#761
Congrats Hungary for not being in the last place for the first time ever, and also congrats Russia for creating a brand new generation that hates you

#762
seems legit
#763
wow an eastern european country that hates all its near neighbours and loves distant rich western countries, this is New
#764
surprised at france not being #1 tho
#765
dude, i frickin LOVE Germany, Great Britain and the U.S.A.!!!!!
#766

jools posted:

surprised at france not being #1 tho



They call us gypsies and they do the racism against us, so opinion on them has been going downhill; the english have started doing it too, but the french have been at it for 25 years. Probably the germans also say shit like that but nobody understands their dog language.

France should still be number 1 tho, since without them there would not be a Romania today. First they were instrumental in the forming of the Romanian Kingdom in the 19'th century by uniting Wallachia and Moldova, as they wanted a powerful ally against the Russian Empire (and romanians did a lot of lobbying in Paris about latin brotherhood and all that), then they did the greatest event of the 20th century, the Trianon treaty
Also there's a lot of cultural connections, like for example almost 40% of romanian vocabulary is borrowed from french, all the great romanian writers have been influenced by french ones, and most of the foreign literature we read is french (when I was a kid I couldn't afford to buy books, so I was going to the city library which was free for students, and I remember the french literature section there was bigger than all other foreign ones combined)

#767

daddyholes posted:

dude, i frickin LOVE Germany, Great Britain and the U.S.A.!!!!!



Good for you. Personally I prefer Japan, it's a very advanced culture.

#768
damn looks like if Putin stopped all this response to western aggression then european reactionaries could love the Usa in peace. Damn. darn
#769
on a related note did you know that over 80% of the Jewish population of Israel, a far-left country, supports the bombardment of Gaza into rubble? Fact.
#770
meanwhile Kiev soldiers announced today they have invaded Luhansk and deployed microwave dishes in the streets to break Putins brainwashing spell. Everyone blinks and looks around and tiny IMF flags slide out of every sleeve and everyone waves them
#771

daddyholes posted:

on a related note did you know that over 80% of the Jewish population of Israel, a far-left country, supports the bombardment of Gaza into rubble? Fact.

damn the one-state solution sounds like a great idea then. dear genocidal jewish neighbours, we're the islamic party in gaza, let's live together in peace lolol

#772
lolol indeed
#773

Tokyo_Sexwale posted:

jools posted:

surprised at france not being #1 tho

They call us gypsies and they do the racism against us, so opinion on them has been going downhill; the english have started doing it too, but the french have been at it for 25 years. Probably the germans also say shit like that but nobody understands their dog language.

France should still be number 1 tho, since without them there would not be a Romania today. First they were instrumental in the forming of the Romanian Kingdom in the 19'th century by uniting Wallachia and Moldova, as they wanted a powerful ally against the Russian Empire (and romanians did a lot of lobbying in Paris about latin brotherhood and all that), then they did the greatest event of the 20th century, the Trianon treaty
Also there's a lot of cultural connections, like for example almost 40% of romanian vocabulary is borrowed from french, all the great romanian writers have been influenced by french ones, and most of the foreign literature we read is french (when I was a kid I couldn't afford to buy books, so I was going to the city library which was free for students, and I remember the french literature section there was bigger than all other foreign ones combined)



they "bought" all your oil lol

#774
also isnt romania part of the francophonie?
#775

jools posted:

also isnt romania part of the francophonie?

it is but they let anyone in, really.

#776

getfiscal posted:

damn the one-state solution sounds like a great idea then. dear genocidal jewish neighbours, we're the islamic party in gaza, let's live together in peace lolol



#777
so i guess the optimal strategy would probably be to pretend to agitate for a two-state solution for a certain period of time before transitioning to a more radical one-state agenda. food for thought, if you think about it
#778
anyone got some hot tips on how to learn russian?
#779
hmm... it'd probably be easier to learn german first because i already know some of the basics from high school. but whatever. we'll see. blessed be.
#780
blessed be
#781
bleßed be
#782
dont matter if u from georgia or georgia, george w is still the kinda guy you'd wanna get a beer with
#783
a nice lady from the FinanCIAl Times explained on the radio today that sanctions against Russia are in place to struggle against Putin's overpowering aggression in Ukraine but things are looking up because, she explained, Russia's beleagured opponents control all money markets and foreign exchange across the world lollllllllllllllll
#784
other facts explained today were that the crashed malaysian airplane has now officially permanently become The Plane That Was "downed over rebel-held areas" and that in turn "spurred sanctions", they're totally giving up on actually arguing that the Russians or the local defense forces actually shot it down or that the sanctions were a response to a real thing that happened. Financial Times person went on to point out that everybody now knew that Russia was uniquely corrupt because sanctions revealed that its economy includes a class of elite business owners and politicians
#785
#786
Billionaires in Europe


A few observations from me

- the 110 russian billionaires own 35% of Russia's wealth

- in an interesting (tho not surprising) dynamic, rich countries that have traditional more leftist societies where taxes for the rich are very high (namely France or Norway) have fewer billionaires per capita than way poorer yet more capitalistic countries (like Russia or Turkey; I would include Ukraine here too). I guess it's way easier to make obscene amounts of money in an insanely corrupt shithole, where the Sochi olympics cost 50 billion euros lol

- at twice the population, Ukraine has 10 times more billionaires than Romania, even tho on average they're poorer than us; I'm actually kinda proud of that, tho I wish we had no billionaires at all

- the one romanian billionaire, Ioan Niculae, is a former officer of the communist secret police (Securitatea); actually most of Romania's richest people used to be members of the communist regime, especially from the secret police. This is because during the Ceausescu regime, Securitatea controlled all of the country's exports and were skimming as much as they could, so after the '89 revolution the secret police higher ups and people connected to them were the only ones that had large amounts of foreign currency and connections to the former communists who took power in 1990; lots of shady privatizations happened during those days, like industrial behemoths and prime real estate being sold by the government for next to nothing. That just goes to show what kind of people were "building communism" around here and why it was going to shit.
Coming back to billionaire Ioan Niculae, he's currently on trial in several cases of corruption and money laundering; considering we're in the middle of an unprecedented anti-corruption crusade in which some of the country's richest and some of the most powerful politicians ended up in jail, I do trust he'll see prison bars in the future. In the meantime, he's blackmailing the government by threatening to fire 10 thousand people unless he is given preferential energy prices. He's a piece of shit.

- speaking of anti-corruption and billionaires, here's Dan Adamescu who only a few months ago was worth 950 million euros:
kPE9T9_GSyY

In that video, he is brought by masked special police to DNA (the anti-corruption directorate), as he's charged with bribing 2 judges. He is currently awaiting trial in jail, since the case judges ruled that he's too rich and if he were to be judged while free, he could influence the trial. Meanwhile, his business empire is crumbling
I posted that video because it shows one of the things I like most about DNA: they like to send those masked special police forces, sometimes armed to the teeth, whenever they arrest high profile businessmen, politicians, judges, etc and they call in the press, organizing a walk of shame as pictured in that youtube. Of course you don't need special police forces for white collar crime, but DNA wants to send a message that no matter how rich and powerful you are you'll be treated as a criminal. This kind of thing is part of DNA culture, as the people running it, especially their chief prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi, are true believers and from interviews and their attitude they give the impression that they're waging a kind of jihad against corruption. This has led to a ton of backlash from politicians from all parties, who call the directorate a "fascist-communist tool of oppression" against them and they've been calling for the directorate's dismantling, but fortunately they can't do shit against it so they just squirm like the worms they are

I could make a more in depth post about DNA and the anticorruption fight in Romania if ppl are interested, as it's one of the few good things about this country

Oh yea, completely unrelated but another good thing about Romania is our emergency response service, which these days is one of the best in Europe; more about it and it's founder, dr. Raed Arafat, here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/world/europe/palestinian-helps-romania-remake-its-emergency-care-system.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
It's kinda funny how a Palestinian ended up as the most popular politician here; needless to say am a big fan of him, as I'm a fan of our anticorruption directorate; if your wondering I also like japanese culture & civilization, pancakes, black girls and reggaeton
Thjat was my post, thx for reading, ciao
#787
http://kissmanga.com/Manga/Misappropriation-Investigator-Nakabo-Rintaro
#788

daddyholes posted:

other facts explained today were that the crashed malaysian airplane has now officially permanently become The Plane That Was "downed over rebel-held areas" and that in turn "spurred sanctions", they're totally giving up on actually arguing that the Russians or the local defense forces actually shot it down or that the sanctions were a response to a real thing that happened. Financial Times person went on to point out that everybody now knew that Russia was uniquely corrupt because sanctions revealed that its economy includes a class of elite business owners and politicians



today lavrov was actually going on about how kiev needs to release flight recorder logs, etc, pretty funny

#789

getfiscal posted:

anyone got some hot tips on how to learn russian?



if you move into my wife's mom's basement apt she will bust in to bother you at least twice a day, you could request she do it in russian

#790
[account deactivated]
#791
lol...
#792

littlegreenpills posted:

getfiscal posted:

anyone got some hot tips on how to learn russian?

if you move into my wife's mom's basement apt she will bust in to bother you at least twice a day, you could request she do it in russian

true story and secret: i might move back to toronto in a year or two. then we can have tea together!

#793

conec posted:

littlegreenpills posted:

getfiscal posted:

anyone got some hot tips on how to learn russian?

if you move into my wife's mom's basement apt she will bust in to bother you at least twice a day, you could request she do it in russian

did u know ur wife's mom can also be referred to as ur mother-in-law ?



ppl will think im setting up some lame mother in law joke instead of reporting the sober truth. Words Matter.

#794

getfiscal posted:

littlegreenpills posted:

getfiscal posted:

anyone got some hot tips on how to learn russian?

if you move into my wife's mom's basement apt she will bust in to bother you at least twice a day, you could request she do it in russian

true story and secret: i might move back to toronto in a year or two. then we can have tea together!



my faovirte dirnk is tea i can drink 40 cups of it in 1 second

#795
[account deactivated]
#796


#797
#798
the news goes wild with Russia Invades Ukraine abt now
#799
this is frm ny times lol

Some of the Ukrainian soldiers (retreating from Novoazovsk) appeared unwilling to fight. The commander of their unit, part of the Ninth Brigade from Vinnytsia, in western Ukraine, barked at the men to turn around, to no effect. “All right,” the commander said. “Anybody who refuses to fight, sit apart from the others.” Eleven men did, while the others returned to the city.



that some iron discipline there

#800
urgh these people wasting their time challenging putin to an ice bucket challange. i'd much rather see lars von trier or werner herzog do it