The State of Affairs in Russia

[Eddie Teach]

Some guy who lived like a million years ago. #generationlettow

[Ed Anger]

Il Duce.

[Syt]

http://en.itar-tass.com/world/731443

MOSCOW, May 13./ITAR-TASS/.Russia suspends operation of US GPS signal transmission stations as of June 1, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said.

GPS stations in Russia to be closed down altogether, if talks on placement of GLONASS stations in the US end inconclusively, he added.

[celedhring]

I'm sure smartphone users in Russia will love this.

[derspiess]

I'm sure smartphone users in Russia will love this.

I'm guessing most of them would have phones that support GLONASS, wouldn't they?

[Syt]

I'm sure smartphone users in Russia will love this.

Meh, Russians always threaten tit for tat like this. Remember when they threatened to close their airspace for airlines didn't submit all passenger data to Russian authorities?

[celedhring]

I'm sure smartphone users in Russia will love this.

I'm guessing most of them would have phones that support GLONASS, wouldn't they?

Can't see most global brands changing their designs to include a glonass radio just for that single market if gps was working there up until now.

EDIT: Looks like I'm wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smartphones_using_GLONASS_Navigation

[derspiess]

Also I thought GLONASS was available pretty much anywhere now.

[Syt]

Long article in the New Republic about Russia/Ukraine and its historical context:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117692/fascism-returns-ukraine

I shared it on facebook, and my sister commented that some stuff from the first paragraph would also apply to the U.S.:

We easily forget how fascism works: as a bright and shining alternative to the mundane duties of everyday life, as a celebration of the obviously and totally irrational against good sense and experience. Fascism features armed forces that do not look like armed forces, indifference to the laws of war in their application to people deemed inferior, the celebration of "empire" after counterproductive land grabs. Fascism means the celebration of the nude male form, the obsession with homosexuality, simultaneously criminalized and imitated. Fascism rejects liberalism and democracy as sham forms of individualism, insists on the collective will over the individual choice, and fetishizes the glorious deed. Because the deed is everything and the word is nothing, words are only there to make deeds possible, and then to make myths of them. Truth cannot exist, and so history is nothing more than a political resource. Hitler could speak of St. Paul as his enemy,Mussolini could summon the Roman emperors. Seventy years after the end of World War II, we forgot how appealing all this once was to Europeans, and indeed that only defeat in war discredited it. Today these ideas are on the rise in Russia, a country that organizes its historical politics around the Soviet victory in that war, and the Russian siren song has a strange appeal in Germany, the defeated country that was supposed to have learned from it.

When I asked her about it, she said it would be too much to cover in a post, but particularly pointed to the eminence of collective will over individual choice, see Obamacare.

[grumbler]

When I asked her about it, she said it would be too much to cover in a post, but particularly pointed to the eminence of collective will over individual choice, see Obamacare.

And, with one pathetic loser bit of hyperbole, she loses all credibility.  It must suck to have a sister so silly that she thinks that the US is or was a "fascist" state.

[Syt]

I tend to not discuss politics much with them.

[Valmy]

When I asked her about it, she said it would be too much to cover in a post, but particularly pointed to the eminence of collective will over individual choice, see Obamacare.

So in that case we have been a fascist state since the Whisky Rebellion.  Fascist before it was cool.

[Capetan Mihali]

I've been reading some '20s-'30s-era contemporary analyses of fascism, and some Trotskyists made a decent case for treating fascism as an extension of Bonapartism (in the N.III sense).

[Valmy]

I've been reading some '20s-'30s-era contemporary analyses of fascism, and some Trotskyists made a decent case for treating fascism as an extension of Bonapartism (in the N.III sense).

The ideological component of Bonapartism, as outlined in N. III's writings and as carried out in practice in the 1860s, was a transition to a constitutional partiamentary democracy on the British model with a transitional period of...you know the short of shit N. III and N. I did in practice before the Liberal Empire.  The phony elections of N. III were supposed to be practice for real elections later (and, actually that turned out to be the case).  I do not recall that being the stated or practical aim of Fascism, which was rather an alternative to the British Parliamentary model, so that strikes me as dubious.

[Syt]

http://en.itar-tass.com/russia/731882

Twitter can be blocked in Russia — watchdog

Russia accused Twitter of violating the law protecting personal data and limiting banned information on the web

MOSCOW, May 16. /ITAR-TASS/. US microblogging service Twitter continues to ignore Russian laws and authorities' demands, Advisor of the upper house's chairman Ruslan Gattarov said on Friday.

The service barely reacted to the demands of the Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor in connection with fake accounts and libel. In particular, Russia accused Twitter of violating the law protecting personal data and limiting banned information on the web, said Gattarov.

Twitter could be blocked in the whole of Russia, Deputy Head of Roskomnadzor Maxim Ksenzov told the Izvestia daily on Friday as "persisting in not fulfilling our demands" Tiwtter specially created the conditions which make blocking of the service in Russia "almost inevitable", he said.

Media watchdog Roskomnadzor's press secretary Vadim Ampelonsky confirmed that Twitter can be blocked in Russia.

Twitter systematically refused to fulfil Roskomnadzor's and Prosecutor General's demands that the service deletes extremist content, Ampelonsky said adding the company's "unconstructive position" rendered blocking of Twitter inevitable.

The last demand was satisfied on February 26, when the service removed a Russian-language account disseminating banned information about Syria, including photos of corpses and executions. Other demands were ignored, said Ampelonsky.

http://en.itar-tass.com/russia/731878

Mass events prohibited in Crimea until June 6

The measure is connected with "continuing developments in many cities of the south-east of Ukraine that resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians"

SIMFEROPOL, May 16. /ITAR-TASS/. Crimea's acting Prime Minister Sergey Aksyonov has signed a law prohibiting mass events until June 6. The document was uploaded to the official Facebook page of the Council of Ministers of Crimea. The Council's press service confirmed to ITAR-TASS that the document had been signed.

The measure is connected with "continuing developments in many cities of the south-east of Ukraine that resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians," the document says. It also aims "to prevent possible provocations from extremists that may enter the territory of the Republic of Crimea and jeopardize the tourist season in Crimea," the document adds.

The republic's government and cultural institutions are advised to postpone scheduled mass events to a later date.