CanPol Megathread: Big Changus

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > CanPol Megathread: Big Changus

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

my morning jackass posted:

I wouldn�t say she got a pass, it�s just that the news cycle moved on from the issue that was really not a huge deal relatively speaking. It wasn�t like she directly was involved in nazi sympathizing and said all the right things afterward so unless she was going to resign why kick the dead horse?

Yeah it's not like she was directly involved in Nazi sympathizing, she only did innocuous things like describe in one of her books people whom she knew were Nazi collaborators as "political exiles with a responsibility to keep alive the idea of an independent Ukraine" and described them as her inspiration for entering politics.

And when confronted about it she said all the right things like "I don't think it's a secret. American officials have publicly said, and even Angela Merkel has publicly said, that there were efforts on the Russian side to destabilize Western democracies, and I think it shouldn't come as a surprise if these same efforts were used against Canada."

What a dead horse that's not worth investigating.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 20:05

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 02:06

my morning jackass: Aug 24, 2009

lowly abject turd posted:

again actual ongoing armed conflict in Ukraine vs a largely dormant Khalistani independence movement. I don't know how it's possible to treat this as the media just spontaneously moving on from freeland(driven by the invisible hand maybe) while each story about singh goes back further and further in time in search of increasingly tenuous connections to something is supposed to be what

edit: phone turned Khalistan to Tajikistan

I don�t like Freeland or this govt but where does that story really go from here? It�s not like she is chilling with Ukrainian neonazis personally and there isn�t more to really unwrap from that story. It�s probably something that a minister may have been expected to resign from in the past but that standard clearly doesn�t apply anymore. Weird anti Russian sentiment in the general public also helped deflect that quite a bit I think.

Singh is running for PM and people are interested in him. There isn�t much else about him to talk about right now since he doesn�t seem to have any strong policy proposals on the table and he doesn�t even have a seat in parliament.

He and the party had to see this coming and they are doing a lovely job managing it. Most Canadians don�t give a poo poo about Khalistani independence because they don�t even know what it is so you think it would be easy for them to move past this issue but clearly not.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 20:24

EvidenceBasedQuack: Aug 15, 2015; A rock has no detectable opinion about gravity

Can someone post a source where Jagmeet Singh is shilling for Khalistani independence terrorists because I suck at the Google?

# ? Mar 15, 2018 20:33

my morning jackass: Aug 24, 2009

I�m not saying that the right wing media aren�t leaning into him hard and overstating this issue. I just think that saying it�s cause of his race is weird. Why would white Canadians care about this issue?

# ? Mar 15, 2018 20:36

infernal machines: Oct 11, 2012; we monitor many frequencies. we listen always. came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. it played us a mighty dub.

He's not able to "move past" it, because the racist press is insisting on making it an issue, whereas they did not when it was about a sitting minister venerating Nazi collaborators.

No matter how many time Sing denies affiliation or unequivocally states that terrorism is unacceptable it will continue to be an "issue" because it's bullshit gotcha hack journalism.

my morning jackass posted:

I�m not saying that the right wing media aren�t leaning into him hard and overstating this issue. I just think that saying it�s cause of his race is weird. Why would white Canadians care about this issue?

They don't, they care that the brown guy with a turban can be associated with terrorism and is therefore bad and it's totally cool that they hate him and only for that reason.

They can't say they don't like him because he's Sikh or has brown skin, but they can say they don't like him because someone somewhere insinuated that he was connected to an extremist organization they've never heard of.

infernal machines fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Mar 15, 2018

# ? Mar 15, 2018 20:37

Baronjutter: Dec 31, 2007; "Tiny Trains"

Regarding Ukraine there are only two possible options with no allowance for nuance or historical context:
-10,000 Ukrainians deserved to die and the country carved up because some anti-russian neo-nazi groups exist in Ukraine, why they grew in popularity after a russian invasion is a mystery but the fact that they did justifies it all. Besides, Russia is surrounded and entitled to buffer states as a great power.
or
-Ukraine has been brutally oppressed by Russians for thousands of years, holodomor actually killed 6 trillion Ukrainians and only Ukrainians, the only bad thing the nazi's did was not kill every last russian speaking person on earth. The nazi SS were fighting for Ukraine's freedom. Once freed from Russians and ((SOROS)) Ukraine will be strong!

# ? Mar 15, 2018 20:38

Femtosecond: Aug 2, 2003

Boiling this issue down it seems like Singh has been spending a lot of time at events with the Sikh equivalent of truthers that think Bush did 9/11. If he doesn�t want to get roasted when someone brings this up at a debate in 2019 he should probably clarify that yes he does think that the dude who we know planned the Air India bombing did indeed plan the Air India bombing.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:06

my morning jackass: Aug 24, 2009

infernal machines posted:

He's not able to "move past" it, because the racist press is insisting on making it an issue, whereas they did not when it was about a sitting minister venerating Nazi collaborators.

No matter how many time Sing denies affiliation or unequivocally states that terrorism is unacceptable it will continue to be an "issue" because it's bullshit gotcha hack journalism.

They don't, they care that the brown guy with a turban can be associated with terrorism and is therefore bad and it's totally cool that they hate him and only for that reason.

They can't say they don't like him because he's Sikh or has brown skin, but they can say they don't like him because someone somewhere insinuated that he was connected to an extremist organization they've never heard of.

I think �everyone is racist� is kind of a lovely excuse, even if there may be truth to it. I think Singh and the party could have anticipated this would happen and handled it way better.

Maybe if he wasn�t a boring Champagne socialist leading a party in the midst of an identity crisis they could reframe the discussion around substantive issues that actually would speak to the interests of Canadians but here we are.

Femtosecond posted:

Boiling this issue down it seems like Singh has been spending a lot of time at events with the Sikh equivalent of truthers that think Bush did 9/11. If he doesn�t want to get roasted when someone brings this up at a debate in 2019 he should probably clarify that yes he does think that the dude who we know planned the Air India bombing did indeed plan the Air India bombing.

Exactly. If he can�t handle this supposedly non-issue now how the gently caress will he manage to get through a campaign?

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:19

HackensackBackpack: Aug 20, 2007; Who needs a house out in Hackensack? Is that all you get for your money?

EvidenceBasedQuack posted:

Can someone post a source where Jagmeet Singh is shilling for Khalistani independence terrorists because I suck at the Google?

That's the thing, by all accounts he's not he's just been seen hanging out near ~~some of them~~ pictures of some of them and is not denouncing them hard enough, according to the Canadian media.

He can swear up and down that he denounces terrorism, but the present goalposts are at specifically denouncing specific individuals, by name, such as Talwinder Singh Parmar, the named-but-never-convicted mastermind behind the Air India bombing, and Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who opposed Indira Gandhi and was killed during the attack on the Golden Temple in 1984. Both men have been called terrorists.

HackensackBackpack fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Mar 15, 2018

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:27

infernal machines: Oct 11, 2012; we monitor many frequencies. we listen always. came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. it played us a mighty dub.

Yes, the federal NDP could have anticipated race-baiting bullshit because it's exactly what sunk them in the last election.

So it goes.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:28

EvidenceBasedQuack: Aug 15, 2015; A rock has no detectable opinion about gravity

Leofish posted:

That's the thing

We're in agreement. I should have used a sarcastic emote

I usually am a fan of Robyn Urback's snark but today's op-ed felt lazy for reasons discussed here.

Curious to see what kind of twitter followers she has, I stumbled on this glorious tweet by thread favorite JBP:

https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/974165076230811649?s=19

He's literally defending Lauren Southern. #notaracist

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:31

infernal machines: Oct 11, 2012; we monitor many frequencies. we listen always. came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. it played us a mighty dub.

Law abiding.

Except, you know, those laws about hate speech. Which coincidentally, are by her own admission, why she was denied entry.

So even your hypothetical ISIS jihadis are evidently smart enough not to tell customs officials they're there to foment racial hatred.

infernal machines fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Mar 15, 2018

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:33

PT6A: Jan 5, 2006; Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

EvidenceBasedQuack posted:

We're in agreement. I should have used a sarcastic emote

I usually am a fan of Robyn Urback's snark but today's op-ed felt lazy for reasons discussed here.

Curious to see what kind of twitter followers she has, I stumbled on this glorious tweet by thread favorite JBP:

https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/974165076230811649?s=19

He's literally defending Lauren Southern. #notaracist

Where's that loving nazi apologist who claimed Peterson wasn't a nazi and therefore defending him isn't nazi apologia? I want to tell him to go gently caress himself.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:35

Helsing: Aug 23, 2003; DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU JOE BIDEN

my morning jackass posted:

I don�t like Freeland or this govt but where does that story really go from here? It�s not like she is chilling with Ukrainian neonazis personally and there isn�t more to really unwrap from that story. It�s probably something that a minister may have been expected to resign from in the past but that standard clearly doesn�t apply anymore. Weird anti Russian sentiment in the general public also helped deflect that quite a bit I think.

Singh is running for PM and people are interested in him. There isn�t much else about him to talk about right now since he doesn�t seem to have any strong policy proposals on the table and he doesn�t even have a seat in parliament.

He and the party had to see this coming and they are doing a lovely job managing it. Most Canadians don�t give a poo poo about Khalistani independence because they don�t even know what it is so you think it would be easy for them to move past this issue but clearly not.

Freeland is our foreign minister. She's overseeing our foreign relations with Ukraine, which is currently embroiled in a civil war, and right now Canada is sending millions of dollars of aid to Ukraine and working to bolster its military:

CBC posted:

Canada is officially extending its military training mission in Ukraine until the end of March 2019, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announced Monday in Ottawa.

"The purpose of the UNIFIER operation is to support Ukraine forces by providing military instruction and capacity building in order to maintain the sovereignty of Ukraine," Freeland told reporters.

"Ukraine is a very important partner to Canada and we will continue to support its efforts for democracy and economic growth," she added.

Freeland said that Canada's mission in Ukraine has seen the forces of both countries work together in a professional way that has helped improve their respective militaries.

Meanwhile there are links between neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine like the Azov Battalion and ministers of the current Ukrainian government that Freeland's ministry is providing assistance toward:

The Guardian posted:

Ukraine's National Militia: 'We're not neo-Nazis, we just want to make our country better'

Ultranationalist group with neo-Nazi links says it has been driven to action by �impotent� police

Just past midnight in a snow-covered forest near Kiev, four men dressed in black with truncheons strapped to their waists listen carefully for the telltale buzzing of chainsaws that belong to illegal loggers. �The police in our country are ineffective, corrupt or drunk,� says Zhenya, one of the men. �That�s why we have to deal with this problem ourselves.�

These woodland vigilantes, all in their early to mid-twenties, are not your typical environmental activists. They are members of the National Militia, an ultranationalist organisation closely linked to Ukraine�s Azov movement, a far-right group with a military wing that contains openly neo-Nazi members, and its political spin-off, the National Corpus party.

�There�s nothing inherently wrong with national socialism as a political idea,� says Alexei, another militia member, as the men move stealthily through moonlit trees frosted with ice. �I don�t know why everyone always associates it immediately with concentration camps.�

Besides illegal logging, the National Militia says it aims to crack down on street crime, drug dealing and public alcoholism. �There are many of us. We are not scared to use force to establish a Ukrainian order,� it said in a recent statement.

On 29 January, hooded militia members turned up at a municipal council meeting in Cherkasy, in central Ukraine, and reportedly refused to let officials leave the building until they had approved the city�s long-delayed budget.

The National Militia says its members are all volunteers, and that expenses are covered by businesses and individuals sympathetic to its activities.

National Militia members include veterans of Ukraine�s four-year war against Russian-led separatists, as well as former football hooligans who took part in Ukraine�s 2013-14 revolution. Some are �straight edge� fitness fanatics who neither drink nor smoke. Many have no memory of life in the Soviet Union, having grown up in independent Ukraine, where trust in law enforcement agencies remains low despite recent police reforms.

�The police reforms were like pouring chocolate on poo poo,� said Alexei, after he and his fellow militia members had abandoned their unsuccessful search for illegal loggers. �It�s still poo poo, you know?�

Although the National Militia has been operating for a year, even conducting street patrols in towns and cities under Ukrainian government control, the group entered the spotlight late last month when about 600 of its members marched through central Kiev. Some wore camouflage gear, while others dressed in black with balaclavas covering their faces. This provocative show of strength culminated at a torch-illuminated fortress, where militia members swore oaths of allegiance to Andriy Biletsky, an ultranationalist MP who heads the National Corpus party.

�When the authorities are impotent and cannot solve issues of vital importance for society, then simple, ordinary people are forced to take responsibility upon themselves,� Biletsky told Ukrainian media.

Biletsky has toned down his rhetoric in recent years, but the former Azov battalion commander declared in 2010 that the Ukrainian nation�s mission was to �lead the white races of the world in a final crusade � against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans]�.

While Ukrainian law allows unarmed civilian organisations to assist law enforcement agencies, for many observers the ceremony in Kiev was reminiscent of 1930s Germany and kindled fears that Ukraine�s shaky democracy was in danger of being hijacked by an increasingly confident far right. National Corpus and other far-right parties are polling at less than 5%, but analysts say they could exploit Ukraine�s economic and social instability to boost their electoral chances.

�We are concerned about rising nationalism in Ukraine and the government�s seeming unwillingness to rein it in. Ukraine�s international donors and supporters should be very worried,� said Tanya Cooper, Ukraine researcher for Human Rights Watch.

National Militia officials says the concerns are unwarranted. �If the world is worried about the threat of Ukrainian neo-Nazism, I can assure you we are not neo-Nazis; we are simply people who want to change our country for the better,� said Ihor Vdovin, a spokesman for the National Militia. �We don�t want to establish some kind of white order.�

Vdovin said, however, that he could not answer for members of the militia who espouse white supremacist or neo-Nazis views.

�People got frightened when they saw how organised and disciplined the march in Kiev was,� said Stepan Holovko, a high-ranking member of National Corpus. �But why should we apologise for the fact that our people can carry out the tasks they�ve been set?�

Azov and National Corpus have been linked to Arsen Avakov, the Ukrainian interior minister who is seen as a possible successor to Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine�s unpopular president. Avakov has quelled speculation that the National Militia is his own private army, saying he would not allow �parallel structures� to challenge the authority of the police.

Vyacheslav Likhachev, head of the National Minority Rights Monitoring Group, suggested that the militia�s activities were aimed at making National Corpus stand out from rival ultranationalist parties ahead of next year�s parliamentary elections. �They are trying to prove that they have more hardcore activists they can mobilise on a street level.�

Here's an article with more details on interior minister Arsen Avakov. Note how a former fighter in the explicity fascist Azov battalion was promoted to acting police chief

The Nation posted:

It should be a priority for the incoming Donald Trump administration to reexamine America�s role in the Ukraine crisis. Over the past year, Washington has focused solely on Kiev�s failure to tackle Ukraine�s endemic corruption, while ignoring another fundamental obstacle to Ukraine�s democracy: the country�s far-right forces.

In Ukraine today, power is split between Kiev and heavily armed ultranationalist battalions, which have a long record of not only clashing with Kiev but also defying the will of the EU and Washington.

The ultranationalists� influence via a policy of veto-through-violence is best exemplified by their continued derailment of the Minsk Accords, the agreement for settling the conflict in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. Minsk is also the key to lifting the anti-Russian sanctions that are hurting European economies and fomenting resentment in countries like France and Italy. It�s no surprise that Paris, Berlin, and the UN have repeatedly stressed that Minsk remains the only solution to the Ukraine conflict. For Ukraine�s far right, however, the accords�which require Kiev to grant Donbass special status, including the right to use the Russian language�are anathema. Accordingly, whenever the West nudges Ukraine to fulfill its Minsk obligations, the far right steps in, often with violence.

In July of 2015, the US State Department took extraordinary pains in urging Kiev to implement the special-status law required by Minsk: Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland flew to Kiev and, together with then-Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, watched as the parliament introduced the bill. A month afterward, during the first reading, ultranationalists killed four guardsmen and injured over 100 others in a grenade attack outside the parliament building; the special status law has remained in legislative limbo ever since.

Nearly a year after, leaders of France and Germany, whose economies have suffered as a result of Minsk-related sanctions, attempted to breathe life into the peace process by telling Kiev to conduct elections in Donbass (another provision in the road map). This time, the far right didn�t wait for a vote. Andriy Biletsky, the commander of the 3,000-strong Azov Battalion, publicly warned that his forces will remove the entire parliament if it allows the elections to take place, as 10,000 men marched through the capital to underscore the threat. Needless to say, the election provision wasn�t brought to a vote.

In addition to stymieing the Ukraine peace process and resolution of EU-Russia sanctions, the far right has flouted the rule of law, fostered instability, and undermined basic democratic institutions within Ukraine. Gangs tied to the Azov, Aidar, Right Sector, and Tornado battalions have had gun battles with police, intimidated court proceedings, overturned local elections, torched media buildings, attacked undesirable Soviet monuments, violently threatened journalists, and overtly spoken of overthrowing the government.

It is difficult to imagine any stable administration tolerating three years of such brazen challenges to its monopoly over the use of force, yet nearly all of the far right�s actions have gone unpunished.

One reason behind Kiev�s inability and unwillingness to rein in the battalions is because they remain the fiercest, most battle-hardened units in the armed forces; it�s hard to send in the National Guard to restore order when the National Guard itself consists of ultranationalist formations. An equally disturbing reason is that Ukraine�s far right enjoys the support of two extraordinarily powerful politicians: Parliament Speaker Andriy Parubiy and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.

Both men played a critical role in harnessing neo-Nazi street muscle during the winter 2013�14 Maidan uprising that resulted in the ouster of corrupt, albeit democratically elected, president Viktor Yanukovych. Parubiy�s ties with the far right go back decades: He co-founded and led the Social-National Party of Ukraine, which used neo-Nazi symbols and whose name, according to Der Spiegel, is an intentional reference to the Nazi Party.

Although Parubiy has not been formally affiliated with far-right organizations since the early 2000s, he has spoken fondly of his past; when prodded to repudiate his background in a 2015 interview, he insisted that his �values� have not changed. Parubiy�s history served him well: He was responsible for organizing ultranationalists into Maidan �self-defense� units that made Yanukovych�s overthrow possible, and assured Parubiy a prominent role in the new government. (The information that the man spent over a decade leading neo-fascist organizations was conspicuously absent from press releases during his 2015 and 2016 visits to meet with members of Congress and Washington think tanks.)

Avakov, in turn, developed Maidan�s �self-defense� formations into heavily equipped paramilitary units that fought in Donbass as well as brutally suppressed any hint of secession in Russian-speaking cities that had not yet fallen to the rebels. In the process, these units amassed a horrific record of rape, torture, kidnapping, murder, and possible war crimes, as attested by numerous Amnesty International and United Nations reports.

After becoming interior minister, Avakov has promoted figures such as a veteran of the neo-Nazi group Patriot of Ukraine and the Azov Battalion who recently became acting chief over Ukraine�s National Police. The National Police�which was funded, equipped, and trained by Washington�was once held up as a shining example of Washington�s guiding Ukraine toward democracy. The fact that it�s now run by a man with neo-Nazi ties is a particularly ironic example of unintended consequences.

It�s no surprise that, with influential leaders tied to the far right, inquiries are quashed by Kiev. Requests by the Council of Europe to look into the May 2, 2014, massacre in which 48 pro-Russian Ukrainians were burned alive after being chased into an Odessa building by radicals have yielded nothing. When an ultranationalist website leaked personal information about journalists who reported from the Donbass conflict zone, labeling them �terrorist collaborators,� it triggered an international backlash from The New York Times and The Daily Beast to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The website, however, is tied to Avakov, and despite a vociferous outcry from Western media, it has not been shut down.

Kiev�s tolerance of the far right is even generating pushback from Poland, one of Ukraine�s biggest supporters and certainly no friend of the Kremlin. This summer, Ukraine renamed a major boulevard in honor of Stepan Bandera, the leader of partisan groups responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Jews and over 100,000 Poles during WWII. In response, the Polish parliament unanimously passed legislation calling the massacres a genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists. Kiev�s insistence on glorifying Bandera�s organizations has eroded Polish-Ukraine relations to the point where a Ukrainian flag was recently burned in Warsaw.

Washington has been right to pressure Kiev to battle corruption and enforce the rule of law�as a New York Times editorial bluntly stated, America �cannot continue to shovel money into a corrupt swamp unless the government starts shaping the democratic rule that Ukrainians demanded in their protests.� The presence of armed white-supremacist formations with free rein to influence domestic and foreign policy poses a threat to democracy that�s at least as serious as graft. It is especially necessary to address this in 2017, as ultranationalism, racism, and anti-Semitism are surging throughout European nations, many of which lack the democratic safeguards of the United States. Washington must stop ignoring the far right in Ukraine, or risk sending an unhealthy message of tolerance to white supremacists, both at home and abroad.

Baronjutter posted:

Regarding Ukraine there are only two possible options with no allowance for nuance or historical context:
-10,000 Ukrainians deserved to die and the country carved up because some anti-russian neo-nazi groups exist in Ukraine, why they grew in popularity after a russian invasion is a mystery but the fact that they did justifies it all. Besides, Russia is surrounded and entitled to buffer states as a great power.
or
-Ukraine has been brutally oppressed by Russians for thousands of years, holodomor actually killed 6 trillion Ukrainians and only Ukrainians, the only bad thing the nazi's did was not kill every last russian speaking person on earth. The nazi SS were fighting for Ukraine's freedom. Once freed from Russians and ((SOROS)) Ukraine will be strong!

Yeah it's a complicated situation but come on man, "some anti-russian neo-nazi groups exist in Ukraine" is a pretty big understatement. Those NeoNazi gangs march through the streets with impunity because they're the only halfway decent fighting force the government has, and their allies control the interior ministry (it never ends well when fascists get ahold of a country's police force)

my morning jackass posted:

I’m not saying that the right wing media aren’t leaning into him hard and overstating this issue. I just think that saying it’s cause of his race is weird. Why would white Canadians care about this issue?

You seriously have to ask why a brown skinned turban wearing man being linked with a violent terrorist movement that advocates for the independence of a country that literally has "stan" in the title might link in to certain pre-existing prejudices that the Canadian public has been groomed for over the last several decades?

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:38

EvidenceBasedQuack: Aug 15, 2015; A rock has no detectable opinion about gravity

She [Lauren Southern] was arrested in Italy for blocking rescue ships from helping Syrian refugees. Also the rationale for the UK denied entry is that she was caught distributing hate speech (which may be a crime in the UK?).

Also her association/sympathy for the white nationalist protest in Charleston SC - you know that time a racist plowed into a crowd of counter protesters. Her totally law abiding and non hate speech ways have been documented extensively.

Edit: I didn't anticipate another amazing effort post by Helsing. Thanks man! You, vyelkin, and Dreylad consistently provide learning materials. Much appreciated.

EvidenceBasedQuack fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Mar 15, 2018

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:38

Reince Penis: Nov 15, 2007; by R. Guyovich

https://twitter.com/Chad_Strongjaw/status/974272362257371137

Toally normal people, concerned about free speech on campus.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:41

Femtosecond: Aug 2, 2003

Oh good Singh was smart and said that Parmar was indeed responsible for air India.

https://twitter.com/globeandmail/status/974370133429846019?s=21

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:44

PT6A: Jan 5, 2006; Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

Reince Penis posted:

https://twitter.com/Chad_Strongjaw/status/974272362257371137

Toally normal people, concerned about free speech on campus.

Hmm, yes, I'm the manly super-heterosexual man who sees Donald Trump as the epitome of masculinity and can't stop thinking about his large penis and muscular thighs...

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:48

EvidenceBasedQuack: Aug 15, 2015; A rock has no detectable opinion about gravity

Reince Penis posted:

https://twitter.com/Chad_Strongjaw/status/974272362257371137

Toally normal people, concerned about free speech on campus.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:52

EvidenceBasedQuack: Aug 15, 2015; A rock has no detectable opinion about gravity

Femtosecond posted:

Oh good Singh was smart and said that Parmar was indeed responsible for air India.

https://twitter.com/globeandmail/status/974370133429846019?s=21

Jagmeet Singh posted:

Some in the Sikh community have not accepted the official record of events. While I can understand that pain, my approach has been different: I have always tried to give space to all voices so that we can move together toward peace and reconciliation.

I'm okay with that rationale

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:54

infernal machines: Oct 11, 2012; we monitor many frequencies. we listen always. came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. it played us a mighty dub.

Well thank goodness that's settled. I'm sure that's the last we'll hear of it now.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:55

PT6A: Jan 5, 2006; Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

EvidenceBasedQuack posted:

I'm okay with that rationale

I understand that he doesn't want to cause tensions in his community, but on the other hand, how is reconciliation supposed to occur without agreement on certain basic facts?

# ? Mar 15, 2018 22:00

Baronjutter: Dec 31, 2007; "Tiny Trains"

Helsing posted:

Yeah it's a complicated situation but come on man, "some anti-russian neo-nazi groups exist in Ukraine" is a pretty big understatement. Those NeoNazi gangs march through the streets with impunity because they're the only halfway decent fighting force the government has, and their allies control the interior ministry (it never ends well when fascists get ahold of a country's police force)

What would you like to see the world do regarding Ukraine? Maybe if the country wasn't left to fend for itself during a russian invasion they wouldn't need to have made such alliances with local nazi's? I think Canada is doing some good work over there, my friend's husband just got back from Ukraine, and if Ukraine had more international military support they perhaps wouldn't have to depend on local nazi's to defend their country.

Russia has mostly caused this situation. There were always tensions between Ukrainian and Russian speakers in Ukraine but things were mostly fine. Even during Maidan the nazi's and ultra-nationalists were not the driving force, it was mostly a grassroots anti-corruption protest. Russia then blasts the media with "fake news" about how nazi's are now in power in Ukraine and carry out a full conventional invasion of a huge chunk of the country while supporting brutal warlords and terrorists in the east. Of course anti-russian sentiment explodes in the country, Russia creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. The harder they hit Ukraine, the more the government needs to pander to and ally with ultra-nationlists and neo-nazi's since they're often the only ones bothering to go fight. One of the biggest reasons those groups are so important is that the regular Ukrainian army is in shambles, and Canada is trying to help train it and support it to be less useless.

Ukraine has been crippled with corruption and poverty since its independence and Russia has done everything it could to keep it that way. It's a very understandable breeding ground for ultra-nationalist movements. Even since the holodomor Ukrainians have had beef with Russia, a lot of it legitimate, but a lot of it of course exaggerated for political gain. Once again with Russia's invasion the local politicians are using it for political gain and the ultra-nationalists are making hay, but none of that somehow retroactively excuses Russia's invasion or decades of supporting corrupt puppet leaders that kept the country impoverished. There's absolutely no excuse or justification for Russia's invasion or ongoing support of terrorists, no southpark "well both sides are bad so the truth is in the middle" bullshit.

All that said, a Canadian foreign minister saying she admires her hero nazi collaborator grandpa is gross and bad. I can understand why some Ukrainians have bought into a revisionist history of the nazi's fighting for a free ukraine but there's zero excuse for a Canadian foreign minister.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 22:09

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

EvidenceBasedQuack posted:

He's literally defending Lauren Southern. #notaracist

So many of her ilk are really good at making the entire conversation be about the fact that their views are being "censored" and twisting the whole argument be solely about that, while avoiding any critical examination by all the free-speech-warriors who come to their defence of what those views actually are.
To the point where you get people who ought to know better having them on their podcast or whatever where they can commiserate about how awful and out-of-control the campus left is, while somehow never questioning or even mentioning all the blatantly racist poo poo they were spewing that led to them being "censored". And then people just hear that one conversation, where they might actually come across as reasonable if you don't dig into it at all, and fall for the idea that it's PC Gone Mad!

# ? Mar 15, 2018 22:22

lowly abject turd: Mar 23, 2009

I think Helsing covered why freeland's politics matter at least as much as if not more (right now) than singhs

also i know this thread is p white but the whole sikh thing is racial because to be considered clean of this taint he would not only have to start every public appearance with a full throat ed denunciation of sikh independence and but also stop going to any sikh community events because guess what? the right to self determination is p popular. From my limited experience with sikh dudes in scarborough it would be really hard to have more than a couple of degrees of separation from reasonably hardline Khalistani and interact with the community, much less be a part of it.

edit: guess i shouldn't have left this response hanging for an hour before updating the thread

# ? Mar 15, 2018 22:48

DutchDupe: Dec 25, 2013; How does the kitty cat go?

...meow?

Very gooood.

infernal machines posted:

He's not able to "move past" it, because the racist press is insisting on making it an issue, whereas they did not when it was about a sitting minister venerating Nazi collaborators.

No matter how many time Sing denies affiliation or unequivocally states that terrorism is unacceptable it will continue to be an "issue" because it's bullshit gotcha hack journalism.

They don't, they care that the brown guy with a turban can be associated with terrorism and is therefore bad and it's totally cool that they hate him and only for that reason.

They can't say they don't like him because he's Sikh or has brown skin, but they can say they don't like him because someone somewhere insinuated that he was connected to an extremist organization they've never heard of.

Yeah, Freeland had some serious blinders on about her grandfather. It's bad. She clearly isn't a Nazi, or white supremacist, or a bigot tho (unless you wanna make that argument). She's just a willfully blind idiot about her family's past.

You yourself are applying a pretty biased double standard though between the two while accusing the media of doing the same.

Jagmeet is sympathetic to Sikh separatism and has participated in events where there's been some troubling associations. And while "denouncing terrorism" he's had trouble specifically denouncing Sikh terrorism before. Jagmeet is an adult, a pretty smart one too. I think he's liable for criticism on this matter. It'd be racist if he hadn't attended Sikh separatist rallies but oh wait, he did.

I agree that it's getting more attention than Freeland's thing, but that's prob because we had a massive week long diplomatic scandal in India about this very issue, we have a violent connection to this issue, we have our OWN separatist movement that has added implications, and Jagmeet has brought some of it upon himself as well through missteps.

# ? Mar 16, 2018 01:39

EvidenceBasedQuack: Aug 15, 2015; A rock has no detectable opinion about gravity

DutchDupe posted:

Jagmeet is sympathetic to Sikh separatism and has participated in events where there's been some troubling associations. And while "denouncing terrorism" he's had trouble specifically denouncing Sikh terrorism before. Jagmeet is an adult, a pretty smart one too. I think he's liable for criticism on this matter. It'd be racist if he hadn't attended Sikh separatist rallies but oh wait, he did.

Please explain how separatism and terrorism are intrinsically the same thing tyvm

# ? Mar 16, 2018 01:53

Jordan7hm: Feb 17, 2011; Lipstick Apathy

EvidenceBasedQuack posted:

Please explain how separatism and terrorism are intrinsically the same thing tyvm

# ? Mar 16, 2018 01:56

EvidenceBasedQuack: Aug 15, 2015; A rock has no detectable opinion about gravity

Touché hahaha

I had to Google wth was that flag. All I remember of the FLQ symbolism is that grumpy old man gravure portrait with a tuque, Bonhomme's arrow sash, and a rifle. That's les valeurs québécoises right there.

Edit: https://goo.gl/images/o3pKPz

# ? Mar 16, 2018 02:02

Drunk Canuck: Jan 9, 2010; Robots ruin all the fun of a good adventure.

https://twitter.com/brownbarrie/status/974455276966326274

Guess he's out of politics for good

# ? Mar 16, 2018 02:31

Tippecanoe: Jan 26, 2011

https://www.cp24.com/news/as-controversy-swirls-ndp-leader-jagmeet-singh-denounces-air-india-mastermind-1.3845197

Oh huh he did it, that means that it's over and the news cycle is just gonna roll past this one right? ahahahahaha

# ? Mar 16, 2018 03:01

Juul-Whip: Mar 10, 2008

are Canadians really ready for a leader who was not brought up with our Judeao-Christian values?

I'm ready. But are Canadians ready? Are they really? I don't know. We go now to our panel where Jon Kay, Rex Murphy and Conrad Black have been patiently waiting. Hello.

# ? Mar 16, 2018 03:19

Juul-Whip: Mar 10, 2008

Drunk Canuck posted:

https://twitter.com/brownbarrie/status/974455276966326274

Guess he's out of politics for good

"after much thought" lol
https://twitter.com/globalnewsto/status/974454414810472448?s=21

# ? Mar 16, 2018 03:28

vincentpricesboner: Sep 3, 2006; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

Are we supposed to not be voting NDP because of this whole Singh stuff? Would we care that much if he was Ukrainian or Palestinian or Cuban or whatever where there is a minority that wants freedom?

Still rather vote NDP than any of the other choices right now.

# ? Mar 16, 2018 03:33

Juul-Whip: Mar 10, 2008

yeah I wanna know what the actual point is

how does this disqualify him for prime minister

what policy of his do they take issue with

(they'll never answer this, it's just Important Questions That Need To Be Asked And What Are You Against The Freedom Of The Press Or Something You Communist Terrorist Sympathizer)

# ? Mar 16, 2018 03:38

PT6A: Jan 5, 2006; Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

zapplez posted:

Are we supposed to not be voting NDP because of this whole Singh stuff? Would we care that much if he was Ukrainian or Palestinian or Cuban or whatever where there is a minority that wants freedom?

Still rather vote NDP than any of the other choices right now.

Are you suggesting it would be acceptable to vote for a Cuban exile?

That's the community that's spawned Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, there is absolutely nothing of value there.

# ? Mar 16, 2018 03:39

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Leofish posted:

I would love to see greater reporting on this issue from actual Sikhs and people who know what they're talking about. Why does it matter? How big of a deal is it? Since Air India, what has happened within the movement in India and in Canada?

nothing. the khalistan movement has been dead for a quarter century. the young sikhs advocating for khalistani are basically the same as nth generation irish americans supporting the ira

edit: it's impossible to go to a sikh cultural event that doesn't have a minority of khalistan independence activists just like it's impossible to go to an irish american cultural event that doesn't have a bunch of people with tattoos of gerry adams walking about

the talent deficit fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Mar 16, 2018

# ? Mar 16, 2018 03:41

PT6A: Jan 5, 2006; Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

the talent deficit posted:

nothing. the khalistan movement has been dead for a quarter century. the young sikhs advocating for khalistani are basically the same as nth generation irish americans supporting the ira.

Idiots who we should point and laugh at, who glorify violence for a cause they only understand in the most superficial sense?

I agree.

# ? Mar 16, 2018 03:44

vincentpricesboner: Sep 3, 2006; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

PT6A posted:

Are you suggesting it would be acceptable to vote for a Cuban exile?

That's the community that's spawned Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, there is absolutely nothing of value there.

If that Cuban defector is a guy like Yasiel Puig, then yes I vote for him multiple times.

# ? Mar 16, 2018 03:45

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 02:06

Jordan7hm: Feb 17, 2011; Lipstick Apathy

the talent deficit posted:

nothing. the khalistan movement has been dead for a quarter century. the young sikhs advocating for khalistani are basically the same as nth generation irish americans supporting the ira

edit: it's impossible to go to a sikh cultural event that doesn't have a minority of khalistan independence activists just like it's impossible to go to an irish american cultural event that doesn't have a bunch of people with tattoos of gerry adams walking about

yeah this was kind of what I was thinking about as the comparison.

# ? Mar 16, 2018 03:49

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > CanPol Megathread: Big Changus

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