Couldn’t have been much of a conversation, considering Turnip was under the table the whole time.
1 Like
yeah, sorry I was trying to figure out how to describe the arrangement as opposed to all the leaders themselves in a big row which would be way formal, and not just saying boy girl boy girl. It’s totally on purpose and likely negotiated months in advanced.
Ex-KGB. Totally speaks English. As well as most leaders.
It puts others at an extreme disadvantage when they have to rely on a translator.
As for trump, he probably needs a translator for his translator too.
1 Like
Harkonnen?
4 Likes
Event planners even have software to help them figure it out. Really.
We are talking about Trump here. Do you think he ever really considers his answers?
But yeah, all good points about the role of the translator.
2 Likes
I’d hope so, she’s from the former Yugoslavia.
Whenever Trump is involved, all bets are off.
1 Like
Alaska, after 150 years in the wilderness, is finally coming home!
Wiki says Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian which for someone of her age and origin is entirely likely. That said, I don’t think this gives you Russian proficiency. You can make yourself understood with some waving of arms and shouting, no doubt, but if she spoke to Putin it was likely in German. Not that it matters, either way, of course.
It’s a shame that of all the incredibly stupid and all the incredibly evil things Trump has done, is doing, and will do the media is focusing on just about one thing he did which is neither evil nor stupid. I mean, you have to go looking for something like that… jeez.
1 Like
You mean, colluding with Russia to get elected, and then continue to capitulate to them?
The media is hyper-sensitive at the moment to anything that continues to support the ongoing plotline, and the President having a previously undisclosed hour-long meeting with Putin does a pretty good job of looking extraordinarily shady.
1 Like
Putin is apparently, according to his biographer, a perfectionist and considers that his German and English are not as good as he would like. His English is not as good as his German, and once he actually quoted Kipling in passing and it turned out he had read him in German translation. German is his second language; he was apparently posted to Dresden in order to keep an eye on the Stasi. For some reason I find that funny.
From what I understand, a Serb talking to a Russian would be something like someone with a strong Glasgow accent talking to someone from rural Kentucky.
1 Like
I’m going to predict that what they talked about included the CIA’s covert program to arm Syrian rebels, and how Putin told Trump to stop it.
I didn’t say it did. I wasn’t responding to someone saying she had Russian proficiency, but that she spoke a slavic language, though - she does because of her country of origin (a country which doesn’t exist anymore).
It’s not uncommon from people from places like the Balkans to have mastered multiple languages (probably less so now, for people who were born after the wars). Yugoslavians likely spoke Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, German, Albanian, and probably some Turkish or even Arabic to boot, to some degree, because of the history of the region as a cultural/ethnic/religious crossroads.
1 Like
Oh, I didn’t meant to suggest you did. Quite to the contrary, I was merely diminishing the significance of my own reply, i.e. it’s an aside. Doesn’t really matter.
And yeah, (former) Yugoslavia is a hodge-podge of languages. Though you’d expect to see more Hungarian and Romanian and less Turkish. And Arabic is mostly just the observant Muslims living in Bosnia and Serbia.
2 Likes
Ah, true enough! It depends on what part of the country you were in. Probably some Greek as well down in Macedonia and along the Aegean sea.
Well, also many of the Muslims are Albanian speakers, too. But again, Turkish is important in the more southern parts of the country because there of the Ottoman Empire. German was pretty common in Slovenia and Croatia, too.
4 Likes
Right.
So. In other news my wife and I may need some sort of sponsorship so we can escape from AK.
1 Like
Don’t buy into Trump’s spin. No legit news agencies reported that it was “secret.” Trump lied about that to bolster his fakenews dismissal of a serious event.
The story is that the president of the United States had a somewhat lengthy sidebar conversation with the president of Russia. With no other U.S. officials present. And that we didn’t know about it until Ian Bremmer reported on it Monday night. The Whitehouse had zero intention of ever mentioning it, much less doing a read-out as is standard protocol.
We don’t know what they talked about and we probably never will know the full story. But Trump has inadvertently admitted it was about sanctions (“adoptions” is code for sanctions because Putin retaliated against the Magnitsky Act sanctions by blocking american adoptions of russian orphans).
Sanctions relief seems to be one of Putin’s two goals behind Russia’s support for the trump campaign. (The other seems to be Putin’s grudge against Clinton for the protests during the 2012 russian election). FYI, the Magnistky sanctions are specifically targeted at individuals involved with human rights abuses, they don’t affect the Russian public at large. Many billionaire oligarchs are affected.
4 Likes
Treason. Putin is Trump’s personal handler:
- Betray Syrian opposition.
- Return Putin’s two KGB spy palaces in the US.
- Subvert the US electoral system by having your guy say “we will never know what happened or who really won.”
- Dismiss and dismantle as much of US cyber security defenses as possible, especially at the State Department so US diplomatic ability is permanently compromised.
- Further instructions to follow.
2 Likes
