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

[PhoneLobster]

So hey, remember when Koumei was all WTF about Joe Hockey and his big thing on August unemployment/job creation/ etc...

Weeeeeelll, aside from the fact that unemployment figures have been pretty much a bunch of fakery ever since free market economics started to take off and they actually had to change methodology to hide the resulting unemployment and our actual unemployment rate, especially during crisis periods is about double and all sorts of related shenanigans...

It turns out that the Australian Bureau of Statistics is now saying "Er... oops?" Apparently the rather "strange statistical blip" of the August "job creation" figure that Hockey was trumpetting as a vast success (right after the prior months 12 year unemployment high "blip" of 6.4%)... that figure, well it turns out it was some sort of actual error of some form.

Right now they seem to be basically saying that the very basis of the way they track employment in this country and the "seasonally adjustment" methodology they use has suddenly and inexplicably broken down, to the point that using the standard seasonal adjustment methods threw off the last two months figures, and inflated the August job creation figures about 4x the amount they intend to "correct" them to.

Now you MIGHT think that the apparent complete break down of the previously solid seasonal employment trends might itself be an alarming piece of news, I mean WTF sort of economic crisis, or at the very least massive and sudden change in the way our employment trends work potentially signaled by this is deeply disturbing enough...

And you MIGHT think that the ABS deciding that they should essentially do what government departments tracking unemployment figures have done since Thatcher and just adjust their methodology until the unemployment figure hovers between 4-6 percent forever might be alarming.

But the MOST alarming thing? Well Joe Hockey has just recently also announced that he wants to take all these here pesky figures (often already very favorably weighted and interpreted) from the ABS, which are currently freely available, and make it so that you don't even get to see them unless you pay for them.

UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM SOLVED. FOREVER.

[Koumei]

On the plus side, it's yet another thing where even Coalition members are breaking out of rank to say "Uh, dude? That's a fucking terrible idea, seriously, do not do that."

On the minus side, we've all seen how successful breaking rank from the Coalition is in Australia. Best case scenario is they're ignored (until Smokey Joe is forced to drop the idea for other reasons, then suddenly "it was because of the good advice of (my party), not (the other reasons)"). Worst case scenario is they get thrown in front of a bus for daring to question the supreme leader*. Like having to go to jail for unauthorised expenses when the PM just gets to pay his back, claiming it was a short-term loan carried out for expediency.

*In this case, the supreme leader is both Joe and Tony. They are interchangeable. They are neither discrete nor discreet entities. You could probably argue that Chris Pyne and Peta Credlin are also part of this blob.

[Koumei]

So Obama said he'd form a tag-team to browbeat Abbott over climate change at the G20. Looking at all we have available on "Team Australia", Tony will need Canadia as a tag-partner, against basically everyone.

But then Abbott decided he's going to have harsh words with Putin because of Putin personally murdering Australians*.

I just want to remind people that Tony did some boxing in university, and Putin used to kill people for a living[REDACTED]is a fine upstanding gentleman. We need to hold G20 inside a steel cage and sell tickets to ringside.

*You know, with the flight that was shot down over the Crimean warzone, where Russia is automatically to blame.

[Longes]

So Obama said he'd form a tag-team to browbeat Abbott over climate change at the G20. Looking at all we have available on "Team Australia", Tony will need Canadia as a tag-partner, against basically everyone.

But then Abbott decided he's going to have harsh words with Putin because of Putin personally murdering Australians*.

I just want to remind people that Tony did some boxing in university, and Putin used to kill people for a living[REDACTED]is a fine upstanding gentleman. We need to hold G20 inside a steel cage and sell tickets to ringside.

*You know, with the flight that was shot down over the Crimean warzone, where Russia is automatically to blame.

Ukrainian or Eastern-Ukrainian warzone. Crimea is part of Russia, and thus not a part of the warzone.

[Stahlseele]

We need to hold G20 inside a steel cage and sell tickets to ringside.

that'd probably raise interest in politics quite a bit.
it'd probably also mean that the klitschko brothers would dominate eurasia pretty quickly.

[Koumei]

So let's talk about countries that were potentially going to have massive shitfan events had Scotland Independence been a thing.

Spain has Catalonia and Basque, and they both want independence.

France has Corsica.

Belgium has Flanders.

Not that Flanders.

Greece has Greek Macedonia.

There are others, particularly once you leave the EU (shall we mention Georgia and the Ukraine? Let's talk about Georgia and the Ukraine!), but you get the idea. In the case of former-Soviet countries it seems to be specifically related to those regions being full of ethnic Russians because the USSR thought that would be a good idea, laying a trap card for the day those countries broke away. That opens so many cans of worms that this is now a Paizo campaign.

But of the non-Soviet ones, what's the deal? Macedonia I'm not sure about, and seems pretty old? People make it sound like the other ones are "Woah, this country has turned really shitty with the economic collapse, but my small region here is doing okay, so we should fuck off and let those other dickheads starve, what have they ever done for us?"

Could someone more educated in worldlyglobal matters elucidate? Or am I basically on the mark there?

(And I know that the former-Soviet countries don't give a shit about the Scottish thing, they were already working on their own independence, with their host countries saying "Sure, we'll give you a referendum. Wait, that's a word for military crackdown, right?" But the others seem to have been watching with interest, due to the whole "So now do we let the Scots into the EU?" thing.)

[ishy]

So let's talk about countries that were potentially going to have massive shitfan events had Scotland Independence been a thing.

Italy has Catalonia and Basque, and they both want independence.

Pretty sure, you should be talking about Spain (and France) there.

[Koumei]

Derp. Let me fix that.

[Username17]

Macedonia is the name of a region which extends from northern Greece all the way through the tiny country actually called "Macedonia" and out the other side into Bulgaria. The region is best known for having produced Alexander the Great, and much lesser known for having been a player in several Greek and Roman wars. Hasn't really amounted to much in the last 2000 years. During that period, it has seen settlement by Celts, Slavs, and Turks, so the language spoken in Macedonia (and called Macedonian by the people who live there) is basically Serbian with some Turkish loan words and not at all the language that Emperor Alexander spoke.

But remember that Macedonia very briefly ruled everything from Egypt to Persia, so people in the Mediterranean have a vague sense that people claiming the title "Macedonia" (even the people who factually live in Macedonia and speak the language called Macedonian) are producing a claim on titles to land all over the fucking place. Think Crusader Kings for how important and dangerous that might be.

So basically the country of Greece especially acts like a giant cock about the name "Macedonia" and other countries in the Balkans don't act a whole lot better. People could plausibly draw pretty much any borders for "Macedonia" that they wanted, and they wouldn't be any less legitimate than the borders the area has now. So a lot of people want to either form new countries called Macedonia or to eat various other countries in the name of forming a Macedonia whose borders they like better. This pretty much can't be resolved unless Greece and the entirety of the Balkans and probably Turkey as well are united under one Empire. Which actually happened for a while under Rome, which is how the Macedonia question got sidelined in the first place. But without local imperial domination, it apparently keeps coming back forever.

-Username17

[nockermensch]

Belgium has Flanders.

Not that Flanders.

There, fixed.

[Longes]

Internet trolls are going to be sentenced to two years in jail in the UK

[nockermensch]

The Workers Party won another presidential race here today, in a very close runoff: 51.5% to 49.5%. We'll be under a nominally progressive government for four more years, and this is great. I'm off to celebrate!

[Ancient History]

Stupid, sexy Flanders.

[Josh_Kablack]

The Workers Party won another presidential race here today, in a very close runoff: 51.5% to 49.5%. We'll be under a nominally progressive government for four more years, and this is great. I'm off to celebrate!

and the overlords are already bemoaning it

For a reminder, of how this works here's some US coverage from shortly after Obama won re-election:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/20 ... on-coming/

Funny how such these people never walk back their predictions of financial doom when the markets turn around in the longer-term under such politicians.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

The Workers Party won another presidential race here today, in a very close runoff: 51.5% to 49.5%. We'll be under a nominally progressive government for four more years, and this is great. I'm off to celebrate!

and the overlords are already bemoaning it

For a reminder, of how this works here's some US coverage from shortly after Obama won re-election:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/20 ... on-coming/

Funny how such these people never walk back their predictions of financial doom when the markets turn around in the longer-term under such politicians.

No, they just scream louder that it totally happened, guys.

[Koumei]

I enjoy seeing them bitch and moan and shriek and generally get upset about things that aren't going to happen. Seeing rich people frustrated is one of the few luxuries remaining, after all.

[nockermensch]

We live in interesting times. 25 years ago, the Worker's Party narrowly missed their first chance at winning the presidency after Rede Globo, a big media conglomerate, shamelessly manipulated the last presidential debate.

Back then, Globo, between a TV network, radio stations and several newspapers had what amounted to a media monopoly in Brazil. This situation was so absurd that BBC did a documentary about it, "Beyond Citizen Kane" - I can't find an original English audio version, but you can turn off the terrible youtube subtitles and follow what the brazilians are saying by the correct original BBC subtitles below.

Now thankfully it's 2014 and Internet has broken Globo's monopoly. Non-cable TV's audience is on a free-fall, people can stream audio instead of tuning on radio, newspapers are a dying media and there's a popular and healthy left-wing blogosphere, with even a couple of decent news portals to counteract the old hate. A lot of people get their news through social media now so two of these election's battlefields were twitter and facebook.

Even then, it was a needlessly close battle. Hunger was considered a chronic and incurable problem in Brazil's northeast, for like two centuries. Northeast politics was essentially dominated by local "Colonels" that kept the people living in the most abject misery and were constantly re-elected based on pork barrel politics or plain old intimidation. Each time there was a drought (Brasil's northeast has periodic draughts) people died of hunger there. This kept happening until into the 90s. It took just 10 years of the Worker's Party government implementing and running social welfare programs to stamp out the "dying from hunger" problem from this country. "Bolsa Família" plus other Keynesian programs did succeed in reducing extreme poverty and inequality in Brazil in an unprecedented level.

So this election should had been a wash because about 35 millions of brazilians are worried now about buying a car, a house or a plasma TV, when 15 years ago their worries would be about getting 1000 calories a day. But it was decided head-to-head instead because the media, even if not all powerful anymore, kept ignoring all these social advances and concentrating on amplifying or even outright creating from whole cloth instances of government corruption. Furthermore, we've seen the arrival of modern rightist tactics here. The rightist sites and communities right now are all but indistinguishable of american Republican ones. Cries about corruption, "out of control inflation" (6% year), about how social welfare (that we barely had before!) is an incentive for the poor to become lazy and have lots of children, that the country needs to close its frontiers (!!!), etc. Even racism is surging here, but rather than being against blacks, it's against the northeastern people, because they dare to vote en masse for the party that helped them out of misery.

So, things were heated here. How heated? How about domestic terrorism heated? The right didn't take last Sunday's democratic defeat lightly. They are right now clamouring for impeachment (on trumped up corruption charges) or even a military coup. Meanwhile, in the real world, the military should be happy that government increased the military spending, specially after finding huge Oil reserves in our coasts.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Furthermore, we've seen the arrival of modern rightist tactics here. The rightist sites and communities right now are all but indistinguishable of american Republican ones. Cries about corruption, "out of control inflation" (6% year), about how social welfare (that we barely had before!) is an incentive for the poor to become lazy and have lots of children, that the country needs to close its frontiers (!!!), etc. Even racism is surging here, but rather than being against blacks, it's against the northeastern people, because they dare to vote en masse for the party that helped them out of misery.

I can't tell you how incredibly eerie that is.

So, nockermensch, where exactly is the Brazilian right-wing getting their democratic mandate? From your post you make it sound like it's mostly a false mandate borne of media manipulation, but personally I've never found those explanations satisfying. See: the debate over the surge of the Australian right-wing. Me, I've always felt than an analysis of the demographics and social history was more illuminating. Especially since 'you stopped our family from starving' should be netting you ridiculous amounts of votes from a demographic.

[nockermensch]

So, nockermensch, where exactly is the Brazilian right-wing getting their democratic mandate? From your post you make it sound like it's mostly a false mandate borne of media manipulation, but personally I've never found those explanations satisfying. See: the debate over the surge of the Australian right-wing. Me, I've always felt than an analysis of the demographics and social history was more illuminating. Especially since 'you stopped our family from starving' should be netting you ridiculous amounts of votes from a demographic.

TRIGGER WARNING: Depressing talk ahead.

Brazilian middle class houses and apartments (mine included) are still made with small rooms separate from the family rooms and adjacent to the kitchen, intended for a live-in domestic servant.


like this

With the extreme poverty in large parts of the country, it used to be a viable strategy for the country poor to give away one of their daughters to "a good family". The poor family would be glad that one of their kids wouldn't risk starvation, but the poor girl would be used as a de facto serf by a middle class urban family. Working with no pay for backbreaking domestic labor, no vacation, living segregated from the family these girls' entire benefits (other than having food and a roof over her head) was that the family would let them attend school and gave like one week a year to visit their original families. These girls would grow up and maybe leave after marrying with an urban poor, but would feel indebted forever to the family that used them.

This shit used to be depressingly common here, but it's finally disappearing, thanks to the social welfare programs we now enjoy. The infuriating part is that there's a significative minority of our population that resents not being able to own people anymore. And this is just the most disgusting privilege our old middle class lost. Access to Universities is more democratic now, with mandatory quotas for minorities and the poor, for example. In Brazil, the best and most desirable Universities were always public, totally free of charge. The perverse catch being that the entrance exams for them are very hard, so your best chance to enter them was to attend excellent and expensive private high schools and cram schools, with the end result that the elites used our free universities while poor people who wanted to pursue education had to to pay private universities.

So, I'm bitter enough about these classist and racist fucks to think that the right obtains their mandate in Brazil by exploring the resentment of horrible people.

The whole truth is more complex than this, of course. Brazil, despite what Carnaval videos can tell you, is a socially conservative country. Abortion is a crime here and any presidential candidate that seriously tackle this question will have their career ruined. So besides disgruntled ex-slave holders, we also have a growing evangelical population that votes on social conservative causes. These people are angry that gay marriage was passed here and live in the same apocalyptical paranoia than american evangelicals. This is milked for votes on every election.

THEN there's crime. I live in an absurdly violent country (despite 9 in each 10 murders in the world happening outside Brazil!). Sometimes I need to call home before arriving to check if the nearby favela is being invaded by the police or a rival drug-dealing gang. This is not a joke or an exaggeration. So tough on crime talk (an idea that always travels together with other conservative canards) is incredibly popular here. The most voted MP was Jair Bolsonaro, a fascist that calls for the return of death penalty, longer jail terms, judging 16 year olds as adults, etc.

Finally, you get some legitimate crisis by taking 36 millions of people out of misery in 10 years. Housing got awfully expensive, for example. So you have a mass of people whose lives are actually objectively better than 15 years ago, but that can point to some areas that are bad right now. The ironic part, of course, is that the right can't actually solve these people's problems, but it'll lie that it can.

So here's the TL;DR for the right's democratic mandate in Brazil:
1) ex-slaveholders who resent these uppity poor sharing airports with them
2) people who feel Jesus is not returning to Earth fast enough
3) people who think we're not emulating Texas penal system enough
4) people thinking their lives will be better under austerity economics

These four groups are bankrolled by billionaires that fear the world is escaping their control (that one is dead now, but his sons keep the work alive). Does this sound somewhat familiar to you?

[TarkisFlux]

Finally, you get some legitimate crisis by taking 36 millions of people out of misery in 10 years. Housing got awfully expensive, for example. So you have a mass of people whose lives are actually objectively better than 15 years ago, but that can point to some areas that are bad right now. The ironic part, of course, is that the right can't actually solve these people's problems, but it'll lie that it can.

I'm pretty sure that the right absolutely can solve the housing price problem. They have plenty of policies to put people back into poverty and free up housing supply.

[nockermensch]

Finally, you get some legitimate crisis by taking 36 millions of people out of misery in 10 years. Housing got awfully expensive, for example. So you have a mass of people whose lives are actually objectively better than 15 years ago, but that can point to some areas that are bad right now. The ironic part, of course, is that the right can't actually solve these people's problems, but it'll lie that it can.

I'm pretty sure that the right absolutely can solve the housing price problem. They have plenty of policies to put people back into poverty and free up housing supply.

Absolutely. Armínio Fraga, who would be the economy minister for the loser neo-liberal party (americans, btw, take notice. Fraga has dual citizenship and was already suggested as a possible leader for the Federal Reserve) is on record saying that the current record low unemployment (5%), high minimum wage situation is bad for the economy.

The actual trick is to figure the kind of rightist you're talking to, if it's one who knows that and is actually okay with it, or if it's one of the dupes who believe that somehow you can run higher unemployment and lower wages and have a better country. I need this to figure as soon as possible if I can start ridiculing them right away or if I should try to show facts first.

[phlapjackage]

Speaking of Brazilian elections: How close to the reality is John Oliver here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n6hvPP06Rs

[Stahlseele]

Meanwhile
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29727311
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... tivity-in/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/ ... 7S20141029
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/29/world ... -airspace/

It's getting a bit cold over here . .

[nockermensch]

Speaking of Brazilian elections: How close to the reality is John Oliver here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n6hvPP06Rs

It's spot-on.

In fairness, he made the penguin with a bowling hat up. But everybody else was real and since he forgot to mention Brazilian Wolverine (who, for some reason, is speaking like Chapolin Colorado in this picture), that was a fair and balanced piece of reporting.

Of course, joke candidates are like, 2% of the total, or something, with everybody else being usually a guy in a suit talking about serious things.

Oliver also didn't mention this guy:

Tiririca is a clown, of the prat-falling, pie-in-the-face variety. His original claim to fame was a novelty song that was a hit with children. Then he ran to MP years ago, in a platform with slogans like:
"Vote Tiririca, because things can't get worse!"
"Do you know what a MP does in Congress? Me neither! Vote Tiririca so I can find out!"

He received a record high amount of votes and joined the Congress, despite some sour grapes trying to impugn his victory by claiming that he's illiterate (proof that people actually mixed the guy with his clown persona). And then...


Everything went better than expected.jpg

...he proceeded to become one of our best MPs, anyway. In a Congress plagued with vacancy and corruption, Tiririca has record attendance, doesn't get involved with dirty dealings, votes for progressive causes and usually does a better job at representing brazilians than a lot of suited, serious people.

But to end this on a sour note, it's important to show that this technique can also be used for the Evil. Enter "Coronel Telhada". A military police colonel, of São Paulo's swat-like ROTA. Telhada does political campaign dressed like this:


can you feel the manliness?

There's a comic about him, too.

Do you feel lucky, voter?

The long and the short of it is that Col. Telhada sells himself as an action hero, that will fix crime by the same tactics made famous in Brazilian's surprise hit Elite Squad (the tactics being, for those unfamiliar with the movie, "total disregard for law and due process"). I think he will also save us from Communism, Feminism and the Gay Agenda, but I may be mixing the guy's own words with those of his rabid constituency.

He was another top-voted MP. He's now claiming that the states where Dilma didn't win should secede, a talk that is like several kinds of crime here, but so far it didn't look like somebody has pointed this to him.

[Maxus]

Note to self: Learn bitchin' guitar solos before I run for office, make it a centerpiece of my campaign. Declare that I will bring the power of metal to elected office.