211–220 of 412 posts
> all rolled into one beautiful, weird, dysfunctional country, and I couldn’t get enough of it. I do not see dysfunctional countries as beautiful. I prefer well functioning countries where things get done and people understand each other. I guess the author likes to see people suffer?
It would be a shame to only have known cakes my entire life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
I understand how and why such feelings come up—it makes a lot of sense given the cultural context and the history. But I'd ask you to pause and consider taking 'yes' for an answer, i.e. to consider that we might genuinely intend to treat all sides, including yours, fairly and equally. I've been telling HN users that they can't attack Islam (same as any other religion) for as long as I've been a moderator here: https:…
Not so new fact that many here may already know: The (in?)famous -stan suffix, coming originally from Persian, is an etymological cousin of State, Street, Statistics, Strategy and Stadt. In Iran, provinces are called Ostan and some Ostans' names end with -stan (e.g. Ostan of Kurdistan). By the way, since it's not clear from their names, it may be worth noting that Tajiki and Persian are two dialects of the same langu…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most Russians hold racist views. It doesn't change if they are expats. As a result of the colonial conquests, Russia is a multiethnic state. But the minorities have never been fully accepted. The govt balances between suppressing the far right and managing it for its own purposes. This wiki article has plenty of references, with many pointing to the racist actions by the senior officials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…
This blanked statement is false. I’m speechless somebody can make claims like this tbh.
As an example: https://academic.oup.com/edinburgh-scholarship-online/book/2...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This blanked statement is false. I’m speechless somebody can make claims like this tbh.
Definitely not false. Actually quite well covered by journalists and scholars. As an example: https://academic.oup.com/edinburgh-scholarship-online/book/2...
You have to lurk really hard to find a nationalist there unless you count people love Dostoyevsky into this group. There are also a lot of glass ceilings in place for ethnical Russians, and distribution in elite universities, politics, and business don’t represent the country average, which suggests there’s an intentional ’reverse racism’ in place towards majority. Moreover, the word ‘Russian’ is banned in media and is replaced by ‘citizen of Russia’.
An amazing place. I visited twice about 15 years ago and have many fond memories of it, but mostly when I think about it I'm filled with sadness, because the people there deserve so much better. They're constantly knee-deep in corruption, both street level and just the very blatant kleptocratic presidential family. There's a lot of ethnic Russians, both expat workers and ones that didn't manage to leave after the col…
> many fond memories of it, but mostly when I think about it I'm filled with sadness, because the people there deserve so much better. They're constantly knee-deep in corruption, both street level and just the very blatant kleptocratic presidential family I spent 2 years driving the length of the Pan-American Highway, and 3 years driving right around the African continent. What you said can equally be applied to many…
Tajikistan looks to be an interesting case of Islam being kept in check without resorting to either extremism or terrorism. But this is neither free nor assured, and it probably requires constant wilful effort. In the long term, I can see it bleeding more territory to China due to the significant difference in military power and aggression. This is so long as there isn't a NATO-like structure to keep Chinese aggressi…
They are exremist, they banned Eid celebrations, they banned the Hijab....
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
You can, in fact, be fighting for liberty and be a brutal murderer. You can even be fighting for liberty one day and a brutal dictator the next. Hiding genocides under the carpet because they are done by the former colony or satellite is not great.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
No, there were real conflicts, violence, and refugees fleeing both across and outside countries before the fall of Soviet Union (not predicted by anyone) and afterwards. Before you reach for checklists and flowcharts to figure out whether you should call them “atrocities” or “civil outrage”, let me refresh your memory. First, we need to look at oil and gas pipeline maps from USSR to Europe. It's easy to do, we're on…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html