Monzanator

The pendulum will eventually swing the other way. It always does. Rupert Murdoch's style of journalism is very much on top right now but journalism as a whole isn't as impactful as it once was. People don't need to buy a newspaper to find out what's going on in the world. Clickbaiting is the new black. Time is money, you don't waste time on double-checking your sources because 150 other journalists will beat you to the punch and post a story that gets gazillion likes & retweets in like 10 minutes. This is how modern journalism looks like.

33 minutes ago, Grassmarket said:

I was talking about the Comintern Parties, not the Bolsheviks.  All the Communist Parties living in exile in Moscow - of which the Vietnamese was one - were ruthlessly purged of anyone who might show the faintest glimmer of independence.

 

But I agree about Chiang Kai-Shek.  His problem was that practically all the journalists writing about China in the 20s & 30s were pro-Communist, so very few people in the West got an accurate picture. 

WWI wiped out the monarchies and it was trendy to support the left-wing & sociallism in the 1920s & 30s. British Empire send China into a terrible spiral after the opium wars which resulted in their own monarchy collapsing even before WWI. Underestimating the power of China became one of the biggest errors of the entire Democratic world and now it's too late to stop them. I fully expect China to be #1 global economy within the next 15-20 years now that USA is busy with internal political problems as well.

20 minutes ago, Grassmarket said:

Sorry to see you falling for that Popular Front propaganda crap.  Ho was Stalin’s man all the way through.  Nobody in the Comintern who lived in Moscow in the 1930s survived without being 150% a Stalin loyalist.

I suppose this is the Western democracies excuse for failing to support Chang Kai-shek to begin with? Because that was even a bigger error than what later happened in Vietnam.

Actually you're wrong on the Stalin loyalists, his most ardent supporters were actually the first to go. Stalin was always afraid of his peers to become too powerful and that's why he had them killed. Only people with zero personal ambitions or outright stupid survived the purge (Kalinin, Mikoyan, Budionny who has been widely considered as the least adept of the original Soviet Marshals).

Bianca Andreescu has withdrawn from the Grampians tournament. This is literally entering the drama lama levels.

20 hours ago, Vic Liu said:

Myanmar is of China’s interests, there are some major China-led infrastructure projects under construction there, especially the gas pipeline linked China and Indian Ocean. If US put some sanctions on Myanmar, it will only push it even firmly on China’s side. Actually it already happened when the West together condemning the so-called Rohinga genocide. 

USA has a history of such actions, like when they sided with France and pushed Ho Chi Minh straight into China & USSR's arms. That proved to be a total disaster

Meanwhile the Oval Office has bigger problems than Myanmar. Kamala Harris is under fire for wearing Dolce & Gabbana clothes. Ah, the wealthy people's problems!

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2021/feb/02/kamala-harris-criticized-wearing-controversial-label-dolce-gabbana

8 hours ago, Federer91 said:

So when is Uncle Joe going to wave the flag of democracy in Myanmar? 

Never. Myanmar has nothing that would interest USA and all Western democracies. It was only useful for the British Empire due to being a passage between China and India for trade purposes. That's no longer important. This place became equally as irrelevant as Cape Verde when the slavery trade from Western Africa collapsed.

Ryszard Szurkowski - the most famous Polish cyclist in history - passed away at the age of 75 today.

Double Olympic TTT silver medallist, 1973 amateur World Champion & 4 time winner of the Peace Race.

Matthew Stafford got traded to LA Rams while Jared Goff has been send to Detroit Lions in a straight QB swap. Lions also get two future first round picks from the Rams. That means Rams won't have a first round pick since they selected Goff first overall in 2017. That will be five straight seasons w/o it. It's almost NBA-like devaluation of the draft but Rams have the luxury of Sean McVey and Aaron Donald in the building. Then again, they whiffed on the QB as Goff looks completely lost without McVey in his ear.

Fractured tibia for Goggia. No surgery required but six weeks on the hook. Obviously season is over

Well, Jimmie Johnson looked slooooow out there tbh. I fear his IndyCar tenure will be a total disaster now.

#10 Acura wins (Albuquerque/Castroneves/Rossi/R.Taylor).

Terrible TV direction who missed the late change for 2nd place (#48 Cadillac passed #55 Mazda).

The Dutch curse strikes! Though Chip Ganassi losing the race in such fashion is not a bad thing

Well, auto racing is too expensive for FIA and IMSA to keep the different regs stance for the sake of local purity. The pandemic hit will only speed up the ineviteable process. It hope it works better than DTM adopting the Super GT regs and still ending up on the floor (which basically mirrored their mid 90s demise).

Audi ditched Formula E (funny how that is viewed second-rate now that it has lost the "new age" aura) and confirmed they will be back at LeMans in 2022. If they really wanted to build a DPi that would be a true swing for the fences!

Racing Team Nederland... in yellow & black Maybe sponsored by Vitesse Arnhem? Btw, this is the same Jumbo as Jumbo-Visma? Guess they have some money to spend?

@Olympian1010 I believe heywood is more of a Rinus fan than van der Zande. Besides Chip Ganassi isn't that of a fan favorite to begin with

3 minutes ago, Olympian1010 said:

It’s not like there’s a need for a privateer/amateur class in prototype either, since there’s already LMP2. 

I know that. Tell that to IMSA though. Ligier & Oreca should be in LMP2 and LMP3 should be scraped alltogether IMO.

Bad news for @heywoodu #29 Racing Nederland is out and Rinus VeeKay didn't even turn a single lap. They crashed on the oil laid by #20 and suffered terminal gearbox problem.

LMP3 is the new PC. Meh. Endurance racing doesn't need a "junior" class like that. It's just field filler whom nobody really cares about.

Ligier should take the battle to Oreca in LMP2 and now it looks like both can dominate each class without much competition.

Well, our biathlon fed twitter feed remains on top as usual

The course was terrible, couldn't hold up at all. Doesn't bode well for tomorrow.

Lara Gut seems to gave gotten to her best form from 5-6 years ago. She owns the Super G this season. Don't know what's up with Corinne Suter?

MM Gagnon finally back on the podium, I thought that won't happen again.

Also good to see KV Lie not choking on race day for a change. Probably because it wasn't a downhill

The first hour was total amateur clown show. Do these guys realize the race lasts 24 hours?

Johaug LOST a 10km race? Did she have a fall or something? Ran the wrong route?

Given the widespread Russian bans in biathlon he did a very lousy job of helping them indeed

Next elections in Poland are in 2023 so if Law & Justice ever wanted to play hardball with the anti-abortion law, the perfect timing was last fall especially with COVID still being somewhat relevant. The bill was passed last November, now it's just being made official. Thankfully for L&J teenagers either don't have the right to vote (if someone is 14yo or 15yo today) and this group is usually the least reliable among voters anyway (unlike seniors and elders who simply don't have better things to do than to go and vote). Come 2023 there will be a ton of other topics on the agenda, two years is forever in politics.