random stuff

[El Pibe]

Or a Burgundian team?

 

[david_carnell]

vgrant Wrote:

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> No Transnistria or Gagauzia though.

Tranistria have a team that play, and usually win, the Moldovan league. And also go on to play in European competitions. They're probably quite happy with their lot.

I had to google Gagauzia. Man, no one like Moldova do they?

[the-e-dealer]

WTF is this about?

[david_carnell]

The 2014 ConIFA World Football Cup

[El Pibe]

sorry, have i just heard Putin bemoan the Ukranian tactics by comparing them to Stalingrad and Leningrad out of concern for civilians?

A man who shelled Grozny, totally destroying it and killing tens of thousands of civilans, mostly ethnic Russians (you know, that folk he's so keen on protecting) in the process before installing a regime where theft, rape and disappearances of civilians are absolutey endemic.

He has certainly perfected the straight faced lie hasn't he!!

[david_carnell]

With all that botox he can't do any other sort

[vgrant]

Sherif Tirasapol are in the champions league qualfiers each year,named after their owner - The Sheriff - arms and money laundering billionare.sadly no Transnistrian national squad.last stalinist statelet in Europe - well, the only one with red banners on the streets. hammer & sickles and busts of lenin all over the place.

Now Gagauzia will likely be hitting the news soon - they are already autonomous within Moldova, but once Moldova aligns itself with the EU then Gag will find itself cut off from its market for the wine that makes up like 99% of its exports - Russia. The gags have said they will go it alone, declare full independenance and likely side with Russia, They are an ethnic turk group, totally surrounded by Moldova.

[the-e-dealer]

Oh it's futileball as we Englanders have to know it as forevermore .

[david_carnell]

The other nationalities fighting in Ukraine.

Utterly bonkers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28951324

Repaying the Soviet Union for their support in the Spanish Civil War?! Are you shitting me?

[El Pibe]

ha yeah, i read that and realised he didn't learn much about the spanish civil war!!!!

But you always get weirdos turning up to these things. Adventurers died in droves in Bosnia.

German business men used to pay lots of money to dress up in camo in the croat lines, hang about trenches, take potshots with a dragonov and be home to tuck the kids in on sunday night...very odd....

[david_carnell]

I can kind of forgive it when there is a real ideological or religious cause. But in this crap shoot of fascists vs proto-fascists?

[El Pibe]

did you read my war gone by i miss it so?

http://www.amazon.com/My-War-Gone-By-Miss/dp/0140298541

You can have borrowage next time you're over....

About an ex army chap who's so bored by normal life he takes up heroine. He originally goes to Bosnia to take photos despite knowing nothing about it, and spends 2 years there.

Every time he came home he'd get depressed and back on to heroine! Aaanyway he meets quite a few of these types, mostly ex forces devoid of a place in the world, many were fantasists, thrill seekers, weirdops who'd watched too many films. Most of them ended up dead.

His time in Grozny is frankly terrifying. Sarajevvo was abad day when you get a few shells an hour, grozny there were several every minute. The only people he met were dead or insane.

These days he's at The Times and got into all sorts of bother in Syria, so clearly still a war junkie!!!

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27469438

[david_carnell]

I have not read that - looks fascinatingly grim. Perhaps a loan in Nov when I'm hopefully coming over?

If you're interested in Chechnya, then I can recommend Let Our Fame Be Great by Oliver Bullough for a brilliant overview of the history of, and modern-day consequences for, the Caucuses.

[El Pibe]

oh cool, you coming over for that? brilliant.

Here's another laugh a minute cracker for you, re chechnya http://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Soldiers-Chechnya-Arkady-Babchenko/dp/1846270405

[vgrant]

http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/french-eurasianists-join-pro-russian.html

French Nazis turning up (amongst others) in this horrible civil war. Sadly, its not just nazis who get killed in nastly little conflcits like this.

[vgrant]

El Pibe Wrote:

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> did you read my war gone by i miss it so?

> http://www.amazon.com/My-War-Gone-By-Miss/dp/01402

> 98541

>

> You can have borrowage next time you're over....

>

> About an ex army chap who's so bored by normal

> life he takes up heroine. He originally goes to

> Bosnia to take photos despite knowing nothing

> about it, and spends 2 years there.

>

> Every time he came home he'd get depressed and

> back on to heroine! Aaanyway he meets quite a few

> of these types, mostly ex forces devoid of a place

> in the world, many were fantasists, thrill

> seekers, weirdops who'd watched too many films.

> Most of them ended up dead.

>

> His time in Grozny is frankly terrifying.

> Sarajevvo was abad day when you get a few shells

> an hour, grozny there were several every minute.

> The only people he met were dead or insane.

>

> These days he's at The Times and got into all

> sorts of bother in Syria, so clearly still a war

> junkie!!!

> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27469438

I thunk I gave my copy to the mind shop earlier this year....scarey

[El Pibe]

I always felt a bit sorry for Gordon Brown PM. He may have cooked the books and left us in debt as Chancellor, but he was definitely earnest about his politics and beliefs unlike certain unmentionables, but trying to do the right thing usually backfired.

He was good at old politics he simply wasn't very good at new politics.

Anyway, for all his faults i quite enjoyed this, he comes across well in his retirement.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/aug/31/gordon-brown-battle-for-britain

"Oh yes he's charismatic all right, aye, very humble, that Alex Salmond. Asked who were the three greatest Scotsman in history, he said the other two are Robert the Bruce and William Wallace."

"The person [Nelson Mandela] most liked [at his 90th birthday party] was Amy Winehouse. She said to him: 'You and my husband have a lot in common.' He said: 'Oh, what is that?' She said: 'You've both spent a long time in prison.'"

[david_carnell]

Much like the closing sentences, I invested great hope in Brown.

A tragic figure who, I think, history will generally see as one of Britain's statesmen.

[El Pibe]

"Aaanyway he meets quite a few of these types, mostly ex forces devoid of a place in the world, many were fantasists, thrill seekers, weirdops[sic] who'd watched too many films."

or they had nervous breakdowns, truth stranger than etc

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-tragedy-of-islamic-states-japanese-hostage-1d18bf794ac8

[Otta]

"I begin to understand how Mrs Duffy in Rochdale ? who he described as that "bigoted woman" when she dared to disagree with him ?must have felt."

I thought he called her a bigot because she bloody well was one!

I hope he is remembered well, he always strikes me first and foremost as a good and honourable man. And I long for a day when it doesn't matter if someone is socially arkward.

He may have gotten things wrong, but they way he was torn apart for things like his smile and having one eye, where disgusting, and a lot of what is wrong with everything.

[vgrant]

Mrs Duffy quote:

"but all these eastern European what are coming in.... where are they flocking from?"

probabaly a cat owner by the look of things

[El Pibe]

"but all these eastern European what are coming in....where are they flocking from" ermmmmm, is this QI, is Eastern Europe too obvious?

If you're not paranoid and they really are out to get you then the cryptoPhone 500, a snip at three and a half k.

http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/mysterious-phony-cell-towers-could-be-intercepting-your-calls

[????]

david_carnell Wrote:

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> Much like the closing sentences, I invested great

> hope in Brown.

>

> A tragic figure who, I think, history will

> generally see as one of Britain's statesmen.

I can't agree really. He reminds me of Heath a lot, who showed great political vision on the EC (as was then); great political courage on Racism - rejecting Powell's rabble rousing and honouring Britain's obligation on the asians expelled from Amin's Uganda and undoubtlebly had intetgrity,,,,but was not PM material and way too moody/emotionally immature and not capable of listening to others point of view very much....

Brown

[david_carnell]

Oh, undoubtably he had his faults. But show me a PM that didn't?

Churchill? Bombastic war criminal

MacMillan? Disloyal

Eden? Conceited

Douglas-Home? Unelected

Wilson? Devious

Callaghan? - Weak

Heath? - emotionally unstable

Thatcher? - blind to pragmatism

And so it goes on....I think you have to be slightly bonkers to want the job in the first place.

[El Pibe]

Major was nice. Although bonking Edwina must surely count as unstable.