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

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Tue Mar 29, 2016 7:22 pm

PMDB, the biggest cancer in Brazilian politics, just severed its alliance with the Worker's Party and left the Government.

Hilariously, there's an impeachment commission that will vote for the future of our President, with 34 of its 65 members investigated for corruption. Meanwhile, the declared cause for impeaching the President is her resorting to accounting tricks, something which isn't even typified as a crime here.

Let be recorded here that if this shit goes down, the two ultimate enablers for the Brazilian coup are the PMDB, a party that lacks any ideology that's not "staying in power, no matter what", and Gilmar Mendes, a Supreme Court judge, appointed by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, which just does whatever he wants to benefit his cronies, ignoring completely his constitutional duties.

UPDATE: (I was wrong about how many members of the impeachment corruption were being investigated by crimes)
http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-ame ... story.html

UPDATE 2: Who'd guess? What we actually need is austerity and being on the IMF hands again!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/201 ... ve-brazil/

UPDATE 3: So, Glenn Greenwald happens to explain what I was trying to write here in a much more articulate form:
https://theintercept.com/2016/03/18/bra ... democracy/

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu Apr 07, 2016 8:06 am

Dutch people voted against the closer association with Ukraine in referendum.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Fri Apr 08, 2016 12:40 pm

Longes wrote:Dutch people voted against the closer association with Ukraine in referendum.

But on Wednesday 64% of Dutch referendum voters rejected it; the turnout was just 32% – barely enough for the result to be valid.

Voters said they were opposing not only the treaty but wider European policymaking on matters ranging from the migrant crisis to economics.

Though the referendum was non-binding, Rutte acknowledged late on Wednesday it was politically impossible for his unpopular government to ratify the treaty in its current form.

The numbers are probably based on an exit poll, the real numbers:61,1% voted against and 38,1% voted in favour of the treaty.

Also, I wouldn't really consider the turnout to be low. Keep in mind that the actual European elections only had a 37% voter turnout. And for this referendum we had politicians calling on people not to vote, we had a drastic decline in the amount of voting booths (some municipalities went from 17 voting booths in the EU election to 5 for this referendum, because they predicted not many people would vote anyway), there were even some lawsuits about the amount of voting booths.

And of course the last time we had a referendum the government completely ignored it anyway, so doubt it'll have any influence whatsoever.

- Edit: note, proper name is "The Ukraine"
- Edit2: our voting ballots were a little unclear. You had to colour the small circle on the ballot. So this vote was invalid:

While this one had a bit of red sperm in the circle so was valid

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Apr 08, 2016 1:17 pm

France: it's not offensive because hairdressers are a bunch of cocksuckers anyway

By that logic, can we use the same terms against all French because France is "well known" for producing a variety of gay people?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Apr 08, 2016 1:24 pm

So by that logic, frogeating surrendermonkeys is not a racist slur anymore either?

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Fri Apr 08, 2016 3:18 pm

To be honest, the "pédé" slur is not necessarily homophobic. While it has homophobic roots, it can be used as a generic insult like you can call someone a "bastard" without meaning anything about his parents. It's a word you better avoid, because of that homophobic origin, but someone getting called a "pédé" could feel just insulted, not discriminated against.

However, the SMS is actually homophobic without a doubt. The translation from the linked article isn't complete, the actual SMS ends like this:
"I don't trust that guy: he's a [EDITED]. They all pull dirty tricks."

In French that usage of the ":" clearly means that what's after is an explanation of what comes before. She was not writing "I don't trust this guy. He's a [EDITED]" but "I don't trust this guy because he's a [EDITED].".
And even if there could be an ambiguity of the exact meaning of this sentence, the one right after is there to dismiss it.

And on top of that, there's this judge explanation that makes absolutely no sense. There's not a single aspect of that story that's not fucked up.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Apr 08, 2016 9:09 pm

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/201 ... al-journey

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Apr 08, 2016 9:12 pm

Stahlseele wrote:So by that logic, frogeating surrendermonkeys is not a racist slur anymore either?

To be fair, French isn't a race.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Fri Apr 08, 2016 10:22 pm

Neither is Islam. Splitting hairs over whether it's technically racism or some other, slightly different form of xenophobic bigotry isn't being fair, it's obfuscating the discussion behind semantics.

Eikre · Post by **Eikre** » Fri Apr 08, 2016 11:04 pm

There's not such thing as a race in the first place, it is top-to-bottom a bunch of completely arbitrary grouping predicated on being wrong and also a fucker. You can be racist against whoever you want. French people? You mean Gaelic Iberians?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Apr 08, 2016 11:05 pm

Stahlseele said "anymore" my point was that it never was, just like "'Murica" jokes aren't racist. I was always under the impression that islamaphobia was racism because while it's the religion people are bigoted against, most of the identifiers they look for are racial differences, and they kind of ignore both the fact that white muslims and arabic christians exist.

Eikre wrote:There's not such thing as a race in the first place, it is top-to-bottom a bunch of completely arbitrary grouping predicated on being wrong and also a fucker. You can be racist against whoever you want. French people? You mean Gaelic Iberians?

Well, there's that, I guess.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Fri Apr 08, 2016 11:56 pm

Prak wrote:I was always under the impression that islamaphobia was racism because while it's the religion people are bigoted against, most of the identifiers they look for are racial differences, and they kind of ignore both the fact that white muslims and arabic christians exist.

"Islamaphobia" is always racism, because it can only ever be an accusation of racism + lying and be coherent.

Being "bigotted" against a religion because that religion is garbage and believing that claimed members of that religion have some respect for it's assorted garbage tenets and beliefs is basically totally fine, and calling people names for that is nonsense.

But people who say they have problems with Islam have a very large overlap with racists, so there is good reason to believe that some good chunk of them might hate islam, but probably not for good reasons (because they are christians) and really just because it's the religion of brown people, and they already hated brown people.

So when you accuse someone of Islamaphobia, you are accusing them of both being racist, and also lying about their racism (or being confused and merging their racism with hatred of a different religion, which is probably the most common thing because if you hate brown people for being different, you can probably also hate people with a different religion for being different).

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sat Apr 09, 2016 2:01 am

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 72361.html

Nebuchadnezzar · Post by **Nebuchadnezzar** » Sat Apr 09, 2016 5:13 am

The Mossack Fonseca leak has sufficiently shamed Iceland's Prime Minister into stepping down. While that tickles the part of me that needs to watch the world burn, I'm more amused by the irony of the resignation of a branch President for anti-corruption group Transparency International.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sat Apr 09, 2016 10:22 am

Ancient History wrote:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 72361.html

of course japan has it before ausfailia O.o

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sun Apr 10, 2016 6:34 am

Ancient History wrote:http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/201 ... al-journey

I loved this, but for whatever reason, I thought it funny that they never made the connection between "kare raisu" and "curry rice."

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Apr 14, 2016 10:02 pm

http://cbldf.org/2016/04/egyptian-puppe ... -morality/

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Apr 18, 2016 8:57 am

So, I don't know the name of what type of show it is, but it's the "dinner-time anger for middle-aged people" thing that calls itself journalism: DODGY HOUSE TENANTS, DODGY CAR DEALERS, THINGS YOUR NEIGHBOURS COULD BE UP TO, REASONS TO BE AFRAID OF YOUR CHILDREN! WE DON'T UNDERSTAND COMPUTERS BUT THEY ARE SCARY!

Well, one of ours, 60 Minutes... the core filming crew went to Lebanon on one of their bullshit things, basically trying to abduct some children to bring "back" to Australia for their mother, and taped the entire thing so they could make themselves look good back home.

They managed to fuck up, and got arrested, and are now jailed in Lebanon.

This is fantastic. If Today Tonight could do the same, that'd be awesome.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Mon Apr 18, 2016 9:16 am

Koumei wrote:So, I don't know the name of what type of show it is, but it's the "dinner-time anger for middle-aged people" thing that calls itself journalism: DODGY HOUSE TENANTS, DODGY CAR DEALERS, THINGS YOUR NEIGHBOURS COULD BE UP TO, REASONS TO BE AFRAID OF YOUR CHILDREN! WE DON'T UNDERSTAND COMPUTERS BUT THEY ARE SCARY!

Well, one of ours, 60 Minutes... the core filming crew went to Lebanon on one of their bullshit things, basically trying to abduct some children to bring "back" to Australia for their mother, and taped the entire thing so they could make themselves look good back home.

They managed to fuck up, and got arrested, and are now jailed in Lebanon.

This is fantastic. If Today Tonight could do the same, that'd be awesome.

The Guardian and "a number of prominent Australian journalists" fully support them

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Apr 18, 2016 10:00 am

Let's go through their supporters there...
Channel Nine: this is obvious, they don't want to look bad by association, and 60min is a cash cow for them
Karl Stefanovic: a complete fuckface who enjoys being wrong about things. He claimed they are trying to expose the truth of a matter - that would be a first for them
The Australian: the most insanely right wing of the Murdoch rags in this country

If anything, I'd ask for those three to not help.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Apr 18, 2016 12:19 pm

In less important local news the conservatives got their election trigger through (by not getting it through).

They don't look very happy about it, probably because they haven't even got through their trail by last minute budget and their actual election announcement yet and their polls are already plummeting into dangerous territory.

But, notably, suddenly, a wild hand shake snub appeared and was apparently briefly super effective.

This whole early election thing is a bit unusual, it is even more unusual than just a double dissolution based on rejected TOTALLY important legislation that TOTALLY isn't just an excuse to call an early election before the polls drop even more. And that's already pretty unusual/borderline abusive of our democratic process.

Importantly though this time it ALSO required the senate to sit and (not) pass legislation when the senate would normally not sit.

This requires the Queen, by means of not being the Queen and instead being the Governor General to make a special demand that they sit and consider some legislation or other because of course it is TOTALLY important and TOTALLY not just something that will vastly politically favor a specific political party what with the governor general ostensibly (but historically not particularly) being a neutral party who isn't supposed to get involved in that, or indeed pretty much ANY shit.

But our current Slimy conservative toad with a meaningless title and free income Governor in charge of nothing other than overthrowing the labor party at every opportunity Governor General went ahead and forced the senate to sit for the urgent and important purpose of... busting a specific union really right now urgently for no particular reason even though the senate said no like over a year ago and no one cared about it to try asking again since.

That in itself is actually... a bigger deal than it might seem, especially in a country with our history of governor generals doing shady bullshit favoring the conservative party and undermining our democracy.

But then when parliament sat because of the GGs demands... he opens with a short speach, shakes the hands of the people he is formally required to, throws in an extra and shakes the hand of the conservative coalitions deputy leader, and openly snubs the offered hand of the labor opposition deputy leader.

That's again, kind of a bigger deal than it sounds like. Largely because of the context, I mean here is a guy who is supposed to be PRETENDING really fucking hard not to be in the middle of a hugely partisan undemocratic act... and yet he can't even grit his teeth through one extra handshake with the hated enemy.

Apparently what with it being caught on camera it exploded a bit on social media. Everyone's trying to talk it down, but fuck it, again, if he weren't a conservative appointee acting on conservative party orders, well, those media venues Koumei just coincidentally listed among others would be making sure his career as a parasitic do nothing head of state was OVER fucking yesterday.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Apr 18, 2016 1:18 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:Everyone's trying to talk it down, but fuck it, again, if he weren't a conservative appointee acting on conservative party orders, well, those media venues Koumei just coincidentally listed among others would be making sure his career as a parasitic do nothing head of state was OVER fucking yesterday.

Be fair, other Murdoch shit like Daily Mail and (something close to every newspaper we have that is still in dead tree format) and news.com.au would also be over it, not JUST the aforementioned bullshit.

And I've seen a few mentions of "The handshake snub that ended a career", which seems highly unlikely. I mean, if it leads to people throwing their hands in the air and going "Fuck this, time to form a republic and ship him to Her Maj in one or more crates" then I suppose so, but the amount of media attention and "people paying attention" is... not great.

So I guess it's just a few months before we can hopefully kick this party out (ideally with Abbott stealing power back from Turnbull a couple of weeks before the election in a hilarious callback to the former election), let's just see how much badness manages to stack up in that short time.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Apr 18, 2016 2:09 pm

Koumei wrote:So I guess it's just a few months before we can hopefully kick this party out

Are you sure? Last I heard the Green Party still exists, and since the [left center party] has not yet murdered every Green Party member, it is still far too soon to attempt to unseat the Conservatives.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Apr 18, 2016 2:41 pm

It's a tricky one. Thanks to preferential voting (and indeed, some changes to the preferential voting system to make it a bit easier), you really can go "Greens, but failing that, I guess I'll put up with Labor". It's not a cert, but between that and the fact that Coalition have basically been fucking up every step of the way, it's at least possible.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Apr 18, 2016 2:47 pm

Koumei wrote:It's a tricky one. Thanks to preferential voting (and indeed, some changes to the preferential voting system to make it a bit easier), you really can go "Greens, but failing that, I guess I'll put up with Labor". It's not a cert, but between that and the fact that Coalition have basically been fucking up every step of the way, it's at least possible.

I was mostly referring to PL's previous comments about how Labor doesn't know who their enemies actually are, and spend all their time attacking the Greens and siding with Conservatives.

Hence saying "too soon to unseat conservatives" as Labor must still fight their primary enemy, the Green Party, instead of trying to actually take control of the government.