International Politics Thread - Disease and Disaster

[Kara]

It's about time we solved an issue with something other than bombs.

Not to be a downer, but http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/11/world/meast/iran-who-kills-scientists/

[benjipwns]

Fox News Poll:

22. As you may know, Benjamin Netanyahu recently won re-election as prime minister of Israel. Are you glad he won or do you wish someone else had won -- or don’t you care much either way?
29-31 Mar 15
Glad he won: 34%
Wish someone else had won: 18
Don’t care either way: 39
(Don’t know): 9

[Great Rumbler]

Been trying to write up a response to that for about 5 minutes, still can't think of anything really.

But it's probably only a matter of time before these kinds of attacks make their way consistently to the west and that's where [as far as America is concerned] the real mess gets started. Can't wait for a new Crusade to get going.

[brob]

some context for the massacre in Kenya

[Rufus]

Onward into the past!

[Kara]

When I saw that the reactionary religious leader was named Tikhon (which while a form of Tycho iirc, contains the Russian word for quiet / slow--tikho) I was amused.

Also, let's get up in arms about pressuring entertainers to alter the way they perform art that was altered by the artist himself to #GetRichOrDieTrying with something so ludicrous as inserting a ballet in an opera for Napoleon III.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Someone please kill me.

[close]

[Madrun Badrun]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32202768

well that is one strategy.  'You owe us money!', 'nah, you guys were Nazis'

[Joe Molotov]

Hence we will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but we will say that heroes fight like Greeks.

[Madrun Badrun]

Churchill clearly wasn't thinking about the hair braiding and homo-butt sex when he said that.

[Madrun Badrun]

[Madrun Badrun]

This guy is pretty enlightening 

[benjipwns]

[Kara]

But that Trot I bully on GAF said class was the only meaningful struggle.

[brob]

always fun looking at what “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” means in China. Uighurs growing beards, Tibetans selling textiles, women protesting gendered violence, etc. Quite multifaceted.

[benjipwns]

Reading those books I did about The Party that I posted in the book thread, I came away with the impression that in China there are only three "real" crimes:
1. Those kinds of oddball ones.
2. Embarrassing The Party publicly.
3. Serial killing.

I guess the third one kinda goes with the second, so maybe there are only two crimes in China.

[Rufus]

^
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Urban_Administrative_and_Law_Enforcement_Bureau#Criticism

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/585879181520728064

[Madrun Badrun]

Things that picture is leaving out

With the deal: Obama wins
without the deal: Netanyahu wins

Now you can make an informed decision.

[benjipwns]

http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2015/201504/news07/20150407-05ee.html

Pyongyang, April 7 (KCNA) -- The Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization released a statement on Apr. 1 in denunciation of the anti-DPRK "human rights" racket being kicked up by the U.S. and its allies.

Recalling that the U.S. and its allies perpetrated such an act hostile to the DPRK as ramming an anti-DPRK "human rights resolution" through the 28th session of the UN Human Rights Council despite the opposition of the progressive countries in the world calling for ensuring genuine human rights and establishing a fair international order, the statement said:

It has already been fully exposed to the world that the "human rights issue" in the DPRK which was cooked up by the U.S. lackeys wearing the mask of "protecting human rights" on the basis of the "testimonies" made by "defectors from the north", human scum bereft of elementary human qualities and conscience, and has been noisily advertised by the U.S. and other Western countries was no more than a fabrication.

The AAPSO categorically rejects the anti-DPRK "human rights resolution".

The U.S. should no longer interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, styling itself a "human rights judge", but set right its own human rights situation as it is being censured as the world's worst human rights tundra.

Japan and some countries of EU should not impudently behave, pursuant to the U.S. scenario, but improve their tarnished image in the eyes of the international community.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Afro-Asian_Solidarity_Committee
http://www.aapsorg.org/en/

[Kara]

Aside from the banner that's a p. snazzy layout for that sort of website.

What's next, Monthly Review graduating from Project Gutenberg tier?

[benjipwns]

White House defends trolling Netanyahu

The White House is standing by a tweet mocking Israeli Prime Minister Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu despite concerns it could further sour relations between the two countries.

A White House tweet defending the framework nuclear agreement with Iran contained a cartoon bomb that was nearly identical to one in a chart used by Netanyahu in a 2012 speech urging the U.S. to take a harder line against Iran’s nuclear program.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu has issued very strong criticisms of this deal,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said on Friday. “That’s entirely his right, but we are also going to issue strong defenses of this deal.

“It would make no sense for us to essentially not make our case,” Rhodes said.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/donald-trump-would-have-negotiated-great-iran-deal-because-he-wrote-art-deal

Donald Trump told Iowa radio host Simon Conway yesterday that while NBC wants him back for more seasons of “The Apprentice,” he is too busy to film the show because “the country’s going to hell” and “we have an incompetent president.”

Continuing to pretend that he is running for president, Trump took on President Obama’s negotiations with Iran, which he insisted he would have been able to handle better because he wrote “the biggest-selling business book of all time,” his get-rich guide “The Art of the Deal.”

“The deal is terrible, it’s going to lead to nuclear all over the place and everyone’s going to want to have it and it’s a disaster for Israel, I can tell you, it’s a disaster for this country,” he said. “And they just don’t know what they’re doing.”

[Madrun Badrun]

Trump is such an embarrassment

[Joe Molotov]

Fuck, everyone's gonna want nuclear now! 

[Madrun Badrun]

Like anyone doesn't actually want nuclear ever.  If you can get nuclear before anyone notices your developing it then you really only get benefits.   Or you can just become paranuclear like all the cool countries. 

[Madrun Badrun]

[benjipwns]

These are all lies because people in the EU pay taxes in the Euro, therefore the Euro something something magic something something debts don't exist.

I'd like to see strategy games start taking on some of these graphic styles and stuff, they amuse me just to watch.

[Brehvolution]

Have you noticed that everyone saying the Iran deal is bad don't say why it's bad?

Or even better, the deal keeping Iran from getting a nuke is actually giving it to them?

 

[benjipwns]

Because they're liars who will get a nuke and destroy Israel anyway! They're hood-winking Obama! Munich! Chamberlain!

[Great Rumbler]

Have you noticed that everyone saying the Iran deal is bad don't say why it's bad?

“President Obama is hailing this framework as something that could enhance the prospects for peace in the Middle East,” McCain told reporters at the United States Senate. “For those of us who have looked forward to bombing Iran for some time now, that would be a doomsday scenario.”

“The Iranians know well and good that if they abandon their nuclear program exactly the way we’ve asked them to, we can kiss bombing them goodbye,” he said, shaking his head ruefully. “It’s a damn shame.”

[Rufus]

We're just going to ignore the spark that set this off, huh?  Not to say this set-up isn't inherently flawed, but there was this little event in '07 that tipped the first few dominos over.

edit: Woops, spoke too soon.

That "cultural differences" bit, jesus christ.

[Madrun Badrun]

Bomb-bomb-Iran was the hit single from the republican campaign trail and this sickening deal is clearly just aimed at diminishing the Republican's musical potential for next year.  I mean you just can't talk about devastating a nation to the tune of Anaconda!

[benjipwns]

We're just going to ignore the spark that set this off, huh?  Not to say this set-up isn't inherently flawed, but there was this little event in '07 that tipped the first few dominos over.

The Boston Celtics trading for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett?

[Kara]

That "cultural differences" bit, jesus christ.

To steal a joke from a Borean, there's a reason why Bloomberg has an L in it.

[Madrun Badrun]

That "cultural differences" bit, jesus christ.

I didn't take it so much as the video calling the Greeks lazy tax evaders but saying Germans perceive the Greeks as lazy tax evaders.  Mostly because the Greeks are lazy and tax evaders.

[benjipwns]

Have you noticed that everyone saying the Iran deal is bad don't say why it's bad?

Or even better, the deal keeping Iran from getting a nuke is actually giving it to them?

 

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-14/boehner-obama-made-a-deal-with-the-devil

President Barack Obama made a “deal with the devil” in his nuclear framework with Iran and there’s no reason to think it can verifiably prevent the Tehran regime from getting a nuclear weapon, House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday.

Returning from a long trip to the Middle East that included stops in Iraq, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, Boehner spoke to a small group of reporters about the war against the Islamic State and the general situation in the region as well as the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran. He said there was great skepticism among Iran's neighbors about the emerging agreement between it and the P5+1 world powers, and he shared those concerns.

“I don’t know how you cut a deal with the devil and think the devil is going to keep his end of the deal,” Boehner said of Obama and his advisers. “All they’ve done this far is talk about a delay of their development of a nuclear weapons for a few months or a year, in exchange for the rehabilitation of their entire economy? I think they are desperate for a deal at any cost and I think this is a prescription for disaster.”

Boehner also responded to White House spokesman Josh Earnest’s March 29 statement on ABC’s "This Week" that Boehner’s opposition to the nuclear negotiations meant he wanted war with Iran, and that he should "should have the courage of his convictions to actually say so." On the contrary, Boehner said, he was not for war with Iran, and if the administration had kept up sanctions pressure it could have gotten “a real agreement” rather than the "unverifiable" pact the framework suggests. Pressed on what that meant, Boehner said: “An agreement that would allow unfettered access to the inspectors to go anywhere at any time. That would be a real agreement.”

Boehner warned that Arab Gulf nations are likely to pursue their own nuclear weapons programs if the deal with Iran doesn’t satisfy their deep skepticism. “If Iran is on a path to get a nuclear weapon, all those countries that can afford to get one are going to have one,” he said. “It’s a fact.”

[Kara]

I'm going to start calling the U.S. government the "American regime."

[benjipwns]

I'm going to start calling the U.S. government the "American regime."

Now you're stealing from Rush Limbaugh?

[Kara]

I don't listen to prog rock, sorry.

[benjipwns]

I think he actually stole it from someone on Air America (:dead) calling it the "Bush Regime" and he was using it mockingly and then just naturally transitioned into using it seriously with Obama.

This is probably the origin story of half my views.

[Kara]

Definitely heard a lot of "Bush regime" back in the day.

I will never get the "bad man does all the bad things himself" thought process.

[brawndolicious]

*this was a but too drunk

[benjipwns]

I will never get the "bad man does all the bad things himself" thought process.

Bob Avakian has a New Synthesis for you!

[Kara]

Greece: Let us go.

IMF: Uhhhh lol no.

Greece: Then you leave us no choice, Agent Eurobond--release the dogecoins.

*global economic apocalypse*

[jakefromstatefarm]

this happened a couple days ago:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-files-show-structure-of-islamist-terror-group-a-1029274.html

so you're telling me a former Ba'athist used his contacts within the Assad and Hussein regimes to create an intelligence network which then exploited the vacuum of power resulting from the Iraq invasion and Syrian Civil War by playing off regional, ethnic and sectarian conflicts, all while using a pan-Islamic jihadist rhetoric that was less a dogma than a recruiting tool for tractable foreign foot soldiers?


never would've seen that one coming

[T-Short]

This is brutal:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/20/britain-criminally-stupid-race-immigration

Quoting almost the whole thing here:

The SNP’s growing popularity has prompted a little low-level press racism of the kilts-and-porridge variety, as an English electorate struggles with the idea that there will be Scottish people holding the reins of power for the first time since the last government. Nicola Sturgeon has been called “the most dangerous woman in Britain”, by someone who hasn’t met any other Scottish women. Of course, it’s difficult to explain to English people that we have always had their best interests at heart – if we hadn’t invented penicillin they would have all died in a Greek airport departure lounge.

Then there’s Ukip, like someone made a heavy-handed version of The Thick of It for ITV. They don’t want Britain to be ruled by foreigners – with the notable exception of the royal family. They want an Australian-style points system for immigration. Who knows what this will look like, but my suspicion is “being white” will be like catching the snitch in Quidditch.

...

Ukip are just the broader end, the easy slapstick laughs. They even have a porn-star candidate. Of course, he isn’t the first MP to have filmed himself having sex. But he is the first to do so with an adult, whom he allowed to live.

 

A lot of racism comes from projection. White Americans have a stereotype of black people being criminals purely because they can’t acknowledge that it was actually white people that stole them from Africa in the first place.

...

This is what happens when you don’t understand or even acknowledge history. You end up in a situation where, when slavery is the elephant in the room in your relationship with African Americans, you think it’s OK to say that you killed one of them because he was trying to escape.

 

Britain is in a similar place with colonialism. We have streets named after slave owners. We profited from a vile crime and feel no shame. We fear the arrival of immigrants that we have drawn here with the wealth we stole from them. For much of the rest of the world we must be the focus of bitter amusement, characters in a satire we don’t understand. It is British people that don’t learn languages, or British history. Britain is the true scrounger, the true criminal.

[Joe Molotov]

this happened a couple days ago:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-files-show-structure-of-islamist-terror-group-a-1029274.html

so you're telling me a former Ba'athist used his contacts within the Assad and Hussein regimes to create an intelligence network which then exploited the vacuum of power resulting from the Iraq invasion and Syrian Civil War by playing off regional, ethnic and sectarian conflicts, all while using a pan-Islamic jihadist rhetoric that was less a dogma than a recruiting tool for tractable foreign foot soldiers?

(Image removed from quote.)
never would've seen that one coming

It's almost like maybe the Iraq War was a bad idea.

[Madrun Badrun]

Who knows what this will look like, but my suspicion is “being white” will be like catching the snitch in Quidditch. 

[Kara]

http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/live-news/2015/4/former-egyptian-president-mohamed-morsi-sentenced-to-20-years-in-prison.html

I'm sure the nu-atheists at GAF are working overtime spinning this.

[brob]

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/04/23/chinese-government-says-please-stop-hiring-funeral-strippers/

 

[I'm a Puppy!]

This is why China will beat the US eventually. When they write the history of China's rise to power funeral strippers will have a whole chapter.

[Kara]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/countries-hate-america-most-124201169.html

http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/rp/advisory/html/advis18.html

I can get my guts ripped out by a saheba lubnaaniyya again.

Being a Jew in Austria would be pretty lulzy too. They even have numbered accounts iirc.

[Phoenix Dark]

[Kara]

If hurling Hellfires from the heavens without intel is wrong I don't want to be right.

[Great Rumbler]

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/04/18/katie-hopkins-russell-bra_n_7091674.html

[Rufus]

Quite the character:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Hopkins#Controversies

[Phoenix Dark]

When will she be exiled to America in order to plague us like Piers and James Corden.

[Kara]

I respect this mec's ennui game.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/04/charlie-hebdo-luz-stop-drawing-muhammad-cartoons-150429203627155.html

[Rufus]

German foreign correspondent's thoughts on his time in Japan as he's returning to Germany.
http://www.fccj.or.jp/number-1-shimbun/item/576-on-my-watch.html

What is new, and what seems unthinkable compared to five years ago, is being subjected to attacks from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – not only direct ones, but ones directed at the paper’s editorial staff in Germany. After the appearance of an article I had written that was critical of the Abe administration’s historical revisionism, the paper’s senior foreign policy editor was visited by the Japanese consul general of Frankfurt, who passed on objections from “Tokyo.” The Chinese, he complained, had used it for anti-Japanese propaganda.

It got worse. Later on in the frosty, 90-minute meeting, the editor asked the consul general for information that would prove the facts in the article wrong, but to no avail. “I am forced to begin to suspect that money is involved,” said the diplomat, insulting me, the editor and the entire paper. Pulling out a folder of my clippings, he extended condolences for my need to write pro-China propaganda, since he understood that it was probably necessary for me to get my visa application approved.

[Great Rumbler]

German foreign correspondent's thoughts on his time in Japan as he's returning to Germany.
http://www.fccj.or.jp/number-1-shimbun/item/576-on-my-watch.html

What is new, and what seems unthinkable compared to five years ago, is being subjected to attacks from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – not only direct ones, but ones directed at the paper’s editorial staff in Germany. After the appearance of an article I had written that was critical of the Abe administration’s historical revisionism, the paper’s senior foreign policy editor was visited by the Japanese consul general of Frankfurt, who passed on objections from “Tokyo.” The Chinese, he complained, had used it for anti-Japanese propaganda.

It got worse. Later on in the frosty, 90-minute meeting, the editor asked the consul general for information that would prove the facts in the article wrong, but to no avail. “I am forced to begin to suspect that money is involved,” said the diplomat, insulting me, the editor and the entire paper. Pulling out a folder of my clippings, he extended condolences for my need to write pro-China propaganda, since he understood that it was probably necessary for me to get my visa application approved.

So, Japan is becoming/has become Bush-era America. Nice.

[VomKriege]

I'm no economist, but the part about how the Euro allowed the politicians to promise "fat pensions" and "full employement" to get elected sounds  if not an outright lie. Make it sound like "austerity" was spawned in the 00's. By 1998 employement and pensions were already under severe pressure and it was clear the constant growth that followed the war was a thing of the past for most of Western Europe countries.

The "cultural differences", oh lord.
"Ever since the hyper-inflation of WW1, Germany have been very financially responsible", except for that slight 10 years hiccup with a square mustache, eh ? 

I am not one of those "the debt is a creation of the person who believes in the development and protection of a Jewish nation Wall Street fat cats !" type, but this is getting a bit ridiculous.