There was a Fidesz ideologue who once said, "What you call corruption is the essence of the system." Seems he was right but we're just learning by how much. The Integrity Authority estimates Orban's rule cost Hungary €160B(!) in corruption. That equals ~2/3 of 🇭🇺 GDP. www.ft.com/content/0c44...
Give a Pole from a big five city a bottle of vodka and ask them what they think about Białystok, and they'll tell you about bisons, Orthodox churches and people who sing the words like Russians do.
Do the same with Russians about Samara, and they'll tell you it's a piece of shit.
Russia is simultaneously:
- hosting Candace Owens in St. Petersburg
- doing its best to stoke racial tension in the West
- advertising in Africa along the lines of "come to work in Russia, we have busty blonde Slavic girls here for you"
- sending Africans who fall for that to their death in Ukraine
If you think that it's just the postcolonial West that has a problem with treating Africans like equals, you need to think again. Even less comfortable is the fact that it's not just Russia where racism is rampant, Ukraine and CEE have their fair share of it, too.
A true professional would say that he found the values he holds dear no longer fully aligned with the values of these companies.
Sadly, that would require Nick to have any values, a tall order I must say.
Russian radar operators in Cheboksary this morning:
🇳🇱🇷🇺 @trouw.nl ran an interview with the RU ambo to NL, and it's wild.
- Don't you feel pain over what RU is doing to UA?
- Yes, I feel pain, but I also feel it for Russia. Because we are one nation. Two brotherly peoples killing each other—that is tragic. (...)
- Have you ever been to Ukraine?
- No.
Hmmm, that means the pools in Case de Viktor must be heated!
⚖️🎲 Sometimes, when my profession and my hobbies overlap, it's fun news about a legal scuffle for the intellectual property rights to Jubilex, Demon Lord of Ooze.
Sometimes, it's shitty news like this one.
This is a capsule of the Russian "That place is ours, but it's also a shit place made of shit-laden straw that I have no reason to ever be close to" thinking that's representative of mainstream Moscow/St. Pete attitude to all those peripheral (in Russian eyes) parts of the Empire.