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ugh its Troika
May 2, 2009

by FactsAreUseless


five days to go, better dust off your rifles goones

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Courthouse
Jul 23, 2013
Looks like the EU elections saw a slew of nationalist/pseudo-facist riding in on a wave of populism. It's going to be a fun time to be brown.

E; Separatists have taken the Donetsk airport, firefight ongoing against Ukrainian paras with helicopter and air support. Looks like a push to properly lock down the east and remove Kiev's influence from what strategic points they still control. It's a pretty ballsy move, and the first time the separatists are confronting the army outside civilian filled cities or forest ambushes.

Courthouse fucked around with this message at 14:12 on May 26, 2014

Snowdens Secret
Dec 29, 2008
Someone got you a obnoxiously racist av.
Petro Poroshenko, the candy magnate, has apparently won the Ukrainian elections.

His vow to enrich the struggling eastern towns by investing commercially to turn them into "Chocolate Cities" seems to already be getting twisted around in the racist pro-Russian press.

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

can't wait until chef from South Park's chocolate salty balls song gets quoted in regards to "Chocolate Cities"

Eugene V. Dubstep
Oct 4, 2013
Probation
Can't post for 8 years!
Goddamn oompa-loompas TAKIN OUR JOBS!

Snowdens Secret
Dec 29, 2008
Someone got you a obnoxiously racist av.
Chuck Hagel, who got two Purple Hearts in Vietnam, says the VA scandal makes him "sick to his stomach."
http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2014/05/26/hagel-on-va-scandal-it-makes-me-sick-to-my-stomach/

The VA has pencilled him in for an initial check for his stomach illness in about four months, but says it may have to get pushed

Snowdens Secret
Dec 29, 2008
Someone got you a obnoxiously racist av.
More seriously:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/26/world/asia/china-japan-jets-scramble/

quote:

Hong Kong (CNN) -- Territorial tensions between China and Japan have flared after a close encounter between their military jets in disputed airspace over the East China Sea. The neighboring rivals accused each other of potentially triggering a dangerous incident, after two pairs of Chinese fighter jets were scrambled and flew unprecedentedly close to a Japanese OP-3C surveillance plane and a YS-11EB electronic intelligence aircraft Saturday.

The fly-bys occurred in airspace claimed by both countries as part of their "air defense identification zones," while China carried out joint maritime exercises with Russia at the weekend. Japan claims the flights were part of a routine reconnaissance mission near a group of uninhabited islands claimed by both nations, known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan. Meanwhile, China's Ministry of National Defense described the move as a justified enforcement of the country's air defense zone.

Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said it was the closest that Chinese jets had come to Japanese aircraft -- passing about 30 meters from one plane and 50 meters from another. "We believe this proximity and behavior does not follow common sense," he said.

He said the flight crews reported the Chinese planes were armed with missiles. "The crews were on edge as they responded."

The article also obliquely mentions how, after China set up their questionably legal air defense identification zone, the US made a show of buzzing it with unarmed B-52s, but doesn't mention that since then we've quietly redirected traffic around it, and that US-based civilian traffic has been following the new identification and traffic rules the Chinese set up.

PookBear
Nov 1, 2008

japan's gonna form voltron and gently caress poo poo up, i hope.

Mustang
Jun 18, 2006

“We don’t really know where this goes — and I’m not sure we really care.”
If we had Teddy Roosevelt as president today he would be all up in Russia and China's poo poo.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

Snowdens Secret posted:

The article also obliquely mentions how, after China set up their questionably legal air defense identification zone, the US made a show of buzzing it with unarmed B-52s, but doesn't mention that since then we've quietly redirected traffic around it, and that US-based civilian traffic has been following the new identification and traffic rules the Chinese set up.

When you say redirected traffic, are you talking about civilian traffic or military? I know the government has advised U.S. airlines to follow the published NOTAMs regarding the ADIZ and that the airlines have made some routing changes, but I would be shocked if we made any sort of change to our freedom of navigation/surveillance operations.

Also China sunk a Vietnamese fishing boat in the vicinity of that drilling vessel that Vietnam is all pissy about, just another day in the South China Sea.

Fojar38
Sep 2, 2011


Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia


also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->

Snowdens Secret posted:

More seriously:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/26/world/asia/china-japan-jets-scramble/


The article also obliquely mentions how, after China set up their questionably legal air defense identification zone, the US made a show of buzzing it with unarmed B-52s, but doesn't mention that since then we've quietly redirected traffic around it, and that US-based civilian traffic has been following the new identification and traffic rules the Chinese set up.

I heard that civilian traffic was being redirected but the USAF still routinely flew through it unannounced.

Snowdens Secret
Dec 29, 2008
Someone got you a obnoxiously racist av.

iyaayas01 posted:

When you say redirected traffic, are you talking about civilian traffic or military? I know the government has advised U.S. airlines to follow the published NOTAMs regarding the ADIZ and that the airlines have made some routing changes, but I would be shocked if we made any sort of change to our freedom of navigation/surveillance operations.

I read that we flew the 2 B-52s through and that was it for testing it, but maybe that just meant that was the only real obviously provocative move and I'm just interpreting it wrong.

standard.deviant
May 17, 2012

Globally Indigent

Snowdens Secret posted:

I read that we flew the 2 B-52s through and that was it for testing it, but maybe that just meant that was the only real obviously provocative move and I'm just interpreting it wrong.
I'm guessing the usual reconnaissance flights that the US uses to tweak Chinese/North Korean/Russian/Iranian/whatever noses occur within their respective ADIZ, and this wouldn't be an exception. At the same time, it's not exactly newsworthy.

iyaayas01
Feb 19, 2010

Perry'd

standard.deviant posted:

I'm guessing the usual reconnaissance flights that the US uses to tweak Chinese/North Korean/Russian/Iranian/whatever noses occur within their respective ADIZ, and this wouldn't be an exception. At the same time, it's not exactly newsworthy.

Pretty much this. The ones in the Chinese ADIZ just now have a freedom of navigation component to them as well, I suppose.

psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*.
So our old pal Edward Snowden is now proclaiming that he was a trained and seasoned intelligence officer for the CIA, NSA, and DIA.

So, let's suspend our disbelief for a second. Assuming this is true, wouldn't that completely undermine his original story of "IT guy exposing the wrongdoings of the government" and instead replace it with "former spy complicit in said acts who outed himself for no apparent reason?" And doesn't the crowd that he panders to loving hate spies?

EBB
Feb 15, 2005

There isn't a big enough :jerkbag: for Snowden now.

The Eyes Have It
Feb 10, 2008

Third Eye Sees All
...snookums
:canada: news: Senator Romeo Dallaire will be retiring (e: in part due to ongoing PTSD)

You may remember him as the Force Commander for UNAMIR - UN's peacekeeping mission in Rwanda. He found himself in the middle of not only a genocide but a civil war, receiving no support and being cock-blocked at every turn in every attempt to control the situation.

He wrote Shake Hands with the Devil as a memoir of it and this longish article today is a pretty good summary.

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/profile-romeo-dallaires-peacekeeping-nightmare

I remember on one occasion he unloaded his sidearm and gave his ammo to his aide before a meeting, because he couldn't trust himself to not just plug everyone at the table. He was tempted more than once in this way. It had it all. Horrible bureaucracy, accountant nickle-and-diming (why the gently caress is the fax machine not working? Accountant disabled it because it costs too much), shitbags sabotaging their own vehicles - they only had a few working ones - so they wouldn't have to leave base, expired MREs for three meals a day (and when the got to the German ones they stank to high heaven), and so on.

The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 18:20 on May 28, 2014

AllDogsGoodDogs
Dec 30, 2008
Brian Williams should have went in with a bomb.

RIP Lion of Panjshir.

maffew buildings
Apr 29, 2009

too dumb to be probated; not too dumb to be autobanned

psydude posted:

So our old pal Edward Snowden is now proclaiming that he was a trained and seasoned intelligence officer for the CIA, NSA, and DIA.

So, let's suspend our disbelief for a second. Assuming this is true, wouldn't that completely undermine his original story of "IT guy exposing the wrongdoings of the government" and instead replace it with "former spy complicit in said acts who outed himself for no apparent reason?" And doesn't the crowd that he panders to loving hate spies?

Isn't he like 25 or some other ridiculously young age that torpedoes his claim?

Dapper_Swindler
Feb 14, 2012

Im glad my instant dislike in you has been validated again and again.

psydude posted:

So our old pal Edward Snowden is now proclaiming that he was a trained and seasoned intelligence officer for the CIA, NSA, and DIA.

So, let's suspend our disbelief for a second. Assuming this is true, wouldn't that completely undermine his original story of "IT guy exposing the wrongdoings of the government" and instead replace it with "former spy complicit in said acts who outed himself for no apparent reason?" And doesn't the crowd that he panders to loving hate spies?

Isn't he like a giant objectvist too. Honestly not sure whats worse, Him being useful idiot who tons of poo poo to russia because "gently caress the man" or he has been on the Russian payroll all along and D&D and others are easily duped.

Zeroisanumber
Oct 23, 2010

Nap Ghost

Mister Sinewave posted:

:canada: news: Senator Romeo Dallaire will be retiring (e: in part due to ongoing PTSD)

You may remember him as the Force Commander for UNAMIR - UN's peacekeeping mission in Rwanda. He found himself in the middle of not only a genocide but a civil war, receiving no support and being cock-blocked at every turn in every attempt to control the situation.

He wrote Shake Hands with the Devil as a memoir of it and this longish article today is a pretty good summary.

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/profile-romeo-dallaires-peacekeeping-nightmare

I remember on one occasion he unloaded his sidearm and gave his ammo to his aide before a meeting, because he couldn't trust himself to not just plug everyone at the table. He was tempted more than once in this way. It had it all. Horrible bureaucracy, accountant nickle-and-diming (why the gently caress is the fax machine not working? Accountant disabled it because it costs too much), shitbags sabotaging their own vehicles - they only had a few working ones - so they wouldn't have to leave base, expired MREs for three meals a day (and when the got to the German ones they stank to high heaven), and so on.

I read his book. It was my first, tentative step down the road to giving up on people.

Nostalgia4Butts
Jun 1, 2006

WHERE MY HOSE DRINKERS AT

Mister Sinewave posted:

:canada: news: Senator Romeo Dallaire will be retiring (e: in part due to ongoing PTSD)

You may remember him as the Force Commander for UNAMIR - UN's peacekeeping mission in Rwanda. He found himself in the middle of not only a genocide but a civil war, receiving no support and being cock-blocked at every turn in every attempt to control the situation.

He wrote Shake Hands with the Devil as a memoir of it and this longish article today is a pretty good summary.

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/profile-romeo-dallaires-peacekeeping-nightmare

I remember on one occasion he unloaded his sidearm and gave his ammo to his aide before a meeting, because he couldn't trust himself to not just plug everyone at the table. He was tempted more than once in this way. It had it all. Horrible bureaucracy, accountant nickle-and-diming (why the gently caress is the fax machine not working? Accountant disabled it because it costs too much), shitbags sabotaging their own vehicles - they only had a few working ones - so they wouldn't have to leave base, expired MREs for three meals a day (and when the got to the German ones they stank to high heaven), and so on.

I just read the article and pretty much lost all faith in humanity.

Sounds like he was basically given the worst situation possible. I'm surprised that he didn't say gently caress it and go AWOL.

Flying_Crab
Apr 12, 2002



PLANES CURE TOWERS posted:

I just read the article and pretty much lost all faith in humanity.

Sounds like he was basically given the worst situation possible. I'm surprised that he didn't say gently caress it and go AWOL.

quote:

One Hutu woman who participated in killing 80 Tutsi children calmly explained to UN investigators that the youngsters did not run away from the mob “because they knew us.” She did acknowledge, however, as the children waited their turn to be killed and could see the carnage before them, “they had big eyes.”

In Kigali, thousands of rotting corpses lay strewn in the streets. Packs of wild dogs were eating the flesh, fighting over the remains. Dallaire recalls taking trips to the countryside where he would drive through villages, seeing bodies of children chopped up like salami. “I’ve seen fetuses ripped out of the stomachs of women,” he says. “I even had the misfortune of arriving at a site where a woman with a child was killing another woman with a child on her back. What do you do? Do you shoot that woman?”

:wtc: :stare:

maffew buildings
Apr 29, 2009

too dumb to be probated; not too dumb to be autobanned
I took a recent tragedies of East and South Africa class in college and after the blocks on Rwanda followed by current gold and diamond industry practices I concluded the only acceptable solution to being alive is raging alcoholism

edit: maybe we will get lucky and Putin will implement "Operation: Macho Man" concurrently with China and Japan popping off at each other resulting in cleansing fire

maffew buildings fucked around with this message at 23:11 on May 28, 2014

EBB
Feb 15, 2005

Nuke the planet. Just burn it all down and let the next species take a crack at it.

Fojar38
Sep 2, 2011


Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia


also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->

quote:

In some cases, Dallaire had already assigned soldiers to guard key officials but that did little good. Ghanaian troops had been posted at the home of Lando Ndasingwa, the only Tutsi in the Hutu government and doubtless a target for extremists. But when the Rwandan presidential guard burst into Ndasingwa’s home, his Ghanaian protectors fled out the back. Ndasingwa, his Montreal-born wife, Helen, their children, Malaika, 17, and Patrick, 15, and Ndasingwa’s mother, Bibiane Nyiratulira, were then executed with gunshots to the head. A UN official would later claim the Ghanaians fled because they had been outnumbered and could do little. But Ndasingwa’s sister, Louise, wonders why they at least didn’t try to take the children with them.

quote:

That same night another contingent of Ghanaian troops stood guard at the home of Joseph Kavaruganda, a Supreme Court judge who favoured sharing power with the Tutsis. The presidential guard showed up for Kavaruganda who was beaten and thrown into the back of a truck, never to be seen again. As he was being bundled away, his wife, Anonciata, and his children watched as the Ghanaians joked with the presidential guard and even shared a few drinks with the family’s tormentors. Anonciata and the children would later escape from Rwanda after taking refuge in the Canadian embassy in Kigali.

Come on Ghana.

Also the Belgians holding off a mob of Hutu in a blockhouse with nothing but a pistol and an AK-47 for 4 hours is pretty :black101:

Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 23:32 on May 28, 2014

Courthouse
Jul 23, 2013

psydude posted:

So our old pal Edward Snowden is now proclaiming that he was a trained and seasoned intelligence officer for the CIA, NSA, and DIA.

So, let's suspend our disbelief for a second. Assuming this is true, wouldn't that completely undermine his original story of "IT guy exposing the wrongdoings of the government" and instead replace it with "former spy complicit in said acts who outed himself for no apparent reason?" And doesn't the crowd that he panders to loving hate spies?

Well, his description of his "spy" work essentially boils down to 'IT guy stealing everyone's internets while pretending to be IT guy not stealing everyone's internets'. So... by that description everyone in the NSA is a spy, because they are covertly spying on your computer. He's not claiming to be a field agent or anything.

quote:

african tribal conflict

:stare:

We are all animals under a thin veneer of civilization, etc, etc. What's more strange to me is that we are so thoroughly traumatized by what in the rest of the animal kingdom is fairly normal behavior.

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

Courthouse posted:

We are all animals under a thin veneer of civilization, etc, etc. What's more strange to me is that we are so thoroughly traumatized by what in the rest of the animal kingdom is fairly normal behavior.
Gonna take a wild stab at this and say it's because we are not like other animals in all the ways that matter.

maffew buildings
Apr 29, 2009

too dumb to be probated; not too dumb to be autobanned
Correct, we cry when the feeble, sick and defective are killed

Ultimate Shrek Fan
May 2, 2005

by FactsAreUseless

maffew buildings posted:

Correct, we cry when the feeble, sick and defective are killed

You might.



Pussy.

Kung Fu Fist Fuck
Aug 9, 2009

Fojar38 posted:

Come on Ghana.

:fireman:

i think its kinda exciting that you can draw parallels to today and just prior to ww2. putin performing foul necromancies on the corpse of the cccp, fascism on the rise in europe again, america becoming more isolationist, japan squaking about returning to the big boys table

gives me a small glimmer of hope that in 20 years there will be a lot less people around :unsmith:

Courthouse
Jul 23, 2013
Some OSCE inspectors got kidnapped around east Ukraine, again.

Looks like the Russian troops are maybe-possibly withdrawing from the Ukrainian border. NATO reports they are packing things up. Unless of course they are packing it up to move a few miles to the west.

Dead Reckoning posted:

Gonna take a wild stab at this and say it's because we are not like other animals in all the ways that matter.

Sure, but seeing as how our entire history is filled with this kind of poo poo on a pretty constant level it seems evolutionary counterproductive that we start putting guns to our heads and drinking diluted poison because of it. :/

psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*.

Courthouse posted:

Well, his description of his "spy" work essentially boils down to 'IT guy stealing everyone's internets while pretending to be IT guy not stealing everyone's internets'. So... by that description everyone in the NSA is a spy, because they are covertly spying on your computer. He's not claiming to be a field agent or anything.

quote:

"I was trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word in that I lived and worked undercover overseas -- pretending to work in a job that I'm not -- and even being assigned a name that was not mine," Snowden said in an interview with NBC News, a portion of which aired Tuesday. The full interview will air Wednesday evening.
. . .
"I've worked for the Central Intelligence Agency undercover overseas, I've worked for the National Security Agency undercover overseas and I've worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency as a lecturer at the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy where I developed sources and methods for keeping our information and people secure in the most hostile and dangerous environments around the world," Snowden said.

Sounds a lot like he's trying to claim he was in the field to me. I mean, I'm fairly certain it's all bullshit anyway, but I'm surprised that this dude is so adamant about proving his spy cred to us.

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

Snowden's a attention whore. And Russia needs news that's not Ukraine Invasion 2014.

SentSix
Jul 19, 2001

psydude posted:

Sounds a lot like he's trying to claim he was in the field to me. I mean, I'm fairly certain it's all bullshit anyway, but I'm surprised that this dude is so adamant about proving his spy cred to us.

Considering his location and visa disposition I'm surprised he didn't lead off with "I am the walrus".

There's ways to to blow the whistle, but dude did it so so very wrong. If that's really what he meant to do.

Edit: Lets be honest, dude probably got turned for some almost-vanilla sex poo poo.

SentSix fucked around with this message at 04:49 on May 29, 2014

Courthouse
Jul 23, 2013

psydude posted:

Sounds a lot like he's trying to claim he was in the field to me. I mean, I'm fairly certain it's all bullshit anyway, but I'm surprised that this dude is so adamant about proving his spy cred to us.

Right, but in the "field" as an IT guy. Not James Bond or anything, which is the idea most people get when you say you're a "spy". I'm sure all these organizations have plenty of IT people sent out to work on vacuuming the internet, what with pretty much all intelligence these days being data based. And of course for counterintel IT stuff, which when you get right down to it is just hunting malware and closing holes hackers could use. But it sounds cooler if you call it counterintelligence.

psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*.

Courthouse posted:

Right, but in the "field" as an IT guy. Not James Bond or anything, which is the idea most people get when you say you're a "spy". I'm sure all these organizations have plenty of IT people sent out to work on vacuuming the internet, what with pretty much all intelligence these days being data based. And of course for counterintel IT stuff, which when you get right down to it is just hunting malware and closing holes hackers could use. But it sounds cooler if you call it counterintelligence.

I can't speak to the offensive part, but an IT person, specifically someone as "advanced" as he claims to be, wouldn't call that counterintelligence, they'd call it security engineering or computer network defense. It seems like an issue of semantics, but it actually provides some insight into his background (or lack thereof).

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
I think the dude is just a little irritated that people keep trying to dismiss him as some low-level Geek Squad IT flunky while also saying that he caused irreparable damage to our national security.

BigDave
Jul 14, 2009

Taste the High Country
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27618681

Pro-Russian rebels shot down a Ukrainian helicopter, 14 KIA.

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Courthouse
Jul 23, 2013

BigDave posted:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27618681

Pro-Russian rebels shot down a Ukrainian helicopter, 14 KIA.

You know, if Russia is going to be as obvious as to give the separatists half decent man portable AA I really don't see why they can't just loving invade already. Stop being a loving tease, Putin. :v:

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