Cultural Imperial posted:

Keep shilling and maybe bunnyofdoom will also fellate you

vyelkin posted:

It's amazing how easily conservatives in the West fall for propaganda, whether produced by their own media or even the media of countries seen as their enemies. Putin's macho man image is a constructed facade to mask his own personal weaknesses because in Russia he's seen as effeminate due to his short stature and high-pitched voice. Hell, most Russians don't even fall for the image of Putin as basically a wrestler, but North American conservatives eat it up. Same with ISIS, their propaganda about how the West and Islam are incompatible and refugees could be terrorists in disguise and they're going to strike in Western capitals until the West invades them wouldn't be out of place on Fox News or the Sun.

THC posted:

They always were duped by the strongman branding and they always secretly liked Putin because of it, but they kept their mouths shut about it while Harper was still around reminding them that Russians are the bad guys. Not so much anymore.

Constant Hamprince posted:

There's an almost complete absence of academic studies on the issue, but anecdotes of corruption on reserves are so widespread that it's difficult to dismiss as just a racist myth.

Cultural Imperial posted:

Keep shilling and maybe bunnyofdoom will also fellate you

Cultural Imperial posted:

faaaaaaaaart

Baronjutter posted:

What's amazing about Putin is that he has a western cult on both sides. There's a lot of low-info "radical left" who love Putin because Putin is an enemy of the west and the west = evil neoliberal colonialism thus putin is good standing up to US and capitalist hegemony!

Ron Paul Atreides posted:

what, really? He's a corporatiste oligarchical authoritarian, he's basically a krystal nacht equivalent from being a full blown Nazi. gently caress me, any 'leftist' praising him should be first against the wall.

Ron Paul Atreides posted:

what, really? He's a corporatiste oligarchical authoritarian, he's basically a krystal nacht equivalent from being a full blown Nazi. gently caress me, any 'leftist' praising him should be first against the wall.

Melian Dialogue posted:

Jesus christ, this is so true. His recent stunt in the Middle East has gotten Putin all of the rage across social media, but its part of their strategic communications strategy (look at Russia Today and the amount of leftist-appealing stories they have, hell I had a Poli Sci professor in University show us a video from RT about some American conspiracy theory about posse comitatus). See, Putin is a "badass" who is actually "doing something" about ISIS (except for the fact that 95% of the bombing runs are targeting non-ISIS groups) while the West's liberal cowards refuse to do anything but send hugs and kisses.

Its one big circle jerk of insecure manchildren who think that by riding a horse shirtless one time and then razing a city to the ground with dozens of strategic bombers dumping dumb bombs for no other reason than to seek "revenge" over the shootings in Paris is somehow "badass"

Baronjutter posted:

Also Ukraine has been taken over by NATO sponsored Fascists so all true leftists and progressives should be cheering on Russia liberating the country.
Putin is really really popular with a lot of old school radical left who think it's still the 60's. Basically all the left wing german political parties and groups for instance are hard core putin/russia apologists for instance. They never of course talk about why russia is good, it's only why the US is bad.

Why do I support putin? Let me tell you about all the civilian deaths the US caused in their illegal war for oil in iraq! Let me rant about neo-liberalism and corporate colonialism! The US is racist! This is why we must support Putin!

I'm not even making poo poo up or exaggerating in any way, huge leftist groups all over the world cheer for or at least bend over backwards to apologize or downplay anything Russia/Putin does. RT plays to these groups really well, constantly running conspiracy theories as news stories, painting Russia as the lone voice on the world stage that can stand up to the neo-liberal conspiracy. They don't even have to say why russia is better, just that the US/West is bad thus the opposing side must be better.

THC posted:

One of my CompSci profs made us watch a Jesse Ventura video

"Pretty out-there but he makes a lot of good points! It's good to hear from all perspectives, just something for you guys to think about~"

cowofwar posted:

People recently like Putin because he took a dump on refugees and told them that Russia doesn't need them etc.

THC posted:

I had some really pretty good profs but that guy was something else. He was obsessed with conspiracy theories, said we shouldn't take climate science seriously because computer models are sometimes bad, claimed to have worked for the JPL and that he once met Ronald Reagan. Entertaining but generally pretty unpleasant.

tagesschau posted:

Why does OPSEU want Patrick Brown to be premier?

http://nupge.ca/content/12389/opseu-condemns-proposed-labour-law-changes-calls-all-unions-fight-back posted:

Merger votes occur when two or more unions represent employees working for a single employer. The employer can make an application to the Ontario Labour Relations Board to have the employees decide which of the competing unions should represent them.

Under the proposed bill, no merger vote would be required if one of the unions already represents more than 60 per cent of the workforce.

Thomas said the proposed change doesn’t take into account the fact that while one union may be able to sign up a majority of workers through an organizing drive, it doesn’t mean that same union enjoys either a superior collective agreement or is better able to enforce the contract.

“In a merger vote, workers should be entitled to judge each union on their own merits,” said the OPSEU President. “Bill 109 rewards one union for having signed up the most members compared to the other union. It doesn’t allow for members to decide for themselves which is the stronger union with respect to negotiating, or enforcing, a good collective agreement. The proposed legislation snatches away that entitlement.”

Coolwhoami posted:

I am 95% confident you are referring to Pearce.

THC posted:

Yeah, him. I had some v good profs though, one of them made us work in a team for the whole semester because being able to communicate and work with others is way more important IRL than "beep boop best algorithm". He strongly encouraged people to take non-STEM electives. The week Jobs died he gave us a big rant about how labour built those products and gets almost no credit (or monetary compensation for that matter)

Ikantski posted:

He's all worked up about Bill 109. I'm with Wynne on this one. You can pick your nose, you can pick your friends but you can't pick your union.

Coolwhoami posted:

Heh. He's changed his mind on the climate change thing, and if you get to know him you learn quickly he likes conspiracy stuff because how far out they can go. Great guy to get beers with.

quote:

Generation Screwed, a nine-hour conference organized by the Canadian Taxpayer Federation intended "to inform and mobilize young Canadians who want to save their economic future." While trudging through Calgary's lovely excuse for a winter on my way to catch an even shittier excuse for public transit, I considered what it might mean to be a member of "Generation Screwed." Perhaps it had to do with the rabid planned obsolescence that denied my phone's battery the ability to simultaneously listen to Grimes and send a text to my mom. Or maybe it referenced the fact that, like most of my friends, I've never held a salaried position longer than a few months. Could Generation Screwed be a shout-out to catastrophic climate change that will very likely destroy any semblance of ordered life by the end of the century? I had to find out.
[...]
Of the 120 or so participants—constituting a sold-out crowd, according to the organizer who strolled around in a red Donald Trump-inspired "Make Alberta Debt-Free Again" ball cap that I absolutely would have bought if it wasn't $20—it seemed that maybe a dozen belonged in the college-aged bracket. Only two of the dozens of white men who asked questions throughout the course of the day were under the age of 30. One of those two was a student who lamented about "liberal garbage" at universities and how he felt he was "going against the grain" and was often degraded and insulted for being a conservative and how he feared that other students of a similar ideological disposition will have their degrees stripped if they don't "toe the line." So at least there was some young talent on the rise for the performance art collective that is the Wildrose Party to tap.

The event's Twitter hashtag, #gscalgary, was used a mere 40 times throughout the day. A lonely three tweets coming from people not directly involved in organizing or speaking or covering it for Ezra Levant's TheRebel.media. The very first older gentleman to ask a question requested a "young person" to fix the mic, which required a switch being turned from "off" to "on." A Mount Royal nursing student Snapchatted my sweater during a break and noted she expected there to be far more young people at the event given its title and supposed mandate. Speakers nevertheless insisted there were "a lot" of young people in the room. The speakers themselves were exclusively white; only three of the 17 were women. The precise demographic of Generation Screwed was thus tricky to define without resorting to obvious phrases like "Aryan" and "ancient" and "penile."

The subject matter was just as uniform. I attempted to keep a count of how many times Ralph Klein's limp carcass was metaphorically circle-jerked, but lost count after a dozen name drops within the opening hour. Debt was almost immediately classified as "immoral and unethical." The province's new climate change policy framework was consistently described as a "cash grab." Rob Breakenridge—a local radio host who very awkwardly made a Wu-Tang reference and paraphrased the subsequent rhyme as "inappropriate language about bodies outlined in chalk"—suggested the NDP have no plan to pay back the debt and that even if interest rates were zero (which they basically are) we'd still be passing on liabilities to our children. This point confused me as I then wasn't sure if the screwed generation was mine or my children, of which I have none and plan to have none. Flanagan reminisced about the good old days when he washed dishes for $0.75 an hour and moved to working in a grocery story for $1.12 an hour although he admitted he was living at home at the time and his father paid most of the bills.
[...]
Such rhetoric largely underscored the essence of the conference: there was no dissent, no desire to understand what or why the opposition believes what they do, no intent to find out if there were potentially other interpretations of what it meant to be a member of screwed generation like incarcerated Indigenous youth or maybe homeless trans teens. Two consecutive speakers later asked everyone who supports oil and gas to raise their hands. All attendees in the room raised their hand, as if the debate over the energy sector's incredibly positive aspects (cheap energy, plentiful jobs) and tremendously harmful aspects (greenhouse gases, rapid inflation) could be reduced to such overtly didactic terms.

After lunch, Fildebrandt—the Wildrose MLA and petulant child of a finance critic—strutted to the stage. He immediately suggested there might be a hidden NDP camera in the crowd while looking in my direction, and pompously stated that he made up the "Make Alberta Debt-Free Again" slogan featured on the red hats and thus deserved royalties, something the crowd seemed to have trouble reading as a joke. He rounded out his rambly anti-NDP sermon by dubbing the government's fiscal approach "voodoo economic theories" and representative of "socialist zeal" and that "it's time for conservatives to stop apologizing for conservatism." I racked my brain for the last time that a conservative apologized for being a conservative.

Baronjutter posted:

What's amazing about Putin is that he has a western cult on both sides. There's a lot of low-info "radical left" who love Putin because Putin is an enemy of the west and the west = evil neoliberal colonialism thus putin is good standing up to US and capitalist hegemony!

Baronjutter posted:

Also Ukraine has been taken over by NATO sponsored Fascists so all true leftists and progressives should be cheering on Russia liberating the country.
Putin is really really popular with a lot of old school radical left who think it's still the 60's. Basically all the left wing german political parties and groups for instance are hard core putin/russia apologists for instance. They never of course talk about why russia is good, it's only why the US is bad.

Why do I support putin? Let me tell you about all the civilian deaths the US caused in their illegal war for oil in iraq! Let me rant about neo-liberalism and corporate colonialism! The US is racist! This is why we must support Putin!

I'm not even making poo poo up or exaggerating in any way, huge leftist groups all over the world cheer for or at least bend over backwards to apologize or downplay anything Russia/Putin does. RT plays to these groups really well, constantly running conspiracy theories as news stories, painting Russia as the lone voice on the world stage that can stand up to the neo-liberal conspiracy. They don't even have to say why russia is better, just that the US/West is bad thus the opposing side must be better.

Count Roland posted:

I know exactly what you mean and deal with it from my parents constantly. On the other hand, a lot of the anti-Russian/Putin sentiment I see is also annoying and excessive. The "US is bad argument" makes sense up until a fine point; if you criticize Russia for action x, then the US doing action x all the time makes them as bad or worse. At least that's how it starts. However there is very rarely any nuance here; in actual discussions its basically either Russia is always right or Russia is always wrong.

Vintersorg posted:

LIVES IN A MANSION FOR FREE..... Harper paid taxes? Apparently he let it all go to hell?

Also, arent tax payers paying his income anyways?

Vintersorg posted:

LIVES IN A MANSION FOR FREE..... Harper paid taxes? Apparently he let it all go to hell?

Also, arent tax payers paying his income anyways?

Constant Hamprince posted:

What I meant is that the government shouldn't impose a change in the system on native peoples (and won't, because it doesn't care). I think the increase in engagement among first nations people that we saw during the latest federal election is a step in the right direction. It's the government's fault that things are the way it is and I don't think it's the victim's 'responsibility' to push for change, but it's something that people need to agitate for if systemic change is going to happen.

quote:

While any abuse or misspending is wrong, with 3,297 First Nation elected officials in Canada, it must be pointed out that this is absolutely not the norm as the CTF would suggest. The vast majority of First Nation elected officials are simply trying to earn a decent standard of living – just like most Canadians – and working very hard in the process. Rather than acknowledge this, the CTF issued its release relying upon the following opening statement:

“The numbers confirm what we’ve been saying all along…Many reserve politicians are paying themselves exorbitant salaries while keeping their band members and taxpayers in the dark.”

And what is an “exorbitant” salary? According to the Government of Canada, the average salary of working Canadians is $46,345. Comparatively, First Nation elected officials earn an average salary of $36,8453
– a discrepancy of almost $10,000.

quote:

In 2002, we looked at the amount of reporting required of First Nations by federal organizations. We estimated that four federal organizations together required about 168 reports annually from each First Nations reserve. We found that many of the reports were unnecessary and were not in fact used by the federal organizations. We followed up on this issue in 2006. At that time, we found that federal departments had made little progress on meeting our recommendations to reduce reporting requirements. In our 2006 follow-up audit, we reported that INAC’s officials told us that the Department obtained more than 60,000 reports a year from over 600 First Nations communities. The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat analyzed the extent of federal involvement with First Nations and confirmed the seriousness of the problem we had identified in 2002.

Coolwhoami posted:

I am 95% confident you are referring to Pearce.

Cultural Imperial posted: