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Rinkles posted:Just me but I don't find these humorous. JK has devalued what was a national disaster into a political farce. It was a tragic event that is now an ongoing comedy/horror show. It is right and good to make fun of this poo poo.
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May 20, 2017 18:18
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Meanwhile in Russia: http://rapsinews.com/news/20170421/278336167.html 
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May 24, 2017 19:02
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Cat Mattress posted:Meanwhile in Russia: Is the accusation about the setting the flag on fire true? Because it sounds like the prosecutors could have just made up the charge so they could throw him in jail.
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May 25, 2017 10:16
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Young Freud posted:Is the accusation about the setting the flag on fire true? Because it sounds like the prosecutors could have just made up the charge so they could throw him in jail. I don't know about the setting on fire part, but the dude is a horrible edgelord. Or maybe he's legitimately mentally ill. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaqvH_tS2wU In this video he says that unlike Russians he loves keeping things clean, so he always wipes his feet before entering his flat. This is one of the tamest videos by him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQBuxo9iCrc In this video he throws a bottle of urine at a war memorial.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uHdGbkh7zI And in this video he kills a rooster with dull scissors. He then calls all Russians animals and shouts 'Death to Russia! Death to Russians! Glory to Ukraine!'. Like, you can say it's some profound performance art, but on the surface it's pretty damning.
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May 25, 2017 10:39
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Zbigniew Brzeziński is dead.
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May 27, 2017 03:49
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Zbigniews if true
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May 27, 2017 07:00
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Brzeziński is dead, the legacy of Operation Cyclone however might just live forever!
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May 27, 2017 08:49
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so that means I can be a cheapskate and post about posting instead of having some wit or spending any more on comedy avs for people. Which I'm also incapable of. Comedy.
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http://www.gallup.com/poll/210866/balkans-harm-yugoslavia-breakup.aspx
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May 27, 2017 11:11
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Serbgrets
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May 27, 2017 11:47
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Serbs were the dominant partner in that union, no wonder they're resentful about being downgraded. What's surprising is Solvenia which I always considered the most pro western out of former Yugoslav states.
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May 28, 2017 09:46
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A Pale Horse posted:Serbs were the dominant partner in that union, no wonder they're resentful about being downgraded. What's surprising is Solvenia which I always considered the most pro western out of former Yugoslav states. It's ironic that if they hadn't followed Milosevic and his dream of a Greater Serbia, they would probably still be in that position.
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May 28, 2017 12:15
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I don't 100% get why the international community thinks it's totally kosher for Kosovo to unilaterally secede because they are an ethnically consistent area with the right to self-determination but the Krajina Serbs in Croatia weren't allowed to because we gotta respect the administrative borders of a sovereign state. Either one of those arguments could have been applied to either of the situations equally and it's just a touch inconsistent. I am not excusing the behavior of some of the Krajina Serbs but the KLA were hardly angels themselves. e: I'm not arguing it shouldn't, we lost that demographics battle a long time ago, I'm legitimately asking because I'd like to hear the reasoning squaring those two things. SaltyJesus fucked around with this message at 12:38 on May 28, 2017 |
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May 28, 2017 12:28
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A Pale Horse posted:Serbs were the dominant partner in that union, no wonder they're resentful about being downgraded. What's surprising is Solvenia which I always considered the most pro western out of former Yugoslav states. I would imagine that it's ostalgia among older people and uncertainty about the future among younger people sprinkled with a large dose of classical slovenian "we're peasants" self-loathing a la Ivan Cankar. The Croatian figures being almost the polar opposite of Serbia are what surprise me considering that they were also ravaged by war due to the breakup. The_Franz fucked around with this message at 17:36 on May 28, 2017 |
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May 28, 2017 17:01
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SaltyJesus posted:I don't 100% get why the international community thinks it's totally kosher for Kosovo to unilaterally secede because they are an ethnically consistent area with the right to self-determination but the Krajina Serbs in Croatia weren't allowed to because we gotta respect the administrative borders of a sovereign state. Either one of those arguments could have been applied to either of the situations equally and it's just a touch inconsistent. I am not excusing the behavior of some of the Krajina Serbs but the KLA were hardly angels themselves.
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May 28, 2017 17:55
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SaltyJesus posted:I don't 100% get why the international community thinks it's totally kosher for Kosovo to unilaterally secede because they are an ethnically consistent area with the right to self-determination but the Krajina Serbs in Croatia weren't allowed to because we gotta respect the administrative borders of a sovereign state. Either one of those arguments could have been applied to either of the situations equally and it's just a touch inconsistent. I am not excusing the behavior of some of the Krajina Serbs but the KLA were hardly angels themselves. True, it's not entirely consistent. However, Kosovo was an autonomous province in Yugoslavia. It had borders, a capital, a constitution, etc. Even its official title contained the word 'autonomous'. Krajina didn't have that in Croatia. It was just a collection of towns and villages with Serbian majority that rebelled and decided overnight that they want to be a sovereign state. The_Franz posted:I would imagine that it's ostalgia among older people and uncertainty about the future among younger people sprinkled with a large dose of classical slovenian "we're peasants" self-loathing a la Ivan Cankar. Croats take pride in the independence war. They defended from an aggression from much stronger forces which committed heinous crimes (this is not to say that there were no war crimes from Croatian side), and they emerged victorious. You think that 23% who think the breakup harmed Croatia is low. If you rephrased the question to say "If you could go back in time and vote again for or against Croatian independence" you'd get an even lower number of people who would try to stay in Yugoslavia. That would mean that they would choose to stay in the same country with people who were ready to kill them.
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May 28, 2017 18:09
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A Buttery Pastry posted:It's because the Serbs were/are the bad guys - though depending on the history of a region, one could argue against self-determination if an "ethnically consistent area" is the result of a deliberate policy to expand the range of that ethnicity. (To counteract the clear moral hazard if you accept the results of ethnic cleansing/colonization.) Well, if anything, Kosovo only became majority Albanian by settlement in the late 17th century following Ottoman reprisals and Serbs fleeing en masse after we sided with the Austrians in a huge Austrian-Turkish conflict. Before then it is well attested by both medieval Serbian censuses and later Ottoman censuses (which didn't have any particular reason to be biased in favor of the Serbs) that the population of Kosovo was overwhelmingly Serbian. Most of the toponyms are of Serbian origin, up to and including the name of the country. The name Kosovo can only properly be understood as part of the name "Kosovo Polje" ie. "Blackbird's Field" from the Serbian word Kos, as far as I am aware it doesn't have any meaning in Albanian. Coincidentally many of those Serbs who fled Kosovo in the late 17th century would settle in the Austrian Military Frontier some parts of which would, a few centuries later, become the Serbian Krajina in Croatia. Doctor Malaver posted:True, it's not entirely consistent. However, Kosovo was an autonomous province in Yugoslavia. It had borders, a capital, a constitution, etc. Even its official title contained the word 'autonomous'. Krajina didn't have that in Croatia. It was just a collection of towns and villages with Serbian majority that rebelled and decided overnight that they want to be a sovereign state. I see what you're saying but this is a kind of legalistic hand-waving. Should we deny other places that aspire to autonomy or independence as a rule just because they hadn't had official recognition from the state they are in so far? On the other hand, to play the devil's advocate, Kosovo was only granted autonomy in mid to late 20th century guided in large part by the idea of "weak Serbia, strong Yugoslavia" (which I'm not disputing, the capital of Yugoslavia should've been in Sarajevo), which is the main reason why only Serbia had two autonomous provinces while some of the other republics also had provinces with significant histories and ethnic minorities but none of them autonomous. SaltyJesus fucked around with this message at 20:08 on May 28, 2017 |
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May 28, 2017 19:56
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I'm sorry for making the discussion a bit heavy, let's lighten the mood somewhat. From the frontpage of r/Europe today, Serbian and Croatian soldiers in Somalia.
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May 28, 2017 20:36
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SaltyJesus posted:I'm sorry for making the discussion a bit heavy, let's lighten the mood somewhat. From the frontpage of r/Europe today, Serbian and Croatian soldiers in Somalia. The left one has a prettier heraldry, I mean checkerboard looks really tame and not even the fun little heraldic mini flags can make it cool. Also, tricolors are the death of interesting flag designs, glad you at least got some bling on yours.
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May 28, 2017 22:01
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Some certain politicians in Estonia still coddle Russian schools. And every year majority of the immigrants come from Ukraine and Russia. At this rate, this is just making the problem with integration worse . It's ironic that certain nationalist groups make a big deal out of some mere twenty Arab refugees instead.
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May 29, 2017 08:42
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SaltyJesus posted:I see what you're saying but this is a kind of legalistic hand-waving. Should we deny other places that aspire to autonomy or independence as a rule just because they hadn't had official recognition from the state they are in so far? On the other hand, to play the devil's advocate, Kosovo was only granted autonomy in mid to late 20th century guided in large part by the idea of "weak Serbia, strong Yugoslavia" (which I'm not disputing, the capital of Yugoslavia should've been in Sarajevo), which is the main reason why only Serbia had two autonomous provinces while some of the other republics also had provinces with significant histories and ethnic minorities but none of them autonomous. Serbia with those two provinces was 9.5 million people. Without them, it was still over 6 million. All other republics were under 5 million. It kind of makes sense even for administrative reasons to divide the biggest and most populous republic. I don't know whether provinces made Serbia weaker, that probably changed during various periods. In the Milosevic era I remember the opposite argument, that provinces make Serbia stronger by giving it two additional votes in the council, while being denied any relevant autonomy. I'm not an expert on self-determination and I don't feel like researching provinces' constitutions but I would say that pre-existing legal and administrative structures do help a push for total autonomy. Of course it wouldn't matter at all if it weren't for the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. It's a widely accepted fact that allowing Kosovo independence was a way for US and Europe to punish Serbia and make it weaker.
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May 29, 2017 09:41
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Doctor Malaver posted:Serbia with those two provinces was 9.5 million people. Without them, it was still over 6 million. All other republics were under 5 million. It kind of makes sense even for administrative reasons to divide the biggest and most populous republic. I don't know whether provinces made Serbia weaker, that probably changed during various periods. In the Milosevic era I remember the opposite argument, that provinces make Serbia stronger by giving it two additional votes in the council, while being denied any relevant autonomy. Fair points and I do genuinely appreciate having a civil discussion on this topic. The two additional votes thing makes sense but Milosevic's people actively worked on abolishing those autonomies because they were seen as intentionally fracturing the state so they must not have seen the votes as central (why vote when you could try to take  )
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May 29, 2017 18:03
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Zudgemud posted:The left one has a prettier heraldry, I mean checkerboard looks really tame and not even the fun little heraldic mini flags can make it cool. Also, tricolors are the death of interesting flag designs, glad you at least got some bling on yours.
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May 31, 2017 01:17
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SaltyJesus posted:Well, if anything, Kosovo only became majority Albanian by settlement in the late 17th century following Ott Not wanting to step in this thing you guys got going here but really... Romans ruled my country for 600 years, moors for 600 years after that and we've been fighting the spanish pretty much non stop for the last 900 years. Personally anything older than 20th century isn't even worthy of consideration other than as an historic curiosity. If we start going back centuries then there's "no alternative" other than killing each other until the sun swallows us all. From the perspective of people over here it looked like Serbia was gearing up to turn Kosovo into a new Bosnia and everybody was sick and tired of images of slaughter in Europe. Milosevic seemed determined to save face after the previous disaster or whatever the gently caress he was thinking and rather than let it play out for another decade NATO finally put an end to the war. I don't hold Serbia particularly guilty for the things that happened in the war but at that point I just wanted the whole thing to stop once and for all. I opposed almost all western/NATO interventions in the last 30 years but I was actually glad NATO stepped in. Again I reiterate I have no especially ill feeling for Serbia, if it had been Croatia or whatever I'd have been in favor or grinding them down. I know this is a grotesque oversimplification and I don't have an answer for what Serbia should have done when the KLA started blowing poo poo up but the thing is that by that point no one cared "who was to blame" anymore. Regardless of how civil wars start and who's to blame after a while there are no good guys, all sides do atrocious things. The public over here just wanted an end to the images that had filled our TV screens for the last decade.
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May 31, 2017 01:35
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Grouchio posted:*Cough* POLAND *Cough* Two heads = twice as good. It's simple math, really. MeLKoR posted:If we start going back centuries then there's "no alternative" other than killing each other until the sun swallows us all. This is Europe, man, it's what we do. :v: MeLKoR posted:I don't hold Serbia particularly guilty for the things that happened in the war but at that point I just wanted the whole thing to stop once and for all. I opposed almost all western/NATO interventions in the last 30 years but I was actually glad NATO stepped in. Again I reiterate I have no especially ill feeling for Serbia, if it had been Croatia or whatever I'd have been in favor or grinding them down. I know this is a grotesque oversimplification and I don't have an answer for what Serbia should have done when the KLA started blowing poo poo up but the thing is that by that point no one cared "who was to blame" anymore. Regardless of how civil wars start and who's to blame after a while there are no good guys, all sides do atrocious things. The public over here just wanted an end to the images that had filled our TV screens for the last decade. Even if only the 20th century counts tons of Serbs from Kosovo who were displaced during WW2 in a premeditated campaign of "adjusting" the ethnic situation weren't allowed to return to their homes after the war because the gov't wanted to settle them in Vojvodina to solidify that region I guess. So it's not just ancient history, I simply picked a point to show how "recent" the current situation is and skipped over several rounds of back and forth ethnic cleansings since then. Barring that, the NATO intervention was a clusterfuck, from mostly successfully bombing just the civilian areas and killing plenty of civilians (with the lowest estimate of civilian deaths being 50% as many as military deaths lol) while doing only limited damage to Serbian armed forces to essentially picking a side in the ethnic cleansing as towns like Prizren went from 10,000 Serbs recorded by the 1991 census to about 20 today and the Kosovo Serb population reduced by six figgies overall. e: but that's kind of besides the point, I'll grant you that that's an understandable reaction in the heated moment but it's been almost two decades since and much of the speechifying hasn't changed from the 90s SaltyJesus fucked around with this message at 06:44 on May 31, 2017 |
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May 31, 2017 06:01
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SaltyJesus posted:e: but that's kind of besides the point, I'll grant you that that's an understandable reaction in the heated moment but it's been almost two decades since and much of the speechifying hasn't changed from the 90s I was lucky enough to be born far far away, I reiterate that I don't have answers to how Serbia should have dealt with the issue once the ball got rolling but god drat... did no one in the Balkans ever hear of "sunk cost"? Would Serbia be better off today if it held on to Kosovo and prolonged the war for yet another decade until it eventually ended in a stalemate? From a distance it just looked like an excellent prop for Milosevic to remain in power, fighting the good fight. Do you envision any scenario were Serbia could come out of that situation on top? Seems to me the war would keep escalating until a stalemate was reached that made all the the deaths in the meanwhile a complete waste. I just don't see how the issue could be settled in Serbia's favor unless it went hogwild on ethnic cleansing. It's true that I wasn't born there and feel no emotional attachment to the land but loving hell if my country had gone through what yours did and someone then said "the spanish are trying to take the birthplace of Viriathus now" my immediate reaction would be "I hope they loving choke on it", definitely not "really? sign me up for another decade of misery and murder then!" I guess the only good thing that came out of fighting a colonial war in the African jungles for over a decade, trying to hold on to an empire 10 times the size of the motherland is that every portuguese became incredibly cynical about dictators/politicians telling us "we must kill and die to protect the land of our glorious ancestors". All we got from that war was a ruined economy, tens of thousands of dead, over one million refugees (10% of the population) when we finally were forced to acknowledge that we couldn't ever win the war and guilt for all the atrocities we committed foolishly pursuing an impossible goal. Well in the end it was the thing that caused people to finally revolt against the dictatorship after nearly 50 years but other than that it was a complete waste of time, money and lives. Nowadays the only thing that might get people riled up would be spanish tanks rolling straight into Lisbon and even then we'd probably try to settle it with a football match or something. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moSFlvxnbgk MeLKoR fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Jun 1, 2017 |
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Jun 1, 2017 01:50
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That's why in my first post I said "I'm not arguing it shouldn't [be independent now], we lost that demographics battle a long time ago", I was mostly just asking why those two situations were treated so differently. If anything I'm not asking why people were for Kosovo's independence, I was asking why the same benefit of the doubt want given to the somewhat analogous Krajina rebellion (that story is pretty much over too). If we're making Iberian parallels tho it would be more like non-Catalans of western Valencia demanding to stay with the rest of Spain if an independent Països Catalans were to form along current administrative borders for Krajina, and the Basques demographically claiming Castilla la Vieja and Leon were always rightful Basque clay for Kosovo. Though even so a bunch of context is missing.
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Jun 1, 2017 06:13
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Look, just get everyone to join the European Union and then the question of who owns which clay becomes irrelevant, a mere question of administrative divisions of the land.
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Jun 1, 2017 11:25
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Cat Mattress posted:Look, just get everyone to join the European Union and then the question of who owns which clay becomes irrelevant, a mere question of administrative divisions of the land. Once you join the EU then Germany owns the clay, just as the PIGS or our right wing media.
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Jun 1, 2017 13:19
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Cat Mattress posted:Look, just get everyone to join the European Union and then the question of who owns which clay becomes irrelevant, a mere question of administrative divisions of the land.
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Jun 1, 2017 15:54
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https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/870610224947884032 https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/870610947626463232 Juicero, but for failing petrostate
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Jun 2, 2017 14:58
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fatherboxx posted:https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/870610224947884032
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Jun 2, 2017 17:51
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Grouchio posted:An influx of technical know-how from the US did not improve the living standards of Latin American countries; it instead made them more subject to US policies. Technology alone can't solve Russia's corruption/fiscal problems comrade. I agree, bring back the
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Jun 2, 2017 18:41
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Cat Mattress posted:Look, just get everyone to join the European Union and then the question of who owns which clay becomes irrelevant, a mere question of administrative divisions of the land.
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Jun 2, 2017 20:21
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SaltyJesus posted:I agree, bring back the Joke's on you, Russia never stopped gulags.
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Jun 2, 2017 21:43
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I just got an email from Liberland saying that there are now some houseboats for rent along the shore! Likewise, the Croatian border police are relenting and allowing boats through. Also a netflix documentary on the way The bad news: quote:You have collected 0 merits so far. Those who collected more than 5000 merits by donation or other efforts helping our cause will be eligible for citizenship. Thank you for your support and if you would like to help us realize our vision of a truly free country, please do so here. ass struggle fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Jun 2, 2017 |
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Jun 2, 2017 22:08
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What's the btc-merit exchange rate?
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Jun 2, 2017 22:09
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Tevery Best posted:Joke's on you, Russia never stopped gulags. Great, won't have to waste any time getting them into gear.
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Jun 2, 2017 22:42
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Extremely stupendous things happened in Estonia today. In Tallinn we've had this case of corruption where one of the deputy mayors arranged to have a company indirectly owned by him get a contract for waste disposal in one of the districts. So it went on for a bit, but they were inept at it (only cases such as trash not getting picked up on 7 times out of 9, or trash being taken away in some open-top truck and). Also that scheme was exposed so now there's an ongoing investigation while the contract was terminated and said deputy mayor fired. Of course this is still not over with. Then we also have this 'municipal police' that deals with all the parking fines and fare dodgers on public transport. Also "keeping order" at election events for the ruling party (the same one that created them), ribbon cutting and all that. New dog walking park? Better go cut a ribbon! But I digress. Since the trash is still not being taken away, some folks decided today to dump their trash bags in front of the city council building. Somebody in that municipal police decided to call the actual police regarding "suspicious bags without an owner", and that automatically meant bomb robot, demolition experts and all that it includes - including stopping the traffic on one of the main routes at 5 in the evening on a Friday. Not only cars but also public transport. : DDDD The rescue services later tweeted that the municipal police would have saved a lot of money and people's nerves if they had just taken the trash away.
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Jun 2, 2017 23:14
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Grouchio posted:An influx of technical know-how from the US did not improve the living standards of Latin American countries; it instead made them more subject to US policies. Technology alone can't solve Russia's corruption/fiscal problems comrade. I think this is the first time I've seen Grouchio post something that isn't an essay question.
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Jun 3, 2017 00:13
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Grouchio posted:An influx of technical know-how from the US did not improve the living standards of Latin American countries; it instead made them more subject to US policies. Technology alone can't solve Russia's corruption/fiscal problems comrade. Could your elaborate on this for about 8 pages, size 12 TNR, and provide a bibliography?
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