What about Russia?

although i prefer bumer:

http://www.dvdigital.ru/img/dvd/photos/w269/bumer.jpg

k thanx

http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=tbn:6HUhze6TCloJ:itc.ua/img/dpk/2003/11/boomer_19.jpg

fkn hell

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/01/russia1

A lawyer for the repeated official attempts to close it down, said police met Yevloyev at the steps of an aircraft after he flew into Ingushetia's airport and drove him away in a Volga car. "As they drove he was shot in the temple ... They threw him out of the car near the hospital," Kaloi Akhilgov told Reuters by telephone. "He was discovered there and they quickly put him on the operating table, which is where he died."

Wait, aside from that account being horrifying, they can't possibly mean "a lawyer for the repeated official attempts to close it down"

death by carelessness

Cops seen Pulp Fiction too many damn times.

Russia has good fur. If you're into that.
What is the Russian Goodfellas?

Chelsea

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html

must be read to be believed

Why Stalin?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t he murder hundreds of thousands of priests?’

‘We don’t know why he was sent by God. Maybe he had to slaughter them so the faith could be tested. We don’t know. It’s not for us to judge.

sometimes I think Russia is a nation composed entirely of insane people.

‘The Bandidos are the biker aspect of the American assault on Holy Rus. This is the last bastion of true religion. Stanislavsky used to say: “Either you are for art, or art is for you.” That is the difference between the West and Russia. You are imperialists, you think all art is for you and we think we are all for art. We give, you take. That is why we can have Stalin and God together. We can fit everything inside us, Ukrainians and Georgians and Germans, Estonians and Lithuanians. The West wipes out small peoples; inside Russia they flourish. You want everything to be like you. The West has been sending us its influencers of corruption. The kabbalah of the usurers. A Russian who is trained in a Western company starts to think differently: self-love is at the root of Western rationality. That is not our way. You have been sending us your consumer culture. I don’t think of Washington or London as being in charge. Satan commands them. That is why you want to bomb Syria, the homeland of holiness. The devil wants to take the road to Damascus, but Putin is defending it. You have to learn to see the holy war underneath the everyday. Democracy is a fallen state. To split “left” and “right” is to divide. In the kingdom of God there is only above and below. All is one. Which is why the Russian soul is holy. It can unite everything. Like in an icon. Stalin and God. Like everything you see here in the Night Wolves, we take bits of broken machinery and mould them together.’

literally O_O right now

This is interesting:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f2985ddc-dcaa-11e3-9016-00144feabdc0.html#axzz31tx9zH2o

It's arguably a little harsh to go after Usmanov as VK's stance on removing hate speech / content has much more to do with its founder Pasha Durov's libertarian bent but it's a potentially useful tactic. Of course, it raises questions about why a group with a strong moral stand were investing in companies owned by an oligarch with Usmanov's 'colourful history' in the first place. Financially it won't make a difference but embarrassing businessmen with a profile in the west to maintain could be a winner.

pretty difficult to have a discussion about alisher usmanov on a uk based internet forum

Yes, my first draft of that post didn't include the words 'colourful history'.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/19/russian-oligarchs-former-wife-wins-record-breaking-divorce-settlement

lol

Moscow cemetery brawl: 'Two dead and 50 arrested'

A spokeswoman, Sofya Khotina, said police believe the brawl was caused by a territorial dispute between two different groups of cemetery workers.

I didn't know until today that there's an isolated part of Russia called Kaliningrad Oblast on the Baltic sea with two countries or more in any direction between it and the rest of Russia. How could I not know this? Did you know it?

https://cdn.britannica.com/46/175446-050-49FDCA6D/Kaliningrad-Russia.jpg

I nearly got deported from Kaliningrad Airport trying to catch a connecting overnight flight to St Petersburg as my visa didn't start until the next day. I had half a dozen people in uniform sternly tell me "KALININGRAD IS IN RUSSIA!", so yes.

Immanuel Kant was born there, back when it was still called Königsberg.

Yes, because of work

Yes, I knew it.

Prussians!

Don’t know much about Geography, but at least in this one case I actually figured out what was up with this place from staring at a map, and only later made the connection with Kant and non-ILX0r Euler.

Do we know why they didn't revert to the pre-Soviet name?

Too German-sounding for nationalist comfort, I assume.

I see we've crossed a bridge.

these weird remnants of dead empires, like Gibraltar as well and France's bit of South America, are strange entities indeed after decades of decolonisation. I think I only found out a few years back about this one.

Saint Pierre and Miquelon is also a bizarre entity.

(xp) Berwick-on-Tweed in a few years from now.

The Channel Islands are pretty weird for that matter.

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nm9w5P6KEXw/TpDQOcmvMkI/AAAAAAAAAws/O8FBZWvpysk/s1600/Jocks%2Band%2Bthe%2BGeordies%2Bpg1.jpg

as prophesied in ancient scriptures

Interesting Saint-Pierre factoid.

The only time the guillotine was used in North America was on Saint-Pierre in the late 19th century.[64] Joseph Néel was convicted of killing Mr Coupard on Île aux Chiens on 30 December 1888, and subsequently executed by guillotine on 24 August 1889. The device had to be shipped from Martinique and it did not arrive in working order. It was very difficult to get anyone to perform the execution; finally a recent immigrant was coaxed into doing the job.

I see we've crossed a bridge.

"The Channel Islands are pretty weird for that matter."

not as weird as they would be if they were occupied by Argentinians! That was one of the things that embarrassed Thatcher: she'd only just recently made some immigration bill reforms that stripped Falklanders of full british citizenship, then she went to war over a "sovereign british territory" not!

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt Deutsch.

Oed' und leer das Meer.

Saint Pierre and Miquelon is also a bizarre entity.

― pomenitul,

Has been very close to appearing on the Guess the City for sometime, but never quite made it

mainly because there is no city

Showed up on my feed via Atlas Obscura today:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kaliningrad-oblast

Russian TikTokers practicing their English to avoid getting arrested during Navalny protests.

“If they try to throw you into the paddy wagon, you say, ‘You are violating my human rights!’”

pic.twitter.com/LoN6SnfbTJ

— max seddon (@maxseddon) January 21, 2021

lol

great bump forks

thanks "Punster McPunisher"

I wouldn't expect anything from the protests at this point, but I do expect the police won't put up with this forever:

Navalny protesters pelting police with snowballs in Moscow.#Russia pic.twitter.com/gY6rceXuO5

— Patrick Reevell (@Reevellp) January 23, 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipAnwilMncI

Fascinating investigative report by navalny on Putin’s wealth

I wouldn't expect anything from the protests at this point, but I do expect the police won't put up with this forever

Theres videos of police beating the hell out of protestors from today

I've got two articles that I feel are connected but couldn't find an appropriate thread, this is best I could do.

For years, Russia has been quietly supporting neo-fascist movements and churning out ethnonationalist propaganda that's influenced far-right extremists around the world.

Now, that's paying off: the U.S. far-right has picked their side. https://t.co/tBky8eM8Pt

— Tess Owen (@misstessowen) February 25, 2022

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/24/russia-ukraine-attack-social-media-telegram/

This is the front line of the information war. Many analysts had speculated that Russia would destroy Ukrainian communications, but shock and awe seems to be the watchword. While communications were reported to be jammed in the Donbass region, which saw the heaviest fighting, communications remained intact in most of the country—allowing the deluge of images and video to show the full brunt of Russia’s aerial bombardment.

For days ahead of the invasion, these Telegram channels had been pumping out a stream of information—some from reputable sources, some speculative, some outright false.

Just don't say "horseshoe theory" whatever you do.

not sure what MAGA freaks and Christo-fascists rallying around Putin has to do with “horseshoe theory”

unless I’m missing something in the FP article that keeps bugging out on my phone when I scroll

It has to do with horseshoe theory because of the willingness on the far left to apologize for Putin.

Hmmm.

Sorry, generalizing. *A willingness of some on the far left to apologize for Putin.

How’s that remotely relevant here? Are the far left in power anywhere? Are they funding Putin? It seems a pretty niche opinion, far leftists opposed Putin in Chechnya and his anti-lgbt laws and a raft of other stuff.

No relevant figure on the far left I can think of does this, doubtless there's some US substack clowns who do but I don't think they're representative of anything much to tie a "theory" around.

Putin's financial contribution to far left parties/causes still zero afaik.

"The far left" is a fairly useless abstraction right now; does it mean communists, anarchists, antifa, prison abolitionists, family abolitionists, trans rights activists, or etc etc? You didn't even specify a country, and neither link even mentions the far left?

It’s people who have hammer and sickles in their twitter handled and use terms like ‘comrade’ without irony.

It's relevant if Russian propaganda is platformed by the far left. I don't think it's actually propaganda and yeah substack clowns, however this is an example of the tendency:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/25/235254/

There's a lot to follow in the Ukraine thread right now so apologies if this is redundant but what's a good leftist source you'd recommend for analysis of the situation?

xp
Do you think comparing those "people" to Steve Bannon is useful?

It’s good to know fifty-follower accounts are of exact equal priority and weighting to the organised far right

https://www.similarweb.com/website/counterpunch.org/#overview
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

use terms like ‘comrade’ without irony

incredible

xpost

That's an interesting site but are you recommending Consortium News?

There are accounts with followers at least in the tens to hundreds of thousands who engage in some sort of apology for Russian or Chinese aggression. I don't think social media on their own are much of a good gauge of anything, especially in terms of 'ratios' etc, except maybe as a vague overview of what areas of interest are the most active.

I'm not wholly denying those people exist, but one of the problems with applied "horseshoe theory" is the implication that they matter as much as the far right, which in the US currently includes FoxNews and nearly all of the Republican Party. Steve Bannon worked in the gd White House! There's nothing even remotely comparable on the far left.

To return to my first point: I disagree that self-parodic tankies define the far left, but maybe that's because I'm currently reading Cedric Robinson.

Horseshoe theory was really just to describe the similar autocratic tendencies of fascism and communism, applied to twitter trends, subgroups and political factions within the US makes no sense.

There's a lot to follow in the Ukraine thread right now so apologies if this is redundant but what's a good leftist source you'd recommend for analysis of the situation?

Not at all the right person to ask this of; the media I know of that I would view as far left are unlikely to have the resources to send people to the Ukraine!

It's relevant if Russian propaganda is platformed by the far left. I don't think it's actually propaganda

Ok so do you have an example of that actually happening? Since you acknowledge the CounterPunch article isn't that. From a cursory look I think you could probably endorse everything said in it and still be anti-Putin.

fwiw there's also plenty of twitter accounts that post xenophobic garbage about "the russians" and seem not to be aware even of the difference between Russia as a modern capitalist state and the Soviet Union - I wouldn't really cast them as indicative of "a tendency on the Center" or anything of the like either tho.

Biden's argument yesterday was that Putin's desire is to "reestablish the Soviet Union" so there is a pretty decent argument for that being a tendency of the Center, tbh.

Hey fuck you comrade

Buncha xposts sorry

bunch really fucking disgusting pro-war right wing garbage being posted on this site lately by people, FPs all around

"buncha", ian otm

If I'm being completely honest I should admit I regretted my remarks here almost as soon as I made them. (And apologies for not following up at the time, I've been feeling pretty overwhelmed.)

(Keyboard issues, had to switch devices. Also I realize this is getting tangential to the thread topic so my bad on that too.) Quite soon after I posted here I saw examples on Twitter of some centrists using this as a lazy smear. In recent days though it’s getting significantly worse from what I can tell.

First there was this, which someone I usually respect retweeted.

The @newrepublic could've gotten someone who'd had even a casual familiarity with satellite imagery and the industry to write this. Instead they had a dim commodity tankie lace up his clown shoes and take a poop on the bed. https://t.co/L1YkzwlCCG

— Adam Rawnsley (@arawnsley) April 1, 2022

Does anyone else think that this will be the exact spin that Tucker Carlson puts on these atrocities tonight? https://t.co/5xTYav9IlB

— Phillips P. OBrien (@PhillipsPOBrien) April 4, 2022

lol

https://www.chron.com/culture/article/conservative-texas-families-move-to-russia-21152330.php