Ball of Confusion

howard · Post by **howard** » Fri Mar 21, 2014 3:10 pm

I'm getting old and losing my fastball. I couldn't craft a "…and the horse you rode in on" joke on that Catherine the Great post.

The Sybian · Post by **The Sybian** » Fri Mar 21, 2014 8:22 pm

Johnnie wrote:I'm still waiting for the all-encompassing Justin Timberlake parody song Crimea River.

I've had that song parody in my head for a week!

Post by **Shirley** » Sat Mar 22, 2014 12:02 am

howard wrote:I'm getting old and losing my fastball. I couldn't craft a "…and the horse you rode in on" joke on that Catherine the Great post.

In pre-Soviet Russia, the horse rides in on YOU.

The Sybian · Post by **The Sybian** » Sat Mar 22, 2014 10:19 pm

Shirley wrote:
howard wrote:I'm getting old and losing my fastball. I couldn't craft a "…and the horse you rode in on" joke on that Catherine the Great post.
In pre-Soviet Russia, the horse rides in on YOU.

That is brilliant!

Post by **Shirley** » Sat Mar 22, 2014 10:26 pm

The Sybian wrote:
Shirley wrote:
howard wrote:I'm getting old and losing my fastball. I couldn't craft a "…and the horse you rode in on" joke on that Catherine the Great post.
In pre-Soviet Russia, the horse rides in on YOU.
That is brilliant!

Doc teed it up. I just took the swing.

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Wed Apr 02, 2014 2:17 pm

Ukraine Invades Russia Because YOLO

howard · Post by **howard** » Wed Apr 02, 2014 3:29 pm

YOSWW3O

“…because they only came to Crimea to do two things: fuck shit up and drink vodka,” according to one soldier, who noted they had recently run out of vodka.

DC47 · Post by **DC47** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 11:37 pm

Hilarious.

Johnny Carwash · Post by **Johnny Carwash** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 1:18 pm

Uh-oh.

Jews asked to register in east Ukraine city taken over by Pro-Russian militants

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 1:23 pm

What's the worst that could happen?

Johnny Carwash · Post by **Johnny Carwash** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 1:27 pm

There's some creative wordsmithing going on in that linked article, so to clarify--it wasn't an official order from the new government, but leaflets being handed out by unidentified militants. Still not good.

howard · Post by **howard** » Fri Apr 18, 2014 3:11 pm

I'm not saying anything, but if I was in charge of psyops and false flags/excuse for intervention making, this is kinda exactly where I would start.

Just sayin'. (I have no clue--I just grew up watching Nixon run political campaigns with dirty tricks, so I tend to be suspicious.)

howard · Post by **howard** » Sat Aug 09, 2014 11:27 am

bumpus

The Sybian · Post by **The Sybian** » Wed Aug 13, 2014 10:19 am

A 7 year old Australian boy posing with a severed head in Syria. His father is some sort of militant asshole who supposedly had plans to bomb Sydney and Melbourne. It was blocked at work, but there was a video which the article said you can hear the father off camera encouraging the kid, and the father tweeted the picture with the caption "That's my boy!" Yeah, this kid is going to grow up well adjusted.

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Fri Aug 15, 2014 5:59 am

Sao Paulo - with 20 million people in its metropolitan area - is in danger of running out of water.

http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/a ... ter/34061/

Despite the company's public statements against rationing, Sao Paulo's main newspaper, Folha de S. Paulo, has reported that more than 2 million people in the state of 44 million already say that their water is often cut for a few hours or days at a time. Some places have their own water utility, but 27 million people rely on the state-run company.

Steve of phpBB · Post by **Steve of phpBB** » Fri Sep 05, 2014 1:30 pm

From a 1996 article in the Atlantic:

One normally sober, centrist, and pragmatic Russian foreign-policy adviser told me not long ago that in the event of a NATO move toward Ukraine, Russia would do its best to wreck the Ukrainian economy with an energy blockade, to rouse the Russian populations of Crimea and eastern Ukraine to revolt, and to subvert the Ukrainian armed forces, whose officer corps is still largely composed of ethnic Russians. Of course, this may well be hot air. Russia might not dare pursue such a strategy, and if it did dare, it might well discover itself to be powerless—because Ukraine today is not nearly so weak or fissiparous as it was a couple of years ago, and because most Russians in Ukraine would themselves probably resist such moves. All the same, it hardly seems rational for the West to increase the risk of such a crisis without some very pressing reasons.

H/T some dude on Twitter.

Edit to add link to article: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... in/305915/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

rass · Post by **rass** » Fri Sep 05, 2014 1:32 pm

fissiparous

Nice word!

howard · Post by **howard** » Fri Sep 05, 2014 3:05 pm

Steve, the (lost) civil war in Ukrania is confusing only if you listen to the western media. The Kiev government on a daily basis comes up with some ridiculous outrageous lie, and the UK/US media parrots it.

Remember all the bullshit and misinformation during the Bosnia war. Remember how it was ramped up to a new level by the time the Kosovo war happened.

We've gone round the bend, where if you take what is said by any US/EU/NATO leader or what is reported by any western source, and assume the 180˚ opposite, you will be closer to the truth than most.

I have been too disheartened by the whole affair to discuss it here. OTOH, the rebels have scored a huge victory and will be establishing their own nation free of Kiev and the EU/USA domination, which is good news.

Doubt this cease fire will hold. Again, see Bosnia.

Steve of phpBB · Post by **Steve of phpBB** » Fri Sep 05, 2014 3:37 pm

howard wrote:Steve, the (lost) civil war in Ukrania is confusing only if you listen to the western media. The Kiev government on a daily basis comes up with some ridiculous outrageous lie, and the UK/US media parrots it.

Remember all the bullshit and misinformation during the Bosnia war. Remember how it was ramped up to a new level by the time the Kosovo war happened.

We've gone round the bend, where if you take what is said by any US/EU/NATO leader or what is reported by any western source, and assume the 180˚ opposite, you will be closer to the truth than most.

I have been too disheartened by the whole affair to discuss it here. OTOH, the rebels have scored a huge victory and will be establishing their own nation free of Kiev and the EU/USA domination, which is good news.

Doubt this cease fire will hold. Again, see Bosnia.

I don't know - sure, the US government is not a group of angels, but there is still enough freedom of the press that I would have a hard time believing that the Russian government is more credible.

Should I doubt whether the Russians really did take over Crimea a few months ago?

howard · Post by **howard** » Fri Sep 05, 2014 4:50 pm

With an armed invasion, against the will of the Crimean people? That is the bullshit part. People voted not to be ruled by the unelected junta installed by the USA. Yep, Putin enforced the will of those people. Nope, not the way CNN/Obama told it.

The actions of the US government in Ukraine are so incredibly horrific. "Not angels" is the kind of understatement I just cannot fathom how to discuss.

The numbers of civilians dead from shelling of urban areas of Donesk, Slavansk and Lugansk dwarf the casualties in Gaza. This was done by the handpicked by Victoria Nuland/US State department junta, paid for by IMF cash.

How many Crimeans did Putin kill?

ETA: wrt Russian media. I did not cite them. The internets provides plenty of real news. But, while RT and TASS have plenty of lies, shading and propaganda of their own, yes Russian media provides much more truth than our media. Look at their coverage of Ferguson, MO as exhibit A.

ETAA: I misread Russian government for Russian media. Sorry. Yep, Putin has lied about his involvement, just as has Obama about his. The record of demonstrably false statements made by the US and other western governments, on a daily basis, tallies overwhelmingly as far less credible than the Russian government. Sure, the Russian character, very much embodied by Putin, is not to run their mouth, with threat and bluster, and to instead act. But the US statements on the downed Malaysian Airlines flight is the best example of which government is lying much much more. Still waiting on one bit of evidence to back Obama's statements made in the first few hours of that mass murder.

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Sat Sep 06, 2014 9:44 am

howard wrote:Steve, the (lost) civil war in Ukrania is confusing only if you listen to the western media. The Kiev government on a daily basis comes up with some ridiculous outrageous lie, and the UK/US media parrots it.

I don't doubt that.

I also don't doubt that what is coming out of Russia is no more credible. I guess in life you chose which lies you want to believe.

Post by **Shirley** » Mon Sep 29, 2014 8:47 am

Heard this on the radio this weekend and knew it had to be Howard's theme song. Fitting that it comes from the greatest band in the world - Nickelback!

Johnny Carwash · Post by **Johnny Carwash** » Mon Jan 19, 2015 11:02 am

So a thing with actual big geopolitical implications may have just happened, if you can find it on the major news sites below deflated balls and Miss Universe selfie scandals.

In 1994 a Jewish center in Argentina was destroyed by a bomb, killing 85 people. The attack was widely believe to have involved Iran, but was never conclusively proven. After two decades of questionable/aborted inquiries, a prosecutor last week accused the current government of covering up Iranian involvement for the purpose of protecting a trade deal with Iran. Today, hours before he was scheduled to testify before the congress, he was found dead of an "apparent suicide."

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Tue Jan 20, 2015 7:50 am

The first story I read about this mentioned that he had as many as ten bodyguards - but apparently none of them were actually in the Prosecutor's home.

Thankfully, he has tabled his report, but this stinks to high hell. 85 people dead, no charges ever filed and a "truth commission" that was established at the same time that the Argentinian government signed a trade deal with Iran?

This is filthy business.

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Tue Jan 20, 2015 7:51 am

Pruitt wrote:The first story I read about this mentioned that he had as many as ten bodyguards - but apparently none of them were actually in the Prosecutor's home.

Thankfully, he has tabled his report, but this stinks to high hell. 85 people dead, no charges ever filed and a "truth commission" that was established at the same time that the Argentinian government signed a trade deal with Iran?

This is filthy business.

Everyone has a price, I'd assume.

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Tue Jan 20, 2015 8:00 am

AB_skin_test wrote: Everyone has a price, I'd assume.

Not just an assumption - a fact.

Here's a very detailed article with a lot of background.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-d ... m-1.638038

sancarlos · Post by **sancarlos** » Thu Jan 22, 2015 8:41 pm

Pruitt wrote:
howard wrote:Steve, the (lost) civil war in Ukrania is confusing only if you listen to the western media. The Kiev government on a daily basis comes up with some ridiculous outrageous lie, and the UK/US media parrots it.
I don't doubt that.

I also don't doubt that what is coming out of Russia is no more credible. I guess in life you chose which lies you want to believe.

Back to our discussions of Russia, the Ukraine and related stuff. I saw this on Market Watch on the internet. Don't know how credible it is, but I thought this line of thought interesting:

The U.S. has been waging economic, financial, trade and political war against Russia and even kinetic war-by-proxy in Ukraine. Worryingly, nobody in power in the U.S. or Europe really seems willing to tell us exactly why...
The U.S. (via John Kerry) and NATO have steadily accused Russia of having funneled hundreds of tanks, armored-personnel carriers and other heavy equipment to the separatists in eastern Ukraine.

These assertions bring to mind the Sherlock Holmes case of the dog that did not bark where the absence of a piece of evidence leads us to a very different conclusion than the one the U.S. political establishment would like us to believe.

The sorts of weaponry that NATO and the U.S. have charged Russia with providing are virtually impossible to conceal from the air. Snapping high-resolution photos of such war machinery is child’s play for today’s military satellites, and even civilian ones too. If the assertions were true, we should have seen a flood of photographs of Russian heavy equipment every step of the way as it passed into Ukraine.

But none have been offered, not even one so far. And the simplest explanation for this is that none exist. If they did, you can be 100% certain they’d have been released and replayed over and over again on CNN until everybody and their uncle could distinguish a T-72 tank outline from that of a T-64...

howard · Post by **howard** » Thu Jan 22, 2015 9:02 pm

Ukraine is such a clusterfuck, you really don't want me to get started. But, briefly, the US thought they would have a quick, easy IMF takeover of the Ukraine, let the big corporations rape the nation of its farmland and fossil fuels, expand NATO and place military bases even closer to Russia.

But, it didn't turn out so easy. The country is broke, Russia was able to prevent the Russian speaking separatists in Donesk and Lugansk from being overrun by the Kiev army with a minimal of overt support and deniability. Most of the world has realized the Russians had nothing to do with the shooting down of the passenger airliner (best evidence is a Ukranian fighter jet shot it down with an air-to-air missile and machine gun fire; motive was either a false flag, or they mistakenly, and incredibly stupidly mistook the plane for Putin's jet, which was in the air at the time.)

The US sponsored coup, the stupid civil war in the East, and the sanctions against Russia have hastened the bankruptcy of Ukraine. They cannot pay the army; they mounted a half-assed offensive over the past week and have been embarassingly defeated again, this time w/o any Russian soldiers. The US, typically, launched a half-assed foreign policy plan, that failed miserably and resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. They have now lost interest, and will not pony up the cash Ukraine needs to avoid default/currency collapse within a few more weeks. The IMF will only give enough cash to pay off some of the bankers.

Yet another failed state. Only thing different, these are white christian people.

Russia has zero interest in invading/annexing this country (all they wanted was their military bases in Crimea, and that Ukraine not become a member of NATO, as promised by previous US presidents.) Because it is a cash sink. Russia has very generously kept the natural gas flowing despite being owed $3 billion in missed payments (not counting billions in forgiven debts from prior years.)

There will probably be a collapse of the military effort in the east, and very possibly a new coup against Poroschenko in the coming months. Somehow this will be blamed on Putin. But the USA took a struggling nation and pushed it over into the abyss. Just to get at Russia, as well as the usual corporate profit motive. Somewhere in the minds of such horrible people like Obama, Clinton and Kerry they decided to make an enemy of Putin/Russia, and thought they could easily mess with him and destroy Russia economically, leading to some western-friendly regime change. Ukraine was but a tool toward that plan. Didn't work, US will back out, (notice the lack of talk about Ukraine lately) leaving destruction and death.

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 6:19 am

Pruitt wrote:Sao Paulo - with 20 million people in its metropolitan area - is in danger of running out of water.

http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/a ... ter/34061/

Despite the company's public statements against rationing, Sao Paulo's main newspaper, Folha de S. Paulo, has reported that more than 2 million people in the state of 44 million already say that their water is often cut for a few hours or days at a time. Some places have their own water utility, but 27 million people rely on the state-run company.

Water rationing in effect - some people in Sao Paulo are going a couple of days in a row without water.

Yet between the World Cup and the Olympics, this country has (or will) spent over $30 billion to host sporting festivals. Madness.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/world ... -news&_r=0

In a meeting recorded secretly and leaked to the local news media, Paulo Massato, a senior official at São Paulo’s water utility, said that residents might have to be warned to flee because “there’s not enough water, there won’t be water to bathe, to clean” homes.

howard · Post by **howard** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 4:11 pm

U.S. Prepared to Intercept Iranian Convoy Suspected of Carrying Weapons to Yemen
So, after we've poured arms into this country over the past several years, and our arms are bombing this country every day, we threaten to impose a naval blockade on arms going into this country.

Unfuckingbelievable.

The Sybian · Post by **The Sybian** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 4:29 pm

howard wrote:U.S. Prepared to Intercept Iranian Convoy Suspected of Carrying Weapons to Yemen
So, after we've poured arms into this country over the past several years, and our arms are bombing this country every day, we threaten to impose a naval blockade on arms going into this country.

Unfuckingbelievable.

They should only import OUR weapons, not Iran's!

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Thu Sep 24, 2015 8:56 am

Think this is the right thread for a story like this.

Great Italian writer on trial for saying that a massive construction project should be sabotaged.

Freedom of expression?

By the way, the project has NOT been sabotaged.

http://news.yahoo.com/italian-prosecuto ... 25799.html

De Luca was prosecuted at the instigation of LTF, the Franco-Italian consortium building the multi-billion-euro link from Lyon in France to Turin in northwestern Italy.

Johnny Carwash · Post by **Johnny Carwash** » Sat Sep 26, 2015 5:02 pm

For the history buffs: Russian ambassador blames Poland for starting WW2.

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Sun Sep 27, 2015 7:28 am

Saudi Arabia to head UN Human Rights Panel. Us is fine with that.

https://theintercept.com/2015/09/23/u-s ... cil-panel/

it is reaching new levels of tyrannical depravity as it is about to behead and then crucify the 21-year-old son of a prominent regime critic, Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, who was convicted at the age of 17 of engaging in demonstrations against the government.

But let freedom and democracy ring!

And it renders a complete laughingstock any attempts to depict the U.S. government as some sort of crusader for freedom and democracy or whatever other pretty goals are regularly attributed to it by its helpful press.

Steve of phpBB · Post by **Steve of phpBB** » Sun Sep 27, 2015 10:35 am

I dunno, I think beheading a guy before crucifying him is pretty merciful.

howard · Post by **howard** » Sun Sep 27, 2015 10:36 am

I read that last post in John Cleese's voice.

Steve of phpBB · Post by **Steve of phpBB** » Sun Sep 27, 2015 2:03 pm

howard wrote:I read that last post in John Cleese's voice.

That helps for the whole thread.

Steve of phpBB · Post by **Steve of phpBB** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 10:42 am

Found out this morning that one of my friends from high school is the American Consul General in Jerusalem.

He always did like a challenge.

Unfortunately I haven't kept close contact with him ... it would be great to hear what he has to say about all of this mess.

Post by **brian** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 10:57 am

Good a place as any to put this, but one of the USAF guys who thwarted the potential Paris train massacre was himself attacked and stabbed in Sacramento yesterday.

Eventful couple of months for that guy.

howard · Post by **howard** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 11:23 am

Damn, but Sac is a shit town. (Where is Matt Barnes from again?) But, great trauma surgeons (ask Bobby Hurley.) (lucky he was about 20 blocks from the university hospital.)

http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/ ... 80571.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Officers were called at 12:46 a.m. Thursday to the 2100 block of K Street where they found a man with multiple stab wounds in his torso.

Officers initially thought the man would not survive the stabbing. However, once he arrived at the hospital, medical staff was able to stem the bleeding and he is expected to survive.