poland north to Estonia is already a NATO member, as is Turkey in the South. American forces in Japan are able to access the Russian Far East fairly quickly if desired. It doesn’t seem (to me anyway) that a few more troops in Chernigov really add much to a military encirclement that was already fairly thorough.
And then, if we look at disadvantages, they’re much more substantial than you suggest. Firstly, Ukraine is costing the West a lot of money, in three ways. Firstly, the soldiers posted there (and in Latvia, largely as a result of the Ukrainian situation) aren’t free. Secondly, neither is the large amount of aid that the West is pouring into Ukraine to little effect. Thirdly, Russian counter-sanctions have had a reasonable amount of bite in many European economies. Germany and Italy don’t constantly push for sanctions reduction out of any sentimental attachment to Russia. They do it because the current situation is significantly damaging their economies.
But even more importantly, although more time will be needed to determine the extent of this impact, annoying and alienating Russia is having a negative impact on the West’s geopolitical interests. Russia is being driven into closer and closer relations with China, which is a much greater geopolitical threat to the West than Russia could ever be. It will be a bitter irony for Western leaders if the result of pointlessly sticking a thumb in Russia’s eye in Ukraine has the long-term result of securing a valuable political and economic ally for China. Also, the fact that the West and Russia can’t cooperate on counter-terrorism isn’t good for either side. There are huge webs of connections between militant groups in Russian and Central Asia and their counterparts in Western Europe. But Europe has sacrificed the potential to cooperate against this threat for the sake of Poroshenko and Timoshenko. Hardly an advantageous exchange.
And of course that was down to Russia’s weakness, and not because the west was constantly yelling about Russian interference. To what end would the Russian ambassador have been there? What would be his role in a western-engineered coup? Patsy? Punching bag?
The root of your problem is that you value sound over substance, and boasting and bragging over everything. The west beats its chest and bellows, and you are moist with admiration. But you’re young. You’ll learn.
Don’t worry your pretty head, Mark, Karl irritates me, but doesn’t wind me up.
A Stolypin-ite ! God save us all.
I am more wound up by Sponge Bob’s polemical skills and deep analysis of historical events…
Very succinct summary. Entirely lost on the sovoks here, ofc.
Naturally. But so long as we’re happy in our fool’s paradise and everything is coming up trumps for the eugenicists and the racial-IQ types the way it is, we’re probably harmless.
As the world’s six millionth most visited site, you are correct that you are harmless. You don’t realize the gem you have in the form of karl1haushofer. One day he will have finally had enough of the abuse here, or will get banned outright, and this site’s transition to a Bolshevik echo chamber will be complete.
To quote Shakespeare:
“Thou shouldst not count Mark as a Bolshevik, nor Karl as a gem.”
Don’t forget the evil laugh. But I’m sure he appreciates the value of your endorsement.
“What should have been the Russian Century turned out to be the fight of survival for Russia, largely because of Bolshevik revolution.”
Karl, you misspelled ‘largely because of Nick yII’s lunatic engagement in a war Russia had no hope of winning’
Fixed that for you.
Youre welcome.
Spot on. I would also add: “lunatic engagement in a war designed to user Russian peasants as cannon fodder to further the power of the British monarchy and Empire…”
And in this case I would have respected Russia’s position more if Russia had decided to fight back instead of caving in to Western demands.
But I guess it is hard to do in this Western-dominated field which is sports. In the battle field it is easier. If someone shoots at you, you shoot back at him. But here Russia’s options are pretty limited.
And if someone dopes to improve their performance, why, then you dope, too, so you can perform better. But oh, whoops; they change the rules so that doping is okay for them but not for you. And that’s the west in a nutshell- it makes the rules so every time the playing field needs a big ol’ tilt so that westerners can win and feel superior, well, no problem.
It all comes down to the battlefield for you, doesn’t it, Karl? Come out, guns a-blazing, and fight to the death. Would Russia win then, where the playing field could not be tilted and it was just man against man? Not likely; not by itself. And by the time China entered the fray, the battle would almost certainly have gone nuclear – Russia is not going to face annihilation with all its missiles still in their silos. And whoever is the victor is going to win…what? A planet which is more than 60% uninhabitable?
I can’t say I’m a big fan of your vision. But then, you probably learned it playing Armageddon on the computer, where you can just shut it down and go have a cup of mushroom tea.
But first….Let us pay homage to the 1943 kindred spirits of the 2017 vermin who wish to muzzle the net!!
http://www.realclearhistory.com/video/2017/02/18/joseph_goebbels_total_war_speech.html
This is what they are up to:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/12/08/yout-d08.html
But..Hope springs eternal….along with alternatives to Youtube…!!
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Dndt90mqPHg/
and for the Canadian Stooges:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Cf5w6LGrMk0/
Eventually YouTube will end up just like television; for entertainment only, 100% sanitized fluff. Kind of funny, when you think about it; the country that squeals all the time, all day long, about how free it is and how nothing says freedom like freedom of speech is actually a state censor which does not allow any dissenting opinion unless it has so little support as to be harmless, or is so wiggy that it is useful to show how nutty enemies of the government are.
Not that much of a loss for me, since video came to be so easy to be altered, often nearly without trace of it having been done, that you can’t even believe what you see any more.
RE: karl on the upcoming Olympics:
“Russia has two alternatives:
1. Denounce the Western imperialism and boycott the Olympic games, while trying to create its own and more fair sporting events.
2. Cave in to Western demands and face another humiliation”
No two ways about it…on this matter…he is spot the F on:
How many of the American snowflakes who NOW yelp and yap about THEIR ordeal of sexual abuse…. will step up and denounce the political rape and abuse of their Russian counterparts???
When the JAP skater opens her trap to defend her Russian sisters….let me know…
Otherwise..STFU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aly_Raisman
http://www.openculture.com/2016/03/edmund-burkeon-in-action.html
Remember Stooges..over the weekend:
I prefer Bobby Brown’s version……….
Oh-following Columbo- just one more thing…
*EXACTLY* where is the 5 billion euros needed to actually bring about construction of the pipeline coming from????
‘This is my buddy’: Boxing great Mayweather meets Chechen leader Kadyrov, wants Russian citizenship
Five-weight world boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. wants to apply for Russian citizenship, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has said after meeting the legendary US fighter in Grozny.
“We had a warm conversation about boxing and the prospects of its development in Chechnya, Russia and all over the world. His experience, namely fifty victories in fifty fights are worth a lot,” Kadyrov wrote on his Telegram channel.
https://www.rt.com/sport/412517-mayweather-russian-citizenship-chechnya/
Al Jazeera English
Published on 8 Dec 2017
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It is a breakthrough on Brexit at long last.
Leaders beat Friday’s deadline and shook hands on the terms of a “Brexit” divorce, allowing them to open up talks on the future of their relationship.
The European Commission announced on Friday that “sufficient progress” had been made by Britain on separation issues including the Irish border, Britain’s divorce bill, and citizens’ rights.
The initial agreement contains few specifics, and there are already signs that the different players’ have conflicting views about what exactly has been agreed.
Presenter: Sami Zeidan
Guests:
John Mills – Chairman of the Labour Leave campaign
Nina Schick – Europe political analyst
Conor Lenihan – Former cabinet minister in the government of Ireland
Financial Times
Published on 8 Dec 2017
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The FT’s world news and Brexit editors, Ben Hall and Daniel Dombey, discuss the deal announced today on EU exit terms by UK Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, clearing the way for trade talks next year.
The National Interest has a short interview with Andranik Migranyan, who was asked, amongst other things, whether he was surprised that Putin was running for President again. Migranyan’s responses were interesting and left me with the strong impression that it is likely that Russia will continue to secure her future. He answered: “I was not surprised. Even a year or two years ago, I knew that he was going to run. He is a man on a mission. He has not accomplished his mission. I hope that he is going to accomplish it during his next six-year term. In 2012, right on the eve of the election, the previous elections, I, together with a small group of political scientists had a meeting with him outside of Moscow. He talked a lot about the steering of the governmental machine, and when you are manually steering it. His idea was that in such a large country, you can’t manually steer everywhere. Instead, you need to have well-established and developed institutions. This is my memory of that meeting- he said he’ll be satisfied if institutions will work and he will not have any problems when he leaves. He feels sure everything will work in a proper way when he leaves.” The full interview is worth reading.
http://www.nationalinterest.org/feature/russia-souring-donald-trump-23554
Gosh! The SBU have re-apprehended You’ll-Never-Take-Me-Alive Desperdildo Mikheil Saakashvili, who is now in custody in Kiev and reportedly eating lots of seeds and nuts and running busily on his exercise wheel.
The latest episode of the long-running Ukrainian soap opera “The Glorious Maidan” has Saakashvili’s Facebook page calling for a demonstration at the detention centre, but it doesn’t seem to be generating too much interest. Surprisingly, western news sources are kind of acting like this is Ukraine’s business, and there’s nothing they can do. Which is quite a contrast with the umbrage and outrage whenever Navalny gets jugged for making an ass of himself.
“Hang in there, Mishiko! Only YOU can end corruption and bring together the Russian lands!”
(Loosely quoting from Prince Igor’s Tale…)
Another Great Moment In American Media, as CNN is forced to admit it got the date that an encryption key for ‘hacked emails’ was sent to Trump wrong by 10 days, and after it was all already public knowledge. Trump Jr’s tweet pretty much said it all:
“I know you can’t help but spread #fakenews @cnn, but now that you know the truth you should have the decency to retract the false story, make the correction, take down the bs tweet, and apologize to the 2 or 3 people that still believe you to be credible,”
I’m no fan of the Trump administration, but CNN is just a rubbishy narrative-shaping outlet for official Washington and it is good to see them step on their dick.
Ukraine cuts off a little bit more of its nose to spite its own face, as a bill to grant preferences to national producers in public procurement passes to wild enthusiasm…in direct contravention of the rules of the Association Agreement. Kiev was apparently too lazy to read it, and did not realize it binds the country and government to certain courses of action when Poroshenko ostentatiously signed it. All he and his little claque of sycophants cares about is ‘will it piss off Russia”? Serves you right, you mountain of talking suet. Now you’ve pissed off the west as well. Not to mention the blazing stupidity of legally favouring national producers (even if their prices are as much as 43% higher than those of competitors) when your GDP would curl up and die without huge financial infusions from the west.
Another cheeky demonstration of government by oligarch. The IMF must have its head buried in its hands. It’s getting so they have to have an embedded reporter in the Rada, so they can know every day what they’re going to have to make the country retract tomorrow.
Here’s a useful explanation of what a simpleminded decision it really was. You’ll want to keep it in mind for when America embarks on another of its “Buy American” trade actions – you can call it what you want, but a ‘Buy X’ rule is a more palatable name for ‘subsidy’.
Sleep well and softly, fair Canada:
https://journal-neo.org/2017/12/08/toronto-fears-assuaged-putin-will-not-invade/
Well, it’s a bit thick in places – the Kiev junta, for example (and an apt description, if ever there was one) did not ‘eliminate the Russian language upon taking power’, it tabled a bill which would remove its status as an official language of Ukraine, long a cherished goal of Ukrainian nationalists. There was such a fierce and immediate backlash that the bill was never signed – the government dared not, it had just got a little full of itself for a moment and thought it could do anything, without having to respect anyone’s feelings. But it was too late to stop Crimea, and too late to stop the boil-over in the east, both of which could certainly have been avoided just by not rushing that bill onto the floor.
Anyway, the original article to which he refers was terrible enough without making things up. Putin is not a special kind of evil; he’s actually not evil at all. In fact, I bet he’s probably a pretty nice guy, one on one. He’s certainly smart, and he must know some amazing stories.
Funnily enough, those nationalist Ukrainian chowderheads would not think twice about the requirement to speak a bit of English in the interest of trade relationships, and English is a very popular second language in Ukraine, not least because a lot of people want to get the hell out of there. But nearly half Ukraine’s trade was with Russia.
TheRealNews
Published on 8 Dec 2017
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The unresignation of Saad Hariri shows that Saudi Arabia’s recent meddling in Lebanon has only strengthened its rival Iran, says professor and journalist Rami Khouri
CBC News
Published on 7 Dec 2017
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Facing a 160-year sentence for non-violent robbery, Derek Twyman thought he might die in a U.S. prison. Then a New Brunswick law student took an interest in his bizarre case.
This video is making rounds on the Net and already produced an avalanche of comments, demotivators and spoofs.
^ What you see here is a “person with a strong resemblance to the deputy Interior Minister Anton Geraschenko” – the fearless Separs-Finder General, thanks to whom all true patriots of the Ukrajina now have such useful site as “Mirotvorets” (which servers just recently moved to the USA… fore safety reasons, of course).
As you can seepoor Antosha G. (or someone bearing a strong resemblance of him) is still suffering from the Moskal engineered Holodomor – his genetic memory calls back to him! Either this, or he himself was a victim of the ruthless Soviet Uber-science, which tried to create pig-rat-human hybrids.
SUGS!
Gersachenko on his FB page have already admitted (and Ukrainian so-called media already ran several articles about this) that it was him… but he did it in the most hilarious way possible. At the meeting with Japanese delegation in Kiev’s restaurant “Bao”, where they were “discussing the problem of restoration of the territorial integrity of the Ukraine, Japanese support in reforming the law-enforcing agencies of the country”
“I love oriental cuisine. And one dish was especially tasty.
Noticing this, the Japanese diplomat said that in Japan, where it is not customary to use bread for dipping a tasty sauce, it is considered a sign of special respect to the cook, when the dish after dinner remains completely clean any shiny.
And in the Japanese tradition, this is not considered shameful.
Just like in France it is considered a good thing to return the dish already licked to the waiter and pass through him thanks to the chef for his high skill.
…I have nothing to be ashamed of. I respect the traditions of various nations friendly to the Ukraine”
AFAIK (thanks to Google – but more knowledgeable people can correct me) there is no such custom in Japan. Likewise – there is no such “tradition” in France. Geraschenko makes stuff up – as usual. This is a case study of how the fake news are born – people with little, minimal knowledge and no functioning brain will trust Geraschenko that in some far away countries there are such “traditions”. Because… why not? Thus the question that the Deputy Minister of the Interior behaved himself like a pig will be canned for good.
This is not story about Geraschenko – this is a story about human intellectual laziness and willingness to believe any half-plausible bullshit, because the people nowadays are just that – half-informed. This is the story about how conspiracy theories and fake news became mainstream.
P.S. I think that Geraschenko should be lustrated (in the most democratic way possible) for writing in the language of the Aggressor Country. SUGS!
What do the Japanese people use chopsticks for? Wouldn’t it be a gesture of the most reverent respect for the cook to simply pour the food into your mouth, as if you couldn’t eat it fast enough? I’m pretty sure no Japanese would want to eat from the same plate Geraschenko licked – I certainly wouldn’t, so as much as the china-manufacturers would probably like to see such a ‘tradition’ take hold, it does not to the best of my knowledge exist at present. Moreover, the Japanese mania for not being subjected to the smells, touches or fluids of others makes it extremely unlikely.
Oh, not in France, either. It is a sign of respect to the cook just about anywhere to ‘clean your plate’, which is to say you eat everything served to you upon it. But as far as I know every civilized country draws the line at dragging your crusty yellow tongue over it. You can bet that plate went straight into the garbage, and it would in France, too.
It’s a tradition in some countries to fart at the table in appreciation of one’s host’s culinary skills.
I’ve heard that, and I’m surprised Geraschenko didn’t throw it in, just in case countries where it is done are ‘friends of Ukraine’.
There was a period in Britain when picking up a glass of wine and throwing the liquid into the face of the person sitting near you at dinner parties (to pass on your host’s toast) was a tradition, begun by the Prince Regent (later George IV) when he tried to get society toff Beau Brummell to say something for a toast. Brummell didn’t say anything so the prince threw wine into his face instead. Brummel picked up his own glass and splashed his neighbour’s face, telling him to pass the prince’s toast on. Now that’s a custom Geraschenko could be encouraged to take up.
Americans have a vulgar tradition at weddings: The groom is supposed to take a slice of the wedding cake and shove it into the face of the bride. And she is then expected to lick the icing off her own mouth while people take photographs.
By now you’d also be familiar with the Latin American custom (which has spread to other parts of the world) of shoving the lucky birthday celebrant’s face into his/her birthday cake.
There’s also a new trend of allowing one-year-old babies to demolish their own birthday cakes. You sit the bub in a tub together with the cake and watch it go!
Let’s be honest here, though. Each and everyone of us has at some point in our lives licked some sauce or gravy off a plate. Just not in a public restaurant, hopefully!
I cannot say I have, old fellow. It is just not the done thing where I come from.
I honestly can’t recall doing so either, although I may have when I was a child, when my manners were often something to behold. As an adult I often use a piece of bread or something like that to sop up leftover sauce, and eat that, but I don’t lick the plate.
Not me. I’ve seen cats do that,
Only slightly less odd than eating one’s tie.
The Rada has put off the decision on lifting the moratorium on land sales until 2019. So the westies will just have to salivate a little longer at the thought of getting their hands on Ukraine’s agricultural land. Oh, I imagine they will get hold of a patch or two here and there, by trickery and by using front companies, but the wholesale plundering will have to bide for the nonce.
Саакашвили объявил бессрочную голодовку в СИЗО
Saakashvili has announced an indefinite hunger strike in remand centre
Indefinite even!
Until the grim reaper cometh, that is.
On the optimistic side, think how long he could live just on stored fat.
Chief Chipmunk at the barricades near the building of Verkhovna Rada in Kiev, 6 December, 2017.
What purpose do those old tyres serve?
Do they deter people from approaching those who stack them?
Why do they set fire to them?
Do they do this for the same purpose as do warships when laying smoke?
He looks to be losing a little weight; being a fireball oppositionist seems to be doing him some good.
Yes, it’s for the smoke; it conceals the size and disposition of your forces. Except the government has helicopters, and can get a better estimation from above, not to mention thermal sensors.
For how much longer can Antonov hold on? It posted a net 60% loss in profits year-over-year from 2016, in only 9 months.
Well, well; Poroshenko-buddy Volodymyr (that’s how Ukrainians spell ‘Vladimir’, because it’s important not to spell your name that way in Ukraine) Groysman announced that 2019 would be ‘the Year of China’ in Ukraine. If that turned out to be true, who else would benefit? Ha, ha. And who would get aced out because they keep snatching away the purse-strings, concerned about corruption? Ha, ha.
China plans to spend about $7 Billion in Ukraine over the short term in joint-infrastructure projects, and envisions Ukraine as a portal into Europe for its One Belt/One Road initiative, through which Chinese goods would flow into Europe.
Well, isn’t that a turn-up for the books? Ukraine was going to be the EU’s portal into Russia, to flood Russia with EU goods. But now it looks as if China is making a move. Wake up, State Department.
As regards the Finn’s allegation (way above) that Russia lost all its most fertile land in “losing” the Ukraine and Kazakhstan, I should like to point out that the extremely fertile black earth region of the Ukraine does not stop at the border created by the founders of the USSR, but continues eastwards into the Voronezh oblast’ and beyond.
Voronezh is the centre of the Russian Central Black Earth Region, a place I know well and am rather fond of: it was where I first lived and studied in the USSR.
As one of the twelve economic regions of Russia, the Central Black Earth Region consists of five oblasts – Belgorod Oblast, Kursk Oblast, Lipetsk Oblast, Tambov Oblast and Voronezh Oblast. Lying on the western border of the country, the Central Black Earth Region is also referred to as Central Chernozemic Region.
Svidomites, of course, claim that Voronezh belongs to the Ukraine, as does the Kuban, because Cossacks settled there.
Cossacks are not an ethnic group. and they did not originate in the Austrian Habsburg Empire.
That’s a neat dodge, that; the one the European Union has going, where it loans Ukraine money to buy gas from European suppliers, and then sells it Russian gas at a markup, so that it can crow triumphantly that it is no longer buying Russian gas. I suppose it will all be written off once it gets too big for Ukraine to repay, but in the meantime it is a transfer of European taxpayer funds straight to European gas companies, for which I imagine they are very grateful. Russia, of course, does not care, since it is being paid for gas, too. It’s Ukraine that is getting fleeced in the short term, and when its debt gets too big the EU will simply write it off, so it’s the European taxpayer who is at the end of the chain.
RUSSIAN SPORTSMEN
SURRENDER!
YOUR PHYSICAL TRAINING INSTRUCTOR LIES!
As a prisoner of the Americans, you will not be tortured or killed
but will be well treated. You will have food, hot water, warm clothes, prednisolone steroid medication and an iPhone X.
Your trainers drive you to death and suffering, force you to take part in doping, deprive you of sweet things — and what for? Only according to a whim of your Commisars!
RUSSIANS, COME OVER TO OUR SIDE!
This leaflet may be used as a pass.
You may also come over to the American armed forces without a pass.
Just throw away your neutral flag and come out with your hands up.
Dieser Passierschein gilt für Russische Olzmpiateilnehmer
[This pass is valid for Russian Olympic Games participants]
Should have been Olympiateilnehmer
Forgot I was using a German keyboard.
Come on over to the Land of the Free and let our outstanding sports experts take care of you!
Former US Gymnastics and Michigan State doctor Larry Nassar gets 60yr sentence for child porn
“Russian Sportsman” above, actually: the appeal is addressed in the singular, cannot imagine why.
Is there only one particular sportsman whom they are urging to defect?
“Nemtsov Bridge”, Moscow.
Shagger Nemtsov would have appreciated that picture!
🙂
As do I.
Part of him is probably rising from the dead.
Certainly not any moral indignation, though.
Something wrong with that picture though.
I think it’s the wrong way round, if you know what I mean: a mirror image of the original.
Those Kremlin towers should be the other way round, left to right, I think.
No, the picture is right: it’s not “Nemtsov Bridge”, it’s the next one upriver, Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge (Greater Stone Bridge), and those two towers are (left to right) Borovitskaya and Vodovzvodnaya.
Why, I do declare; if you were looking for a sweet bedtime snack, this is it. Our friend at Bloomberg, Lyonya, has penned another agonized soul-search entitled, heretically, “West Backed Wrong Man in Ukraine”!!! It will now be harder than ever for him to deny charges that he is ‘Putin’s man’. And if I could stop mocking for just a moment, I would like to say seriously that I am an admirer of Bershidsky’s writing even when I am in complete disagreement. It’s just a little funny to me that the cluster-fucking in Ukraine has forced him to come full circle. And I am genuinely sorry that things did not turn out the way he hoped for Ukraine, although it would have come hard to see them happen at the hands of a shit like Poroshenko. But I would like to point out that there was a pretty strong consensus here that such things were unlikely to happen based simply on his history of greed and self-interest. And now Lyonya is with us – isn’t this cozy?
I’ll tell you a secret, though – you know what makes the whole thing almost unbearably delicious? The whining from certifiable wooden-head Anders Aslund: to wit,
“President Poroshenko appears to have abandoned the fight against corruption, any ambition for economic growth, EU or IMF funding”.
Silly Anders – Poroshenko knows well he can count on a fairly steady flow of lolly from Washington, so long as he keeps up the anti-Russian rhetoric and continues to provide cover for Uncle Sam’s inveigling for more trouble.
The enjoyable part of it is how fed up Europe is getting with Porky’s amusing shenanigans. He caves in on anti-corruption courts, and then fires the head of the anti-corruption committee. He back-pats himself for NaftoGaz taking the first steps toward unbundling, but all entities are still 100% owned by the state – what difference does it make if they have set up a new management entity for the gas transit system when Porky owns the whole shebang? Not privately, of course – only as President. It’s not like he would mix business and running the country, I never meant to imply anything of the kind.
To continue “Zrada-Fest 2017: PoROSHENko’s Nightmare”, already covered by our gracious host Mark – Maxim Eristavi, hot-blooded Georgian genatzvalyi, uses such respectable American edition (pffffffft… sorry, sorry – give me a sec to compose myself… I have to suppress giggling while typing this) as “The Washington Post” to ring the alarm bell, blow his whistles and in general to tear down the veils of deceptions about the Ukraine. Also – he offers free advertisement for the half-assed Mikho-Maidan, but that’s kinda expected from him.
Brace yourself for a hot, burning bright session of “Beh-beh-beh”-ing!
Opinion: It’s time for the West to get tough on Ukraine
Maxim Eristavi is a nonresident research fellow with the Atlantic Council and co-founder of Hromadske International, an independent news outlet, based in Kiev.
Important excerpts:
“Ukraine’s complex political intrigues can be hard to figure out. But this week we’ve arrived at a rare moment of clarity.
The most important domestic issue in our country is corruption. And for the first time in our modern history, we have the people and the institutions in place to fight it.
[…]
Activists in Kiev say that we’re approaching a tipping point. If the anti-corruption bureau is abolished or emasculated, it will sound the death knell for transparent democracy in Ukraine.
Western governments have channeled hundreds of millions in taxpayer money into Ukraine’s anti-corruption reforms. The time to protect that investment has come. The United States and the European Union should be telling Poroshenko and his friends that they must hold the line on corruption.
Such a message will be even more important given Poroshenko’s recent push to consolidate his power in next year’s national election. The president and his supporters have been squeezing the media and cracking down on their critics — all to a resounding lack of international outcry. Many in Kiev view the attacks on anti-corruption bodies as a gift from the president to his businessmen friends, who will support his reelection bid if they know he’ll protect them from prosecution.
Poroshenko clearly believes that his supporters in Washington and Brussels will back him no matter what, given the continuing war by Russian-supported forces in eastern Ukraine. The West sees the Ukrainian president as a bulwark against Russian designs in Eastern Europe — and it has given him plenty of reason to think so. Whenever I’ve asked Western diplomats why they’re so reluctant to pressure our government, I almost always hear the same answer: “The Russians will exploit any criticism to destabilize Ukraine.” In his recent address at the United Nations, Poroshenko mentioned Russia more than two dozen times. Corruption? Once.
In this respect, Poroshenko is starkly at odds with his own people. Independent polls show that Ukrainians regard corruption as one of their top worries — even more so than the war. Of course, we are worried about Russia’s efforts to destroy our country. Of course, Putin invaded our country. But Putin isn’t the one stealing state funds. Putin isn’t the one leaving holes in our roads. Putin isn’t the one helping our crooked bureaucrats to avoid jail. Putin isn’t forcing our elites to evade paying their taxes.”
[I think that Eristavi should be declared a domestic separ and be most democratically lustrated for the last paragraph – all in accordance with the newest democratic traditions of the Ukraine, exampliphied in such people as Anton Geraschenko and Zoryan “of Nepalia” Shkiryak, and “veterans of the ATO” who were blocking the NewsOne TV studio earlier this week – Lyt]
“The government’s ham-handed attempt to arrest former Odessa governor Mikheil Saakashvili this week is the latest example of how far Poroshenko is willing to go to silence his opponents. At the same time, he is also trying to distract Ukrainian public and foreign allies from his attack on the anti-corruption bureau that was happening at the same time.
Our foreign allies can help Ukraine to end the rot. But they can’t do this unless they stop accepting the narratives pushed from government offices and start defending their own investments in Ukrainian progress. Otherwise those millions they’ve spent to help us will be stolen, and our sleaziest practices will migrate to the West — just as they did in the case of Paul Manafort, who assisted the most corrupt Ukrainian president in recent memory before he went to work for Donald Trump.
Where should Ukraine’s friends start? First, they should restore and guarantee the anti-corruption bureau’s independence by giving the EU anti-corruption mission in Ukraine the powers to act as a mediator and auditor. They should demand the launch of new anti-corruption courts no later than next year, so that anti-corruption cases can finally be tried outside the largely unreformed justice system.
Next, Ukraine’s allies must show that they know how to use not only carrots, but also sticks. They should warn the government in Kiev that the recently launched visa-free regime with the EU can be suspended if any efforts are made to further undermine NABU.
Ukraine’s anti-corruption reforms have proven a remarkable success — which is precisely why the leadership is so keen to dismantle them. Now is the time for reformers and their allies in the West to come to their defense.”
Well – sounds like plan. But here’s the catch – this piece is filed under “opinion” tag. It was published before second arrest of Saakashvili. So I foresee that even before the rooster crows three time in the morning (in Washington, D.C.) there will be new articles in WaPo entertaining seriously the claims by Poroshenko and even more alcohol wrecked person – the Prosecutor General Lutsenko – that Mikho, indeed, was in the pocket of Yanukovich and Kremlin and tried to wage a hybrid warfare. The thought that Saakashvili might be in the pay of Benya Kolomoyski won’t be mentioned even once.
P.S. Comment section below the article is just… beautiful. SUGS!
Here’s a link to a piece on the Garibaldi of Georgia:
http://www.unz.com/pbuchanan/the-nutball-the-neocons-wanted-in-nato/#new_comments
And, as usual, in that article the Yanukovich government that Uncle Sam wanted out is called “the elected pro-Russian government”.
One thing for sure as regards Saakashvili, the “Garibaldi of Georgia”, I am pretty sure they won’t name a biscuit after him as they did with Garibaldi of Italy.
Sure they will.
Couple of mistakes; it’s Petro Poroshenko, not Boris. And it was not ‘Putin’s’ tanks and troops pouring through the Roki Tunnel, but Medvedev’s. Putin was at the Summer Olympics in Beijing, and did not even speak to Medvedev for 24 hours – that immediate counterstrike was all Dima, although he never got any credit for it. And his military advisors, of course, but it would have been the same for Putin, he wouldn’t make a decision like that without consulting his experts.
By and large, though, it’s accurate. Saakashvili is a clown who learned to speak a lot of languages and – far more importantly – learned the important buzzwords that westerners love to hear, like freedom and democracy. The west loves him because he’s a loose cannon who responds predictably to flattery, and can be counted upon to stir up shit in exchange for being told he is a great leader. His ‘anticorruption drive’ in Georgia was a thing of beauty – it either fooled everyone who could speak English, or they allowed themselves to be fooled. Still, however, it’s doubtful his current antics in Kiev are at the behest of Washington, which is still foursquare behind Poroshenko.
Buchanan hasn’t written his own articles for years, so blame the intern.
It’s official now – Maria Alexandrovna “Masha” Gessen have gone to shit. Like – both mentally and bodily. She clearly needs help from the qualified professionals. Because what she now passes for the “journalism”, is bad even by her own standards – all traditional levels of lies, damned lies and “trust me – I’ve heard that from friends/relatives” in her latest “masterpiece” are well over 9000.
Or over 90 000. You are to judge: Just keep a vomit bag barrel ready. Thnakfully – it’s quite short:
“Since resuming the duties of President for the third time, five and a half years ago, Vladimir Putin has restored many of the habits and cultural institutions of Soviet society. The lived experience of a Russian citizen is that of the subject of a totalitarian society, one in which everything is political: genuinely private space shrinks into nonexistence. In this disposition, the choice that the I.O.C. has posed to the athletes is one between self and country. Kremlin shills have already started bandying about the word “treason.”
The word suggests that Russia is at war with the world, and that is exactly how it sees itself: a country under attack, surrounded by hostile forces. This pervading sense of life in a fortress under siege is what makes today’s Russia, for all its visible superficial differences, so fundamentally similar to the Soviet Union.
Back in the Soviet era, the Olympic Games served as a symbol of the Communist empire’s struggle with a world full of detractors. Olympic triumphs occasioned nationwide jubilation; champions received the highest state honors, such as the Order of Lenin. Promising young athletes were conscripted into the Olympic Reserve: a system of sports schools with a tellingly militaristic name. It was war, and in war all was fair. I’ve been told by friends who were in the Olympic Reserve—the system was vast, and few actually went on to compete internationally—that they were pumped full of steroids starting at an early age.
The 2014 Winter Olympics, in Sochi, were one of Putin’s personal battles in Russia’s ongoing war. On his first day in office following his third Inauguration, in May, 2012, Putin made the time to meet with Jacques Rogge, the president of the I.O.C. at the time. It was the first Kremlin meeting of Putin’s new term. Putin reassured Rogge that, in spite of domestic unrest that had marred his return to the Presidency, the Games would proceed as planned. While the two were talking, police in Moscow were rounding up people whom they suspected of taking part in the protests against rigged elections and corruption—the very protests that Putin was promising Rogge to neutralize. Putin, for his part, was convinced that the protests had been organized by the U.S. State Department. That same day, he also signed a decree directing the Foreign Ministry to increase its vigilance in dealings with the United States and NATO.
Sergei Markov, the head of a Kremlin think tank and the apparent Russian spokesman on the Olympic disaster, has already framed the I.O.C. ban on the Russian team as part of a Western plot to overthrow the Russian government. A few hours after the I.O.C. press conference, Putin announced that he was running for President again, for his fourth official and fifth de-facto term. It would put him in office until at least 2024, for a total of twenty-five years as Russia’s leader. The announcement surprised no one, but it came earlier than expected—it almost looked spontaneous. Perhaps he felt that he had to rouse the troops now, and reminding the country that he is in charge indefinitely would aid the mobilization.
It is hard to imagine a Russian athlete daring to compete under a neutral flag under these circumstances. But such a performance would not, in fact, be unprecedented. Twenty-five years ago, athletes from the former Soviet Union (excepting the three Baltic states) competed in the Winter Games in Albertville and the Summer Games in Barcelona under the Olympic flag, as the Unified Team; the U.S.S.R. had broken up at the end of December, 1991. The athletes wore the same uniform, but each participated as an individual—including in team sports, where individuals from different newly independent countries competed together. They took a total of a hundred and thirty-five medals; in Barcelona, they won more medals than any other team. Back then, it looked like the ultimate victory of hope, solidarity, and sportsmanship over totalitarianism.”
What I learned from this article were two things. First, Maria Alexandrovna Gessen (born in 1967, Moscow, USSR, studied in the (in)famous school №57, emigrated with family in 1981), back in the age when she could still be called “Masha” without much clout of pretentiousness, was indeed feed some “medical” stuff – not here imaginary friends. Second – this is how her “user-pic” at “The New Yorker” looks like:
This how she looks in reality:
There is also been noted the… discrepancy between the chosen “painted” avatars of the now famous brave feminist activists of the so-called GamerGate scandal and how they look in reality:
Coincidence? I don’t think so!
Did she really go to school №57?
That place is (was) for maths whiz kids.
I don’t think Gessen is academically outstanding.
Yes, school №57 is still a specialized maths school.
As of 2016, School 57 is a highly selective school with a competitive admission process — Moscow State School №57.
According to refuseniks they were denied access to such schools. I smell BS.
Menachem Begin’s love child? Or Woody Allen’s stunt double?
“It is hard to imagine a Russian athlete daring to compete under a neutral flag under these circumstances…”
And yet, sadly, I predict that there WILL be some who do.
I hope that I am proved wrong in this prediction.
I agree that’s probably why the government’s position was somewhat nuanced – because it’s unfair for athletes who have trained for years for this moment to have to see it snatched away by power politics and childishness. The rules strictly forbid them from identifying themselves as Russian in any way, or be disqualified, but after winning – if a Russian athlete does – there would be nothing to stop them from advertising it as a victory for Russia. The obvious hope is to humiliate athletes by making them repudiate their nationality in order to compete – but that was the status they sought for ‘whistleblower’ Stepanova, and she was supposed to be proud of it. It means whatever they say it means. But an athlete who honestly thinks he/she has a serious shot at gold should go. If they took away the medal for waving a Russian flag after winning, it would only highlight what cheap and valueless shits they actually are.
Masha just sees another issue that needs the gravitas of a ‘Russia Expert’, and another opportunity to get her name in print. An attack from Masha, for whom a perfect world would be one in which homosexuals were regarded as higher beings visiting from another world, is a compliment.
Speaking to supporters in Florida, Trump said that the United States was a nation that “dug the Panama canal, won two world wars, put a man on the moon and put communism to its knees”.
Russian Senator Pushkov’s response to the above:
In assessing the historical role of the USA, Trump should keep in mind that in the First World War they played an auxiliary role and in the Second World War, without the USSR they would not have defeated Hitler.
See: Пушков напомнил Трампу о реальной роли США в двух мировых войнах
Pushkov reminds Trump of the real role played by the USA during the two World Wars
Wasting his breath when countering Hollywood history.
In any case, as every true Briton is well aware, it was Margaret Thatcher who brought down Communism.
Thatcher wanted to bring down the Russian Federation too………
She was right in the sense that Great Britain was on the same side as Croatia. Tito was a creation of Great Britain as well but that is another story.
And it was Churchill who defeated Hitler!
Glad to see there is at least one person with some common sense here as well as having a penchant for historical accuracy!.
…and General Winter, Radar, code breaking, Nordon bomb sight, Sonar, D-day and all of the other Hollywood fantasies to obscure the fact that the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany and their allies..
You forgot to mention how Bletchley Park developed that “Funniest Joke in the World” secret weapon which caused the German soldiers to die of laughter.
It was either that, or Churchill’s famous “We will meet them on the beaches” speech.
And they don’t even get the Panama Canal, at least not the grandiose way Trump describes, ringing with Yankee can-do. The Panama Canal was started by the French in 1882. The Americans seized control of it in 1904 in the usual American way; by starting a revolution in what was then Colombia and splitting Panama off as a separate country – divide and conquer, baby.
Contact has been made on the western (Kerch) side:
The eastern side is currently on the move (animated GIF):
The most complicated and time consuming task of all is finally being wrapped up, just a week or so to go.
Still on schedule for first traffic in 2018 then?
Since July they’ve been laying the asphalt on the road part of the bridge, which will be opened before the railway part. Last week they were reporting that they were ahead of schedule with the asphalting and it was half-done
Cue Shochi style western propaganda about the most expensive bridge in history. Every accusation by the lunatics in Kiev will be given air time, while any sober accounting of the facts on the ground will be given a pass.
Putin is about to go up for re-election. The “corruption” trope needs to be blared 24/7.
Russia Insider
Published on 9 Dec 2017
SUBSCRIBE 247K
Russian TV Show 60 Minutes on Western Reaction to Putin’s Decision to Run for President
I disagree with the Japanese “philosopher” mentioned at the end. The west and the east are not stone and clay while Russia is sand. The west and the east are societies dominated by conformity, especially the eastern ones. Russians (not including only ethnic Russians) have spat in the face of authority for 1000+ years. That is why Russian governments and monarchies always needed an authoritarian bent. All the theoreticians who think that western democracy is a manifestation of actual freedom are full of hubris-filled BS. The slave who obeys gets little rewards, the slave who resists gets beaten and chained.
Russia is at a critical moment in history. The natural propensity to discount the “regime in power” in favour of some political fads needs to be dialed down. Nobody is coercing Russians to maintain some regime in power. So the current government should not be a target. The real enemy is, for real, outside the borders. It appears that most Russians realize this and are not sucking NATzO cock. But millions are.
Американский F-22 мешал российским Су-25 выполнить задачу в Сирии
9 декабря 2017, 15:40
An American F-22 obstructed Russian Su-25s from carrying out their mission in Syria
An American F-22 fighter prevented a pair of Russian Su-25 attack aircraft from accomplishing their mission in Syria, the Russian Defence Ministry has said.
The incident occurred on November 23 in the sky near Mejadin (a city in the east of Syria in Deir ez Zor Department – Ed.). The US Air Force aircraft simulated an air battle.
“The F-22 aircraft launched heat decoys, raised its air break shield and constantly manoeuvred”, said the official representative of the Russian Defence Ministry, Major-General Igor Konashenkov.
According to him, the Russian aircraft were aiming to destroy an IS (“Islamic State”, banned in Russia) stronghold. The US Air Force fighter actively obstructed the combat mission, Interfax quotes the representative of the Defence Ministry as saying.
“Most of the rapprochement between Russian and American aircraft in the region of the Euphrates River Valley has been associated with attempts by US aircraft to interfere with the destruction of terrorists”, said Igor Konashenkov.
The F-22 “Raptor” fighter is the world’s first fifth generation combat aircraft to come into service. It was first used in Syria in the military operations of the US coalition of 2014: the aeroplane struck at the city of Rakka.
The Su-25 is a subsonic Russian attack aircraft, which has been in service since 1981 and was designed to support ground forces from the air and to strike ground targets around the clock in all weather conditions. It is known by the military nickname “Grach”. [“Rook” — ME]
As reported by iz.ru, over the past week, Russian military aircraft have undertaken about 550 sorties and inflicted more than 1.3 thousand attacks on terrorist group targets in Syria. At the same time, the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces have reported the results of the latest operations of Syrian government troops.
Who thinks they should have tried to shoot the F-22 down? — Not that I think an Su-25 is capable of doing so.
I think I know.
Russia weak?
Stay tuned for a Pentagon denial.
Shhhhh!!! Karl is our gem, the only truly aware being among us. You’ll frighten him away!
Everybody: I just finished writing and posting my 13-part series (egads!) on the Chase/Trotsky research. A project I have been working on for many weeks now.
Here is the link to the final part, and that piece contains within in links to all the other pieces, in case anybody is just starting, and wants to read them all in order.
Of interest to those who are fascinated by Russian (and also American) history of the 1930’s.
It covers the American communist movement of the 1930’s, the Trotsky assassination and lots more.
Guaranteed to give Kirill an embolism, and to send Averko into epileptic seizure.
The hamsters on the social networks are in raptures, claiming that Navalny has succeeded in drawing a massive crowd at Novokuznetsk:
Навальный продолжает портить вове настроение
Новокузнецк
Navalny continues to spoil Vova’s mood
Novokusnetsk
I suspect another well angled photo shot.
And “continues” to upset?
Why?
Has there been a row of previous “massive” turnouts for the bullshitter?
And note: it’s “Vova”, not “Vlad”!
Thousands came, they say?
Another kiddies’ show. He never talks about his policies, just demands an end to corruption (doesn’t everyone?) and talks of “democracy”.
Oh, look!
Antimaidan
Aleksei Navalny continues to hold his several rallies in the cities of Russia. On Saturday, the blogger met with his followers in Novokuznetsk. The meeting was held at the local Hyde Park in the Kuibyshev district. According to the city administration, thousands came to take a look at the touring Moscow guest speaker.
The meeting began with a 15 minute delay. Loyal fans had been waiting for the blogger in a temperature of -10 degrees. Having climbed onto the stage, Navalny urged his followers to vote for him in the upcoming March 2018 presidential election. He has no right to run for president because of a conviction for a serious crime, however, the self-proclaimed candidate is not fazed by this fact. Navalny, in the spirit of traditional populism, has promised this and that to each and everyone and to give money to the people. Some eyewitnesses at the blogger’s speechifying said that his promises resembled the unfulfilled promises made in the early speeches of the leader of the LDPR, Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
Navalny told his fans that the next venue for his tour is Kaliningrad, where he will speak on Sunday.
На встречу с Навальным в Новокузнецке пришла тысяча подписчиков
One thousand supporters came to Navalny’s Nvokyznetsk rally
В городе Новокузнецке (Кемеровская область) прошла встреча Алексея Навального с местными жителями. Об этом сообщили местные средства массовой информации.+
Отмечается, что данное мероприятие проходило в гайд-парке Куйбышевского района. Оппозиционный политик обсуждал будущее страны.
На встречу пришла одна тысяча человек.
In the city of Novokuznetsk (Kemerovo region) Alexey Navalny met local residents. This was reported by local media.
It is noted that this event was held at the Hyde Park of Kuybyshevsky district. The opposition politician discussed the future of the country.
A thousand people came to the meeting.
And now the backlash to the hamsters’ early claims on the social network:
Navalny ridiculed in social networks because of “low turnout” of subscribers at the Novokuznetsk rally
9 Dec 2017
Blogger Aleksei Navalny on Saturday, December 9, held a rally in Novokuznetsk. As written in social networks, only a few hundred people turned up.
Navalny had organized a rally in the Kuibyshev district of the city in Hyde Park. Witnesses and the administration tell us that there came to the weekend rally only the blogger’s subscribers, who were ridiculed in social networks. In Novokuznetsk alone there are resident over 500 thousand people.
Earlier, the media reported that information about those who attended blogger Aleksei Navalny’s rally was put on the network together with their names and surnames, as well as photographs and links to peoples’ social networks.
“Hyde Park”? Where does this come from? Couldn’t the reporter have just said “city park”?
Nah, when the liberals repeatedly demanded that they had the constitutional right to assemble anywhere they wanted (they have not) and regularly refused alternative venues offered by city authorities (this was way back when the “31 Movement” started, named after article 31 [freedom of assembly] of the constitution, whereby they assembled at a major road intersection at Maikovskaya metro station on Tverskaya on the 31st of a month), some suggested that this regular altercation between the city authorities and the liberal protest community could be settled by allocating a place such as is Hyde Park “Speaker’s Corner” in London, where one has the freedom to assemble anytime and talk about whatever one wants (one hasn’t, but no matter).
“Good idea!i” they thought.
In fact, a “Hyde Park” was allocated in Moscow, but the freedom loving liberals still preferred to go where the authorities said they couldn’t so as to get arrested and then Tweet messages from Paddy wagons. It’s what Hamsters like doing.
So that’s why you have the “Hyde Park” areas in some Russian cities.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-09/trump-lashes-out-fake-news-cnn-vicious-and-purposeful-mistake-demands-terminations
Regardless of anything else, at least Trump takes the US fakestream media to the cleaners. All the previous presidents just kissed its ass.
The problem with it is that he does so directly, via Twitter, and so nobody is afraid and people challenge him directly. There is none of the ominous atmosphere of, say, the NSA suddenly commencing an investigation of CNN or something like that. But nobody is really afraid of Trump, because he brings everything down to personal level. They feel confident to say, we’re not firing anybody, and you can stuff your apology. I can’t help wondering what kind of situation he is going to leave for the next president.
Now that the Karl blitzkrieg has passed, my question is simply this:
If Russia has been defeated by the West at every turn, why is Russia incalculably and undeniably much stronger today relative to the West than it was 20 years ago?
You see it, he doesn’t.
Everything is about the relativity of facts.
It’s enough that it hasn’t simply collapsed, considering the west has thrown everything at it that it dares. It can’t sanction the energy exports because too many allies depend on them, and all its other efforts have failed. Even that is a major accomplishment. For Russia to shake off much of its western trade and move on, and still grow, is remarkable. Growth is not much, mind you. La Russophobe would be hear to scream that growth of less than 2% is stagnation, but for two things – one, she’s gone, and two, Project Ukraine is even worse off.
Russia’s GDP growth is limited primarily by the insane management of the CBR. Foisting an over 10% lending rate (8.25% is only for banks, not what banks offer their customers) on the economy is simply criminal:
1) This rate suppresses small business formation and growth. For example small business owners complain that 30% of their prices reflect the CBR insanity. For many small businesses 10% is all they can make in profit. Thanks to the CBR they have to price themselves out of business.
2) The CBR pats itself on the head for suppressing inflation. That is a load of steaming BS since no central bank has full control over inflation. Russia is simply not showing any inflation instability. This is because it is actually growing and not being puffed up with money printing. As per point 1 above, the CBR actually drives up inflation in some instances. The main reason CPI is low is because the economy is being artificially cooled by the CBR. This is not healthy for development. It will cause problems down the road. For example, artificially suppressed inflation has a nasty tendency to come back with a vengeance.
3) The CBR is the primary reason why the Russian banking sector is underdeveloped. This exposes Russia to financial coercion from NATzO. It makes no sense to borrow domestically (e.g. pay over 10% rates instead of less than 4% abroad). We have seen this pattern for a long time. Before Nabiullina it was due to high inflation around 13%, but inflation fell to under 10% and is now under 4%. So the prime rate should be CPI – 2% or 2%. Russian businesses would grow Russian banks into major players overnight since a vast amount of borrowing would migrate back to Russia. This would shield Russia from any coercion on the financial front. I don’t for a moment buy the immunity of Chinese banks from NATzO coercion. So Russian businesses borrowing from Chinese banks is stupid and that is all thanks to the CBR. Another reason why forcing Russian companies to borrow abroad is retarded is that it deprives the Russian government of important tax revenue and stifles diversification of the economy (more accurately budgets) away from oil and gas.