ModernMajorGeneral posted:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/09/ukraine-fighter-pilot-i-could-learn-to-fly-western-jet-within-three-months-vadym-voroshylov

I think maybe a guy who lost his 1000x more expensive fighter jet to a drone should not be the spokesperson for how Ukrainian pilots are much better than the west gives them credit for and can learn to fly anything in 3 months

maybe this is no big deal in fighter pilot land, I get that fighter piloting is a hard job, but surely they could have got this guy to keep quiet and picked... anyone else

Weka posted:

Why is Putin Team Russia in English?

Leandros posted:

Moreover, why does the street sign have an English translation?

Nonsense posted:

Putin's invasion of Moldova confirmed!

https://twitter.com/Xx17965797N/status/1624020123240525825?s=20

a loving idiot posted:

“I took over the government with an anti-corruption, pro-development and pro-European mandate at a time when corruption schemes had captured all the institutions and the oligarchs felt untouchable,” Gavrilita said. “We were immediately faced with energy blackmail, and those who did this hoped that we would give in.”

“The bet of the enemies of our country was that we would act like previous governments, who gave up energy interests, who betrayed the national interest in exchange for short-term benefits,” she added.

Frosted Flake posted:

I could take it to CANPOL, but quickly - my wife is now getting frustrated that internal job listings are asking only for diverse candidates, she had to attend a two day training course on “Indigenous people and (obscure area of government policy in which there are no indigenous people nor relates to them)”, Statistics Canada has an HR manager in a job code that pays + $110k whose program of responsibility is to hire Inuit mathematicians.

The problem is that as Liberalism has nothing to offer people but this, and as this is clearly bullshit and doesn’t do anything, it’s creating more and more… idk bad vibes. Among a population without class consciousness and to which Canadian history basically isn’t taught, the whole thing is hanging by a thread - how much university educated PMC like my spouse feel like their sense of being good people requires them to support it. Among people who didn’t pick up that affectation by going to good universities, and getting good jobs where they don’t want to cross HR, there’s no buy-in at all.

The Bottlemen point out that none of these neoliberal policies can survive even basic examination so they put out these cultural values as what they compared to “Explosive Reactive Armour”. Canada is taking 300k immigrants a year, every year, even as house prices rise, wages are stagnant, and standards of living fall. Why? To drive down wages and because the population can’t afford to have kids anymore. Since they understand they can’t say that, it’s because we’re a multicultural society that values diversity.

Well, now people resent the diversity and have latched onto these ideas of white replacement, a universal “white” identity, all of this really dangerous poo poo. The ablative protection for neoliberal economics is having some very serious and potentially frightening effects as neoliberal economics continue to grind society to dust, with a smiling face.

I think I posted it in another thread, but there’s a very good book about how official multiculturalism in Canada was a completely artificial top-down programme to prevent Canada from going the way of Northern Ireland, which it truly seemed to be. Canada was a deeply violent, sectarian, country who had two clear and distinct competing nationalisms fighting for control of one state. The ruling class has been, since the beginning, in a compact across those lines. In the 1850’s they made a deal between English and French, the Laurentian Consensus. They’re above fighting over language and religion as they’re at the top of their respective societies. Kayfabe is useful though, and they weren’t above stirring it up for domestic consumption. Well, by the mid 20th century things were getting out of control and the ruling class needed to pump the brakes on the sectarian conflict.

So they decided, centred around the centennial in 1967, to change the culture of Canada to defuse the crisis - while keeping the economic structures intact. Open up immigration and dilute the two clashing sects, encourage this idea of a multicultural society. Now keep in mind that the British reaction to the rebellions in Canada in the mid 1800’s was to flood Canada with British immigrants and start a massive campaign to encourage a British identity, and you can see how this seems like a move to prop up the power of the ruling class. Both worked - for a time.

The British policy worked until the 1960’s, when after the two Conscription Crises, Quebec was at the “militant protests and increasing involvement of the Church and other institutions” stage of The Troubles. In the 70’s, the Canadian Army was sent in to quell unrest, at almost the same time the British did the same in Ireland in Operation Banner.

The reason people forget, don’t think about, don’t know this, and other elements of Canada’s very recent past, (the Orange Order march on The Fifth was Toronto’s largest and most attended parade until the mid 70’s) is that the multiculturalism thing worked, just like the British attempts to engineer a more amenable Canadian society worked. Remember, “money and the ethnic vote”? Unrest in Quebec was quelled and Ontario became less militantly Proddie (the real reason Ontario and Manitoba retained the Union Jack on Red Ensign after the introduction of the Maple Leaf flag, by the way).

Well, now we hit another crisis, maybe not as bad as those that awoke Quebec nationalism and everything else in the mid 20th c, but Quebec has seen a sudden surge of blood and soil nationalism, and the rest of Canada has seen all of this resentment swell too. Liberalism cannot and will not respond to the crises. These things are all getting worse in a way even people who grew up in the End of History with no class consciousness or understanding of politics or economics can feel.

Only, the generations now grew up with multicultural (non sectarian) identities, and were taught the fantasyland version of what Canadian history, society, culture were so they’re organizing around being White instead of English or Proddie, or even Catholic for that matter, and Liberalism is perfectly content to protect the economic order by using indigenous people, immigrants, any “diverse” population, as a shield for the economic and political system. The ERA comparison is bang on.

And yeah, Western Canada even moreso, was more-or-less settled under a policy of being “White” at a time when the British economy was relatively good. That meant there were very few British settlers compared to the three earlier waves of post 1790 settlement, not enough to “people the West”. Remember the purposes were threefold: Outnumber the Indians, outnumber the French, Catholic, Indian and rebellious Métis, and outnumber the Americans then living north of the 49th. That meant opening immigration up to Norwegians, Germans, Poles, of course Ukrainians, rather than the Scots, Irish and English that were the preferred settlers in other organized top-down immigration campaigns.

As an aside, there are disproportionately very few Welsh in Canada, even compared to the USA, and Welsh culture has not survived here at all or left much of a mark at all. One reason is that during the Victorian Era, most Welshmen were nonconformist, and in 1914 the Church of Wales was disestablished. Nonconformist, with a national and linguistic identity that, while subdued, was still not English did not make them ideal settlers to drown out the French Catholicism of Canada. Whereas, Ulster Scots were the preferred group, follows by Highland Scots and Irish Unionists. Their sectarian identity was much stronger, aligned, and therefore useful, to Britain as islands of loyalty in Canada.

Anyways, where they could count on the loyalty of British groups for the above reasons, they were not sure how to cultivate a loyal identity and identification with Canada in the non-British settlers of the 1900’s and so they settled on “White” as their commonality. That was the basis of Western Canadian culture, such as it is. There were pockets of the old pattern, but of course there were still Métis and settlers from Quebec too, so they really hammed home this ersatz Mickey Mouse western Canadian identity that could be summed up as “material prosperity”, “pioneering spirit” and “pluck”. Combined with “Whiteness” as an organizing principle, just like Multiculturalism, it worked for a time, but as soon as there was a material crisis had serious downstream results.

So basically a series of decisions made by the Canadian ruling class since 1967, itself a result of policies from 1867 and 1767, has used immigration by “loyal groups” (the diverse immigrant populations are obviously supposed to be loyal to cultural liberalism and so by extension the Laurentians and LPC) and the construction of a mythologized culture and history that reinforces that loyalty, as a way to deal with any problem rather than address material conditions.

So, to that Croatian guy, Canada is just as artificial a nation, with just as false a construction of national identity and ethnos, with the downside that ours is like 1:1 tied to the End of History instead of the Dual Monarchy. It’s not wholly outside the imagination that a prolonged crisis and collapse of the End of History sees pogrom and all of the other things that accompanied the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Even if the expression is not as extreme, the cause is similarly because the ruling class hopes to seed “diverse” populations everywhere to act as a magnet for discontent and backstop to loyalty, which is pretty much how Germans and Jews were, if not used then perceived, within Austria-Hungary.

It’s frustrating as hell because where a Canadian Liberal has thought terminating cliches that trip a switch immediately and tune you out, the right is receptive to ~80% of this but because they are still right wing, conclude the problem is the minorities and diversity, instead of the socioeconomic system, material conditions, any of this other poo poo.

It doesn’t exactly mirror how NATO and the EU used this stuff in Ukraine but liberalism is extremely dangerous in the ways it tries to divert attention from structures of power. Blood and soil nationalism is preferred by them over socialism, and so there is no telling where any of this goes. “White Canadian” is exactly as artificial an identity as the Viking-descended Ukrainian garbage, or really even the Galician identity Austria-Hungary intended, so it’s only our relative stability and material prosperity, maybe at this point belief in those things, plus biases for our own societies, that makes us think the ruling class can’t or won’t as easily play the same games and reap the same whirlwind here.

HallelujahLee posted:

what number are we on now with collapsing eu governments

Ardennes posted:

Well it isn't EU, but it is going to be a bit spicy since if an election was held, pro-Russian parties would win.

HallelujahLee posted:

fair point that seems to be similar to others that had collapsing governments alongside nazi parties gaining traction

Leandros posted:

Moreover, why does the street sign have an English translation?

tazjin posted:

They all do, by the way, not just the main streets. They don't in Moscow. I think it's because Grozny wants to be more of a tourism spot (the airport even has international flights!).

tazjin posted:

Here's the mural again, in better lighting. I couldn't get a full shot of it from anywhere because there's some scaffolding in the way from the building across, so some of the nicknames are cut off.

tazjin posted:

Here's the mural again, in better lighting. I couldn't get a full shot of it from anywhere because there's some scaffolding in the way from the building across, so some of the nicknames are cut off.

Ardennes posted:

I think it is a uphill battle considering Dagestan has beaches right next door, and Tbilisi and Baku are more destination. Baku in particular has become kind of a hub for the Iran and South Asia because it is majority Muslim but alcohol is cheap and free flowing.

tazjin posted:

Here's the mural again, in better lighting. I couldn't get a full shot of it from anywhere because there's some scaffolding in the way from the building across, so some of the nicknames are cut off.

tazjin posted:

Here's the mural again, in better lighting. I couldn't get a full shot of it from anywhere because there's some scaffolding in the way from the building across, so some of the nicknames are cut off.

Ardennes posted:

Well it isn't EU, but it is going to be a bit spicy since if an election was held, pro-Russian parties would win.

fits my needs posted:

does every dude have a beard or is it cool to be clean shaven too

crepeface posted:

what if we ban all the pro-russia parties

Slavvy posted:

Ardennes posted:

Nah you need a beard...

Nonsense posted:

AnimeIsTrash posted:

https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1623672699238203393

Lol

Orange Devil posted:

What the gently caress even is an international zone?

Nonsense posted:

https://twitter.com/OrestZub/status/1619727373553004544?s=20

AnimeIsTrash posted:

https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1623672699238203393

Lol