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zingers

John McCain Has a Zinger For You

"It was February 2006 in Munich, and John McCain's eyes were flashing with the mischievous spark that comes when he's about to fire a verbal rocket. 'I've got a zinger coming,' he told me, referring to a speech on Russia he would give a few hours later at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy." Wow! What sort of zinger did McCain have planned for the Munich Conference on Security Policy? Did Gunther Beckstein, Minister-President of Bavaria, look like a painted trollop? Or was it the one where a gorilla rapes Richard Holbrooke? Tell us, David Ignatius, what was this zinger you've set up so thrillingly? More »

9:57 AM on Wed Aug 20 2008
By Pareene
3,859 views, 91 comments

Latest by N/A: doozie? has anyone said doozie yet? more »

foreign affairs

Georgia Prez: This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

So. The Georgians sorta instigated this nutty war but the Russians were apparently looking for any old excuse to swarm in and take charge. The U.S. is stepping up the rhetoric but lord know what we'll actually do to stop the Russians from toppling the Georgian government. Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili is now waging a second war—a public relations war! He knows one of his better bets is to turn United States public opinion toward his beleaguered nation and against those terrible Russians, so he plays up how Western his country is all the time. They love America! Hot dogs! Johnny Cougar! In this clip, Saakashvili goes off on an incredible tangent about how Georgia once had amusement parks and Dolby Digital movie theaters (seriously!) but the Russians destroyed that, because they hate fun. How can anyone be against surround sound? Those filthy Russians!

12:45 PM on Fri Aug 15 2008
By Pareene
1,704 views, 91 comments

Latest by Mediahohoho: @El_Feo: There's no hope for people like you. If a Republican president does it, you're good with it. Enjoy. Unfortunately, more »

journalists in peril

Journos Shot in Georgia!

Ohh, Georgians. It will be hard to maintain your current favorable coverage in the US press if you do things like this. The attached clip shows a Fox News reporter running from gunfire from Georgian troops. The absoltely amazing thing is that as he's running from them he's still, like, totally on their side? They are exhausted and humiliated by those Russians (those baaad Russians!). Also who hasn't wanted to make a Fox News correspondent dance a little, right? Totally understandable! (For balance, the clip is followed by a clip of a Georgian journalist getting shot in the arm on-air by a sniper. Presumably a Russian sniper? Who knows. Fog of war!)

4:46 PM on Thu Aug 14 2008
By Pareene
3,716 views, 42 comments

Latest by RoosiDesi: @ADismalScience: @mz_wysiwyg: There is more to the response. Missile Defense in Poland: [www.nytimes.com] more »

Global Nuclear Annihilation On Hold, Thanks To The French "Medvedev announced agreement to a French-brokered proposal for both Russian and Georgian troops to stop fighting and move back to their initial positions." [Washington Post, Previously]

104 comments

diggbait

Digg in Bed With Russian Menace!

Take a look at the front page of crazy-huge crowdsourced web aggregator Digg today and you'll see a totally different portrait of the war in Georgia than you'd find on the front of the New York Times. It's not the scary specter of Russia asserting its dominance over the region and thumbing its nose at the West, gambling that we won't respond with force. It's not tanks rolling toward a soverign nation's capital in the hopes of overthrowing its pro-American leader. No, it is, as usual, a conspiracy by George W. Bush and the Mainstream Media to confuse and deceive you. A false story propagated by those terrible, biased gatekeepers. Also—Russian tanks are fucking awesome!!!! Why the hell would typically nerd-news and cute photo-obsessed little Digg take such a counterintuitive view of a war being waged on the other side of the globe? Three simple reasons. More »

12:19 PM on Tue Aug 12 2008
By Pareene
3,666 views, 25 comments

Latest by Meeg: Further proof of the Abkhazian kabal that controls the Internet. more »

explainer

Why You Should Be Concerned About This Georgia Thing

This link to a ridiculously slanted Russian news story about the war in Georgia has 1,194 Diggs, but please don't pay it any mind. Pravda.ru is a joke, a web-only repository of mistranslated hilarity and boob pictures unrelated to any print publication. Russian newspapers can still be oppositional and independent—it's the TV Putin controls. We should probably worry less about wacky Engrish propaganda and more about the return of the Cold War! More »

6:26 PM on Mon Aug 11 2008
By Pareene
5,822 views, 125 comments

Latest by Senor_Wences: @Triborough: Ha, wow, that's super random. They're the only folks around here who carry dill pickle relish. I more »

foreign affairs

Henry Kissinger Has Olympic Fever!

George W. Bush has been celebrating the twilight of his disastrous presidency by seemingly spending the entirety of 2008 overseas. Right now, as NBC constantly reminds us, he's in Beijing, enjoying the Olympics. Also with him is internationally beloved teddy bear war criminal Henry Kissinger! (Read on to learn why this is yet another example of how terrible NBC is.) More »

10:34 AM on Mon Aug 11 2008
By Pareene
7,667 views, 90 comments

Latest by N/A: So this is how it ends, with a drool. more »

they're just like us

Adorable Ukraine Has Own Ron Burkle

Our economy is tanking and our super-wealthy are in trouble because all their money is tied up in poor people's mortgages, or something. But in the rest of the world, there's a whole new generation of oligarchs benefiting from the booming commodities market. One of them, Victor Pinchuk from the Ukraine, is doing something terrible and unheard-of with his billions of dollars—buying status and influence. Amazingly, his deep pocketbooks have even bought him the ear of former President Bill Clinton! That incorruptible public servant hanging out with sketchy billionaires is one thing, but sketchy foreign billionaires? According to the Times, the two men have bonded over "a fondness for blending high policy with kitschy celebrity gatherings." Unmentioned: private jets full of models and coeds? [NYT]

12:00 PM on Fri Aug 8 2008
By Pareene
324 views, 4 comments

Latest by N/A: I had to comment, just to second buttbutt. more »

foreign affairs

Russia Loves The Office, Hates Emo

A show about depressed industrial workers ruled by a unfunny megalomaniac is headed for its natural demographic — Russians. The BBC has just sold Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's mega-hit sitcom The Office to the country, which plans to adapt its own version as over 70 other countries have already done. (Slave labor being the high concept that unites us all). This might give Slavic fans of Belle and Sebastian something to do with their free time now that the Russian state legislature has decided to outlaw emo. The reason? Unlike anything else you might associate with the land of nihilism and revolution, it "encourages anti-social behaviour and glorifies suicide." [Guardian, NME]

2:26 PM on Thu Jul 24 2008
By Michael Weiss
1,600 views, 45 comments

Latest by N/A: Belle and Sebastian isn't emo. I heard the guy say his greatest inspiration was the Richie's. As in " You more »

we're so sorry

Saudi Arabian Textbooks Antisemitic, Scary, Shamefully Hilarious

America's best friends the Saudis are throwing a party in Spain today where they will all celebrate how tolerant they are of other religions or something. So the folks at the Center for Religious Freedom decided to translate some official school textbooks from the Saudi Ministry of Education into English so that we may all shudder at what they teach their children and also maybe kind of laugh, because it honestly reads like a Shouts & Murmers piece. We all know the Jews control the banks, but did you know they also run the nightlife? More »

11:39 AM on Wed Jul 16 2008
By Pareene
7,042 views, 120 comments

Latest by Dror Poleg: I heard that some of them also own restaurants, shops, and passenger cars. more »

not afraid to be servicey

In Which We Help Jakob Lodwick Understand "China"

You are pretty much everything that is wrong with everything. Read a goddamn book. You are seriously the worst. [The Tumblr That Represents All That Is Wrong and Evil In This World]

11:09 AM on Tue Jun 24 2008
By Pareene
7,243 views, 108 comments

Latest by Rossini: I like lodwick... more »

bullshit?

Those Amazonian Tribespeople: Bullshit?

A rare, isolated, never-before-seen tribe photographed from a plane high above the Amazon! Dressed in red warpaint and shooting arrows at the camera! What a story! Well... you know us, we love to call bullshit on things. Just last weekend we were ready to call bullshit on the guy who made the "self-portrait" with DHL and a GPS device-equipped suitcase (honestly, people!) but then the dude called himself on it before we got the chance. (Stupid holiday weekend!) Anyway. Is this tribe shit for real? More »

3:34 PM on Fri May 30 2008
By Pareene
8,580 views, 94 comments

Latest by Git Em SteveDave is starless: @Calraigh: And Stakeout partly brought us Rosie O'Donnell. I see the wisdom in your words. I redact my more »

foreign affairs

Google Terrorizes Italy

Ever since Rome elected a straight-up neo-fascist mayor, they've been a little on edge about things. So when Google sent their magic creepy photo-van around town to capture every block for their wonderful Street View feature, Italians naturally fled "into shops and bars, hoping to be out of view of the camera's lens." Because they thought it was government surveillance, not the good, benevolent private surveillance we Americans know and love. Or at least don't give a shit about. Silly Italians! [Times of London]

4:47 PM on Mon May 12 2008
By Pareene
922 views, 13 comments

Latest by ellagood: @CodePink: fucking brilliant, baby. more »

psa

The Five Most Dangerous Countries for Bloggers

Internet nerds became terribly excited recently when Twitter sprung a man from jail, but it's worth noting that in most of the world, blogging is much, much more likely to send you to to clink. While there are a number of bloggers whose eternal imprisonment—possibly in the Phantom Zone—we fantasize about daily, we grudgingly admit that throwing bloggers in jail for blogging is probably bad. So as a public service, we're here to tell you where not to blog if you value your freedom. China and Iran probably get the most press for their blogger crack-downs, and Malaysia just arrested a blogger this week, but if there's anything we learned from skimming the site of the Committee to Protect Bloggers, it's this: don't Tumblr in Egypt. More »

4:19 PM on Thu May 8 2008
By Pareene
2,627 views, 11 comments

Latest by sqwodaydc: @AuntPenny: well done! first rule of blog club, don't talk about blog club. the michelle malkin/william kristol in me would more »

foreign affairs

Ungrateful English Demand Apology From Eccentric American Blogger

Earlier this year, Matt Drudge saved the life of Prince Harry, the UK's adorable ginger-haired lunkheaded Nazi ruler. Harry, you see, had been deployed to Afghanistan, where there are lots of people who'd like to blow him up. But Drudge revealed the deployment, breaking a media embargo, and then they were forced to send Harry back home, where he's more or less safe. For some reason this enrages the English. So the Mayor of Windsor and Maidenhead, whose name is probably spelled "Higginbobotham" but pronounced "Higgins", has demanded an apology from Drudge. The apology is probably not forthcoming. [UPI]

12:56 PM on Fri May 2 2008
By Pareene
1,204 views, 30 comments

Latest by famousauthor: Drudge should just have a short, standard apology to issue in cases like this. It would be the gracious more »

foreign affairs

Lovable Fascists Take Control of Small European Nation

In Italy, amusingly corrupt right-wing media mogul Silvio Berlusconi has just returned to his old position of Prime Minister, after a bitterly contested election that also put a straight-up fascist in charge of Rome. Berlusconi welcomed the country's rightward turn by invoking the name of Francisco Franco's Spanish fascist party. On the way out of power, the departing center-left government "published every Italian's declared earnings and tax contributions on the internet." They didn't even play it off as an accident, either: "The finance ministry described the move as a bid to improve transparency." Hah. Stay classy, Italy. We'd check to see what an Italian professional blogger makes, but we're kind of terrified of the whole country. [BBC]

11:35 AM on Thu May 1 2008
By Pareene
704 views, 31 comments

Latest by vulturesquadron: I love how Berlusconi's response was in openly in defense of tax evasion. Italians and the French are masters more »

Celeb-on-Celeb Interviews Reach Exciting New Low GQ sent supermodel Naomi Campbell to interview Hugo Chavez. Hugo says Fidel Castro is "the most stylish world leader." Ahmadinejad: snubbed. HuffPo offers: "Keep reading -OR- See pictures of Naomi Campbell's bikini beach vacation."

8 comments

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari did not poke you Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the 19-year-old son of assassinated Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and co-head of her political party, had a Facebook page! Except it was a fake. The fellow behind the fake profile says he used it to meet "a ridiculous number of hot Pakistani girls." (Coincidentally, this is the same reason Nick Denton made all of Gawker Media join the site.) [Radar]

51 comments