Recent posts

#11

Off the Record / Re: The Off Topic Topic

Last post by Caliga - Today at 04:17:25 PM

Yeah I don't really know who maps directly onto the Succession characters, I just kind of wanted Ken to win   

Why?  He was a fucking whackjob.

And the others?

 

I wanted that weird kid Greg to win.

#12

Off the Record / Re: DNA Sequencing Megathread!...

Last post by Caliga - Today at 04:06:09 PM

To all you bitches who mocked me earlier for paying for these services:  both Ancestry and 23andMe capture health markers too, and you can separately have those analyzed.  Well, my dad had me test him with Ancestry and when I analyzed his health markers via a service called Promethease, it uncovered that he has a rare disease called LG Muscular Dystrophy and that it runs in his family (I'm a carrier, as is my brother and all of our cousins), which after I let him know, he talked to his doctor about and he's now getting some sort of treatment for.  So, fuck all y'all.  Love, Cal.

#13

Off the Record / Re: POLOT - President of Langu...

Last post by Caliga - Today at 04:00:50 PM

The time has come for new blood and new talent.  Too long have we languished under career-business-as-usual-politics here at Languish.  We need a new President elected!

I nominate you.

#14

Off the Record / Re: POLOT - President of Langu...

Last post by Jacob - Today at 03:53:37 PM

You may be the President of Languish OT, but you're not the President of Languish Off the Record.

#15

Off the Record / Re: 20 years of Languishing

Last post by OttoVonBismarck - Today at 03:38:52 PM

I'm still a part of a few "old style" privately hosted message boards like this, all that I joined around a flurry of online debating I was doing around the first GWB administration and the Iraq War. All are pretty reduced in number obviously--something I often, grimly wonder about is a few posters like MB we know have passed on to the great beyond but I sometimes wonder how many of the ones who just "vanished" over the years have also passed on.

#16

Off the Record / Re: [Canada] Canadian Politics...

Last post by Barrister - Today at 03:29:17 PM

Just that, as others have said, honoring him with a standing O at Parliament was extremely poor judgment.

We can all agree on that.

Yes.

#17

Off the Record / Re: [Canada] Canadian Politics...

Last post by viper37 - Today at 03:27:46 PM

Just that, as others have said, honoring him with a standing O at Parliament was extremely poor judgment.

We can all agree on that.

#18

Off the Record / Re: The Off Topic Topic

Last post by Tamas - Today at 03:08:16 PM

As we discussed, I find that a profoundly city-dweller view. For people not huddled up in urban centres, it opened up their wider region to exist in.

I'd say that is the city dweller view. Dismissive of how much life could be found in smaller towns before the coming of the car.

I grew up in a village listening to the tales of pre-car village life. There was plenty of life sure, what you did not have plenty of was options.

There's even less post car when you're young, disabled, or poor.
And even for those with a car you have to work far more  to get anything.

so the young, the disabled, and the poor had it better before cars became available for people to buy? How so?

#19

Off the Record / Re: [Canada] Canadian Politics...

Last post by Josephus - Today at 03:08:16 PM

I don't think anybody is condemning him. [We don't know his role in the war so presumption of innocence applies. Just that, as others have said, honoring him with a standing O at Parliament was extremely poor judgment. Not only because of the Waffen SS but also because he's got nothing to do with the current war that's going on. He didn't fight against Putin's Russia but against a different enemy all together.

There are plenty of Canadians who were victimized by Nazi Germany and this is obviously an insult to them.

It was silly, and stupid, and I'm glad the speaker is resigning over this.

#20

Off the Record / Re: [Canada] Canadian Politics...

Last post by Barrister - Today at 02:58:41 PM

You have to understand the context of this region of Ukraine.  They were never part of Russia or the USSR.  They were part of Poland.  When the USSR invaded Poland, they saw their friends and their family get deported by Staline.  Years prior, they heard the stories about the famine in the neighbouring counties of Ukraine, created by the USSR.

The man's blog read like any Ukrainian resistant letters of the time.

He didn't enroll because he hated Jews.  He was part of the SS because foreigners weren't allowed to form battalions for the Whermacht.  His only other choice was the partisans. Which were cooperating with the SD.  Not much better.

You can read his blog here, with Google translate:
https://komb-a-ingwar.blogspot.com/2010/10/blog-post_4610.html


He did not deserve a standing ovation for sure.  But I don't see him as a war criminal simply for joining an army fighting against the USSR on his home soil.  It's nothing like the Charlemagne Division, or some of the other SS units.

After seeing his teacher, his friends, some of his family members leaving in trains to the east, I understand how he felt.

This history of western Ukraine is pretty complicated.  Historically yes it had been part of Lithuania, then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but with the partition of Poland western Ukraine came under the control of Austria-Hungary.  Poland only regained control by 1919, 20 short years before the war.

Fascinating blog, been scrolling through it.  This one was I think the most popular so I clkecked on it first, and it kind of covers all of the basic points.

https://komb-a-ingwar.blogspot.com/2011/03/blog-post_21.html

By the way, he describes himself as 14 at Sept 1939, so would have been 17 when he joined the SS Galicia Division.

But yeah, he talks about how once the Soviets took over how many people were disappeared by the NKVD, how once the Germans took over the provisional Ukrainian government was sent to concentration camps, but generally they were able to talk freely amongst themselves, including on matters of politics.

Then comes 1943, as the Soviets appear set to return.  And he talks that although the OUN urged people to join the UPA, while the Ukrainian Central Committee urged people to join the Galicia Division.

BY the way - this kind of division has long harmed Ukrainian civil society.  The one absolutely amazing thing about this war is how it has largely unified Ukrainian society as well as the diaspora.

I don't see how you can read these blogs and condemn the man.