This post belongs within that rare category of the truly laugh-out-loud funny. Because after all Australians use garbled English like "my own country is as of late bleeding the consequences of being forcibly allied to those bastards for all these years (nato vatos)" all the time!

Google translate let you down REALLY BADLY there my poorly disguised Russian friend.

Wrong again. I am not Australian. And certainly not Russian. But out of topic twice! Still, Ukrania shutting off demonoid, was something that made LOTS of people angry, regardless ethnicity. (Even the anonymous threatened for counterattacks, angered by this move) Especially for the purpose of showing off to those fAmericans. Show me your friend, as they say. Choice and consequence, and this is too for laughing out loudly! ;) :D

Cool story bro. I'm sure you will fool everyone with that completely believable cover story. I notice that you have, rather remarkably, managed to type a message using English words (not correctly, but still...), while still retaining your Russian accent. An impressive feat.

One question. Where and in what context exactly do "they" say "show me your friend"? I've never heard that used as an expression.

The ability of been able to get a fun from a shill is a true gift these days.

Two weeks ago there were some "elections" in St. Petersburg and, oh wonder, the old governor is also the new governor. However there were 344000 more votes for the governor/mayor elections than for the minicipial elections which took place at the same time. That's cool. It means that the result probably has not much to do with what the people who actually bothered to go there marked. And since opposing candidates (Oxana Dimitrieva for example) are anyway excluded before, I only ask myself: why making this mummers show at all? All outside but probably also inside of Russia should know by now that democracy isn't really alive there.

Meanwhile Putin himself signed the renaming of a special police force unit with the new name of Dzerzhinsky which was a really nice guy back in the 1920s. So I guess if Russia is not democratic and you want to know what the future will bring, have a look into the past.

Democracy is a magic! http://i.imgur.com/vDw0URg.jpg
Nope.
In real life you have a choice between shitburger and vaginal clyster.
You choose most competent one, not "most democratic".
At which level you political view should matter?
I would choose someone who wants to work in any circumstances to make people's life better, not someone who loudly shout that "we can do it better, but..."
I voted for Roizman in Yekaterinburg, he is from opposition, and he won.
She is good with papers, but is she good with people? These are different skillsets.

Estonia introduced last week as the first of the former Soviet Republic areas legal same-sex marriage. The decision was narrow but in my eyes it shows that actually what people do matters. Even if you have the same past doesn't mean you must have the same future.

And that's great example of social evolution and a good guide for all other ex-USSR republics (in many other areas too). I never understood animosity towards gays anyway.

That's not quite correct. Cold war propaganda messes with people's reporting and thinking. You have to look into the past, but a bit farther than that.

The mayor of Krasnodar keeps insisting that the city be renamed back to Yekaterinodar for patriotic reasons, Crimea and stuff. Blah blah. Of course, Krasnodar is a Soviet-inspired name, but it's also identical to an old Slavic city name and quite appropriate for a Russian city no matter one's political persuasion. And he's far from the only one. As far as the Russian government is concerned, Communism is the enemy, the opposite of patriotism.

Recently, WW1 has been making an astroturf comeback, as in, let the courage and bravery of WW1 fighters never be forgotten. Upon seeing the first wave of propaganda, I corrently assumed Putin's gang is again attacking the Soviet Union, and lo and behold, I was right: the official doctrine is that if only, on the verge of victory, the evil wicked treacherous Jewish bolsheviks hadn't sold out Holy Slavic Russia to Germany, Holy Slavic Russia would've won the (first and only) war, become an economical powerhouse and ruled the world spreading godly Orthodox grace everywhere like anthrax spores.

(Roizman is a neo-Nazi gangster, kidnapper and protection racketeer. Such people wield considerable power in the suburbs of Moscow (Ruza, Krasnogorsk, Istra), and the fact that one became a mayor of a larger city halfway across the continent is entirely unsurprising.)

edit: forgot the conclusion:

If you think Russia's internal and foreign policies and propaganda are Soviet or neo-Soviet or Communist or Totalitarian Stalinist or whatever, you're wrong -- they are literally neo-Nazi policies with Imperial Russian flavor. Friendship of the peoples? Fuck that noise, go go apartheid. Workers of the world, unite? Fuck that noise, go go Juche. Communal ownership of property? Fuck that noise, privatize everything. Hell, the guy who funds the Eastern Ukrainian insurgency runs an internment camp for children.

Patriarchy and again its mostly animosity towards Male Homosexuals, Females are persicuted too but when people typically think of Gay they think of Male homosexuality. And the Abrahamic religeons are to blame. Look at Greece and Rome before Christianity came to Western civilization. Homosexuality was accepted and tolerated. You see it in their stories, Heracles had male lovers. Than Christianity came which the movement itself is anti-homosexual. Asia was also accepting of Homosexuality.

(These are just my 2 cents.)
Estonia also ranks as the highest percentage of irreligeous people.

Actually if you go back towards it's beginnings as a religion there are records of same-sex couples getting married. In christian churches. With priests and godly blessings and everything. Then homophobes got into positions of power and messed it all up.

Can't tell you about Judaism. When it comes to Islam, it's complicated. The Quran includes a message similar to the Christian 'Love each other' and back then homosexual love was not a sin. Intercourse between homosexuals however (and also sex outside marriage) was frowned upon, it was considered unclean. There were health risks, people didn't have the same medical means they have now, you get the idea. And the Quran regulates a lot of practical stuff regarding cleanliness in order to protect people from disease outbrakes, so being unclean or doing something unclean is considered a sin for Muslims. It was easier at the time to say 'this is not okay' because it could be dangerous than to let everyone do what they wanted and possibly put the whole community at risk.

Today there are two general sides to the issue. One believes that people should stick to the exact wording of the texts and thus sex between homosexuals is unclean/sinful. Bigots of course have always been exploiting this and spreading misinformation that homosexuality itself and all aspects of it are sinful. The other side believes that since Islam is a religion that was created to be relevant in all eras, it has to evolve along with the world and the circumstances people live in. For example, there are instructions in religious texts that a dowry should consist of x camels, most Muslims nowadays however don't actually offer camels. They offer money or whatever of value is applicable according to their living situation. So progressive Muslims believe that similar values should apply to homosexuality. Since same-sex love is not a sin and we now live in a world where there are measures one can take to make sex safe, they believe that sex between homosexuals is also not a sin.

Sorry it took me a few days to answer.

No problem. I understand you were either at work or some other activity.

Be careful that , while there were ,both in the eastern (orthodox ) and western traditions, legal forms of association between 2 persons of the same sex, these were botherly unions, meaning sharing property / civil rights ( very much as an adoption of an adult by another), but in theory without sexual meaning. Some modern day historians read something else in that, but it's good to remember that civil law in the early Middle Ages remains broadly based on Roman laws and Germanic tradition, thus may seem very alien to modern day observers. If, having no living descendant had meant your assets would become state property upon your death, you might have been happy to be able to make a friend your "brother" in law.

Same-sex sexuality was a sure way to shorten one's life, and that's as true in the late Roman empire ( post 342 AD, Theodosian law) as in the middle-ages