How the world reacted to #OccupyCentral: http://t.co/ob8BXO7nsp pic.twitter.com/zZCFA4btrj
— SCMP News (@SCMP_News) September 29, 2014
Click on the link for the Hong-Kong-based South China Morning Post‘s full story.
From the NYTimes:
A wave of public protest in Hong Kong extended into the working week on Monday as thousands of residents defied a government call to abandon street blockades across the city, students boycotted classes and the city’s influential bar association added to condemnation of a police crackdown on protesters a day earlier.
The continued public resistance underscored the difficulties that the Hong Kong government faces in defusing widespread anger that erupted on Sunday, after the police used tear gas, pepper spray and batons to break up a three-day sit-in by students and other residents demanding democratic elections in the semiautonomous Chinese territory.
The Hong Kong government said Monday morning that it had pulled back the riot police from roads across the city where thousands of determined protesters were blocking traffic. The government urged the demonstrators to end their street sit-ins so that life in this busy commercial city could return to normal.
But in the Admiralty area, home to the government’s offices and a focus of the demonstrators’ anger, many of the protesters who were occupying a main road said they were determined to stay until the city’s top leader, Leung Chun-ying, resigned and answered their demands for democratic elections to choose his successor…
The protesters are calling for fully democratic elections for the city’s leader, the chief executive, in 2017. Hong Kong, a former British colony that was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, had been promised universal suffrage by that date. But under China’s plan for conducting those elections, only candidates vetted by a Beijing-friendly committee would be allowed to run…
Slate aggregates reports from the weekend, including multiple video clips, here.
James Fallows, at the Atlantic, has a report from one of the protestors: “When we felt threatened, we opened umbrellas and raised our hands“.
The pro-business and finance contingent supporting @Occupycentral calls for democracy and end of 'corruption' in HK
http://t.co/oFaD5l4d92
— Deborah Kan (@debkhk) September 29, 2014
The Wall Street Journal‘s “China Real Time” section has a live blog:
There will be no fireworks in Hong Kong to celebrate National Day this year.
The Oct. 1 fireworks show, one of the world’s finest, takes place in the skies above Victoria Harbor and annually showcases the city’s stunning skyline against a backdrop of exploding colors. However, in a statement, the Hong Kong government announced that out of “regard to public transport arrangements and public safety considerations,” the display would be canceled.
The government said it anticipated that the main roads leading to popular viewing points “may continue to be seriously affected” on that date, which will mark the 65th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China…
Hot Hashtag: #HandsUpDontShoot
HK #OccupyCentral protesters msg to police inspired by Ferguson. Photo via @leungfaye pic.twitter.com/pOAbN52DrH
— Femi Oke (@FemiOke) September 29, 2014
Will
This will only end with hundreds dead and Beijing removing any semblance of self governance in Hong Kong. Today, we saw the end of Hong Kong as we know it. America and European nations will just look the other way because we are just too deeply in bed with the Chinese government now and don’t want to hurt business. Morals be damned, business is all that matters.
Patricia Kayden
Not sure if anyone really expected China to allow democracy in Hong Kong while not allowing it for its mainland citizens.
Good to see that Ferguson has inspired protesters in other countries.
raven
@Will: And what else ” America and European nations” do?
Baud
@Patricia Kayden:
I didn’t. I’m surprised it took this long for the protests to arrive.
BillinGlendaleCA
Watching Joe: “THE MUSLIMS ARE COMING, THE MUSLIMS ARE COMING”, they’re gona get us in our beds.
Schlemazel
It is nice to see protest done better. OWS gave up and agreed to sit out of the way in the park rather than actually bring wall street to a stand still. Big whoop. Ferguson was invaded by looters. Th anti-globalization have a raft of fellow travelers that only want to set fire to a Starbucks or smash windows at McDonald’s. Whatever the outcome the folks in HK are showing they will not give ground & wait to become irrelevant and they have not spawned bad publicity. I don’t think Bejing can afford a Tiananmen Square in HK so I expect some compromise that will appear to give the protesters some appearance of democracy. But you never know, those folks are taking a heck of a chance
Schlemazel
@BillinGlendaleCA:
They are not going to be happy until innocent Muslims in the US are attacked, beaten and killed. Well, tht and a Republican is in the White House, which is the ‘clever’ game they are trying to play.
EDIT: and of course those attacks and killings will make big news in the rest of the world & be proof that the US is on a crusade against Islam thereby justifying even more violence. I do love a good self-fulfilling prophecy.
Will
@raven: China is teetering on the brink right now with one of the largest asset bubbles ever seen. It would cause a crash in the value of companies that do business with China, such as Apple, Google, IBM, etc, thus taking a very sizable chunk out of everyones 401k, but American and European governments could cut off the import of goods that had any piece manufactured in China. Within weeks, most factories would be shuttered. Service (white collar) business in China that service the media, financial, or any other interest of these mega factory companies would shutter soon after that. China would of course dump all the holdings they have of our debt on the market in retaliation, but that is just wounding themselves as well because as the dollar crashes, the value of the debt they are trying to unload just becomes less and less. Both of us would get dragged into a great depression, but quite frankly, whether you like it or, we are going to come to blows with China in the future at some point. It will be over either Taiwan or Japan, but it is going to happen.
Patricia Kayden
@Will: Hence Communist China is given “most favored nation” status while we are still boycotting Cuba (supposedly because it is a communist dictatorship). So consistent.
raven
@Will: Hahahaha, go get em big boy.
Will
@Patricia Kayden: One of the greatest examples of how stupid our foreign policy can be.
@raven: Hahahaha at you?
raven
@Will: Hahahaa freak the fuck out. It’s the mooslims, it’s the chineeee, they’s comin to get you!!!! boogie boogie
OzarkHillbilly
More proof that God is a comedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh:
Few neighbourly disagreements are as peculiar, or as visible, as the dispute that rages at the end of Southwest Churchill Road, in an otherwise quiet part of Topeka, Kansas.
On one side of the street is the Westboro Baptist church, the insular and fiercely anti-gay group which has gained infamy for its its offensive protests and placard signs. There is an upside-down American flag in the churchyard and billboards informing passing cars that ‘God Hates Fags’, alongside CCTV cameras, threats to trespassers and a warning that homosexuals risk “the vengeance of eternal fire”.
Across the street, its antithesis. A whole house painted top-to-bottom in rainbow colours, the universal symbol of the gay rights movement. A rainbow flag – hung the right way up – flutters above the roof; hand-painted signs in the yard advocate peace and tell passersby: ‘Feel free to come on property for pictures’.
…
“We’re just very happy to have them here,” said Rebekah Phelps-Davis, a prominent member of the church’s 70-strong congregation. In a twist on that oft-quoted Christian axiom ‘The Lord works in mysterious ways’, Phelps-Davis said God must have determined “from eternity past” that the house would be purchased by the campaigners.
…
The Westboro residents have looked on as their neighbours encouraged same sex couples to kiss on their roof, held a gay wedding ceremony in their front yard – directly opposite Westboro’s ‘Gay Marriage Dooms Nations’ sign – and even hosted a rowdy LGBT festival, to be repeated next month, called “Drag Down Bigotry.”
…
“One time we tweeted them a picture of rainbow pancakes and asked them if they’d like to come over for breakfast,” Hammet said. “They just tweeted back that we should burn in hell.”
Will
@raven: Freak out? Over what? Are you freaking out?
OzarkHillbilly
@Will: Ain’t no way any of that is ever going to happen. They need us as much as we need them. There will be tensions, but no economic suicide, not now, not any time soon, and certainly not over Japan or Taiwan.
raven
@Will: Yea, I’m the one predicting World War Eleventeen.
Capt. Seaweed
Wow, raven, you’re being a bigger dickhead than usual this morning. Well done.
Will
@OzarkHillbilly: Don’t assume that the Chinese have no intentions of taking back Taiwan. That would be a gross mistake. We won’t sell the Taiwanese the upgrades for their F-16 fighter jets and congress hasn’t approved the sale Perry Class frigates for fear of antagonizing the Chinese. Eventually, as the decades creep, it would be the equivalent of American forces when they came up against aging Russian military hardware in the gulf wars. China is also selling a very violent nationalism to the youth of the nation (such curriculum is one of the sticking points for HK protestors) that is pushing them towards wanting war with Japan to make up for their humiliation at the hands of the Japanese in WWII.
raven
@Capt. Seaweed: @Capt. Seaweed: China is teetering on the brink right now with one of the largest asset bubbles ever seen. It would cause a crash in the value of companies that do business with China, such as Apple, Google, IBM, etc, thus taking a very sizable chunk out of everyones 401k, but American and European governments could cut off the import of goods that had any piece manufactured in China. Within weeks, most factories would be shuttered. Service (white collar) business in China that service the media, financial, or any other interest of these mega factory companies would shutter soon after that. China would of course dump all the holdings they have of our debt on the market in retaliation, but that is just wounding themselves as well because as the dollar crashes, the value of the debt they are trying to unload just becomes less and less. Both of us would get dragged into a great depression, but quite frankly, whether you like it or, we are going to come to blows with China in the future at some point. It will be over either Taiwan or Japan, but it is going to happen.
raven
@Capt. Seaweed: Yea, because Will is not saying what I said he is saying. fuck off
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Wait, now the Chinese as well as the mulims are gona get us in our beds. One of the mulims already got me in my bed. It was a rather enjoyable. I await our Chinese overlordesses.
Schlemazel
I tend toward Wills vision of the future (always the optimist, me!) I think armed conflict may be inevitable as China’s economic influence grows, the US wanes and the inevitable resentment forms in the nation with a larger military than the rest of the world combined. There is a lot that could get in the way of that conflict though & greater demands for a share of the wealth and democratic leadership would be a huge step in both countries. People there are doing their part, here, not so much. WIth any “luck” Rupert can perform his magic in China & Fox News Beijing can spawn a teaparty that will keep the peasants there angry and stupid like they are here. That will be great for the oligarchs right up to the point they lose control of the mobs & we go after “those evil peasants over there”
Will
@raven: You asked what we could do, and I told you. I guess asking a question and getting an answer is complicated? For the record, I’m not scared the Chinese are coming for me. They don’t want any part of us. They want us to continue as we are, guzzling sugary soda, jerking the whole day off to broadband internet porn, watching on our big screen tv footage of us blasting the “mooslims” into tiny pieces cause we like to be scared of people who think swords are still a modern weapon, and leave that part of the world to them. However, I do understand geopolitics and China is eventually going to get into it with a country we have sworn to protect. Either we will honor our defense agreement, or, we will let the Chinese feed their bunker busting bomb footage to our tvs so we can enjoy our popcorn while reclining our fat asses in the lazyboy.
Schlemazel
I worked both Saturday and Sunday so I’m really excited to get back to work today, nothing like 11 days in a row to make me look forward to getting back to the ol grind!
If I could find the bastards responsible for ‘Shellshock’ I would gladly clamp their scrotums in a vice, remove the handle, set fire to the room & give them a plastic spoon so they could chose to die in a fire or extricate themselves via a plastic spoon.
debbie
Anyone who didn’t see this coming back when Great Britain signed Hong Kong over wasn’t paying attention.
Raven
@Will: Yea, well I did my time so you’ll need to find someone else this go around.
Gin & Tonic
@Will: Substitute “Kiev” and “Moscow” and your entire paragraph reads thee same, and correctly as it has played out. Business is business, fuck you if you want freedom.
OzarkHillbilly
@Will:
The only thing I assume is that there are enough people with at least as much common sense as I have to notice that like it or not the US and China have to work things out with at least a minimum of civility. Anything less is suicide for both.
As to China taking back Taiwan, in what real world way is that bad for us? I assume it will happen, but it won’t happen with bombs and bullets any more than it did with HK.
As to China’s attitude towards Japan, that particular strain of hatred is old and nothing new at all. Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. The Chinese Communist Party loosed an economic tiger and now they have it by the tail. Sooner or later they have to let go.
I remember when the Soviet Union was going to destroy us, we were all on the edge of Armageddon, and our only hope for survival was to spend Trillions upon trillions of dollars on guns, bombs, missiles, ships, planes, tanks, helicopters ad infinitum to defend freedom and the American Way ™. Less than a decade later the Soviet Union didn’t even exist.
I refuse to get my panties in a bunch over this “threat” either.
PS: Someday the US will no longer be a world power. Empires end. They don’t have to end violently. That is one lesson of the 20th century that we all can learn.
Will
@Raven: Your assumption from the get go is that this is something I want or favor. It is not. However, just because it isn’t something I want doesn’t mean I pull the wool over my eyes. I spend a lot of time in asia and they can’t stop talking about the Chinese there. Every other day the front page has a headline blasting Chinese aggression. Xi was in India less than two weeks ago and while he was sitting down for tea with Modi, 3,000 Chinese troops crossed over the line of control into India over the disputed state of Arunachal Pradesh. They eventually withdrew across the border, but it was an obvious probe, a test of strength to see how Modi would react.
Will
@OzarkHillbilly: There is nothing wrong with Taiwan willingly rejoining China. It would actually be great for us, it would make one less nation we feel we have to rush to the aid of if they were to get into a war.
I’m guessing your example that an empire can end non-violently was the passing of the British Empire to the American Empire? If that is so, I would argue the lesson was they actually end violently, very violently. Every global institution was set to favor Britain, which angered the emerging power Germany, who found themselves confined everywhere. If you read the papers of the time, they said the same things you echo now, that common sense dictates there is just too much to lose by coming to conflict, that there was plenty of wealth to go around. However, those weren’t the people that won out and controlled the levers of power. The Germans wanted more, they didn’t want to be confined by global institutions that favored Britain. Britain didn’t want to cede power or allow for a balance between the two, so we ended up with war. It is an interesting topic though, I would love to hear your thoughts on how we can avoid the same fate.
OzarkHillbilly
@Will: I was thinking of the Soviet Union.
Will
@OzarkHillbilly: Ah, I didn’t really consider them an empire as they were mostly regional, but yes, that is a good example of a mostly peaceful transition.
raven
@Will: I never saw an answer to “what else ” America and European nations” besides precipitating the calamity you describe by ” cut off the import of goods that had any piece manufactured in China.”
Gin & Tonic
@Will: 11,000 km from east to west, spanning 11 time zones and over 180 nationalities is quite a “region.”
Baud
@Schlemazel:
IIRC, OWS also never came up with concrete demands. The HK protesters seem to have one.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
Yeah, I’m trying to figure out how our “region” was bigger than the Soviets’.
C.V. Danes
Me wonders how this is different from the machine politics practiced here in the U.S…
Baud
@C.V. Danes:
We have problems, but that comparison is a joke.
Will
@Gin & Tonic: 11,000 km is big, but a lot of that expanse was mostly unpopulated and uninhabitable. Beyond their borders, they were dependent upon allies, whereas the United States has claims to islands around the world from which to manage security of the empire. The only way to do business in the world was with the dollar, not the ruble. There weren’t countless countries around the world using the ruble as their own domestic currency in the way the dollar was. Because of this, they couldn’t bring a country crashing to their knees with monetary policy like America could do with the dollar. The Soviet navy wasn’t guaranteeing the safe passage of commerce around the world, they could barely afford to maintain a force significant enough to act as a deterrence. The American navy was doing that and matching the Soviet navy for a possible conflict at the same time. I’m not arguing their military, nuclear stockpile, and size didn’t make them a superpower, but in my mind, they weren’t an empire. Reagan just thought it was a fun and clever thing to say while eating his jellybeans.
C.V. Danes
@Schlemazel:
Well, that would certainly be the story perpetuated by the press, no? But like most things, the reality was quite different.
Mike J
@C.V. Danes: Really?
OzarkHillbilly
@Will: I include client states in my definition of what constitutes an empire. Like Cuba, Vietnam, Sudan (IIRC), Syria, etc.
C.V. Danes
@OzarkHillbilly:
China has been China in one form or another for thousands of years. They will probably be China in one form or another for thousands more. I have reservations about the U.S. lasting the rest of this century.
C.V. Danes
@Mike J: Yes, really. Given that OWS underwent sustained, coordinated attacks from the Feds and local law enforcement, I’m surprised they lasted as long as they did. But you never hear that part of the story.
Belafon
@C.V. Danes: Delaware.
Mike J
@C.V. Danes: You don’t see any difference between the government choosing who is allowed to run for office and what happens in American politics?
OzarkHillbilly
@C.V. Danes: I have reservations about humanity surviving the rest of this century. ;-)
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I have reservations on the Swoop in November!
Will
@OzarkHillbilly: Even in that case, their “empire” was meager compared to the American empire. You start including client states and suddenly the American empire looks like the British empire around the early 20th century.
OzarkHillbilly
Facing tax shortfall, Kansas approves online sex toy auction to recoup lost tax revenue
OzarkHillbilly
@Will: Every empire since the beginning of history has had client states, including the British empire, the Roman empire, etc. Why in Dog’s name would you exclude them? That makes no sense at all.
Will
@OzarkHillbilly: You’re not convincing me. It sounds like you define it based on land mass size when to me an empire includes such things, but is more based on the economic power to do what you want, when you want, and how you want to with no one to tell you that you can’t.
Patricia Kayden
@OzarkHillbilly: Anything except increase the tax rate on the wealthy. Got it.
rikyrah
In Harlem, Tenants See a Campaign to Oust Them
By CHARLES V. BAGLI SEPT. 14, 2014
Keith L. T. Wright, 59, has lived in the Riverton complex, a middle-class
bastion in Harlem between 135th and 138th Streets, east of Fifth Avenue, for his whole life.
On Sunday, Mr. Wright, a state assemblyman, stood at the Riverton gates waving his rent receipt as he announced the filing of a $10 million
lawsuit against the property’s managers.
The lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, claims that CWCapital Asset Management and an affiliate, Compass Rock Real Estate, have been systemically overcharging tenants as part of an effort to oust longtime residents and charge more for Riverton apartments.
“It’s all economic,” said Mr. Wright, who was joined by Representative
Charles B. Rangel, Councilwoman Inez E. Dickens and two dozen tenants. “It’s a campaign to get higher-paying tenants, never mind the original intent of what Riverton was about, or the fabric of the community.”
Randreta Ward-Evans, the president of the Riverton tenants’ association, said she had been inundated with complaints from tenants, especially older ones, who said they had received eviction notices for nonpayment of rent, despite mailing checks to the management office that, the tenants say, have gone uncashed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/15/nyregion/in-harlem-tenants-see-a-campaign-to-oust-them.html?_r=0
Gin & Tonic
@Will: Here’s what Wiki says: “Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples (ethnic groups) united and ruled by a central authority.”
Sounds like Russia/Soviet Union to me.
OzarkHillbilly
@Will:
Are you even listening to yourself? I know you aren’t reading half of what I have said. All of the above em, applied as well to the SU as it does to the US. Or did you not notice what the Vietnamese said to us back in the 60’s and 70s? What the Iraqis said to us just a few years ago?
C.V. Danes
@Mike J: I admit to a certain amount of hyperbole, but given the influence of money in our elections, not as much as you may think. We serve different masters, that is all.
AnonPhenom
Demographics is destiny.
Back in the ’80s everyone was shitting themselves over a Japanese group purchasing Rockerfeller Center. Back then it was the Japanese who were going to eclipse the U.S.
You heard it here first. Peak China is NOT a myth. You live in interesting times. It will be up to the West to decide if China’s landing will be hard (see: dangerous) or soft.
AnonPhenom
Oh, and you can tell all the wingnut relatives this holiday season that the United States’ projected increase in working age population is almost entirely premised (95% of it) on an increase in immigration. So ask them which is their preference; a healthy economy that produces a viable safety net for it’s retired population or do they “want their country back” along with an empty fucking belly.
Belafon
@AnonPhenom: You know the saying, right? Republicans are willing to sleep under a bridge, and eat pigeon cooked on a shower rod, as long as the person under the next bridge has neither a pigeon or a shower rod to cook it on.
They are not rational creatures. Your logic means nothing.
rikyrah
Mostly Black Cities, Mostly White City Halls
By RICHARD FAUSSET
SEPT. 28, 2014
CONYERS, Ga. — Since moving to this small city on the eastern flank of Atlanta’s suburban sprawl, Lorna Francis, a hairdresser and a single mother, has found a handsome brick house to rent on a well-groomed cul-de-sac. She has found a good public school for her teenage daughter.
Something Ms. Francis, who is black, has not found is time to register and vote. She was unaware that the most recent mayoral election was held last November.
“Life’s been busy — I’ve been trying to make that money,” Ms. Francis said one morning this month from her two-car garage, where she was micromanaging a particularly complex hairdo for a regular client. “And honestly, I only vote in major elections.”
That kind of disengagement is one of the many reasons that only one of the six elected positions in this municipality of 15,000 is held by an African-American, even as a wave of new black residents has radiated out from nearby Atlanta, creating a black majority here for the first time in the city’s 160-year history.
Disparities between the percentage of black residents and the number of black elected officials are facts of life in scores of American cities, particularly in the South. The unrest that followed the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., has emphasized how much local elections can matter, and prompted a push there for increased black voter participation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/us/mostly-black-cities-mostly-white-city-halls.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
rikyrah
Ferguson Demands High Fees To Turn Over City Files
Sep. 29, 2014 10:10 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — Bureaucrats in Ferguson, Missouri, responding to requests under the state’s Sunshine Act to turn over government files about the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, are charging nearly 10 times the cost of some of their own employees’ salaries before they will agree to release any records.
The move discourages journalists and civil rights groups from investigating the shooting and its aftermath.
The city has demanded high fees to produce copies of records that, under Missouri law, it could give away free if it determined the material was in the public’s interest to see. Instead, in some cases, the city has demanded high fees with little explanation or cost breakdown. It billed The Associated Press $135 an hour — for nearly a day’s work — merely to retrieve a handful of email accounts since the shooting.
That fee compares with an entry-level, hourly salary of $13.90 in the city clerk’s office, and it didn’t include costs to review the emails or release them. The AP has not paid for the search.
Price-gouging for government files is one way that local, state and federal agencies have responded to requests for potentially embarrassing information they may not want released. Open records laws are designed to give the public access to government records at little or no cost, and have historically exposed waste, wrongdoing and corruption.
“The first line of defense is to make the requester go away,” said Rick Blum, who coordinates the Sunshine in Government Initiative, a coalition of media groups that advocates for open government. “Charging exorbitant fees to simply cut and paste is a popular tactic.”
Since Brown’s death and ensuing protests, news organizations, nonprofit groups and everyday citizens have submitted records requests to Ferguson officials, asking for police reports, records about Brown and the personnel files of Officer Darren Wilson, who shot Brown Aug. 9.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ea801dccbeca4d42a06d4477fdb982a0/ferguson-demands-high-fees-turn-over-city-files
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
I wonder if there’s a way for someone (an Occupy group? a smaller media outlet?) to crowdsource the fees and then release the records to everyone. The MSM probably wouldn’t do it since everyone wants a “scoop.”
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
I wonder if someone is there to explain to people like Ms Francis that it’s the outcomes of local elections that have the most direct effect on their lives and the greatest. So that makes local elections the most major.
gene108
@OzarkHillbilly:
The U.S. was never an Empire in the traditional sense.
You could say incorporating the Louisiana Purchase, gains from the Mexican-American War, Alaska and Hawaii into the Union are sort of imperial, in terms of expansion, but those areas have been incorporated into the Union, such that a person can go from Florida to Alaska or Maine to Hawaii and still feel like he/she is in the same country.
Also, the projection of U.S. power around the world seems to be magnified by the way it is reported here. The rest of the world does not worrying about what America does, unless it directly effects their national interest, like say tariffs on imports or potential visa restrictions.
Even the European nations, with faded empires, are not doing badly themselves. They are well above being the poorest countries on the planet. Some of them, like the Netherlands or Belgium or France, are shining examples of what liberals want the U.S. to become, with regards to social spending.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Will: Thank you for advocating a nuclear war in the name of FREEDOM. How very, very NeoConish of you.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@gene108:
It’s been pointed out the quality of living in France and the UK went up after their empires ended since they no longer had to pay for the privilege of seeing their flag all over the map. Worth considering the driving force behind those empires was forcing open markets and that’s not an issue in the world now.
Captain C
@Will:
Tell that to the Georgians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Azeris, Armenians, Karelians, Chechens, Tatars, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Tajiks…
Will
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Where did I advocate nuclear war? Sticking words in my mouth are you? Making things up are you? How very, very Fox Newsish of you. I salute you, sir, with a coffee cup in my hand.