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Post by miscmisc on Oct 5, 2017 3:10:25 GMT 1
Anyway, I still can't wrap my head around the Spanish government's actions re: Catalonia. Is there something I'm simply unaware of?
Yes, like I said, the law seems to be clearly on the Spanish government's side. The EU can't possibly back the Catalan separatists either. But that shouldn't give you the license to be incredibly dumb.
I'm not for Catalan independence, but my God I have no idea what they were thinking.
The Catalans can't back down now, can they? Independence or not, Spain is probably losing Catalonia. I know, it's hard to see how they can win legitimate independence practically speaking, but some things are simply irreparable in this world. You may be able to postpone divorce and lock her in indefinitely, but she isn't likely to open her heart to you again.
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Post by miscmisc on Oct 10, 2017 18:31:47 GMT 1
Catalan president Carles Puigdemont is speaking now, and I have no idea where he's going with this.
Basically, he can't declare independence, and can't not declare independence either, if you know what I mean. I guess this speech will reflect that politically impossible position.
PS: So, it was basically a nothing speech that resolves nothing at all. I was right. It was a declaration of non-independence independence.
I'm not mocking Puigdemont, though. With the EU establishment in particular quietly yet very clearly and firmly against the independence, to the point where they would tacitly threaten the Catalan separatists in various ways, it would take enormous balls and a fair amount of recklessness to clearly go ahead with it, especially since Catalonia is a euro-zone "country".
There're many, many Catalans who would breathe a sigh of relief if the independence is indefinitely suspended (= practically cancelled), but you shouldn't think that Catalonia can just move on like before. That foolish violent crackdown by the Spanish government will have an ever-lasting effect. It fatally wounded the marriage at least on the spiritual level. Spain slapped Catalonia in the face, and she will not forget it. That scene will come up time and time again in her mind.
Rajoy is very unlikely to change his "You fucked up, and now, just come back home, and I'll forgive you, we will forget it and move on, OK?" stance, especially since much of the rest of Spain is cheering for his behaving that way.
I know it's a popular, stupid analogy, but it really is like a marriage going horribly wrong.
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Post by miscmisc on Oct 10, 2017 20:06:40 GMT 1
The Nobel Prize in Economics, aka the Fake Nobel Prize, is one of the worst things ever in this world. It has inflicted an untold amount of damage on the well-being of this planet.
You say "Nobel", and people bow down, without knowing it's a fucking fake Nobel.
Now, laymen take Richard Thaler's toxic bullshit nonsense seriously, and that stupid charlatan can act like a legit scientist. I want to throw up.
What a wonderful academic field economics is, where an insufferable half-wit like Thaler can be that successful. He would've had to drop out in the first year of the doctoral course in any legitimate scientific field, or in any legitimate liberal arts field for that matter, for economics is neither.
Those Swedes, who came up with this fake-ass shit and slapped the word "Nobel" onto it for PR - despite the Nobel family begging them not to do it, no less - are criminals whose names should be remembered.
Economics should have ended with Keynes. That doesn't mean he truly understood economy (He didn't, but who ever possibly could?), but everything that came afterwards in that field has been no better than, say, futures studies; It has been a joke of a discipline, fantasy-based kindergarten stuff that nonetheless has had a ridiculously oversized influence on the real world. None of the physicists who are worth a damn actually believes in the concept of equilibrium any longer, but those economists cling to the free-market nonsense like the Christian theologians in the dark age who behaved as if the ancient Greek civilization had never happened. All it practically did is contribute massively to the bank accounts of the rentiers, and that's perhaps precisely the secret for their survival and success in the institutions where no one other than the economists themselves actually has any intellectual respect for the discipline.
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Post by miscmisc on Oct 11, 2017 7:01:10 GMT 1
Imagine you're a sophomore who wants to study computer engineering, because they say it's much better than the English literature degree in terms of job prospect. You're not very good at math, and much prefer writing and talking about politics to solving math problems, but believe you'll be able to manage. You took two history classes last year to fulfill your liberal arts requirement, and decided to take another one, an advanced two-semester course, because you did very well in the previous two classes. It's 20th Century Europe, and at the end of the second semester, you must write a paper on one country of your choice, and the topic must be related in some way to ongoing events in 2017. The professor told you that it will be far more important than the exam, saying, "I don't want you to simply memorize stuff like a robot; I want you to think about stuff." Naturally, you choose Russia. You're upset that Russia meddled in and got Trump elected. You're angry. But you also know Russia is such a hot topic that the competition will be tough. You suspect 80% of the students in the class will write about Russia. You know you must write well to make sure you'll get an 'A'+. So you do research online, more than you would for other classes. You read thedailybeast.com and a few other news outlets on a semi-regular basis, so you think you've already got the basic stuff covered. You'll enjoy writing it for sure. And now, this is the result of your hard work, your 'A' winner: How Putin’s Russia uses Soviet-era tricks to evoke racist white fearswww.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/10/09/how-putins-russia-uses-soviet-era-tricks-to-evoke-racist-white-fears/?tid=ss_tw-amp&utm_term=.c7a187e18b45Well, this is not exactly the one you wrote, of course. For one, you've never visited Lviv, Ukraine, obviously. But you do know someone in the dorm whose parents came from Western Ukraine, and who was born in that country and moved to the US at a very early age. And that random dude did tell you the same thing as what this random Ukrainian old man in Lviv said. That's pretty much the only difference. This is your essay, and unfortunately, it's a very, very bad one full of assertions, very sophomoric confusion about "race" and "ethnicity", several factual errors, pure imaginations, and not much else. If your fundamental premise is that the Soviet Union was based on "Russian ethnic superiority," when in reality Russian nationalists, not to mention Russian "supremacists", were considered the official fifth columnists in most of the Soviet era, consistently purged and demonized in the society and system, whatever you vomit out is bound to be fiction. It's exactly the kind of a mess one would expect from an overzealous 20-year-old sophomore student indeed, for whom the Soviet Union is this imaginary land ruled by semi-immortal Stalin for its entire 70-year history, and the Russian Federation is also an imaginary land ruled by a racist who oppresses ethnic minorities and suppresses their local cultures. In other words, it's a paper written by someone who doesn't know a thing about the USSR or Russia. Your professor gave you an 'A' for this, but that's only because you showed a lot of passion in it, which she appreciated, and she didn't want to be an asshole to a non-history-major kid who at least cared a lot about the paper. Her comment on the paper goes: "The part about your Ukrainian friend is unnecessary, quoting a random person doesn't do anything for your argument, but great work overall! ((A))". And now, imagine the Washington Post decided to publish on its op-ed page this sophomoric undergrad essay of yours. It has come to that. There is no longer any "standard" to speak of. PS: It's one of those too-silly-to-be-worth-refuting things, but there's one historian generous enough to have volunteered: irrussianality.wordpress.com/2017/10/10/centering-the-russian-slav-by-destroying-russian-culture/
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Post by miscmisc on Oct 11, 2017 9:33:13 GMT 1
When you see people accusing someone/something of being one of the few things that they actually aren't at least in comparison to most others, you know it's not criticism but hysteria.
There's a Japanese proverb which goes, roughly translated, "If you hate a monk, you will hate his robe too."
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Post by miscmisc on Oct 11, 2017 9:45:19 GMT 1
Wow, why didn't I know until now the US failed to qualify for the World Cup? Not even the playoff for them? Holy shit, that's wild. Finishing behind Honduras and Panama?
Never imagined that happening. I pretty much assumed there were permanent automatic berths for Mexico and USA in CONCACAF anyway, since the CONCACAF qualification system is relatively upset-proof by design as it filters out lesser teams gradually, step by step, and 2/3 of the teams remaining in the last stage will go to the World Cup or at worst the playoff against a non-world beater in the fifth best team from Asia. We might get a scare or two during the process because this is football/soccer, but I didn't expect USA to miss the World Cup outright like this. I thought the 4th place = playoff and losing to a South Korea/Australia/Saudi Arabia, thereby missing the World Cup, was the conceivable worst case scenario. Didn't even get there.
There must have been surely some conspiracy behind it given who the host is this time. Or maybe a kind of an elaborate boycott scheme by the Americans.
PS: This is a good rant.
Better luck next time.
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Post by miscmisc on Oct 12, 2017 6:44:07 GMT 1
Speaking of the World Cup qualifications, Syria lost to Australia in the two-leg AFC playoff, as you probably know already. It was close, though. Closer than expected, as Australia was the clear favorite on paper. The Syrians would be preparing for the intercontinental playoff against Honduras now if Al-Soma's spectacular free-kick in the dying minutes of the extra time had squeezed in. Australian goalkeeper Mathew Ryan was completely beaten in that one, but the ball decided to hit the goalpost, making that loud metallic sound which symbolizes the cruelty of the game. Had the ball gone in, and if Syria managed to beat Honduras in the winnable playoff, the Syrian government would undoubtedly exploit the crap out of that success. The loss is devastating for the regime. If you think they are too busy with all the other important things now, such as, well, the war, to care about a mere sport, you're mistaken. Ostensibly, the opposition are breathing a sigh of relief as they didn't want the government to get any moral booster, any propaganda tool, especially when the situation is already as dire as it is now for them. But only ostensibly. I can assure you their hearts were also torn apart hearing that big clang as the ball hit the goalpost. It could've been different if Australia were mauling Syria by 4-0 or something. But it was close. Almost all Syrians believed, momentarily, "Maybe, maybe, we are going to the World Cup, for real!" And needless to say, it wasn't exactly a royal 'we'. With that being said, this crap by Tim Cahill was so fucking disgusting: http://instagr.am/p/BaGHiBblnAO PS: Damn, the instagram's gone. In case you're wondering, it was veteran Australian striker Tim Cahill, after scoring the match winner in the Syria match, doing this: Late capitalism is just wonderful, isn't it.
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Post by miscmisc on Oct 17, 2017 9:47:03 GMT 1
The cyber attribution industry is the new snake oil vendor on the block. They can so easily have the liberal arts types who dominate the media, because for those tech illiterates, the 'net and computer technology in general is this one huge inaccessible black box.
In reality, Mr. Cyber Detective doesn't have the magick skillz to see the Matrix. What he does is nothing more than a guess game, and his "conclusions" are at best opinions. And he isn't even remotely as reliable as those people seem to think. One of the biggest pieces of "evidence" for the Kremlin hacking into the DNC server was that the attacks tended to happen during the daytime in Russia.
It's just nowhere near as sophisticated as many people seem to assume. They don't fully disclose their methodology not only because that's their company secret, but also because they want to permeate the myth that they are super sophisticated professionals.
So, stop presenting their "conclusions" as "facts".
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Post by miscmisc on Oct 17, 2017 11:08:58 GMT 1
This is a good book review. Arrested DevelopmentMasha Gessen offers a familiar diagnosis of her home country www.bookforum.com/inprint/024_03/18469This. This, really. You can psychoanalyze Russians, or any other people for that matter, all you want. You might be onto something. But you can't do that to the exclusion of actual history, actual events. Gessen describes the collapse of the Soviet Union as the period of chaos, opportunities, and fear of the future, where the optimism gradually faded away under the weight of "historical trauma". That's way too abstract. She effectively erases from her narrative what actually happened in Russia in the '90s. The healthcare was practically gone, the income for most people shrank rapidly, the average life expectancy was massively reduced, and millions of people lost all their savings in the end. Russia became a laughing stock. And they saw the Americans, who helped the post-Soviet Russian elites drive the country off the cliff, blame it on their national or even ethnic character afterwards. You exclude these things from your view, and your narrative is bound to be ahistorical, which means mostly useless.
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Post by miscmisc on Oct 19, 2017 7:16:55 GMT 1
"Correction" That feeling when your doctor told you that you had cancer, and you asked for a proper health report and on the last page it says, in tiny prints that requires a magnifying glass, "I inaccurately diagnosed you with cancer, by the way." Anything goes at the WaPo office when it comes to Our Official Enemies. Literally anything goes.
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Post by miscmisc on Oct 19, 2017 19:32:53 GMT 1
Folks, I've found The Worst Take Ever on Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder: Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder shows why hatred of the media is wrongwww.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/18/daphne-caruana-galizia-maltese-journalist-mediaThis garbage by Jonathan Freeland @ Guardian is not only utter bollocks, but also in extremely, extremely bad taste. I'm actually incensed. I'll never know how these twats can stoop so low so easily and shamelessly. Maybe they're not human.
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Post by miscmisc on Oct 19, 2017 19:42:48 GMT 1
Extremely this:
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Post by miscmisc on Oct 19, 2017 19:48:42 GMT 1
I actually watched the above live with a friend of mine. We froze up for a few seconds, slowly turned and looked at each other, and then burst into laughter. I still remember that room, the pizza on the table, the view of Manhattan from the window, everything so clearly.
It was pretty much a nervous laughter, though. We were scared. We simply didn't know how else to react to such incredible 10-year-old-boy nonsense coming out of the mouth of one of the most powerful people in the government of the most powerful country in the world.
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Post by K1power on Oct 19, 2017 20:15:06 GMT 1
I haven't seen this video before, but I can't say I'm surprised when a guy who looks like Adam West sees Batcaves everywhere.
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Post by miscmisc on Oct 26, 2017 17:19:39 GMT 1
So, I watched the highly anticipated over-17-hour long documentary on the Vietnam War by renowned director Ken Burns, which just came out.
With heavy heart I must inform you that I couldn't even make it to the 10-minute mark. Because almost right off the bat:
Narrator: It was begun in good faith, by decent people, out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence, and Cold War miscalculation...
Well, what can I say. You can't fault me for being unable to continue any longer, can you?
Ken Burns is not some right-wing nutcase. He's more on the liberal side. But it's exactly these "thoughtful" "intelligent" people that permeate this ridiculous tragedy-started-with-good-intentions garbage over and over again when it comes to USA. It's the "balance" that they offer to counter the USA! USA! USA! right-wing gore, and it stinks almost as bad as that jingoism, because it's pure apologia, pure masturbation, only in a more "thoughtful" way.
Whatever that narrator described above is not the Vietnam War. It simply isn't. I don't know, and don't even want to know what's in the remaining 17 hours of the documentary. I don't think I'm being unfair when Burns threw shit at me, and millions of South East Asians who died because of that war for that matter, in the first five minutes like that.
It's sad that this narrative - where the war was bad primarily because it corrupted the American heart, and because pretty American boy Christopher Walken's mind was destroyed by the trauma caused by the "tragic" war which forced him to fall prey to those savage, primitive gooks (which is basically the summary of Deer Hunter) - is so pervasive, and that Burns, despite the interesting decision to make a documentary about the Vietnam War now, doesn't seem to quite deviate from that crap.
Basically, for the vast majority of Americans, the image of the Vietnam War comes from those Hollywood movies, including Deer Hunter. They were "anti-war" movies all right, but even in those, even in Platoon by Oliver Stone, the idea that the war was basically merely a "mistake" is never challenged.
When the US produced a gigantic clusterfuck, it was just a "mistake", a "tragedy" caused by "unfortunate" decisions, "misunderstandings", the "course of events" which supposedly the US couldn't control, etc. The US is almost always "drawn" into a war/conflict, and never really an aggressor with real plans and ambitions.
But of course, when America's "enemies" did something similar, even on a much smaller scale, it was a well-planned, sinister endeavor with bad intentions. Iran is creating the "Shia crescent" of course! Russia is trying to revive the huge Soviet Empire II of course! To subjugate the people in the region!
Ken Burns would be outraged if he read this. He never thinks of himself as a mindless right-winger, or a US empire apologist.
But I would tell him to say that narration above to the millions of South East Asians who perished, while the US military was promoting the idea that "the Orientals don't care nearly as much about life as Westerners, both philosophically and even materially (so you shouldn't feel too bad about killing so many of them)". Tell them that it was just a "tragedy" started in "good faith".
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