“In North Korea, people get so hungry they have to eat their clothes, even the buttons”

Not posted in a while and this isn’t strictly news but I figured if anyone keeps track of Western misinformation around the Ukrainian war and the events leading up to it then you can add this to your “There are no Nazis in Ukraine” section.

I’ve been having this argument with my brother for a few days now. I had most recently brought up the anti-Roma pogroms post-2014, one of which is described in detail here. Of course this wasn’t good enough as a source for my brother even though it directly links to the court’s ruling on the Roma’s claims for compensation for being forced from their homes by local authorities after anti-Roma riots on the Ukrainian Court website. So I pulled up the court document and had it translated. Some choice quotes from the Judge’s decision below:

On the legality of the local assembly’s decision concerning the Roma: “The court states that the decision No. 1 indirectly instructed the Executive Committee of the Council of the need to convey to residents of Roma nationality the opinion of the residents of the village on the issue of their residence in the village, which according to Article 8 of the Law ‘On Local Self-Government in Ukraine’ is a form of direct participation in solving issues of local importance.”

Regarding the village head’s actions in signing and announcing the assembly’s decision: “As for the actions of the village head to sign and announce this decision, in the opinion of the court, they do not have independent significance in the aspect of violation of the rights of the plaintiffs but are actions of writing the decision of the general meeting of citizens for its legitimation in the context of the possibility of further consideration in the activities of the Council and the Executive Committee.”

On the court’s view of the village assembly’s decision’s impact: “At the same time, the defendant village head did not personally make this decision; such a decision was made by the territorial community represented by the village council, which is not a defendant in the case and against which claims have not been filed.”

On the issue of moral damages: “Since the court came to the conclusion that there are no grounds for recognizing the actions and inactions of the defendants as illegal, there are also no grounds for the recovery of moral damages, taking into account the absence of signs of illegality in the actions and inactions of the defendants.”

Some rumours from leftist Arab sources on Twitter that American ships have been hit in the Red Sea by Houthi rebels. Waiting for confirmation.

I am disappointed. I’ve decided to stop talking to a person I had been talking to for a while who I had thought was becoming increasingly left-wing. Today we were discussing the recent shooting in Belgium where two Swedes were killed. I tried to make them understand that Islamic extremism and its prevalence is as much a product of Western imperialism and funding of extremists at the expense of left-wing movements such as the Kurds as anything else, as well as the racism and exclusionary politics that Muslims face in Europe.

From there we moved onto talking about the burning of the Qu’ran, my position is the burning of the Qu’ran should be considered a hate crime and serves only to boost right-wing forces. They started screeching about freedom and democracy, I tried to reason with them but in the end I just had to tell them I refuse to talk to them anymore until they educate themselves.

Ah man that song brings back so many memories from that time. I was a socdem lib back then but at times during the independence referendum, it did really feel that something different was possible for Scotland.

I’ve since moved away but I go back a lot to visit family and everything feels totally different now. Over a decade of Tories and everything that brings (stagnant wages, crumbling infrastructure, child poverty, unaffordable housing etc.) then add in the SNP fucking it (not a fan but they are IMO the vehicle to independence and hopefully, one day, a socialist Scotland) and the place just feels bleak as fuck right now. Labour winning UK-wide with Keith doesn’t look like it will change a fucking thing either.

I just finished watching this rn on YT based on your recommendation and would now also recommend it as the best contemporary (2019-ish) run-down of what has been happening so thank you

However, JFC I feel so fucking sick and angry. I ended up watching some mainstream coverage tonight when I got in from work just to check-in on what the ‘Overton window’ is on what is “acceptable” to say about the conflict. I’m obviously well-aware that the media coverage is bullshit but to juxtapose the experience of observing the media “narrative” and watching Gaza Fights for Freedom in the same night. It hurts my heart so much, what the fuck can we do?

EDIT: Having thought about it for a few minutes: if any of us can encourage and recommend this to people that have a modicum of sympathy for Palestine, I don’t see how anyone could still have any undeserved respect or support for Israel. I have no idea how this documentary was first distributed but the fact that the current YT upload only has 400k views is crazy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnZSaKYmP2s

The UK government hates and refuses to work with the Scottish government on a lot of issues. The Scottish government has zero input or influence on UK foreign policy and very little of its own foreign policy, barring a handful of missions to a few major capitals that are basically just to promote Scottish trade and investment so I imagine it won’t make much difference.

I dm’d you a link but I also found it on YT in poor quality https://youtu.be/RBh-ivZ5C-w

I remember watching Oliver Stone’s interviews with Putin from 3/4 years ago (I’d recommend watching them, v interesting) and you could see he had Windows XP with a picture of the Kremlin as his desktop background. In recent photos of him at his desk you can make out that he’s still going strong on XP with the exact same background. :putin-wink: