[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Fri Dec 16, 2016 11:01 am

And for the fifth time, no less.
There's always a "good reason", an event, a celebration, anything. The thing is that they can't stop it. If they do and something happens, they'll be blamed for having stopped it. And with the constant fear-mongering, there aren't a lot of people who realize how inefficient and dangerous it is to keep it.

It's Vigipirate all over again.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 10:46 am

Russian ambassador to Turkey murdered by religious nutter who gave short speech about remembering Aleppo as said ambassador lay dying.

Ironically, said ambassador was the chief negotiator of the current ceasefire for getting the civilians out of Aleppo. But religious fanatics are never ones to let facts get in the way of murdering someone.

Turns out it's easy to carry a gun into a secure area as an off-duty police officer in Turkey, and also their recent purge of the police force probably targeted the wrong people.

Probably not going to hurt Turkey-Russia relations in the long term, but the bad guys there have just shot one of the more capable peacemakers in the region, so, not good.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 2:02 pm

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... mas-market
Yeah, the impacts are getting closer . . .

Also, killing a russian official?
Putin will not like that. Not. One. Bit.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Dec 26, 2016 4:00 pm

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/12/26/middl ... s-nuclear/

Duped by fake news story, Pakistani minister threatens nuclear war with Israel

well . . shit . .

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Wed Dec 28, 2016 8:00 am

Richard Adams died.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Dec 28, 2016 9:58 am

One by one.

sendaz · Post by **sendaz** » Sun Jan 01, 2017 1:29 am

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china ... 4H0GQ?il=0

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Fri Jan 06, 2017 5:33 am

Japan is not amused by being remembered about "comfort women".

Germany is sued for another of their genocides.

Al-Qaida is gravely offended by rival's suggestions they're not fanatical enough. It seems like filthy christian infidels are all-right as long as you get money and products from them.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:22 pm

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-tanks-ro ... -invasion/

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:27 pm

Maj wrote:http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-tanks-ro ... -invasion/

Can't wait for Republican party to start making fun of them for "asking for" the joint invasion by US and Russia by letting us move them in.

SlyJohnny · Post by **SlyJohnny** » Wed Jan 11, 2017 12:08 am

Kaelik wrote:
Maj wrote:http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-tanks-ro ... -invasion/
Can't wait for Republican party to start making fun of them for "asking for" the joint invasion by US and Russia by letting us move them in.

...jesus christ

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Jan 11, 2017 10:12 am

Maj wrote:http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-tanks-ro ... -invasion/

As the resident german, i will admit to being slightly concerned . .

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Jan 11, 2017 10:41 pm

The Obama administration believes that Russia, emboldened by their latest success, will pull more Crimea's. We're going to deploy a bunch of tanks and soldiers across eastern Europe so that if Russia wants to do that they literally have to be willing to fire on U.S. armed forces in order to take territory.

Cold war's formally back on. Hurrah.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Jan 12, 2017 1:03 am

Except it seems likely that Trump will either just recall the soldiers and tanks ahead of time, or say "It's okay, Mister Putin, go ahead and fire on them, we won't retaliate. Fuck those guys, joining the armed forces, they should have become reality TV hosts instead."

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Jan 12, 2017 1:14 am

Well, it is intended to put Trump in the spot of being forced to recall them if he wishes to do so because the headline "Trump withdraws support from eastern Europe" is much harsher "Trump doesn't do a thing he probably should," and headlines will matter because we'll have at least one more set of free elections before we start feeding journalists polonium or whatever particular path down which our new authoritarian asshats will attempt to cement their regime.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jan 12, 2017 1:46 am

DSMatticus wrote:Well, it is intended to put Trump in the spot of being forced to recall them if he wishes to do so because the headline "Trump withdraws support from eastern Europe" is much harsher "Trump doesn't do a thing he probably should," and headlines will matter because we'll have at least one more set of free elections before we start feeding journalists polonium or whatever particular path down which our new authoritarian asshats will attempt to cement their regime.

I'm not so sure about that. Seems like "keep telling all the white people to ignore all news and get their info from my ass and keep telling black people HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Remember when you could vote? Yeah, I thought that was intrusive, so I stopped it" seems to be the path they have chosen, and we have negative 7 elections since that started.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Thu Jan 12, 2017 2:13 am

Negative seven?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jan 12, 2017 2:28 am

Shatner wrote:Negative seven?

Any number is as arbitrary as any other since it's just a slow build up over time.

Shelby and Comey and Brietbart this last election are upscales, so it could be that negative 1 is the best number, but 2004 is a good year for the same nonsense since there was a sudden upswing in weaponized voter suppression by republicans leading up to that election.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Jan 12, 2017 2:41 am

Yeah, it's very hard to pick a start date for deliberate disenfranchisement. Justice Roberts tells us all "racism is over, stop whining?" The 2010 gerrymandering? Voter ID laws? It never really went away? All of the above?

It's also very hard to pick a start date for the right-wing propaganda machine. I mean, you say Breitbart, but is Fox News really any better? They say in dog whistles what Breitbart says explicitly, but in the end viewers walk away with the same misinfo.

But yeah, we probably hit the tipping point sometime during the Bush 2.0 years. That is likely when Republicans saw the writing on the wall about their own demise - what with the popular vote/electoral college split and the Supreme Court ultimately deciding an election - and made the willful decision to focus their efforts on rewriting the rules to favor them as opposed to making policy changes to draw in voters at the expense of their plutocratic sponsors.

But even this strategy barely won them 2016 with the help of what almost amounts to a police coup, and the policies they're about to enact are NOT going to earn them any new supporters. They are going to have to escalate in order to retain power now that they have it, so who the fuck knows what horrors we're in for.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Thu Jan 12, 2017 1:52 pm

Mexico vows to never pay for Trump wall.

On the bright side, Mexico also states the interest of seeking better free market deals with the E.U. since it seems like the Trump will slap a bunch of taxes in their other border.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jan 12, 2017 2:00 pm

maglag wrote:Mexico vows to never pay for Trump wall.

On the bright side, Mexico also states the interest of seeking better free market deals with the E.U. since it seems like the Trump will slap a bunch of taxes in their other border.

If you think there will be any tariffs at all... well I was going to say something about how stupid and credulous you are, but then I realized you are maglag, so it would be redundant.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Thu Jan 12, 2017 3:01 pm

maglag wrote:Mexico vows to never pay for Trump wall.

On the bright side, Mexico also states the interest of seeking better free market deals with the E.U. since it seems like the Trump will slap a bunch of taxes in their other border.

Why do you think Mexico refusing to pay is not a 'bright side', too? I understand it would be an ecological disaster as well as doing virtually nothing to stop illegal immigration.

Do you understand that most illegal immigrants came here legally, then stayed after they were supposed to leave? Do you understand that there is a huge demand for agricultural workers (generally seasonal) and that without 'guest workers' the work just won't get done? The work is so grueling and labor intensive that very few Americans are willing to do it - especially since they can't get rich doing it.

Were you aware that approximately 2/3 of the illegal immigrants to this country have been here more than 10 years and fewer than 1/3 have been here less than 5 years?

In point of fact, do you know ANYTHING?

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Thu Jan 12, 2017 5:06 pm

deaddm, is maglag your new calling in life now that shadzar is banned? This feels like the start of a legacy.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Thu Jan 12, 2017 6:07 pm

I think he keeps slinking off and coming back hoping that enough time has passed that people will forget him being pants-on-head retarded. I'm not following him around a host of threads to harass him or anything, but I do think he should admit that he was not only wrong, but VERY WRONG. Like, it may seem weird that I keep bringing it up, but this is what he actually said:

maglag wrote:
Funny that you complain about Russia and China in specific, because those are both the countries that for hundreds of years have mostly been happy to keep to their borders.

I mean - that is what he said and it has all the context it need. It's not like he was trying to make relative comparisons - he absolutely is saying that they've 'mostly been happy to keep to their borders'.

Which is not even close to being factual.

I don't have a problem with anyone choosing to interpret facts differently than I do. That's a good basis for a conversation, and that's something that I can learn from. But as Patrick Moynihan observed, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." If maglag can't admit to being wrong in the light of overwhelming evidence, I don't think he can contribute to the conversation. More to the point, I don't think he SHOULD. So as long as he persists, I feel I have to keep pointing out why nobody should listen to him.

But really, if he admits he was wrong and/or stops using mistaken history to defend the policies of questionable regimes, I'd stop pointing out that he has nothing to contribute.

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Thu Jan 12, 2017 9:06 pm

deaddmwalking wrote:Do you understand that there is a huge demand for agricultural workers (generally seasonal) and that without 'guest workers' the work just won't get done? The work is so grueling and labor intensive that very few Americans are willing to do it - especially since they can't get rich doing it.

While there is a huge demand for guest workers it is very important not to confuse 'horrible business practices make this job unacceptably horrible even for low-income Americans' with 'Americans are unwilling to do the job.'

There are a lot of problems with the agricultural industry, including the nature of pay, the work conditions, and the geography of where and when those jobs are available (notably many of the rural areas that need season agricultural jobs are no longer capable of supporting or housing a sufficient resident labor base) that make them extremely difficult to fill with conventional employees and highly abusive. The big agribusinesses love to abuse legal immigrants (notably the many East African refugees who've been settled in the Great Plains in the past two decades) as well and play upon their fears.

Generally if a job is so horrible that broke American citizens won't take it there's some wrong with the nature of the job, not with the nature of Americans. If the agriculture industry can't sustain itself without willfully violating labor laws, housing laws, and a bunch of other protections the solution is not to provide them with a limitless supply of workers without any legal protections who can be paid below minimum wage and can be paid in cash and thereby short the IRS, the solution is to reform that industry.