242 on 24/8/2008 at 09:00
Quote Posted by clearing
I guess this tells us what country you might hail from. 242, you from
orange Ukraine?
From blue, my dear.
clearing on 24/8/2008 at 10:02
Bravo :p
TTK12G3 on 24/8/2008 at 14:15
I would advise you to do the same. You kind of just dropped an emotional appeal/rant without citing parallels and examples.
Starrfall on 24/8/2008 at 15:49
I think one of the sort of unusual things about this is that because everyone in the USA knows or should know that the government has been selectively lying about Russia/USSR for 60 years or so, it's both difficult to analyze this conflict and easy to not give it any real thought. Combine this with Russia's relative recent quietness and fatigue from the last 7 years and it seems like hardly anyone here, government included, knows what the hell is going on. Which in turn makes setting a clear course for future action difficult.
It's interesting to see how well a world superpower can hamstring itself in the face of international crisis. It's like we've made Russia into this big amorphous blob and we can't see its real shape or figure out how to make it take the shape we want.
(Or maybe it's not that unusual and we're always this retarded when it comes to foreign policy, but I still think this is worse than normal. Edit: Another part of what contributes obviously is that fact that probably 50% of americans still don't know Georgia is a country.)
Muzman on 24/8/2008 at 16:29
Before people jump in on the US school system (I might yet :P ) this is bang on. At school it was this big monolithic red area of thems we do not speak of, with a bit of lip serivce to newer ajuncts like Romania, Bulgaria and whole lot of staring at the Berlin Wall and that was it. The uncomfortable truth of WW2 allied status and the commies basically bearing the brunt of the fighting kinda disappeared.
So yeah, even after twenty years its not so much the undiscovered country but a whole mess of them for most people I suspect.
d'Spair on 24/8/2008 at 18:16
Quote Posted by SD
Violent nationalism, persecution of minorities and brutal crushing of the human spirit still seems to be the order of the day in Russia.
If you actually dare to come to Moscow one day, you'll probably notice that the ones who are really persecuted are native Russian people, and they are persecuted by a huge amount of immigrants from the Caucus - Chechen, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and, well, Georgian. Raping Russian women and wasting our men. That's actually the result of a liberal and democratic internal policy of our dear 'tyrants' Putin and Medvedev.
And don't try to compare the situation in Moscow to Paris and all their black African immigrants. It's much worse.
Quote Posted by SD
Use your noggin. Russia had far and away the most to gain from Litvinenko's death. He met with two "former" KGB agents on the day he was poisoned (of course, as Badri Patarkatsishvili says, "there is no such thing as a former KGB agent").
So you don't even think that this assassination looks
too much like it was done by Russia? I mean, I believe Russian special agents aren't that stupid, if they really wanted to kill Litvinenko secretly, they would have definitely not posed in front of the crowd for the whole day.
Muzman on 24/8/2008 at 19:51
Quote Posted by d'Spair
If you actually dare to come to Moscow one day, you'll probably notice that the ones who are really persecuted are native Russian people, and they are persecuted by a huge amount of immigrants from the Caucus - Chechen, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and, well, Georgian. Raping Russian women and wasting our men. That's actually the result of a liberal and democratic internal policy of our dear 'tyrants' Putin and Medvedev.
And don't try to compare the situation in Moscow to Paris and all their black African immigrants. It's much worse.
You've got your time periods mixed up. Go back to the sixties in Paris you'll find a whole lot of French people who feel roughly the same about the Algerians etc.
This is the burden of empire, whether you want it or think you deserve it doesn't matter. Nationalism won't save you from it. Never has, never will.
d'Spair on 24/8/2008 at 20:11
I was comparing it to modern Paris. I've been there half a year ago.
I want the people who come to my city know, that they are generally welcomed, but they should know that they are guests on someone else's territory. Right now it's quite the opposite - my friends and I start to feel like guests here. When you walk down the street in almost any district of Moscow at night, you're lucky if you see a single Russian face on your way.
Muzman on 24/8/2008 at 20:30
Better start making friends then. Everybody gets "swamped by human trash" at some point. Just means you've got something to offer.
