Topic: Politics

[Krakow Sam]

They keep arming themselves until either there's a coup and a rival family or military junta deposes the Kims or they level a major population centre and some sort of supeer-coalition goes in and kills 70% of the population of Pyongyang.

[Plank of Wood]

Maybe if we hadn't invaded and killed the leaders of every non-Superpower that tried to make nukes but then folded under international pressure, North Korea wouldn't be so obsessed with their continuing nuclear programme and telling the west to **** off.

[Inkling]

Maybe the leaders of those countries shouldn't have made a habit of killing their own people?

[Plank of Wood]

I am not defending North Korea or any others, which are and were objectively terrible regimes. What I just said is the current opinion of the US Director of Intellegence.

[Plank of Wood]

Why me getting food poisoning in Budapest was actually not my fault at all and in fact the fault of the free market

[Krakow Sam]

But Plank, everyone knows Slav plebs actually PREFER inferior products.

[Plank of Wood]

As we know, Slavs do like things that are bad. But Hungarians aren't Slavs, hence the controversy.

[Inkling]

Man, I don't even know enough about Slavs or Hungarians to have stereotypes about them.  I think they do that squat thing instead of sitting?

[Krakow Sam]

Yeah, you can tell the various subspecies apart by the number of stripes on their sweatpants.

More stripes = more addidas

[Inkling]

Any thoughts on the Catalonia situation?

[Ultimatum]

At this point Spain might as well give them their independence,assaulting people at the polling stages has essentially justified their decison 

[Plank of Wood]

I was in Barcelona the day after the referendum and during the General Strike.

What is happening is basically Brexit-plus. Catalonia is essentially a very rich region being tired of paying for the poorer regions of Spain. The results of the referendum are iffy, but that's what happens when half the region is trying to stop the referendum and the other half is physically trying to stop it happen. The problem is that it's almost purely nationalistic rather than ideological - both the left and the right want independence (creating the weird situation of communist flag wavers next to football hooligans and actually not punching each other for once), but this means a lot of the arguments for independence are based in "we're Catalan and we want a Catalan country" rather than actually improving Catalonia.

Independence is going to be stained by a series of extremely dodgy referendums (92% in favour at 40% is absolutely not any kind of mandate). Unionism is stained by Madrid being authoritarian. Everything is clucked.

[/lurk]

Independence for everyone.

Free Tibet.

The South will rise again.

[Krakow Sam]

Yeah! Independence for Scotland and Wales and Yorkshire and all those dumb islands but NEVER EVER independence for Cornwall EVER under any circumstances.

[Yokto]

Yeah! Keep Cornwall under a tight leash!