All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Catlady in training]

This is quite long, but I think it's worth to read it all, especially if someone still struggles to understand why russian people are the way they are and why hoping that they will change the system themselves is probably futile.

Russia on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown an essay from 2017 by a russian journalist.
https://granta.com/russia-verge-nervous-breakdown/

A 140-million-strong population exists in a somnambulistic state, on the verge of losing the last trace of their survival instinct. They hate the authorities, but have a pathological fear of change. They feel injustice, but cannot tolerate activists. They hate bureaucracy, but submit to total state control over all spheres of life. They are afraid of the police, but support the expansion of police control. They know they are constantly being deceived, but believe the lies fed to them on television.

Immersed as it is in a national-depressive psychosis, Russia finds an outlet in television, vodka, drugs and war. The country’s mortality rate is the highest in Europe, with only Afghanistan and sixteen African countries ahead of us worldwide. A third of Russia’s male population won’t live long enough to claim a pension, and eight per cent of people live below the poverty level. And this is a country that boasts 131 billionaires and 180,000 millionaires.

But we are not going to hear about any of this on the news. Why would a doomed people want to hear about their fate? The ropes of social mobility have been torn, and a kind of negative selection pushes the scum to the top. Russia’s economy is drowning, but life-jackets have been given only to the banks, state-owned corporations and those closest to the Kremlin. Every year more towns and villages disappear from the map. Young people have no prospects, adults have no jobs and the elderly have no pensions. In the provinces millions of people live without modern conveniences, in the countryside they live in dilapidated homes with wooden outhouses for toilets as it was a hundred years ago. Instead of central heating they have wood stoves; in the ‘oil and gas empire’ many citizens only dream of a gas supply.

But even the most backward regions have achieved one mark of civilization – the satellite dishes that stick out like ears on almost every house. In the evenings, residents of squalid towns and dying villages are glued to their television screens, listening to political analysts, economists and all manner of experts telling them how much the whole world hates us simply for being Russian.

All that remains to these people is the patriotism they see on TV, and the hate they feel for whomever is pointed out to them as an enemy. Without this, they would go mad from despair, horror and anguish.

[nose norton]

This is quite long, but I think it's worth to read it all, especially if someone still struggles to understand why russian people are the way they are and why hoping that they will change the system themselves is probably futile.

Can't you be a little more Russophobic? You hardly even tried there.

[CaptainEurope]

Bolsonaro supporters have stormed several government buildings in Brazil. Scary pics, very January 6 on January 8.

[Kirby101]

Can't you be a little more Russophobic? You hardly even tried there.

Guess you missed that the author is Russian, comrade. Your trolling is slipping.

[babyblob]

Can't you be a little more Russophobic? You hardly even tried there.

How dare she not support a government that invades another country for no reason, and kills and imprisons their people and laughs about it.

[Tami]

Bolsonaro backers storm congress, court, presidential office in Brazil’s capital

BRASILIA — Thousands of radical backers of Brazil’s far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro breached and vandalized the presidential office building, congress and the Supreme Court on Sunday, and sought to enter other halls of power, in scenes that hauntingly evoked the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former president Donald Trump.

The attack came a week after the inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in a runoff election in October.

Images on Globo TV showed protesters roaming the halls and standing near smashed glass cases in the Planalto Palace, the office of the president. Thousands of others wearing the national soccer shirt — now a symbol of the far right — and waving the Brazilian flag milled about the massive square outside in a part of the Brasilia capital that is similar to Washington’s National Mall.

“This absurd attempt to impose the will by force will not prevail,” Lula’s justice minister Flavio Dino tweeted shortly after the invasion began around 2:30 p.m. local time. “The Government of the Federal District claims that there will be reinforcements. And the forces at our disposal are at work. I’m at the headquarters of the Ministry of Justice.”

The incident captured the uncanny parallels between Bolsonaro and his political lodestar, Trump, and came after months in which pundits have feared a Jan. 6 style copycat action here.

In a manner similar to Trump, Bolsonaro has fueled discontent among his base since his loss to the newly-inaugurated leftist, stepping down while refusing to officially concede.

[Gray Lensman]

How dare she not support a government that invades another country for no reason, and kills and imprisons their people and laughs about it.

There are only two kinds of people I have seen that spit out the word "Russophobic" and neither is worth engaging.

[nose norton]

Guess you missed that the author is Russian, comrade. Your trolling is slipping.

I don't know who the members of the forum are, or where are they from, do you?

[Kirby101]

I don't know who the members of the forum are, or where are they from, do you?

The author of the article Catlady posted is Russian.
ты понял теперь, ты жалкий тролль

[MajorHoy]

I don't know who the members of the forum are, or where are they from, do you?

Sometimes you do, if they have said where they were from and were truthful.

However, I believe Kirby101 wasn't referring to "Catlady in training" herself but to the writer of the article she posted:

This is quite long, but I think it's worth to read it all, especially if someone still struggles to understand why russian people are the way they are and why hoping that they will change the system themselves is probably futile.

Russia on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown an essay from 2017 by a russian journalist.
https://granta.com/russia-verge-nervous-breakdown/

[Kirby101]

Is Ukrainophobic a word?

[nose norton]

The author of the article Tami posted is Russian.
ты понял теперь, ты жалкий тролль

That wasn't even the poster I was quoting. And I didn't mention the article either, did I? Who's slipping now?

[Gray Lensman]

Is Ukrainophobic a word?

Probably, but you can also try the functional equivalents of either "vatnik" or "tankie" depending on which one you think is a better fit.

[Kirby101]

That wasn't even the poster I was quoting. And I didn't mention the article either, did I? Who's slipping now?

My mistake, the article in question, by a RUSSIAN, was posted by Catlady, who you accused of hating you and your countrymen. You can't hide under this bridge little troll.

[Mister Mets]

His personal history, the way he conducts his interviews, the risks he takes, the vibe hi gives.

The information I can find on Patrick Lancaster isn't very flattering.

Vice had a spotlight, suggesting he has spread Russian lies.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxne...ter-journalist

A month later, as the war raged, Lancaster reportedly found himself trailing a Russian soldier through the burnt-out remains of a Mariupol school that had allegedly been used as a base for Ukraine’s military. In the basement, Lancaster’s footage showed the body of a local woman who the Russian soldiers claimed had been raped by members of the Ukrainian military and had a swastika painted in blood on her chest.

“It was a base of the National Guard and presumably the fighters of the Azov Battalion,” a Russian soldier told Lancaster on his YouTube channel.

But the explosion on the Russian border turned out to be a fake, concocted by the Kremlin as a way to justify its imminent invasion. And evidence suggests that the soldiers who painted the swastika on the woman’s body were from Russia.

He seems to be a frequent guest on Infowars, which is a red flag.

Another profile on Grid News notes his sloppiness in reports of terrorism.

https://www.grid.news/story/misinfor...from-missouri/

In Ukraine, he enjoys access to Russian-controlled territories, where he is often the only English-speaking reporter. In his videos, he sometimes appears to accompany Russian military. In one recent video posted to his Telegram channel, he dons a white strap around his arm and leg, a form of identification used by Russian soldiers to recognize one another. He tells the camera if he didn’t do this, he has been informed he could be mistaken for a Ukrainian soldier and shot. On Telegram, pro-Russian trolls encourage users to support Lancaster’s work.

Just prior to Russia’s invasion, Lancaster was one of the first to report on an alleged “terrorist attack” on three civilians, purportedly carried out by Ukraine. In his coverage, he uncritically repeats what he appears to have been told by Russian military: Ukrainian saboteurs had detonated an improvised explosive device from the side of the road.

In this case, the scene appears to have been so lazily constructed that Lancaster’s own footage captures apparent evidence of the lie: his images of the remains inside the vehicle revealed an impossibly clean cut along the front of one “victim’s” skull, consistent with an autopsy. Grid confirmed with experts at the time that this was the case, and subsequent reporting further established the truth: This was not evidence of an IED attack, and the bodies appeared to have been sourced from a morgue.