Gorth

Hard to say Bruce... the two articles linked to are SA specific. Not living there, not experiencing the SA society, all you get is second hand information. I think the only thing most of us can do is to compare with our own local experiences wherever we live at the moment. In Australia, racism is alive and well. Doesn't look like it's going anywhere soon. But that is irrelevant for racism in SA other than as giving the impression that it may be a larger than local problem and if it's a problem in enough parts of the world, it may also be a problem in SA. I know, still not really answering your question, but I think your question is difficult to add much to for outsiders (if you want to talk specifically about racism in SA).

A strange thing racism... I'm fully convinced it's an issue with and of society. When I was a kid and through most of my teenage years, I grew up in a place where i think you could say racism was effectively non-existing in daily life. Why? Because the population was 99.99% Danish. There was an Inuit from Greenland living in the neighborhood, but he was more an "object of curiosity" than an object of hostility or derision. I know things changed and they changed a lot, mostly for the negative since. Still, It's something you learn, racism isn't bred into your genes (not to be confused with fear of that which is different or not understood). Meh, still just trying to live life, judging other people and myself (yes, I'm sometimes quite judgemental, including where my own actions are subject of introspection, why did I do this, why didn't I do that? etc.) by actions and deeds rather than simple physical appearances. If someone wants to create increased awareness about racism (or most other kinds of discrimination), power to them. Edit: So much discrimination has somehow ended up becoming embedded in our language and our choice of words too. I know people resent political correctness and it gets out of hand sometimes. It can be part of what perpetuates a problem, although I think it's often more a symptom of underlying problems in society.

The Reddit "investors" (anyone remember GameStop?) are at it again... this time deciding to save the gorillas GameStop has now suddenly adopted a number of gorillas by supporting the Dian Fossey fund. Sort of a nice story for a change amidst all the misery. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56438230

Guitar version of the Game of Thrones theme (first two minutes are mostly warm up and tuning)

I know, US elections 2020 are over, but I thought this little tidbit was interesting. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56423536 Tl;dr; according to US intelligence services, Russia interfered to support Trump, Iran interfered to support Biden and China thought both candidates were hopeless and it wasn't worth interfering

One of the longer running threads indeed (5 years now?)

You beat me to it... was about to ask if there is some kind of original Arroyo meme that people keep copying/building on.

He did transfer it to a different administrative body, yes. He didn't transfer it to "Ukraine" (as in the nation state), but to the Ukrainian SSR And Yes to the second one. They could have chosen to join Ukraine too (but a referendum with 94% of the population in favour of saying good riddance to all things Ukrainian, fat chance of happening) or stay independent like the other autonomous areas. Although this is a bit like debating things in isolation/out of context

You seem to love the word 'illegally'. You want to get technical about it, the Ukrainian invasion of a neighbour was illegal as was the illegal occupation of Crimea. Lets be real. Besides Ukraine having no legal claims on Crimea, legality isn't worth ****, especially when it comes to international relations and it's made up on the fly by whoever finds a convenient use for it. It's nothing more than a propaganda tool. Like the old "Casus Belli" that European monarchs were so find of trying to create whenever they wanted to wage war for the the purpose of making a landgrab. Constantly repeating a phrase doesn't make it true, it just becomes tiresome, especially when most people know it's a meaningless thing. This isn't a Trump campaign meeting. In the real world, you have realpolitik instead. It's what have been practiced millennia and most country leaders knows it. Russia is no more likely to hand over part of its population to a hostile country than the US is handing over California to Mexico (unless you ask die hard Republicans who would say good riddance to the damn liberals). I know Ukraine (and most western countries) tries the 'legal' shtick when it comes to propaganda, but in the end, that is all it is. The Crimeans voted to sever ties with Ukraine before the break up of the Soviet Union and the illegitimate occupation only happened for two reasons, the west backed what was nothing more than an opportunistic land grab and two, Russia was mess at the time with Red Army units marching on the Kremlin, tanks laying siege to the parliament and the only leader they had was a drunkard named Yeltzin (who was more concerned about the vodka supply than foreign politics). If Ukraine had tried to same thing now (even without Crimea being annexed by Russia but being independent), you bet they wouldn't have dared? As said, the west doesn't care about the Crimeans, only about the realpolitik aspects of it. Democracy and legitimacy be damned.

Khrushchevs actions (which I'm sure he wouldn't have done if he had known the internal administrative lines would become national borders some day) were undone by an equally valid and legit referendum before the Soviet Union fell apart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Crimean_sovereignty_referendum But as Zor said, nobody cared about the referendum and Ukraine sent tens of thousands of troops to suppress Crimea and make sure the independence was ignored by everybody except the Crimeans and Russia, ignoring the legally valid status of 'ASSR'. I.e. Autonomous Republic, no longer part of Ukraine and they were free to chose their own allegiances the same as Urkaine, Belarus and other autonomous republics. But, as said, the west is blind when its convenient and Ukraine was recognized as a sovereign country and Crimea wasn't, allowing it to be effectively annexed by Ukraine. As said, it was never part of the county Ukraine in the past or present, except for a the post Soviet years where it was occupied by Ukrainian troops.

Watched the first 3 episodes of 'Romulus' so far. Not sure what to think of it On one hand, I'm sure there is a story in there. It just moves so slowly, you have to sit and stare carefully, hoping to spot it when it finally moves. On the other hand, some quite picturesque scenes from Italy the people (the ancient Latin tribes before they became united) who lived there before Rome ever became a kingdom (and later an empire). And the oddity of hearing everybody speaking ancient Latin.

Disagree on that one. Putin was what kept post Soviet era Russia from completely falling apart. Dozens of oligarchs where marshaling their mercenary forces, separatists and religious terror groups blooming in the Caucasus and a president that was slurring his words and stumbling in a drunken stupor on world wide TV, embarrassing Russia and its people in a rather painful way. Pockets of Red Army officers still having clandestine meetings, waiting for the right moment to make their move (anyone remember when that Fascist officer seized the Spanish parliament, wanting to revert Spain back to Fascist regime again?). People may not like him today and resent his heavy handed methods of staying in power, but I still to this day believe the alternative situation if he hadn't stepped in would've been something worse by an order of magnitude. Does Russia need change? Definitely. I sure as heck would *NOT* want to live there. Is some western backed populist stooge like Navalny the answer? No. Probably Putin's biggest failing so far is the lack of preparation for the time after he's gone. No establishing of hierarchies or power structures that can ensure stability after he's gone (and hes what, around 70 by now? Nobody lives forever).

Hence the "administered by Kiev" part. Simply because it was geographically closer than Moscow and made logistically sense as domestic politics in a single country. But, agreed. Many things glossed over because it doesn't fit the current popular western narrative.

They didn't "annex if from Russia after the Cold War" as much as they put down lines on a map after the declaration of independence from the Soviet Union (roughly following the dotted lines on a map of the spheres of the Soviet bureaucracies, i.e. what in the Soviet Union was administered by Kiev). The West being their typical self wholeheartedly supported those territorial claims, recognizing what had been administrative lines made for management convenience as new national borders, regardless of history and ethnic composition of the people in those areas. Which is why Ukraine ended up with large Russian populations in Donetsk and Crimea. They never wanted to be part of this new country that laid claim to their land, but it was supported by the west for geopolitical reasons (i.e. what is bad for Russia is good for us). Post Soviet Ukraine is sort of a mixed bag of revolutions (most famous being the Orange Revolution of 2004). Things took a down turn when https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych was ousted in a violent uprising in 2014 (voted in as President in what international observers called free and fair elections in 2010), which directly lead to the Russian decision to "Return Crimea to where it belongs"

Why not look at bit deeper at the issue? The problem isn't that Russia annexed it from Ukraine, but Ukraine annexed it from Russia during the breakup of the Soviet Union. It doesn't compare to Spain and the Basque people (edit: I confess to know too little about the Sudan issue to have an opinion). Of course, the western countries decided that this was bad for Russia, therefore it was a good idea and supported it immediately, not giving a damn about consequences (or the people living in Crimea). Never mind that it had never been part of a country named Ukraine. Edit: I think the US would be unwilling to hand over annexed territories like Texas and California to Mexico

That was your rather nonchalant dismissal of the idea that the people Crimea should have any say in their future and your rationalizing of why democracy is only for the select few. That was probably when I took a rather dim view of your attitude towards things that matters to me, like the right to self determination of your future. Things didn't improve when you showed yourself very enthusiastic about the idea, that the military should be exempt from scrutiny by elected leaders. Especially since we're not talking about all out total war, but tit for tat low profile warfare where strikes that doesn't have collateral damage in innocent lives lost is the exception rather than the rule. Last what I consider hypocrisy in victim blaming when trying to condemn whistleblowers rather than the dirt they revealed. All in all something I find doesn't paint a pretty picture measured by my own values. Edit: Military leaders are very rarely held accountable for their decisions (good or bad), the US being no exemption. Elected leaders are, at the very latest when the next election comes around. Hence why I prefer them to keep a leash on the military.

So many whataboutisms

Maybe he doesn't have the access to the same type of confidential papers and communications in Russia that he had in the US?

Actually, you don't. Not at all. And you have too much faith in technology. Those people monitoring peoples activities and communications? They were picked because they were zealots. True believers in a cause. Anything that looked even remotely circumstantial like what they were looking for got tagged and persecuted. I would recommend checking up on confirmation bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias. Once people start looking for something, they start seeing shadows of it everywhere. Better destroy a few hundred innocent lives than letting one genuine villain escape, right? Did it ever occur to you, that there was a reason that wiser people than that added the clause "innocent until proven guilty" (aka presumption of innocence) to legal systems in civilized countries? We've already established you're not a fan of democracies, but still, you may have heard about this particular principle. Those people will not be neutral, they wont be objective and they wont give you any benefit of doubt. They will have quotas to meet, to justify their existence and "1984" will start looking like a fairy tale that would should strive for compared to the reality you're advocating. Edit: Once you start a witch hunt, guess what? You can't really stop it again. But then, nobody expected the Spanish inquisition, right?

It has. The system you favour was implemented in the DDR (for East Germany), Poland (during the Warsaw Pact days), Czecoslovakia, The Soviet Union, The CCP, North Korea, Hungary (during the Warsaw Pact days) and probably a several others, but those were the obvious examples that most Nordic people of a certain age would be familiar with. Guess what? People didn't like it.

You're against governments looking the military over the shoulders, but in favour of them looking normal citizens over the shoulder. Go figure... I wouldn't want to live in your idea of a world.

I don't live there, I only read the web news, but every time somebody in the US uses the word 'Liberal' to describe someone or something, it's implied they means 'Commie' (or socialist) Cambridge defines it a bit differently https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/liberal And a liberal party... can be just about anything. When I was still living in Europe, the various western European countries liberal parties were centre-right parties favouring unregulated market economy, tax the poor and reward the rich kind of attitude. edit: the latter being why I don't think the US use of the word quite matches the perception of it elsewhere. edit2: The current Australian PM and his party are the 'Australian Liberal Party', biggest pile of vile scumbags you'll ever see in a western country.

Mussolini won the election in 1924... with a coalition of fascists, catholics, liberals (not to be confused with the American use of the word liberal) and conservatives. The parallels (edit: what feels attracted to what) are hard to overlook.

Hey! That's the Powerpoint presentation of every go-live ever Edit: Brings back fond memories of driving for many hours through South Australias desert, heading home after a stay inland at a customer, just to get a phone call 1 hour away from Adelaide (where I was living at the time, many years ago), that would be around 7-8pm'ish that I was needed asap at a customer site in Adelaide. The customers server had crashed with defect hard drives, database was corrupt and they had sort of forgotten to test if their backup procedures actually worked Spent all Friday night (after driving through desert much of the day) and part of Saturday drinking beer with the customer and trying to salvage as much data as possible from a corrupt database, transferring the salvageable parts to an impromptu new "server" running on a laptop. McGyver would've been proud. In the end, we got a "workable" system up and running, though the poor interns would have to reenter transactions from the last 4 weeks as a new data entry exercise.

Still mostly playing Guild Wars 2 these days. Taking a break every now and then for the usual suspects. Xenonauts, Master of Orion 2, Borderlands 2, NieR: Automata and a few old SSI wargames on my C64 emulator Speaking of NieR, looking forward to NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139. I hope Kaine is still as foul mouthed as she was in the original (never played that one, only watched youtube clips)