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Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 6:46 pm
by nockermensch
angelfromanotherpin wrote:Anyone in eastern Europe want to comment on
this? My gut tells me it's oversensationalized scaremongering, but what do intestines know?
Without knowing much about this particular situation, my own gut instinct is that this is a false-flag op by pro-western agents to discredit the pro-Russia side.
Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2014 1:48 am
by ...You Lost Me
It's a hoax or heavy exaggeration. As Abe Lincoln once said, don't believe everything you hear on the internet.
Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2014 6:00 am
by RadiantPhoenix
Abraham Lincoln wrote:Anything is a dildo if you're brave enough
I heard it on the Internet so it must be true!
Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2014 8:00 am
by Username17
The Donetsk separatists, including the person who supposedly signed it, says it is
not real. Also, the place where they were supposedly going to have a Jew registry does not have one. It is a very clumsy and deeply offensive piece of anti-Russian propaganda.
Presumably not done by the actual Kiev junta, but probably by their extremist militant allies in Right Sector.
-Username17
Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2014 9:33 am
by Koumei
Some brief news that flowed through the filter of "omg our royal family are getting a surfboard!" said that in Ukraine, diplomats have agreed to end violence. Surely the problem isn't with the diplomats and we want the militaries to agree to that!
Joking aside, it said a peace deal had been brokered and "the occupying military forces would withdraw". They didn't actually say whether that meant "Russian soldiers would leave the Ukraine", "Russian soldiers would leave Crimea", "Ukrainian soldiers would leave Crimea" or some combination of the above. Because fuck informing people.
Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2014 10:30 am
by Username17
There was a meeting in Geneva between Russia, the Kiev Junta, the EU, and the United States. The Donetsk separatists were not invited. The kiev Junta, the EU, and the US all demanded that the Donetsk separatists stop occupying government buildings. Russia said "Sure. We totally agree to that, just like we agreed to the agreement that the Maidan protesters would stop storming the government buildings in Kiev that they didn't abide by. Good luck with that. You understand that the people you are demanding action from aren't even fucking here, right?"
So the "agreement" was made, and the Donetsk separatists have officially laughed at it. Their response was "Sure. We'll totally stop occupying things as soon as the junta steps down in Kiev and the Maidan protest camp disbands. We're totally holding our breath for that to happen. In the meantime, we aren't going anywhere."
-Username17
Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2014 10:39 am
by Koumei
Business as usual then. Grand.
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 4:59 am
by DSMatticus
So, if you happen to have lived somewhere on planet Earth at some point in the past five years, you are probably aware there was a
minor economic crisis that sparked worldwide, not-quite-apocalyptic-so-hey-that's-something recession. Good times.
Sweden went into this recession with a strong economic position, their own sovereign currency, automatic hikes to welfare spending, and a dirty pinko commie central bank that thought it could solve all their problems by flooding the economy with money. Idiots, am I right?
So, after posting two years of absolutely astounding growth (but unemployment rates still moderately higher than pre-crisis levels), they decided it was time to aggressively raise rates. And when this caused inflation to plummet below their 2% target, they realized the error of their ways and HAHAHA YEAH RIGHT anyway things kept plummeting and now their inflation is negative. I think there's a word for that. Starts with 'd' for 'dumbasses.'
Long story short, the Swedish central bank is now paying people to hoard cash while growing the debt burden in an economy that already has moderately high employment, high consumer debt, and low demand. And that might become the norm - if you expect your dollar will be worth more tomorrow than it is today (deflation), and you expect the increase in value of your dollar will be worth more than the extra returns you'd get from investing it today (demand is sufficiently low),
you hoard the fucking dollar. And if a central bank hands you a bunch of money under the expectation that you will put it into the money supply and that will cause inflation, you hoard those dollars too and it doesn't.
Edit: have some
Krugman. I went looking for some other articles that weren't behind an (albeit easily circumvented) paywall/trial limit, but I gave up after a few pissed me off trying to justify the Riksbank's anti-inflationary policies as a legitimate effort to curb another housing bubble. Hint: if you want to stop housing bubbles caused by risky lending,
regulate your fucking banks.
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 1:24 pm
by MisterDee
Yeah. The Canadian Conservatives "broken clock, still right" moment was when they tightened lending standards for housing.
Sure, it sucks that my condo isn't exploding in value, and it really sucks for the very small minority of people that could only buy with a minimal cash down and super-long mortgage (and who'd still be able to make their payments), but I'll take it to avoid another housing bubble.
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 9:09 am
by tussock
I always sort of wonder why governments, when faced with a house-price bubble, don't just start building high-quality low-cost housing. You know, exploit the fucking thing.
But then, here in NZ, when we regulate the banks, they just ignore it. Always have. Like, we had a big deposit requirement in ancient times, and the banks just loaned people the deposits they needed through insurance companies or building societies. When our interest rates are raised, the banks collect more money from bored Japanese widows (that's their term for where it all comes from, formerly bored Belgian dentists) and just think up ever crazier schemes to lend it out to local people.
And when the reserve bank tries to get them to increase lending by lowering rates to near zero, because it's 2009 and holy shit, well they just put on their own huge deposit requirements and then find endless bullshit excuses to not loan anyone any money anyway. Partly because they don't have much to spare, because said international money flows promptly went elsewhere.
For a little country like us, or Greece, or Ireland, or Cyprus, or whatever, the international system of credit and currency exchange kinda sucks. Our housing booms are powered by that, no matter what anyone does. Ironically we'd probably slow real borrowing quicker by lowering interest rates.
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 9:43 am
by Koumei
I like what Shaun Micallef's Mad as Hell had to say about the Australian push towards austerity* though: "but as we all know from Greece, Italy and France, when the government wants to push something like that through, there are alternatives" (cut to videos of riots in the streets with people throwing firebombs at stuff).
Sadly, the season ended, so now I have no idea where I'll be getting my news. Presumably the Den.
*Obviously not including the massive tax cuts to mining companies, and the sudden decision to spend $48billion on shitty fighter jets that the US got rid of long ago and that our head of defence says is a terrible idea.
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 6:41 pm
by Grek
How much should I worry about the US sending troops to Poland?
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 6:57 pm
by Username17
Grek wrote:How much should I worry about the US sending troops to Poland?
Not at all. Poland is a Nato country, and them having Nato troops inside is totally acceptable. What you should worry about is the Polish hawks asking for a military buildup next to Kaliningrad because they are insane. But American paratroopers engaging in military exercises in Poland and Latvia is not a major issue.
Right now there are 600 soldiers. Enough to be a "trip wire" that deters any thoughts of Russian aggression without being enough to be a plausible invasion force to prompt Russian retaliatory buildup in Kaliningrad. It's a smart move, and should ease tensions. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland will be less likely to do something monumentally stupid having been assured that NATO takes their sovereignty and NATO membership seriously.
-Username17
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 7:21 pm
by Prak
Oh, cool. I hadn't even heard about the troops in Poland, and when I saw Grek ask, I thought the worst, but, no, that's actually good. Poland is, sadly, kind of the christian geek on the playground of Europe. They get picked on and roughed up for their lunch money a lot. Which is all the more sad because they used to be the good natured jock on the school grounds of Europe, roughing up the real bullies when they tried to squash the small nations.
Invasion, genocide, and the progression of modern warfare (while one's invaded and being genoicided) are a bitch.
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 9:24 pm
by Longes
Prak_Anima wrote:Oh, cool. I hadn't even heard about the troops in Poland, and when I saw Grek ask, I thought the worst, but, no, that's actually good. Poland is, sadly, kind of the christian geek on the playground of Europe. They get picked on and roughed up for their lunch money a lot. Which is all the more sad because they used to be the good natured jock on the school grounds of Europe, roughing up the real bullies when they tried to squash the small nations.
Invasion, genocide, and the progression of modern warfare (while one's invaded and being genoicided) are a bitch.
In spirit Poland is still a jock, but those muscles had atrophied.
Posted: Sat May 03, 2014 5:58 am
by Koumei
So explaining the derp in Ausfailia:
Our hard-right conservative party got into power based on three things:
1. Lying ("There is a crisis with all these
boat-people! We only accept vagina-people in this country, and plane-people! I WILL STOP THE BOATS WITH MY MASSIVE EARS AND SPEEDO:)
2. Lying ("THERE IS A DEBT CRISIS!")
3. Cheating (Gina Rineheart basically gave them as much money as they wanted for their attack ads and almost all mainstream media is owned by Rupert Murdoch, so uh...
yeah.)
Now
Lie, Cheat, Steal is a great motto, but they saved the stealing until they got into power.
Pictured above: our senate. Except there are too many women in the picture.
Anyway, they pretended there was a huge debt crisis and we were going to lose our AAA rating and be reduced to a developing nation. Note that, under the Labor government, it would have taken 4 years to
completely pay the debt off. As in, every other country would be jealous and we'd be trying to figure out what the fuck to do with our excess (a sensible government would issue more bonds and invest in infrastructure and public jobs creation and so on, but Labor weren't sensible).
So now that the Coalition of Mordor got into power, the treasurer* quadrupled the debt ceiling, and engaged in immediate class warfare. Tax breaks for the super-wealthy, deregulating financial advisors so that they don't even have to have your best interests at heart, reducing payments to veterans, and of course blowing $24billion on fighter jets that are so shitty the US has just been trying to get rid of them, in the same sentence as telling everyone else we need to tighten our belts.
Similarly, just as it's getting harder to evade taxes via offshore undeclared holdings so more countries are regaining losses by nabbing evaders, taking their assets and throwing them in prison, they decide "We'll basically issue an amnesty - come clean to us and we'll just take back part of what you owe, no harm no foul." Which sounds an awful lot like writing their own "Get out of jail free" cards.
Oh, and we have Bulk-Billing over here: plenty of doctors (GPs anyway) you can just go and see for free, the government pays the tab. He declared there'll now be a $6 fee for that. (PM quote: "The average Australian visits the doctor 11 times a year. I don't think they're that sick." But they're going to be!) And was then told "people will just wander into the ER then for their free treatment" so declared there will be big fees for going into the ER if it's not an emergency.
Keep in mind that any financial emergency we suffer will have actually been engineered by them - we were doing just fine until they came along. But they needed to create a big panic so that they could then justify attacking the poor and doing whatever insane shit they liked - all the while squawking the old line of "We're trying to get the country back in control after the gross mismanagement of the previous government". They have not stopped saying that for the entire time. Everything is the last lot's fault. Still.
But the latest trick was to get a Commission of Audit so as to help get the debt under control - that might sound like an independent thing, but it's a hand-picked razor-gang designed to launch insane austerity. So let's take a look at some of the things suggested:
- Nationally halve the minimum wage, abolish the body that establishes minimum wages, and encourage individual states to race to the bottom, eventually abolishing the minimum wage altogether. Thus, with fewer people over the taxable threshold, we will gain more money by something something underpants gnomes.
- Put an end to mandatory penalty rates - you can tell your workers they're working weekends, nights, public holidays, whatever, and if they don't like it, they're fired. Again, step two is ??? and step 3 is "government profits".
- Lay off public servants (but not members of parliament - other than the ones that are constantly resigning in the midst of the Independent Commission Against Corruption).
- Raise the retirement age to 70, when the average lifespan is 69.
- Stop the wage connect program (which subsidises wages for the first 6-12 months when places employ the hard-to-employ. It was a massive success and resulted in more people working and ending up in fully-paid jobs where they could pay taxes, but it involves investing money first, so...)
- Stop funding things - why do they keep asking us to pay for their infrastructure?
- Sell off all publically owned assets so we get a one time payment and then everyone else pays more for worse services for all eternity.
- Reduce payments for the sick, the elderly, and basically everyone else.
- If someone is on a disability pension, bring in a hand-picked person who is not a doctor but who does have incentives to cut payments, and get them to re-evaluate the person on the pension.
- Drown puppies in the tears of kicked orphans. Whilst masturbating.
So clearly, half the list isn't even "get more money", it's just "Do bad things that we like doing".
I am really hoping we actually do get a violent uprising with petrol bombs and assault rifles. Still, at the end of this year I visit Sweden, and I intend on getting gay-marries while there, which means in another year or so I can get a Visa for permanent residency,
and I'll go there and never come back. Then eventually change citizenship, change my name to Freja Skullsmasher (or another appropriate Norse name) and revoke my Australian citizenship.
And then when people say how bad Ausfailia is I can laugh at them and say "You voted for it, dickheads! BORK BORK BORK!"
*his qualifications for being treasurer are literally "Hates poor people" and "Is a friend of the Prime Minister".
Posted: Sat May 03, 2014 6:59 pm
by Longes
http://rt.com/news/156592-odessa-activists-burnt-alive/
46 people died in flames in Odessa, when radicals set ablaze the local House of Trade Unions with anti-government protesters blocked inside. The city is now in mourning for those who died, suffocated in smoke or had to jump out of windows.
Posted: Sat May 03, 2014 11:50 pm
by PhoneLobster
Koumei wrote:Oh, and we have Bulk-Billing over here: plenty of doctors (GPs anyway) you can just go and see for free, the government pays the tab. He declared there'll now be a $6 fee for that. (PM quote: "The average Australian visits the doctor 11 times a year. I don't think they're that sick." But they're going to be!) And was then told "people will just wander into the ER then for their free treatment" so declared there will be big fees for going into the ER if it's not an emergency.
I think this might be one of the better examples of their bullshit right now.
So they floated the $6 "copayment" as a "rumor/leak" early on. And yes people pointed out "er you know how horribly expensive this whole drive people to the ERs and end preventative GP care thing is right? Just ask the fucking 3rd world nation called the USA?".
But the "independent" committy consisting of three individual "independent" Murdoch fluffers from within the federal liberal party's own ranks and most closely associated hard right "think tanks", propaganda machines and corporate concentration camp running lap dogs. They instead have "recommended" a $15 copayment. With a discount down to $5 for some pensioners, oh and also our formerly world class prescription drug government funded bulk buying/discount scheme? The one already marginally sabotaged by John Howard stacking it's managing panel with drug industry shills? Yeah well now they want to add a $5 dollar copayment to ALL drugs on the scheme (the one intended to identify massively important over priced drugs and make them fairly and reasonably affordable for everyone through bulk buying and resale)... and to "reassess" every drug on the scheme. And to create an addition "independent panel" outside of the scheme's
existing independent panel to do that... and assess the scheme's "continued viability".
Because one of the things the group is trying to cut down on is bureaucratic duplication. And if there is one sure way to save money by reducing bureaucratic duplication it's by creating more independent panels who's sole task is to reassess the actions and continually question the existence of a single other existing independent panel.
But anyway. All these are indeed the wank fantasies of Rupert Murdoch. And only a "recommendation". Some say that it's all a scare campaign to beat up paranoia so when they only trash half of Australia's infrastructure everyone will pat them on the back for being good boys and not trashing ALL the infrastructures like the "independent panel" wanked to.
Though the scary thing is this government seems to be genuinely retarded extremist in attitude and may well go as close to the whole hog as they think they can manage.
Others still suggest they plan is to propose their wet dreams of neo liberalism (think neo-conservative/modern Thatcherite) and just let the senate save them from themselves by rejecting stuff. But good luck on relying on crazy Clive Palmer to be the voice of sanity in the room.
Speaking of which this insanity of a "this is totally the template our budget (that is still secret and we make no commitments!)" situation is only generating more talk about whether this will lead to a double dissolution. Not because it's becoming clear that many signature pieces of "I won't negotiate I'll totally for reals call an election!" Abbot's agenda are going to be blocked or watered down massively in the senate, but because they are proposing a budget so insane that even IT might actually be blocked in the senate almost forcing a double dissolution election.
And the crazy thing is that Clive's Palmer United Party (PUP, no really) only personally stands to gain if they can force an election right now. And if they block the budget pretty much every other party in the senate would be borderline nuts not to take the opportunity to go to the polls and earn Abbot the "One Term Tony" moniker that everyone is hoping to hang on him nice and early.
Oh and PS as if the recommendations of the "independent panel" weren't crazy enough it includes some totally out of left field bug nuts insane
anti-federalist states rights ranting! Which I will note is borderline unheard of in Australia.
Seriously people have gone on for decades about how there are issues and redundancy in our three levels of government and how in some impossible fantasy scenario they might like to abolish one of those three levels of government. But THEY were all talking about abolishing the state or local government levels. THESE guys want to effectively abolish our Federal government.
No really, they want the federal government to stop funding important things, stop bossing the states around, stop collecting income tax, and let the states collect income tax instead and SEPARATELY use it to run all their hospitals and shit. Because THAT won't lead to duplication, forcing every state to have totally separately managed and independently funded services.
Oh, and they explicitly called for an
end to co-operation between the states. No really you could not make this shit up. They actually want our federal system to be
non-co-operative because as all true Australian nationalists know if their is one thing wrong with our federal nation it is all the fucking co-operating to make it a better place. Nope, it would be better if each state was a mercenary asshole trying to stick it to all the other states in a "competitive instead of co-operative federation" because fuck yeah let's make TASMANIA fund it's own hospitals with wishful thinking and no-population then TOTALLY compete on a "level playing field" with fucking NSW and it's giant economy.
Why? Fuck knows why, these people are just fucking insane anarchists. Or maybe its about disempowering and destroying government so they can better loot it with privatization scams and corruption at the state level, what with them totally being in the middle of that.
Oh yeah. And meanwhile as an added bonus, end all government support for the homeless. But start giving rich people subsidies to employ under paid nannies. No really.
Homeless nannies for the win.
Posted: Sun May 04, 2014 5:07 am
by Starmaker
A number of half-decent bills are moving through the Russian legislature, and conservatard sites are circulating an open letter to shut them allegedly because of teh ghey. The exhaustive list:
- equal rights for men and women: equal employment opportunities, no discrimination on the basis of family status (esp. of women with children, or - this is all over the place - of childless women of childbearing age whom HR dipshits consider to be "biological clock time bombs"), representation in government. Note the language: it doesn't say "gender rights" or anything, and there's no room for alternative genders; if anything, the law indirectly affirms the state's recognition of the gender binary. Yes, conservatards who are always whining about white people being "outbred" by the "ethnics" are not about to make it easier on women to have children if it means women's rights.
- a children's rights amendment which rephrases the "gay propaganda" ban as an anti-pedo law, with a dash of "abstinence first" sex ed. But noooo, heterosexual pedos are a-okay because they spread wholesome God-approved heterosexual propaganda.
- an anti-harassment law. It's kinda bad, what with being one-sided (it's supposed to protect women against men and that's it), but conservatards aren't against it because they think gay harassment is a problem; it's just harassment doesn't exist, if anything untoward happens, the bitch must have wanted it all along, and if she hadn't, she should have stayed in the kitchen.
There's also a conservatard initiative to ban surrogacy, again, because of teh ghey. Now, I'm all for banning it, because renting out underprivileged wombs to bear "noble" babbies is fucked up. Except, uh, gay couples don't actually need surrogacy the way it exists now, and since the bill is explicitly introduced as an application of the state's homophobic stance, I'm afraid they come for IVF next. Which sucks all the balls, because IVF for healthy women is (comparatively) affordable, $2k or so, not much more expensive than proper medical care for a "natural" pregnancy, while IVF tourism is out of reach for a majority of women.
Finally, there's a bill that would nationalize and provide easy access to all state-funded art (including everything up to 1993). The post-1993 part can go both ways, since most modern Russian movies (the most costly "art" category) are popularly acknowledged to be unwatchable shit, and the perspective of transferring rights to the end result might mean more shit will be given the green light (and stacks of green paper). But the pre-1993 part, if implemented properly (ha!), will make it a small price to pay.
Posted: Sun May 04, 2014 6:52 am
by tussock
@Odessa, so 1500 fascist brownshirts shipped in by the junta march on a union headquarters chanting death to Russians, attack the police who stand between them, firebomb women and children outside to herd them indoors, then set the place on fire and beat to death anyone who tries to escape.
But it's important to remember that Russia is the bad guys and Crimea wasn't in any real danger, OK. Also, the union being slaughtered, some of them fought back for a bit, that's really important to note. "Clashes", not "mass murder by party thugs".
@Australia: welcome to New Zealand. Isn't neoliberalism fun. Enjoy your small taste of the 18th century. PS: it cost me $60 to visit a doctor last time (up from $20 in two years), and there's often an 8-hour wait for the "waiting room" for the Emergency room at the local hospital, with triage in place to sort you into the right one.
@Russia: it's nice that you have a progressive government, it's sad that means they're only going to repress gay men because they're all paedophiles. You should know, NZ was having that exact same argument in 1985. Thirty years from now gay marriage should just be normal there too, if you don't go a bit quicker.
Posted: Sun May 04, 2014 11:13 am
by Meikle641
tussock wrote:
@Australia: welcome to New Zealand. Isn't neoliberalism fun. Enjoy your small taste of the 18th century. PS: it cost me $60 to visit a doctor last time (up from $20 in two years), and there's often an 8-hour wait for the "waiting room" for the Emergency room at the local hospital, with triage in place to sort you into the right one.
(Emphasis mine)
Sounds like here in my town. 8 to 14 hour waits are common here in my hospital.
Posted: Sun May 04, 2014 3:31 pm
by Longes
"Voice of Ukraine", the official newspaper of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, published an article, in which scientist Valeriy Bebik proves that Buddha was a ukrainian.
Posted: Sun May 04, 2014 6:16 pm
by RadiantPhoenix
That's a joke, right?
Posted: Sun May 04, 2014 7:20 pm
by Ancient History
Posted: Sun May 04, 2014 7:21 pm
by Longes
RadiantPhoenix wrote:That's a joke, right?
http://www.golos.com.ua/Article.aspx?id=131661
March 2009 though.