Plastic_Gargoyle posted:

Is there any substantive evidence to the claim that the current Ukranian government is in any way/partly made up of "Nazis" or "Fascists"? I've got a friend who continues to insist that this is the case.


Of course, he also insists that the current government is "illegal" because it didn't follow all the proper channels, as do all real revolutions

Maarek posted:

This thread is starting to get hilarious. From the 'I am glad that Russians are dying out' guy to the the calls to fight the Russian army to the last Ukrainian, I guess we now know exactly what you need to turn D&D into Freep.

Cliff Racer posted:

Maybe you should cool off for a bit and return to the thread when you are in a better emotional state?

Unless you are always like this in which case, Christ.

Rinkles posted:

I have a hard time believing most Hungarians see it as a coalition of mutual empathy. The West may have made the growing pains worse than they should have been and exploited them along the way, but it was only because of the five decade long dump their oppressor took over their country that they had to make the transition in the first place. (Furthermore, the dilapidated state it was left in was what made much of that exploitation possible).

It could certainly be a convenient arrangement, though. Desperate countries can do strange things. The popular rise of an almost(?) openly fascist party is especially worrying (though I'd need to read up on the specifics of Jobbik).

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Actually, the US government (and every other government) should consider the interests of every person on Earth. I'll settle for them not just completely discounting the lives of anyone outside a few specific countries (at best) though, maybe we can work up from there.

Building up an ABM shield/system that can completely nullify the Russian nuclear arsenal and then bringing Ukraine into NATO seems like the most permanent solution, though I suppose a truly neutral Ukraine could work well enough. I just really have my doubts about Ukraine's ability to remain neutral, in the face of an expansionist Russia which seems to err on the side of "They're coming right for us!" whenever anything slightly counter to their plans happens.

Maybe now you can finish replying to me previous post.

I thought we had been over this? ABM sites in former Warsaw Pact states aren't needed to put a dent in Russia's second strike capabilities, if the US decides to pursue such a program, Russia's problem with them is that it cements American power in a region they would really like to come back into their orbit again.

WAFFLEHOUND posted:

I've mostly been reading this from the sidelines but I fail to see how neutrality backed up by threats from a stronger neighbour if the situation changes is actually neutrality and not, say, being that stronger country's bitch? Neutrality seems to be from a position of self interest complete with an internal ability to enforce it, as opposed to something like what you're advocating, which is "Stay 'neutral' and we won't invade an annex everything."

The Swiss and Swedes are Neutral in large part because of massive degrees of internal cohesion, if the Swiss were neutral because they second they hinted that maybe they indicated anything else a neighbour would steamroll in and destabilize them then they're not neutral, they're a subservient puppet.

HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:

"Orthodox Jihad"

Cuntpunch posted:

I can't even tell what your point here is? The American Civil War was hardly based on slavery alone so the cartoon villainy is more a simplification for middle school students.

Jim DiGriz posted:

Yeah, I've heard about the Americans and their lack of political power. But when I give up, I give up hard, guns dropping.

Omi-Polari posted:

It's hard to prove a negative. But I think a lot of people are kind of in the dark (or underestimate) the amount of foreign intelligence activity inside the United States.

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Aren't a bunch of Israelis Russians who figured it was better than the USSR, and their descendants?

Cuntpunch posted:

Ok easy enough.

The US contributed about 16 million men. The Soviets contributed something like twice that.


There's no real argument to be had. The Soviet contribution to the war was enormous, even if it was just bleeding German forces in protracted sieges, they held out long enough for America and Britain to stop loving around in the Mediterranean and get to work opening a second front in mainland Europe.

Mightypeon posted:

Concert of Europe from 1818 to around 1846?

Kopijeger posted:

Funny that Romanians would make Orthodoxy an important part of the national identity, considering that it is a legacy of Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire. It just seems at odds with the fetishisation of "Latin" culture. Has there ever been any kind of movement to switch over to Roman Catholicism (on the grounds of it being a more "Latin" doctrine)?

Cuntpunch posted:

Poroshenko should just choose Predator Drones as the weapon-of-choice. Checkmate, Russia.

HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:

I think I would actually like to see a World of Tanks battle. That or some FPS old fashioned frag fest.

Guildencrantz posted:

(Fun fact: in Poland in the past few years a common derogatory term for libertarians has become kuc, meaning "pony", because of their stereotypical ponytail. And also, among the well-informed on awful internet poo poo, their disproportionate representation among bronies. They gather on wykop.pl, our local equivalent of reddit. Truly we have the gooniest political life of any country)

Fabulous Knight posted:

fatherboxx posted:

Kazakhstan would probably be next - Putin has already dropped some burns that they were not a real state before USSR and some professional Russians are working hard pretending to be persecuted. Of course Kazakhstan is not in the NATO expansion plans and its leadership try to stay close to Russia, but after scaring whole Eastern Europe into digging trenches Putin would need to test his expanding military budget somewhere.

Also Azerbaijan and Armenia could go to war again, which would instantly alert "the great keeper of peace".

kalstrams posted:

Russia bans production, acquisition, storage and (or) transportation through Russian borders of hentai, depending and what and why and how do you do you can get up to 10 years of jail imprisonment. Using Internet for any of that is "special circumstance", that transforms just watching hentai on some website from "up to 4 years" to "from 3 to 10 years". Law project is to be accepted on December 9, 2014. Source.

If you know Russian or don't mind translated stuff, I'd recommend reading comments, they're quite good actually. It ranges from (obviously sarcastic) "Aww yiss!" to () "Guy who almost killed me with knife got 3 years probation (or whatever you call it when you have to abide courts ruling, without getting to jail, and if you fail (by making similar crime, for example), then you get another court trial, this time with imprisonment for a period that is equal to whatever court rules + probation time).

Forgall posted:

Niedar posted:

I think there is a difference in not being able to write in cursive and not being able to read cursive as well. I can not write in cursive to any suitable degree because I never need to except to sign my name but I can read it perfectly fine.

my dad posted:

Whitelands of South Africa might be a good place to get hired with such a CV, honestly. I have a relative who has a crazy story from his time spent working there. His coworkers were suspicious of him (in a really bad way) because of his Serbian (AKA Slavic) accent, but once they heard he has a German surname (His grandfather was a Yugoslav German who joined the Partizans and fought the Nazis, his father married one of my aunts) they relaxed, started making Jew jokes, and it wasn't too long before he found that some of them had Swastika tattoos. That was a rather awkward/scary period of his life.

Friendly Tumour posted:

I've been wondering about how these sorts of things happen for a long while. It's like, after the fall of communism and after the radical left movement in the West fell apart, the ideology underwent a really weird nationalist/far-right metamorphosis and they ended up adopting a lot of the ideas of their supposedly hated fascist enemies. And yet, another strain of the same ideology adopted the Palestinian struggle and various anti-zionist stances. I wish I understood it how this sort of thing is possible, it seems so terribly curious in a twisted sort of way. The only person I've come across who comes close to addressing it is Adam Curtis, but his explanations seem to be missing something imo

NEED TOILET PAPER posted:

I remember on some other forums years and years ago I called Croatia Balkan and a Croatian poster told me that "Balkan" only referred to areas that had been conquered by the Ottomans, of which Croatia was apparently not one.

TBF he was at least polite about it, though that still raises my eyebrows. To me, Balkan refers to any land southeast of Austria that was administered by either the Habsburg or Ottoman Empires.