Shantytowns are symbolic of failure,

The failure doesn't disappear just because you make the shantytown illegal. All that accomplishes is make the people who lived there even worse off, for the sake of letting those who didn't pretend the problem doesn't exist. And in a way, it doesn't: a "failure" implies an unintended undesirable consequence of some decision or policy, while demolishing the homes of worst-off members of society for the sake of appearances is an intentional, deliberate action. It confirms that you are okay with this outcome, of treating people like garbage to be thrown aside and disposed of if they aren't economically useful; in other words, you haven't failed, you're simply evil.

Moses even had tablets, but they were pretty slow I'm told.

http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_839_29-iconic-images-from-history-shamelessly-turned-into-ads_p29/#27

Look at #27.

Is that even possible? Is there a stop where russophobes such as yourself stop imagining things, and connecting incomparable things just because "oh god, RUSSIANS!"?

If there is one, I haven't seen it yet. On a lighter note, the sheer absurdity of your behaviour leads more and more people around the world to simply ignore outbursts of your types, or openly deride them.

So please go on. Be as absurd and as noisy as you possibly can. The faster your credibility is eroded completely, the faster we may start getting crises where sacrificing massive amounts of people to the engine of war will not be the only solution and way out.

Clearly, they looked very coerced after the fact on the streets. We all know that singing, dancing and partying is how Russians show they are coerced.

Yes, Russians are weird, and our propaganda, no matter how absurd is correct. Thank you for playing!

And what they could possibly have hoped to achieve by filing charges, other than a nasty (and well deserved) publicity backlash?

Most likely they were defending the concept of domination. In their view, society is made of hierarchical power relations, and the only way to advance is to challenge someone above you. Bullying is a natural part of such system, used to establish pecking order, and it's "cheating" to expose it to outside judgement.

Basically, the school administration approves of bullying because it helps perpetuate a system where they're top dogs, and consequently view any effective attempt to stamp out bullying as a direct threat to their own status. It's ultimately the same reason why some people like to shit on the poor (sometimes despite being poor themselves), or get bent out of shape at the thought of everyone getting a prize: if there's no way to divide people into winners and losers - or pure and impure, or whatever terms you prefer - the hierarchical system will collapse, and take with whatever part of your identity you have invested in status in it.

The West installed the current regime. When "Yats", the Nuland's guy got the top job, kicked out the "too inexperienced to rule" (aka not corrupt enough) "Klitch" and went to maidan to annouce his government (which could be summed up as Tymoshenko and her stooges), do you know what happened?

They openly threatened to kill him for "continuing the same order we are here to fight against". After Tymoshenko saw this, she ran away to Germany and left her stooges to take the hits. The only reason they are still in position of some power in Kiev is because Right Sector, which was the real power behind maidan but had little public support initially switched sides to West puppets because it saw just how vulnerable they were against the people and just how much power they would get by essentially taking the entire security apparatus into their hands by supporting the weak puppet government.

Nowadays they do stuff like beat up MPs and journalists, while taking videos of it. Euronews had a hilarious story that got through propaganda curtain by sheer absurdity of it a few weeks ago, where the deputy minister for free speech beat up a head of TV station in Kiev while filmed by one of his (assaulting party) guards until he signed his resignation. Then he uploaded the clip to youtube to show his supporters that he's defending the "motherland". Even hollywood isn't good enough to write stories like this one.

Maidan is still there by the way. People are still protesting against the current regime. Have you heard any news about them in the Western media as of late? Ever wondered why they stopped covering maidan so abruptly after the current US-approved regime took power?

Sometimes, 2+2=4. Even if there's a massive lobby screaming at you that it equals 5.

Whoever upmodded you needs to do fact checking instead of just blindly doing so.

You are wrong or lying. Study talks about "wealthy or elites" referring to the top 0.1% or so.

Pretty much any graduate working in tech, unless he's one of the tiny portion of top CEOs is completely outside this scope. Even your average CEO or top manager will likely not be included in this definition - they are simply not wealthy or powerful enough to fit.

They see it as danger because they see it as a small but potential source of new people coming up and pushing them off the pedestal.

The single biggest fear of those on top has always been being toppled. Regardless of actual potential of that happening being large or positively tiny.

To someone who modded this flamebait - presenting relevant facts that disagree with your point of view is not baiting flaming. It's bating an intelligent discussion.

If you disagree, grow a pair, show that you can be called a person who supports freedom of speech as a core Western value and present your counter arguments instead of downmodding it.

Especially when the issue is of that importance - voting apathy in the West is exceptionally destructive to democratic process, and one of the key elements which have allowed corporatist and militarist agenda holders to take power even when their platform is not the one most voters would prefer.

And I would agree. Which is why it's relieving that it in fact we have not seen those numbers in Crimea.

In fact, some of the more reliable and neutral press in the West, such as Der Spiegel (you'll know them from the fact that people like Snowden and Assange trusted them enough to give them the source materials for redaction) posts stories like these today:

http://www.spiegel.de/internat...

Juicy quote: "Nevertheless, the situation here is not as unambiguous as it was on the Crimean Peninsula" when talking about situation in Eastern Ukraine. In other words, they agree that situation in Crimea has had little ambiguity - people by far and large wanted to join Russia and they got their wish.

Considering that euronews mentioned in the a footnote of their story on pullout of Ukrainian troops from Crimea after the annexation that "2/3 to 3/4 of the ukrainian soldiers are actually staying behind because they deserted before or during the conflict in Crimea", we can see that desperate attempts to claim that Crimea's vote wasn't geniunely democratic have little merit.

About the only argument you can make is that situation was orchestrated to manipulate public opinion. But if we call that an offence that makes referendums and political decisions invalid, shouldn't we have already put other people who have been proven to have used massive disinformation to get the outcome they wanted in prison, such as former US president G.W. Bush? And can we really argue that Russia is in this alone, and West has not been the prime instigator of current situation with Russia being the massive loser who's merely reacting? They lost entire country of Ukraine after all, with all its industrial base. This isn't some crappy third world oil producer - they make things like engine parts for space rockets. And they are historically ally of Russia throughout several centuries against threats like Ottoman slaver empire or Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, not to even mention being the birthplace of modern Russian culture.

We were discussing Crimea just a moment ago, so I think we can safely say that your passionate "never" has been debunked before it has been uttered.

So in your opinion, if a state is not perfectly stable and/or has any issues that people are passionate about, it's not a "real Democracy".

I humbly disagree. I do believe that vast majority of sane population of the West is with me on this particular issue, regardless of their views on the Ukrainian conflict.

Since the only comparison you could come up with here is Nazi Germany, I think I will just label you a "standard, shameless militarist nut job" and stop talking. Arguing on merit of facts with your kind is pointless - you will twist the reality to fit your own, warped imagination and disregard any inconvenient inconsistencies with your story, like your aforementioned claim that democracy is not "real" if people feel compelled to vote.

Funnily enough, most pro-democracy movements continue to make an argument that one of the biggest problems with democracy in the West is low participation. Inconvenient, and I'm sure you'll ignore that tidbit as well. After all, they're probably not about "real" democracy.

Yes. There's little difference between the morality of the militarist wing of East and West. Both are two sides of the same militarist coin, with same level of ethics.

Did the whole Snowden debacle show you nothing? Iraq?

My argument is actually that if US annexed Iraq, it would have had to take responsibility for people it left in an impossible situation after its invasion.

Russia is giving all Crimeans, regardless of ethnicity of vote a right to vote in Russian elections for example. When will people of Iraq, who are massively impacted by results of US elections be given the same right?