Photos of how Sloviansk looked before terrorists came. But of course you cannot be bothered to sign the petition to call the crimes committed against these people with the name they deserve.
“I think the whole idea of air travel passengers standing in a line holding their shoes is the result of a brain storm session where one hot shot told the other, “I bet you a thousand bucks I can make everyone take off their shoes in some twisted patriotic sense of homeland security.”” I suspect there were quite a few drinks involved in said brain storm session, but I agree with this blogger’s insight.
An enormous list of links to video and photo footage of what happened with Odessa. Of course, I know nobody cares because BBC or CNN or some other loser network has already declared that Ukrainians deserve nothing better.
“Long gone are the days when supply outweighed demand and job seekers had to go an extra mile to stand out and appease recruiters and hiring managers. While top headhunting firms are now recognizing the need to differentiate in order to engage potential candidates, outdated advice to job seekers still abounds.” Old-school thinking takes forever to give way to the new.
“When reports of the “botched execution” (lovely phrase) in Oklahoma came out, it didn’t even occur to me to wonder what the crimes involved were because it didn’t matter.” Yeah, because it’s easy to be a preachy do-gooder when you don’t have to imagine the suffering of a raped and murdered 11-month-old baby girl or of the young woman buried alive. These are female victims, which means that they don’t matter anyway. And if somebody decides on the basis of this that I support the death penalty, then I seriously worry for such a person’s intellect.
Finally, political analysts are starting to clock on to the change in the US foreign policy towards the withdrawal mode. Maybe we will even see an analysis of this development that will go deeper than the tired old discussion of Obama’s personality.
Under a mountain of empty and boring verbiage in the linked post, I did manage to find something kind of insightful: “We must see marriage only and always as endangered or broken, because that is the only reliable way to enshrine it as valuable and important. If people are fighting to preserve it, if its hollowing out is felt as a loss — well, then, it must be something very precious!” It’s true that people who declare with scary solemnity that “marriage is hard work” are the ones who live in really shitty and worthless relationships.
And the most hilarious post I read in a while: “Given all of the vicious homophobia of Russia and its self-proclaimed Tsar, Vladimr Putin, along with the recent annexation of Crimea and the long-established regional history of misogyny and anti-Semitism, I’m starting to get a bit worried about a possible resurrection of a new USSR.” I shouldn’t laugh, this blogger means well. It’s just weird to see somebody realize something so painfully obvious about a year after everybody else got it.
In Russian: a hybrid war in theory and in practice.
I saw this article announced as “a devastating indictment to Harper’s Canada” but found a mumbly collection of useless quotes. It’s no wonder nobody can create a strong opposition to Harper if even online people are incapable of writing in a way that will really arouse passions against him.
Photos of a newspaper office in the Ukrainian city of Torez destroyed by Russian terrorists.
In Russian: Russian terrorists in Donetsk continue with their anti-semitic outbursts.
Out of these “9 Incredibly Useful Russian Words With No English Equivalent”, I never heard 2. Who makes these lists if even a very educated native speaker of a language with a very limited vocabulary can’t identify some of the words on the list?
Isn’t it cute when a man pompously declares that it’s unnatural for women to enjoy sex? (The exact quote is, “Some women’s clits are fully engaged during intercourse without any extra effort (they can come “just” from fucking), but they’re in the minority.” The whole statement is out-of-this-world idiotic.)
“Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged that a planned May 11 referendum on autonomy in southeast Ukraine be postponed. In a Wednesday meeting with Swiss president Didier Burkhalter, Putin also called on Ukraine’s military to halt all operations against pro-Russia activists who have seized government buildings and police stations across at least a dozen towns in eastern Ukraine.” What a disgusting horrible cockroach. He will have a second Ossetia in the East of Ukraine at any cost.
In Russian: Putin explains the tenets of Russian Nazism and why this ideology is dear to his heart.
Clarissa's Blog 
Feel free to address me by name if you want to passively attack me in a post. But truth be told, I’ll happily call them whatever you want, up to and including terrorists, and I don’t disagree with what you call them: I just won’t demand my President take an act of war over it.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen you demand Ukrainians fight and die for injustices elsewhere in the world, so I for one see no reason why you demand that of Americans. You are asking young men who’s closes relationship to this conflict is Odessa, Texas, to die for an agreement they were children when was agreed.
You say America reneged on its promise: very well. We did. Tough. But consider this: What outrageous arrogance and total disregard for other people’s sons, from YOUR country to accept the idea that it should shelve its ability to protect itself on the basis that other people’s children would come and fight and die for its right to independence. We conned you, but the con only worked because you were dishonest enough to fall for it. You thought you could get national sovereignty on the cheap… or at least at someone else’s expense. Maybe you still will. It’s not right, and *that* is what your petition is aimed towards, not merely us using a particular word on the street to describe what’s happening
My comments throughout this travesty have been largely pro-Ukrainian people, if not the leadership. I stand by what I said, and times when I disagreed with you I refrained from commenting because it was not my place – this is personal for you, and to nitpick or discuss macro-level geopolitics would have been wholly out of place.
But you have moved it beyond the grounds of personal grievance.
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“Feel free to address me by name if you want to passively attack me in a post.”
– My dig was at twicerandomly. I don’t remember you participating in this argument at all. Or do you use both avatars interchangeably?
“You thought you could get national sovereignty on the cheap… or at least at someone else’s expense. Maybe you still will. ”
– I have no idea what you are talking about. Are you at all familiar with the history of Ukraine?
“My comments throughout this travesty have been largely pro-Ukrainian people, if not the leadership. I stand by what I said, and times when I disagreed with you I refrained from commenting because it was not my place – this is personal for you, and to nitpick or discuss macro-level geopolitics would have been wholly out of place. But you have moved it beyond the grounds of personal grievance.”
– I have this weird feeling of being confused for somebody completely different. What is “it”? What personal grievance? What sons? What children of other people? Are you the same Alexander who usually leaves very intelligent and insightful comments? Because this comment is so confusing I have no idea what you are even trying to say.
“We conned you, but the con only worked because you were dishonest enough to fall for it.”
– I’m not sure who “we” and “you” are here, but do you realize that the sentence makes no sense? Victims of con men are not the ones who are dishonest. And they are not the ones brought to trial. Con men are.
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From
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/gjay/www/Whiteness/stranger.htmI
I do not think, for example, that it is too much to suggest that the American vision of the world-which allows so little reality, generally speaking, for any of the darker forces in human life, which tends until today to paint moral issues in glaring black and white-owes a great deal to the battle waged by Americans to maintain between themselves and black men a human separation which could not be bridged.
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I also see moral issues in glaring black and white, so the whole thing is not too convincing.
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Im wondering why is Dan Savage’s remarks idiotic? Are his statements false, misleading? I dont get it?
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Because he’s a gay man, and has zero understanding of female bodies. Were I to make any pronouncements as to how gay males experience their bodies during sex, I would sound as silly.
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So what if youre a gay male obstetrician?
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Dan Savage isn’t one. And obstetricians don’t specialize in sexual functioning but in reproduction, which is very different.
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“Of course, I know nobody cares because BBC or CNN or some other loser network has already declared that Ukrainians deserve nothing better.”
Is this what you are directing at me? As far as I know, the BBC said nothing of the sort, and I never said they did. So what’s really going on here? Do you think I should express more outrage about Russia’s actions? (I can do that.) Do you think I should offer some hope that Ukraine will be allowed to be a free and autonomous country? (I can’t do that.) Do you want me to stop challenging you when you make assertions that I think are over-generalizations or for which there is some contradictory evidence? (Really?! If you tell me it is upsetting you, I guess I could stop.)
And it was Alexander, not me, who said that he would not sign the petition. Alexander and I are not the same person.
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Please understand that I find it extremely strange when people who don’t even speak Russian try to “challenge” me on this subject. I don’t even know how to react because I’m not sure what response they are hoping to get. It’s just weird. I have an intimate and profound knowledge of this and debating with opinion taken from some BBC piece feels weird. I don’t even have another word for it. It’s just weird.
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But I have never said that I know what is happening in Ukraine. When you say that Odessa is like St. Petersburg, full of vulgar people, I just ask, “Isn’t it possible that they are both vulgar because they are port cities?” When you say that two football teams march together for Ukraine, I ask, “Isn’t it possible that a bunch of young men just finished a sporting match are out looking for trouble?” Neither question requires a knowledge of Ukraine, just a knowledge of human nature.
And although you unquestionably know more about Russia and Ukraine than I do, I do know something about evidence. If some pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian (using these terms as shortcuts) takes 100 photos of a riot, are they going to post them all on their website? No. They will just go through them and pick out 10 or so that support the narrative that they are advancing. So you can read Ukrainian blogs and Russian blogs and listen to Ukrainian news and Russian news, and still not be sure what is going on. Whereas the BBC, for example, which is disinterested, will interview a dozen people and publish all the information, and quite likely come up with a better grasp of what is going on than those blogs or journals with an agenda to promote.
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Look, if you believe that BBC, CNN, NBC, Fox News and Co are capable of coming up with any sort of grasp on anything, that’s your right. These are the last places on the planet I’d go for information, but hey, to each his own.
“So you can read Ukrainian blogs and Russian blogs and listen to Ukrainian news and Russian news, and still not be sure what is going on.”
– As we say, let’s debate the taste of partridges with those who have eaten them. You’d have to read and listen before you could safely make this assumptions, wouldn’t you?
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A joke about a completely different kind of referendum:
– Sakhalin? Hello?
– Here, here.
– What have you decided?
– Everything is fine, all is fine. We’re voting.
– What do you mean – “voting”? What for?
– We’re joining Japan via a secret, public referendum.
– How have the voices been divided?
– Haven’t been. Unanimously – to Japan.
– Is somebody against?
– Yes, yes. Japanese are against, but it’s too late, we’ve already joined.
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Here we go.
http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/the-game-was-lost.html
I do my best. It isn’t much.
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From comments:
— I have a book, historical fiction, with an afternote pointing out that many many medieval manuscripts are assumed to have been written by a man just because there is no identification attached.
— In the Jewish tradition starting in the 1600s, books were produced for women in Yiddish. The had morality stories and prayers specifically for women. While many of these volumes were written by women, some were done by men who used female pen names. This happened for many reasons, but one was that people were afraid that women wouldn’t stuff about the female experience credible if it came from man.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2014/05/christian-patriarchy-on-educating-daughters.html
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Общаясь с россиянами, начинаешь неожиданно остро понимать, как западникам трудно с нами и как нам трудно с западниками. Смотришь, бывало, на какого-нибудь англичанина, американца или даже чеха – и диву даешься: какое же они общительные, открытые, человек человеку брат, заговорят в магазине, улыбнутся друг другу в автобусе, протянут руку на выходе из трамвая, лёгкие и бесхитростные, как дети, даже языком ихним западным толком не заговоришь, пока сам не превратишься в ребёнка, а сделать это трудно, невозможно. Хау а ююууууу? Ооо, океееей. Хелллло! – и улыбка до ушей. Только дети так общаются, дети с гламурных фото, не видевшие “настоящей жизни”.
Это ты ее так называешь, свою ежедневную мясорубку – “настоящая жизнь”. Ты несешь на своих плечах бетонную плиту своего прошлого и настоящего, существования на пределе, будничного озверения и отчаяния – даже когда ты отдыхаешь на берегу океана и услужливый гарсон подносит кофе в фарфоровой чашке.
http://talliori.livejournal.com/931576.html
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So true!! That’s exactly how I taught English to Russian-speakers! I’m writing a post about this right now, thanks for the inspiration!
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My Kyrgyz wife has said many times to me, “Ty kak malanki rebenok.” I don’t think she realizes that for Americans that really isn’t an insult. There are far worse things to be like than a small child.
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Nah, I’m with her. I hate childishness is adults. 🙂
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