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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
ranma-official
ranma-official

inb4 glorious revolution

argumate

can someone please explain to me what the heck is going down in Russiatown

ranma-official

1) Small-time opposition politician Navalny spends years campaigning against corruption. No one cares. Politician is written off, albeit harried by frivolous cases.

2) Navalny uncovers a massive corruption and theft scheme Medvedev (premier and party leader) is involved in, shows his wineries and castles. Billions are stolen from the budget. Makes a documentary and a webpage. It goes viral.

3) Navalny organizes protests. Protests are banned almost everywhere in the country.

4) At least a hundred thousand people goes out into the streets to a complete media silence. Some are arrested.

This is on Putin’s anniversary (inauguration on 27 March 00)

5) Navalny gets arrested again, police immediately caught in making fraudulent documents.

6) People are openly discussing this in the street. Pictures go viral. The Streisand effect kicks into gear.


The revolution will not be televised. It will be snapchatted live.

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ranma-official
ranma-official

I live in Russia. I can casually buy a belt buckle with the confederate flag at the flea market. how

lordpatiii

Use of the Confederate flag on clothing and stuff was pretty much unquestioned until very recently, that’s not a value judgment that’s just a statement of fact. Also says there should bad, you should be able to buy the Buckle with anything on it.

ranma-official

no, i mean

obv it’s not illegal

but how is this a thing that has market value here of all things

mitigatedchaos

Putin’s long-term plan to divide the United States by having the South rise again.  He sponsored this recent rally as part of a long-term goal of reviving the Confederate States of America and pitting it, once again, against the virtuous northern Union.

(Of course I say this jokingly.  He’s actually funding California separatists.)

shtpost politics
xhxhxhx
xhxhxhx

mitigatedchaos reblogged your post: @poipoipoi-2016: So what just happened with Trump?…

Conservatives and others on the right have down-prioritized it because they thought the whole Trump-Russia thing was bullsht.

Which is why the reporting should change their minds, but won’t. It’s difficult to get someone to understand something when their politics depends on them not understanding it.

Probably doesn’t help that Hillary seemed hyped for war in Syria, which could have lead to war with Russia, both of which are pretty terrible.

I have nothing but contempt for this canard. It imagines a fantastical risk of conflict over a small, irrelevant Middle Eastern country, while ignoring the grave risks of nuclear war over treaty allies in Europe, which Trump’s election has substantially heightened.

But even if you did believe that, Clinton’s foreign policy is irrelevant now. Trump’s foreign policy is not.

mitigatedchaos

Well, that is the difficulty with oppositional politics.

I wonder if in multi-party systems, the standard for “better than the other guys” is higher.  Probably not.

politics
wirehead-wannabe
thathopeyetlives

First question: What does one even do about Russia secretly interfering with our politics? If people are actually involved (and apparently Flynn was) you can impeach or disqualify them. Trump has been president for a few weeks and has managed to screw up royally, so we could kick him out, but earlier on… you’re kinda out of luck unless you want to totally screw up the politics. 

Second question: What is actually going on? Is Trump genuinely trying to be friends with Russia and enemies with China (stupid plan in a world that successfully avoids war!) or just Putin wants to weaken the USA with idiot leaders or what?

wirehead-wannabe

My gut feeling is that either that Putin blackmailing/threatening/bribing Trump, or that authoritarian leaders with a socially conservative support base flock together. Or both.

mitigatedchaos

Russia + China is not an unreasonable combination.  So yes, I think preventing that is part of it.  China is about to enter a period of decline, but it’s still more likely to become a global hegemon than Russia.

I think there are several things going on here.

  • Trump actually does have some level of respect for authoritarian rulers, I think.  Even I sometimes look at China and think about what could be accomplished if all the NIMBYs were stopped from holding up projects, even though I know actually doing that wouldn’t work out so well.  But I think half of it on Trump’s part is just signalling.
  • The sanctions over the Ukraine, as far as I can remember, have not actually been lifted and are likely to stay in place, as far as I can tell.
  • Russia itself is less powerful than it has been, both in terms of its economy and its conventional military.  They couldn’t really invade America even if they wanted to, and they aren’t going to become a global hegemon.  China is a much greater threat to America’s global power long-term, depending on just how bad all their looming crises become.  China also sticks out more to his base because it wasn’t Russia that the jobs got offshored to.
  • Trump is probably seeking to cooperate with Russia when it suits America’s interests, rather than just fight Russia across the board.  In part, he wants to signal this to Moscow.
    • This also depends on just how you define “America’s interests”.  If you think of democracy or global capitalism as being synonymous with “America’s interests”, then I don’t think Trump agrees with you.
  • Trump probably does find Islam threatening in a way that he does not actually find Christians, Hindus, gays, transgender people, etc threatening.  So, let’s suppose he wants to drain the migrants out of Europe.  Right-wing parties are gaining steam, and others are shifting right on the issue.  But so long as there is nowhere to put the migrants, the media can pelt the nativists with stories about migrant suffering.  Enter the Syrian “safe zones” plan from his campaign.  Paying off the construction of temporary housing and mass issuing of rations is cheaper than a lot of military action, it keeps the migrants out of Europe, and it creates somewhere to put them for when they leave Europe without triggering the same level of media-based political fallout.  However, to do this, he needs support from Russia/Putin.
    • Trump is signalling that he does not care if Syria is ruled by a tyrant.  He’s willing to compromise if it gets him his safe zones.
Source: thathopeyetlives politics trump
argumate
mitigatedchaos

Re: Not making refugees

I’m told Bush campaigned on not getting into as many wars. Obama, of course, campaigned on not getting into as many wars, though his not-wars still created more refugees. Trump campaigned on the Iraq War being a costly disaster, on not getting into a fight with Russia, on going up against ISIS militarily (which could just mean a return to Iraq, which would not really be a new war), and on not needlessly attempting to knock over strong men and replace them with democracy - thus implicitly against getting into as many wars.

So there is demand there among the American public for reducing the number of wars, but somehow the wars happen anyway. If the second part could be rectified, the number of wars could be successfully reduced.

argumate

what does America spend on defence, $600 billion a year?

I’ve seen costs for the Iraq war being bandied about in the trillions.

difficult to turn off the tap, I think.

mitigatedchaos

I’ve been infuriated by the shear cost of the Iraq War simply in economic terms since around 2008. Either they’re looters or they’re freakishly incompetent, and I don’t like either. I’m really hoping this whole Trump thing works out. He’s at least smart enough to realize that you can’t just export democracy to other countries like it was done to Japan - or that you have to actually stay there and make it stick, like Japan.

Of course if you actually notice that not all cultures can support democracy and that hey, you’re going to have to do some real proper imperialism to make it stick and overwrite non-trivial chunks of the local culture, that marks you as right-wing these days…

Maybe I am right wing now. I did, after all, say that if a Communist Revolution emerged, I’d have to back the Anti-Communists. (Struggle sessions and famines aren’t really my thing.)

Source: mitigatedchaos politics
argumate
argumate

diogenesvonneumann said: Alawites are about 10% of the Syrian population, fighting a war to maintain their dominance over the majority Sunnis is pretty close to imperialism. And Russia supporting Assad in that war to maintain access to their naval base definitely is. On the other hand the other aspiring rulers of Syria are probably even worse.

If a sufficiently nasty war broke out in the Middle East that resulted in forced ethnic relocation similar to what happened in Europe at the end of WWII and the Yugoslav Wars resulting in relatively monolithic ethnostates, would that make the situation more fucked up or less fucked up or just a different variety of fucked up.

(Because as people keep pointing out, Europe has been suspiciously peaceful since right-wing nationalists achieved their dream of neatly reshuffling all the people and borders to line up, barring some over enthusiasm where they mistakenly thought the German border might extend a thousand miles into Russia).

mitigatedchaos

While I genuinely like the idea of allowing different ethnic groups to have their own laws (providing Exit is still an option, etc, etc) to a degree and nation-states are a way to do that, I suspect that the sectarian religious divisions might cause them to constantly bristle at each other.

It might not be enough.  But then again, maybe that war would bring about an Islamic Reformation.

politics

Re: Not making refugees

I’m told Bush campaigned on not getting into as many wars. Obama, of course, campaigned on not getting into as many wars, though his not-wars still created more refugees. Trump campaigned on the Iraq War being a costly disaster, on not getting into a fight with Russia, on going up against ISIS militarily (which could just mean a return to Iraq, which would not really be a new war), and on not needlessly attempting to knock over strong men and replace them with democracy - thus implicitly against getting into as many wars.

So there is demand there among the American public for reducing the number of wars, but somehow the wars happen anyway. If the second part could be rectified, the number of wars could be successfully reduced.

politics
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