Elerond
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Posts posted by Elerond
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7 hours ago, Zoraptor said:
hah, serves me right for being a smart arse while not checking.
To be finicky, not much Ukrainian Orthodox presence at Christmas time, in Russia, though.
Both the Ukrainian Orthodox churches still use Gregorian, at the moment. UOC allows services on Dec 25th though, as of this year.
Do you mean Julian?
Question does it matter if Russia does not have much of Ukrainian Orthodox, in case of thinking that "since they're Orthodox." is explanation for something when Orthodox churches have started to split which calendar they use? Orthodox like all Christians celebrate Christmas December 25th, but Orthodox churches didn't switch to use Gregorian calendar, when it was released probably because it was done by Catholic church. 25th of December by Julian calendar currently hits to January 7th in Gregorian calendar (date is slowly moving towards summer because Julian calendar does not have leap years to even out fact that Earth doe not go around the Sun in 365 days, but in 365.256 days).
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9 hours ago, Zoraptor said:
And, of course, Christmastime in Russia is still nearly two weeks away (January 8th) since they're Orthodox.
These days it probably needs to be specified as Russian Orthodox as Ukraine's Orthodox church moved to use Gregorian calendar and had their Christmas already
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It seems that Musk's freedom of speech and democracy project is going well
"Musk later joined the discussion, but briefly — getting out his talking points and then leaving abruptly. He had earlier put up a poll with a variety of options, asking whether or when he should reinstate the journalists’ accounts. When a plurality of respondents voted to restore the accounts immediately, he deleted the poll and started a new one with fewer options."
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2 hours ago, Malcador said:
Expensive gifts for Christmas. Guess the Russians will try to focus on those, easier than hunting HIMARS.
Russia does not have dedicated anti-air counter force, so their result maybe even less impressive as their HIMARS hunting. As anti-air platforms are usually in deep in enemy territory (especially long range systems like patriot) where only air force is able to operate with some efficiently and anti-air systems are designed to counter and destroy air force units. So it is quite suicidal job for anyone doing it.
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On 12/14/2022 at 4:41 PM, Malcador said:
Maybe related to https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/19/new-language-requirement-raises-concerns-ukraine
"The law aims to revitalize the Ukrainian language and is part of government efforts to reinforce national identity after the fall of the Soviet Union. Some officials called it essential for Ukraine’s national security. Public opinion polls indicate that at least 60 percent of Ukrainians support certain provisions of the law.
Article 25, regarding print media outlets, makes exceptions for certain minority languages, English, and official EU languages, but not for Russian. Ukrainian authorities justify this by referring to the country’s European ambitions and “the century of oppression of … Ukrainian in favor of Russian.”
There are concerns about whether guarantees for minority languages are sufficient. The Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s top advisory body on constitutional matters, said that several of the law’s articles, including article 25, “failed to strike a fair balance” between promoting the Ukrainian language and safeguarding minorities’ linguistic rights. It stated that “historical oppression of Ukrainian ... may lead to the adoption of positive measures aimed at promoting Ukrainian, but this cannot justify depriving the Russian language and its speakers of the protection granted to other languages…”"
At least Russia acts fast, as they soldiers were already securing rights of Russian speaking Ukrainian's just month after law was introduced
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16 minutes ago, Sarex said:
Those rarely (never) visit a bank. Do you really think foreign governments pick up the cash through local banks?
Where they get big sunk of foreign money in cash?
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16 minutes ago, Sarex said:
They are still in circulation and extremely popular.
Yes, but you can't get them big sunk from bank as when someone deposit them in bank they go to be destroyed. So you would probably not see many of them used as bribes by foreign governments
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8 hours ago, Sarex said:
Hahahahahaha, that one 500 euro bill tells me that they didn't even find the half of it.
It maybe only legitimate bill there as 500 euro bills were discontinued in 2019
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Yep, Israel's jewish colonies in Palestinian also fully support jewish control of those areas.
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31 minutes ago, BruceVC said:
I dont think we have same definition of historical Colonialism and how and why it ended
Here is the official definition, you may have a different definition?
https://www.thoughtco.com/colonialism-definition-and-examples-5112779
To quote from the link "Colonialism is the practice of one country taking full or partial political control of another country and occupying it with settlers for purposes of profiting from its resources and economy "
So Colonialism is about economic exploitation and it was driven primarily by European countries. None of those countries are examples are exploitation. The local citizens are indigenous and expats and they benefit from the economy in the same way. Colonialism ended in Africa because both France and UK realised it wasnt morally right and it wasn't sustainable and local citizens wanted freedom from being controlled by Europe
If you disagree then post links from any of the countries you listed where local people have been demanding independence like we saw in Africa
You seem to be assuming that all the countries you listed want complete independence from France or UK and I dont think they do?
They are all occupied countries, which France and UK have exploited and still do exploit.
UK's overseas territories still don't have representation in parliament of UK, even though there should be , irrevocably guaranteed for all UK's citizens to have the same rights and representation they would have if born in England. So those territories are in subordinate states to main UK and therefore they are colonies.
France gives better representation to its overseas territories, but they also lack equality to main France and are therefore colonies.
EDIT: continuation of this topic belongs to general politics thread not here Ukraine thread.
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8 minutes ago, BruceVC said:
Which one of these countries wants independence from France or the UK in the same way that African countries got independence from the 1960's
Just select one or 2 and I will read the links. Because most of these countries I know about are happy with the government structures with France or the UK
All of them (when speaking of native population, in most of them french and british people make majority of population), making them independence these days almost impossible
EDIT:
France assassinated leaders of independence movements in Africa way after WW2. UK was not much nicer to its colonies. They just didn't have resource to keep bigger territories.
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1 hour ago, BruceVC said:
You ask a very interesting and nuanced question that I have followed various debates around for 12-15 years
And its great that you asking this question as a German citizen. I want to provide you some feedback but before I do I just want to clarify a few things. Germany is an excellent example of how a country can recreate itself after a dark history and I admire the economic and social success of Germany since WW2 and it achieved this without becoming a military superpower
What self-reflection do you believe the likes of other EU countries, like the UK and France, should go through or should have gone through after WW2? Because both these countries started ending and did end Colonialism after WW2
Both these countries knew that Colonialism was wrong and not sustainable and no one defends slavery anymore. So Im genuinely interested in what changes you are talking about ?
Native people of French Guiana, French Polynesia, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Mayotte, New Caledonia, Réunion, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon and Wallis and Futuna probably would disagree with that sentiment.
There are also some people in British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar (especially after brexit), Anguilla, Bermuda, Montserrat, Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno Islands, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands who also disagree with the sentiment.
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Shingrix vaccination is not covered here by government's vaccination program, because it is determined to have excessive price and bad availability, but public hospitals give it free to high risk patients because even though Shingrix's is expensive they have determined that it is cheaper to vaccinate people than take care of them after shingles onsets.
Private health insurance cover cost of all vaccinations outside of government vaccination program (for example yearly influenza vaccinations)
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Funny thing is that Armenia gets more support from allies of its enemy's ally than its own allies.
EDIT: Because keeping Turkey happy is more important for allies of Armenia than it is for Turkey's allies.
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12 hours ago, Zoraptor said:
lol Armenia is just an awful example because... who is the major backer of Azerbaijan?
Russia? Belarus? Kazakhstan? Kyrgyzstan? Tajikistan? Union State?
Or why does not Azerbaijan's aggression towards Armenia trigger CTSO's Article 4 of the Collective Security Treaty (CST) which establishes that an aggression against one signatory would be perceived as an aggression against all
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I am sure that Armenia has been very happy be part of security organization that has given it next to nothing assistance when it has been under attack of its neighboring country and lost some of its territories
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3 hours ago, Pidesco said:
This is a whole thread about right wing and left wing extremist violence. With sources.
But you need to understand that
(Is there right wing violence? yes) True == (Is there left wing violence? yes) True
so it is equally bad in both sides!!!!!!!
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3 hours ago, BruceVC said:
Elections in countries that are free and fair should be considered credible. Its not the fault of the outcomes if people dont vote
I dont consider Russia, Iran or NK countries where elections are free and fair?
What does their elections not free and fair if you compare them to twitter poll that was run unannounced for couple hours and closed before original deadline? Where no one checked if people voted with multiple accounts and did bot accounts (which Musk himself says run rampant in Twitter). As you such poll was example of democracy where result is the only reason why people don't like it.
So is your reason why you think that Russia's Iran's and NK's elections aren't free and fair that you don't like outcomes?
I would remind that people running bot farms in Russia, Iran and NK were able to participate in Musk's poll, to give it that extra freedom of letting government supported trolls have their voice heard.
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9 hours ago, BruceVC said:
So you blaming the outcome, which was very close, on the fact that some people didnt bother to vote or didnt care to vote?
Do you do the same thing in elections in countries when only some people decide to vote? Do we say " Im angry with the results and I blame the people who voted " or do you accept the outcomes because thats how Democracy works?
Here elections are null and void if less than 50% of people vote.
Do you think that Russia, Iran and North Korea have democratic and fair elections as they do have elections where people get to vote and person with most votes wins the election? And do you think that Russian referendums on areas that it conquered from Ukraine were fair and democratic and showed real will of people when result that they want to join Russia was option that got most votes?
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4 hours ago, BruceVC said:
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-back-twitter-elon-musk-says-people-have-spoken-1760891
Trump is indeed back on Twitter, Democracy has spoken. 15 million people voted and we should respect the will of the people like in all voting outcomes
I have mentioned this before but he should never have been banned because it fueled the hyperbole that freedom of speech is being undermined in the US. Also ideological lines are already decided when it comes to Trump, its not like Twitter is going to change people's opinions on him?
Besides according to Trump he will continue to use his own Twitter, not that I believe him. He is too much of an attention seeker to not use Twitter
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-says-hes-happy-twitter-132939373.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
It is not will of people if less than 10% of people entitled to vote, cast their vote.
It is mockery of democracy, but Musk owns Twitter and therefore is it's dictator and is entitled to rule his platform anyway he chooses.
But anyone who says that such polls are will of people and some how protecting freedom of speech are just lying themselves or just hate democracy and want to distort meaning of freedom of speech for some reason.
But as Twitter is spiralling down of its own destruction because it is losing assets that made it popular in first place
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Even FIFA starts to have doubts when their biggest sponsors are banned from the games and they are losing money in television deals and tickets sales are anything but good.
But maybe Qatar is able to compensate FIFA's losses, who knows.
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Court of arbitration decided today that Gazprom broke it contracts when it demanded payments in rubles and stopped delivering gas. Which could mean that Gazprom needs to pay hundreds of billions of euros compensations to gas companies around Europe.
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1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:
“There is preliminary information that contests that,” Biden told reporters when asked if the missile had been fired from Russia. “It is unlikely in the lines of the trajectory that it was fired from Russia, but we’ll see.”
Considering that if Russia fired it they would have fired it from Belarus or Black Sea, so statement that it wasn't fired from Russia is true almost every possible scenario
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6 hours ago, Zoraptor said:
Heh, our news has just downgraded it to "Russian made" missile rather than "Russian".
Yes, the longer range versions definitely can be used for ground attack in theory. End of the day you can use any missile for ground attack in theory though, due to gravity. They've just never been used for it before, they would be a really weird choice for a precision attack and there are far better alternatives (ie drones) if you don't want as big a bang as a cruise missile. The only scenarios that would make sense are failed AD from Russia or Ukraine, not ground attack.
Russia has started to use high velocity anti ship missiles because Ukraine's air defense can't intercept them because their anti air missiles don't have enough speed to hit one, even though they aren't accurate against land targets. And as stock of Russian high speed cruise missiles get thinner and Ukraine does not have air force or missiles which Russia needs high speed air defense missiles to defend against it would not be surprise if they have decided to use those missiles to bombard Ukraine as even though they are less accurate they still be more effective than lower speed missiles as Ukraine is not able to shoot them down
Ukraine Conflict
in Way Off-Topic
Posted
My original point was that Ukraine's Orthodox announced calendar reform 24th of December of this year (according to Gregorian calendar), that they will switch to use Gregorian calendar (Of course full calendar reform probably will take sometime). So in future Russian orthodox church will be last major orthodox church that will use Julian calendar.