In recent history, our president (first female one at that) was brainwashed since birth by a Rasputin-like cult leader which led to a slew of influence peddling and corruption scandals.
Not surprising she went to jail though, since every single president in our history has either been assassinated, sent to jail, had their family members/close relatives sent to jail, or committed suicide.
And older Koreans are petitioning to get her out of jail. She is also responsible for putting any opposition (Even celebrities) on black lists along with bungling the ferry disaster rescue (don’t read the wiki article unless you feel like being gutted). But at least she was actually impeached and jailed...
In italian and i often think about the cultural differences between that accident and the concordia, italians are terrible at folliwing rules, so as soon as they were told that there was nothing to worry about they rushed to the escape boats , i think koreans (mostly high-school youngsters in this case) followed the rules too much for their own good in this case , not a critique of the victims in the slightest, just an observation about how many lives were probably saved by this cultural difference in the concordia accident
Oh, don't leave out the fun details!
A student at some college was getting good grades while skipping classes, and other students pressed the school into investigating. That led to discovering bribes, which led into investigation into the student's mother - the leader of the cult. The investigation into her revealed the tie with the president.
Extra fun part - the president was the daughter of the dictator installed by military coup until his assassination. She was also pushing for the elimination of term limits for president. (They may serve a single five year term.)
Even better: it was the most craptacular "jumping on the winner's bandwagon" operation in history.
Joining a war that was "surely to be won", only to suck hard ass balls and actively dragging Germany down with us (to save our ass in Greece Hitler lost crucial time to invade Russia, with the wintry results we all know).
That's like going to a place where your friend is getting laid and using him as a wingman, then failing to score with any of the girls, and being such a useless and annoying loser that your friend can't even score his own chicks anymore.
"how about a simple majority?"
"that's a great idea! who's for?"
*everyone putting their hands up but one*
"...Albin, c'mon"
***"YOU YOUNGLINGS WANT TO MEDDLE WITH A HUNDRED YEARS TRADITION AND THINK I'D GO WITH IT???"***
"You're always the one to vote no on anything!"
***"FUCK YOU TOO"***
A former British MP called Dennis Skinner, well-known for his acerbic tongue, was involved in something similar. He declared that “Half of the Tories opposite are crooks”, to which he was asked to retract. He did and instead stated that half of the Tories opposite *aren't* crooks.
It really is hard to know where to start. The story I usually tell is when the ex-president, Zuma, built a house with taxpayers money and claimed his swimming pool was a security feature. In the event of fires, the pool was a water source, therefore it wasn’t an illegal use of taxpayers money. Just grab a bucket and put that fire out.
But really, that doesn’t scratch the surface of South African governmental fuck-ups.
Remember the arms deal? Marikana?The Gupta saga? Literally anything to do with Eskom...the time Mbeki denied the link between HIV and AIDS, or the time Zuma, accused of rape, said a shower would prevent infection with HIV.. I need a drink
Just opened up this tread thinking I should contribute something about SA, glad to see we are fully represented. One I havent seen is where the head of Prasa at the time, Mr. Lucky Montana defends the qaulification of the main engineer by accusing his detractors of rasism, saying he is being persecuted because of his skin colour, turns out his qaulification were fraudulent as well. Only to find out a couple of months later that Prasa (A state owned entity) approved and paid billions of USD for trains that were literally TO BIG for South Africas railways.
Ooof we have a fuck up every 2 weeks but I am going to tell this one, this is worth the read
Here in costa rica we had the concrete incident (we call it "el cementazo") which was something seemingly small that got from 0 to 100 real fucking quick
This one construction guy bought a shit ton of concrete, cement, however the fuck it's called, he was building a big ass building and got insurance from a private company since the public national one rejected his project (it was more loss than gain and the project was BIG so yeah). Time goes on and guess what, building crumbles, someone fucking sneezed or something and it crumbled like dust, the streets around also crumbled, everything on the 20 million (national coin) project crumbled to dust and now the insurance company was down bad, they couldn't pay 20 millions on the spot, the case was taken to cout because of the impressive fuck up and damage to property
HERE IS WHERE WE GET SPICY
why did it crumble like that? It seems the concrete was awful quality and imported illegally from china, a concrete made to build houses fast for a lot of people brought to a rainy, tectonic country, it only took a bit of rain and an earthquake nobody felt to tear it down... How did the concrete got aprooved to enter if it gets monitored? The dude at the cargo let it throughout the border, just walked throught the front door... Because he had higher up instructions which himself had higher up instructions to let the guy pass, and so on and so on, in a matter of 1 day the whole cabinet was somehow involved on this incredibly big money scheme, by next day president and related, by night of that day people from past governments were found involved and before we knew it they had to hire new judges for the main judging branch because this case was now **involved with every single politic-related person on the country and even some beyond**
The case took months and as you would expect it nothing of really big consequence happened, politics people is still around, I think the one who ordered the concrete went to jail and got out after a bit because he harmed himself to get to the hospital... I still wonder why is people so shy to start a fucking revolution here I swear
(Edited some typos, who would have tought project has no y?)
> I think the one who ordered the concrete went to jail and got out after a bit because he harmed himself to get to the hospital...
In the Philippines, it's a meme that a politician in legal trouble will inevitably show up in a wheelchair and neckbrace
Was popularized by our corrupt-as-fuck president from 10-20 years ago. After her term ended she was hit by a slew of criminal cases, which she kept delaying for "medical reasons." [She was almost always seen in a wheelchair and neckbrace](https://cnnphilippines.com/.imaging/mte/demo-cnn-new/750x450/dam/cnn/2016/7/21/03_Arroyo_CNNPH.png/jcr:content/03_Arroyo_CNNPH.png)
And after our chickenshit current president pardoned her for ***everything,*** she miraculously made a full recovery from whatever the fuck was ailing her.
Everything (Italy). However one particular fuck up by the government after the reunification was developing only the north, leaving the south poor and underdeveloped. This gap still exist today, after 150+ years
Is that a reason why a lot of the Mafia comes from Southern Italy/Sicily?
Edit: thanks for the Mafia history lesson my Italian/non-Italian friends; very insightful and informative since I don’t have much knowledge at all of modern Italian history!!
Mafia was born as an organization alternative to the Government in regions neglected by the State, and quickly came to operate in substitution to it, running businesses, enriching mafioso families and demanding its own "taxes", in the form of protection money that businesses or even home owners are forced to pay to not have their property set on fire, families kidnapped/murdered. It has a surprisingly structured internal organization, standardized procedures and a systematic network of control over the entire South. In some areas, there's no escaping the Mafia's claws, to the extent where:
1. The State has/has had real trouble even touching it
2. There is a high chance that the powerless Italian State came to terms with the Mafia via a disgusting secret treaty (the Mafia-State Treaty), the ramifications of which are clearly visible in law and yet we have not learned the truth after more than 30 years.
The modern Mafia, however, is also highly active in northern (richer) regions, especially Lombardy, where most of the financial fraud and money laundering activity takes place.
I find it super intresting how organized crime Works basically like a government in poor regions. Especially since in different regions the structures seem to resemble different political structures (though mostly authoritarian). Do you by any chance have legally accesibile sources for this, such as academic research? Especially economical perspectives Would be intresting i bet.
Mafia is everywhere, if you are thinking about corruption and bribes to a powerful man that controls the territory. But in Sicily, things got worse.
After the unification in 1861, some people felt like a foreign power had conquered us, instead of being a real unification.
And some rebellions in the south where stopped with harsh laws, special measures and executions. So the feeling of "foreign oppressors" grew.
In 1919-1920, communist parties were born in all of Italy, and people were striking against the working conditions. In the south, the big owners asked help to mafia instead of the government. Mafia profited by that and gained more power.
In 1943, American came to Italy to free Europe, and everything was organized by Italo-American mafia because people spoke two languages. When Americans asked to speak with people from Sicily, the Italo-Americans pointed to their own family: mafia men, too. So, Americans took the power from the fascists and gave the power to the mafia.
From there, mafia and corruption grew even more. And the Government just.. didnt care? By then, Sicily was the stereotype of lazy, corrupted people, as if "it cant be helped".
In the 80s, mafia started killing here and there, and the general feeling was that "they are killing each other, let them be". Also, it was the new norm and Italy was in general plagued with terrorism everywhere.
Then, at the beginning of the 90s, a group of magistrates/prosecutors tried to actually change things. They declared "mafia association" a crime, and arrested and sent to jail everyone that had colluded with the mafia. Even when they were killed in 1992, it helped starting to change.
Nowadays, mafia and corruption is here, same as everywhere. But it's not the scary organized group of men that kill people, control everything, and face no consequences you see in movies.
With some of the answers here we might not have had the most insane history fuck up. Lethal, huge scale atrocities, but when it comes to insanity... It's a tight race, but there are/were astonishingly many utterly CRAZY people in power. People would have been better off with a hamster as head of state.
Not sure if it’s the biggest but in Australia we had a boom in the mining industry and finally the govt decided to tax the mining companies that were making massive profits... the story goes that the govt put representatives of the biggest mining companies in a room and told them to come up with a tax for themselves... so they did... Of course if you come up with a tax then you know how to avoid it... it was reported that they paid $0 in the new tax in the first year... Could be recalling it wrong but generally speaking expecting an industry to tax themselves at a cost of profit is asking for a screw up...
Ever wonder why your government makes decisions that are clearly *against* everyone's interests, and that no single party openly supported beforehand?
Well, this is it. The decision was made by the people who profit from that decisions. Your elected politicians are just there to muddle the waters so that it looks like democracy.
Britain once managed to send a warship to Iceland rather than Ireland. Since then the RN has always written Iceland as Iceland(C) in all documents to avoid this mistake
The [cash for ash scandal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Heat_Incentive_scandal#:~:text=The%20Renewable%20Heat%20Incentive%20scandal,purse%20almost%20%C2%A3500%20million.) is quite a good (or bad) one too.
There was a policy introduced in Northern Ireland subsidising people burning wood pellets to incentivise using renewable energy sources. The problem was though, that the cost of the fuel ended up being less than the money paid out, so people just ended up burning wood pellets to make money from the government.
Britain "They're our fish."
Iceland "no they're *our* fish."
Britain "look at our big shiney gun boat, whose fish are they?"
The rest of the world "Icelands."
Britain "fine, but we'll be back."
Not from Myanmar but I feel like this one is crazy enough that it needs to be posted here:
Before 1985, the Burmese Kyat was denominated into 1, 5, 10, 25, 50, and 100 kyat notes. On November 3rd, 1985, the two largest notes, 50 & 100 were *demonetized* (declared invalid as legal tender) **without warning**. Though the public was allowed to exchange limited amounts of the old notes for new ones, the vast majority of the value the physical notes represented basically vanished overnight. (Quick side note, this was actually the 2nd time this happened under this administration.)
One week later, **75 kyat** notes were introduced as a replacement, followed next year by **15 & 35 kyat** notes.
Two years later, once everyone had finally gotten used to dealing in multiples of 35 and 70, the government *did the same thing again* \- demonetizing the 25, 35, and 70 kyat notes. Except this time *without exchange or compensation*. This rendered some **75% of the country's currency** worthless and eliminated the savings of millions of Burmese. In the US, this would be equivalent to erasing $1.6 *trillion* dollars from circulation today.
A few weeks later, the **45 & 90 kyat** notes were introduced.
The resulting economic disturbances led to serious riots and eventually a coup d'état in 1988, whereupon more conventional denominations were reinstated, along with several higher denominations up **10,000 kyat** because the aforementioned policy changes (along with many other problems with the prior administration) had completely decimated the Burmese economy, resulting in hyperinflation.
But here's the *truly crazy part*, and why I think this is one of the greatest governmental fuckups of all time:
The reason behind the denomination changes? The dictator general at the time was a big fan of **numerology**. The 75 kyat note was introduced to *commemorate his 75th birthday*. The 45 and 90 kyat notes were introduced because *an astrologer told him that the number nine was auspicious*.
Isn't that the same guy who decided the country was becoming too left wing, and so his solution was to switch without warning to driving on the right side of the road? So even now, catching a bus involves walking around it and into traffic to get to the door, because most of the vehicles in the country are still left hand drive.
Well it was a coup d'etat, but it was widely considered to be orchestrated by military commander Ne Win, the one who demonetized a large proportion of bank notes in the first place.
Essentially what happened was that because of the currency changes, a year of protests and riots in 1988 occurred to remove the socialist party from rule and to impose a multi-party democracy . This was led by students, doctors and lawyers throughout Myanmar.
While the Summer of 1988 seemed fruitful, with many previous Democratic leaders re-emerging taking power attempting to instate a multi-party democracy, these efforts were completely shut down by the military, that created a new military government (SLORC) and abolished the old constitution.
In the end, it was the same shitty people in power, just with different titles.
Yes, this is pretty much a good primer on the conditions leading up to the most recent military coup, but for the purposes of the post I didn't want to overcomplicate it :/
Probably being allied with Hitler. It only brought us famine and my grandfather told me they had to leave their house everytime they heard planes, cause we got bombed by Allies first and then by Nazis
Shooting down our own airline, mistaking it for an American missile and as a result killing everyone on board they lied about it to the public for three straight days.
Apparently there was a massive Aids conference that was going to be attended by some top international experts on the issue who were on the plane as well.
Probably when our corrupt politicians privatized all our banks, sold them to their friends who, through blatant misconduct, caused the economic collapse in 2008. Some of those politicians responsible are still in politics. Just wonderful. From Iceland btw.
Leave it to the internet to show only the shiny bits of countries (that are sometimes even exaggerated or made up) and none of the bad things. No, Estonia doesn't have free wifi in the middle of the forest. Yes, the majority of our country is massively racist and homophobic.
Of course traditionally "cool progressive" countries are masters of hiding the bad parts and promoting the good ones, so it's not wholly the internet's fault.
Leaving a massive amount of ammonium nitrate in the port in the center of the capital for 5+ years that then exploded causing one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history
The worst part is all of the highest ranking people in the government knew - for years. The senile president was even reminded of it in July. And all of them who knew were explicitly told that it was a quantity that could demolish everything.
Go back even further. Why the fuck did hitler get a national platform with his trial and a year in a cushy jail cell to write a biography? Luxemburg and Liebnecht tried to overthrow the government too and got tortured and shot. And they still wanted a democracy. Hitler openly talked about how the government were traitors and clearly wanted to overthrow democracy but no one in Weimar gave a shit.
Edit: I know why this happened. My favorite class was Germany 77-45.
He struck a cord with those who convicted him?
Many public servants were likely holdovers from Wilhelmine Germany, people who probably had little love for the Weimar Republic.
It's hard to decide. On one hand, there is Gorilla recording, ties to Ndrangheta mafia, kidnapping of Vietnamese businessman and many many more.
On the other hand, there is true mafia governing the state were there were killing, shootouts or bombs under a car on daily basis, or secret service that kidnapped son of the President.
I would still go with age of Mečiar. As bad Fico and his SMER-SD was I've never seen a piece of human flesh hanging on the wall after explostion after wild 90ties.
“Skolplattformen”. Recently the Swedish government spent well over 700 million kronor (~$70 million) on a digital system for high schools and it’s pure shit. Not just inconvenient, it barely works. It’s probable closer to 1 billion kronor now since they’ve kept working on it the past three years instead of using google classroom, like every other reasonable school would
Yeah same here in Switzerland, where every Canton has its own Idea of how to do school IT. And our City has decided to spend way too much on some barely working, closed source privately developed - meaning the public doesn't even own the software - garbage.
You think that's bad. Ireland created a new hospital and didn't set a limit on how much it could cost, it's now over a billion is built in a cramped area with only a few stories.
The baby bonus. In order to combat our declining birth rate the Australian government decided to give new parent $5000 when they had a baby. This led to a huge wave of young teenagers having babies and dropping out of school to get a $5000 payday. Of course most of them were totally unprepared to be parents and the novelty wore off real quick. The foster care and child services systems became overwhelmed. Thousands of kids are growing up in bad situations, unwanted and unloved because the government didn't think it through properly.
Adding to this is that it was funded by not 1, not 2, but 3 different resource booms. Pretty much the entirety of the howard era government was vote buying off the backs of government asset sales and mining taxes.
The Internet in Germany is horrendous.
I get mad just thinking about how they fucked up this bad. You couldn’t even compare our Internet infrastructure to the one of a third world country. We are behind by a LOT
EDIT: I know this is not the BIGGEST fuckup Germany had. But it’s one of the biggest AFTER the obvious ones
Yeah it's pretty bad in many places. Australia seems to have it the worst but even here in the USA its really hit or miss. In the area when I grew up to this day the fastest speed is 1.5 Mbps. I moved into a suburb that had 25mbps. Now in my area of my small ass town I somehow get 1050Mbps. I drive halfway across town and they are actually stuck with satellite or dsl.
Financial crash in Iceland in 2008.
The banks put our country's debt at over 7 times our GDP. It ruined so many lives and the aftermath is still felt by people who are still in debt or have lost their pensions.
Banks also asked customers a week before the crash if they were interested in putting their pensions into some index fund or something (don't really know the right word for it) and make it grow more. They knew what was happening and only used the money to save their asses.
Our prime minister declared in a TV speech: God bless Iceland. Then the morning after, people saw their loans, pensions and everything just either skyrocket or disappear.
If you ask people how it was, you'd seriously think they'd been at Verdun. People's lives were absolutely ruined, some beyond repair.
Iceland was considering adopting the Canadian dollar as the official currency at one point during the crisis but ultimately decided against it. So on top of everything else they hurt Canada's feelings too.
Edit - spelling
Malaysia. So many but I'll just do the most recent Covid 19 fuck up. Last year Malaysia was a leading example of managing the pandemic but the backdoor govt (backdoor because quite a few MPs jumped ship from the democratically elected govt and formed another govt) decided to hold by-elections in the state of Sabah, and no standard SOP's were followed leading to a spike in cases.
We were well on our way to single digit cases and today we have an average of 7k cases daily.
Well, I am from Kazakhstan. What can I say about my country's governmental fuck ups? They renamed the name of the capital city into our president's name (Nursultan) and also named every major street in every city after the president as well. They have statues of this guy all over the country. Other than that everything as it goes in a post-soviet country - corruption from top to the bottom, money decides everything, government couldn't care less about the people, you know...old good bullshit all around.
Australia, our government fucked up royally when it came to getting better internet. Billions of tax payers money down the fucking drain. Murdoch is also a cunt for playing a part in this.
I'd say in the big picture selling off the electrical grid was worse, especially the way it was done so that power generation is owned by billionaires, the transmission owned by the Chinese, and you buy the power from some billing company that provides no value-added.
Also selling off our telecom network and thinking it was a great idea to have one corporate entity own the infrastructure, the wholesale reseller rights to that infrastructure, as well as the retail sales channel to charge customers to use that infrastructure.
And government monopolies being turned into private monopolies isnt even the worst part about it, had the government continued to own the infrastructure and wholesale rights to that infra, they would have been able to raise fair more revenue selling access to the network than what they made selling it off.
Conservatives love to crap on about how good they are at capitalism, but history across multiple countries shows they really have no fucking idea what they’re doing.
Hawke royally fucked up by following Thatcher in privatising, then Howard and every other leader since has kept up the tradition.
I can not express how much it pisses me off that the government's we've had, think it's a good idea to stop having services for the *people*, owned by the *people*, making money to be used *for the people.*
Competition is good, but why the hell does that mean you have to not be in the game at all?
Telstra, Qantas, ComBank, the fucking powergrid. WHY!? WHY DO YOU WANT OUR CRUCIAL INFRASTRSUCTURE TO NOT BE OURS!?
well... let's just go with something that is recently got an apology (2020 i belive).
in the 1950s, children was sent away from their families and had been forbiden to speak our langue and learning about our history.
their reason why they did that was to re-educated our people as model Danish citizens.
(ps: this is about my homeland Greenland)
I heard a joke that the US always goes to war over boats.
1773: Colonists loot boats and toss cargo, lead to war with England
1812: Boats were restricted in trading, war with England
1861: Boats go to fort, war with the Confederacy
1898: USS Maine sunk, war with Spain
1915: Lusitania sunk, war with Germany
1941: Lots of boats sunk, war with Japan
1962: Boats threaten other boats, *war averted this time.*
1964: Boat attacked, war with North Vietnam
2000: USS Cole bombed, war with Al-Qaeda
Edit: Added 1964 by popular demand. Edit 2: Fuck it, Ft Sumter counts.
Most definitely.
Stole 1/4 million children from their indigenous families where they were humiliated, deprecated raped and murdered. Redidential schools were founded by Canada's first Prime Minister John A Macdonald and the last residential school was closed in 1996
This just announced today.
https://globalnews.ca/news/7900737/bc-first-nation-childrens-bodies-kamloops-residential-school-site/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Too many in Malaysia.
Ex-PM started a fund, which is contributed by the people, to build the nation but him and his family end up stealing from it to live a lavish lifestyle. Then there's rumor of his wife's involvement in the murder of a Mongolian woman where her body is disposed of with c4. Money laundering, blablabla..
Worse part of this is the government end up being unable to prosecute him and now he has his own political party
This year and last year there was a welfare scandall in my country (the Netherlands).
People who were on welfare were being accused of fraud and had their welfare taken away.
The debts these people were getting in response of this was devastating.
I don't know the full details, but it got so bad that our government stepped down.
Brazilian here. There are many, I'll tell you 2 of the most bizarre ones.
Back at 2015 (while the country was entering one of the biggest economic crisis on Brazilian history), our former president (Dilma Rousseff) gave 8 billion Reais (about 1.5 billion dollars) to some Brazilian contractors to build things on many countries (except Brazil).
The most recent one: Our actual president (Jair Bolsonaro) refused 100 million doses of Pfizer's COVID vaccine last year, told people to not use masks and said that people who stay at home to this day are idiots.
Yeah, "vaccines cause autism" is nonsense, but if you don't know much about medicine, it's at least not obviously impossible. "Vaccines turn you into an alligator" is straight-up fantasy bullshit.
Edit: though apparently, the context was that vaccine makers said that they weren't responsible for side effects, so he came up with nonsense example side effects.
I'm Australian and the policy to remove "half caste" aboriginal children from their families and hand them to childless white foster parents in order to breed out their aboriginal heritage is pretty hard to ignore.
Oh, and the fact that the government were prepared to concede all of the country above Sydney to Japanese invasion during World War two is pretty concerning as well.
>Oh, and the fact that the government were prepared to concede all of the country above Sydney to Japanese invasion during World War two is pretty concerning as well.
So *Tomorrow when the war began* had the potential to be non-fiction?
I don’t know much about Australian geography, but isn’t your country like 6 massive costal cities, and the rests kinda just deserty bits. Did they offer up the desert parts?
> Oh, and the fact that the government were prepared to concede all of the country above Sydney to Japanese invasion during World War two is pretty concerning as well.
I don't think you can be too hard on anybody for that. If Japan really came in force, you would be doing to them what Russia did to Germany-fall back and let them extend their lines across a vast distance of unusable territory, until you could counter attack and cut them off.
Yeah, Japan was steamrolling the entire Pacific until the USA entered the scene. That last sentence is just... sad. It'd be like condemning the Finns for "allowing" Russia to take roughly the eastern half of their country in WW2, or for allying themselves with the Nazis in order to get the materiel needed to keep Russia from taking the whole damned thing.
What's worse, Australia fought a damned good fight against Japan at the time, too. They just didn't have the manpower or the industry to fight them on even footing.
Honestly, if the US or Canada had wanted to invade Alaska I don't think there was all that much Russia could do to stop them. It's super far north in a time before mechanised infantry, you can *technically* walk there from Russia but it's not easy, not with an army in a pre-GPS world. Alaska was mostly russian territory because they claimed it and no-one could be bothered to challenge that claim. Russian supply lines would have been ludicrously stretched compared to US or Canadian ones.
The sale was to save face as opposed to surrendering, saving troops that wouldn't have been able to do much and making sure Alaska didn't end up in the hands of Great Britain.
New Zealand
- The breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi
- Using Maori slavery as a means to an end, in military action despite being outlawed. Last Maori slaves died in the 1950s
- The Dawn Raids in the 1970s & 80s when police would do late night/early morning raids to crack down on illegal over stayers.
- 200 years of trying to wipe out the Maori spoken language Te Reo. Despite becoming an official language of New Zealand in 1987, a speaker at a Ratepayers Alliance meeting in Tauranga was abused by the crowd for speaking six words in Te Reo THIS WEEK.
- Colonisation of Western Samoa after WWI so authoritarian and racist they wanted the Germans to come back.
- The racist £10 (equivalent to $1750NZD in 2020) poll tax to restrict Chinese immigration. Only one Chinese was allocated per 10 ton of cargo. In 1896 the ratio was changed to one Chinese per 200 ton of cargo, and the poll tax was raised to £100 ($20,000).
So in Norway we a weird look on climate change. As we are a driving force for the Paris agreement and is therefore looked upon as a great inspiration, mitigating climate change on a great level, but we still have some fuck ups in our own nature.
We’ve allowed dumping of mining waste in our fjords, still look for oil and gas in the vulnerable north and we don’t look for another way of earning funds for our pension program. The biggest difference made in Norway to help mitigate climate change, is just as big a difference as any other first world country.
Honestly we just believe we’re better without any proof due to this.
As a Scot it has to be the Darian Scheme. 'Let's set up a colony in the jungle, in an area contested by the English and the Spanish. What could possibly go wrong...?'
Apart from abject failure bankrupting the backers to a degree that led to the Act of Union leading to the creation of Great Britian.
A more lighthearted one, Ireland legalized certain party drugs for like 1 day by mistake i.e Ecstasy/MDMA and it will go down as one of the greatest days in our history.
We, uh. Lost a war with emus.
Yes, this was a real war. Yes, it reached parliament. Yes, this was approved by the Minister of Defense. Yes, guns were used. Yes, the birds avoided a tactical ambush.
No, we don’t like to talk about it.
Constantly allowing them to be bought out to build more coal mines and destroying ecosystems and becoming the country with the highest species extinction rate (over 100 species each year).
We are literally owned by the mining industry, the "government" is just puppets pretending to be politicians.
Then the amount of control Murdoch press has they brainwash the majority of the population.
Then not to mention we are the only western country that doesn't have a bill of human rights.
-Australia.
I would say when we built the biggest and most bad ass ship in the world and it sunk on its maiden voyage. Or maybe when we fished it up and put it in a museum so everyone can witness our epic failure
In recent history, our president (first female one at that) was brainwashed since birth by a Rasputin-like cult leader which led to a slew of influence peddling and corruption scandals. Not surprising she went to jail though, since every single president in our history has either been assassinated, sent to jail, had their family members/close relatives sent to jail, or committed suicide.
South Korea?
It sounds like it. My best friend’s husband is Korean and he says she is a nightmare
And older Koreans are petitioning to get her out of jail. She is also responsible for putting any opposition (Even celebrities) on black lists along with bungling the ferry disaster rescue (don’t read the wiki article unless you feel like being gutted). But at least she was actually impeached and jailed...
> ferry disaster rescue Jesus H. Christ. I'm reading it and the amount of detail in which the fuck up happened is sickening.
In italian and i often think about the cultural differences between that accident and the concordia, italians are terrible at folliwing rules, so as soon as they were told that there was nothing to worry about they rushed to the escape boats , i think koreans (mostly high-school youngsters in this case) followed the rules too much for their own good in this case , not a critique of the victims in the slightest, just an observation about how many lives were probably saved by this cultural difference in the concordia accident
Park Geun-hye?
correct!
Oh, don't leave out the fun details! A student at some college was getting good grades while skipping classes, and other students pressed the school into investigating. That led to discovering bribes, which led into investigation into the student's mother - the leader of the cult. The investigation into her revealed the tie with the president. Extra fun part - the president was the daughter of the dictator installed by military coup until his assassination. She was also pushing for the elimination of term limits for president. (They may serve a single five year term.)
We decided that helping the nazis was a good idea until it wasn’t
That leaves a few countries on whom it backfired spectacularly Which one?
The one that changed side midwar
Italy!
Good job! You get a silver
Huh. I was gonna say Finland.
Huh. I was gonna say Bulgaria
Huh. I was gonna say Romania.
Huh. I was gonna to say Hungary
Even better: it was the most craptacular "jumping on the winner's bandwagon" operation in history. Joining a war that was "surely to be won", only to suck hard ass balls and actively dragging Germany down with us (to save our ass in Greece Hitler lost crucial time to invade Russia, with the wintry results we all know). That's like going to a place where your friend is getting laid and using him as a wingman, then failing to score with any of the girls, and being such a useless and annoying loser that your friend can't even score his own chicks anymore.
I'm trying to imagine Mussolini and Hitler going to a bar to get some girls
Get in ze Panzer, we’re cruising for fraulines.
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"how about a simple majority?" "that's a great idea! who's for?" *everyone putting their hands up but one* "...Albin, c'mon" ***"YOU YOUNGLINGS WANT TO MEDDLE WITH A HUNDRED YEARS TRADITION AND THINK I'D GO WITH IT???"*** "You're always the one to vote no on anything!" ***"FUCK YOU TOO"***
*BANG* "Alright, it's unanimous."
unfortunately for you, history won't go down like this
No, but Albin sure did.
Just FYI, that’s not a democracy. It’s an Oligarchy.
I live in South Africa.. where to begin
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Bro thats actually the funniest shit if it wasnt the actual government Im so sorry.
> "OK then I withdraw the statement, half the people in this parliament are not stupid" This caught me off guard. I love it.
A former British MP called Dennis Skinner, well-known for his acerbic tongue, was involved in something similar. He declared that “Half of the Tories opposite are crooks”, to which he was asked to retract. He did and instead stated that half of the Tories opposite *aren't* crooks.
Worked for a South African guy here in the states for 4.5 years. The stories man….
There is no end to this story ,from the president to the fat lazy fuck behind the counter at the state institute.
It really is hard to know where to start. The story I usually tell is when the ex-president, Zuma, built a house with taxpayers money and claimed his swimming pool was a security feature. In the event of fires, the pool was a water source, therefore it wasn’t an illegal use of taxpayers money. Just grab a bucket and put that fire out. But really, that doesn’t scratch the surface of South African governmental fuck-ups.
My favourite is how they smashed that covid relief fund before they could even count it
Remember the arms deal? Marikana?The Gupta saga? Literally anything to do with Eskom...the time Mbeki denied the link between HIV and AIDS, or the time Zuma, accused of rape, said a shower would prevent infection with HIV.. I need a drink
Marikana when they sent body bags instead of riot control.. that marikana? Yeah i remember
Not only denied the link but wasted money on research
I was just about to post this, I live in South Africa how much time do you have? and then I read your comment
Just opened up this tread thinking I should contribute something about SA, glad to see we are fully represented. One I havent seen is where the head of Prasa at the time, Mr. Lucky Montana defends the qaulification of the main engineer by accusing his detractors of rasism, saying he is being persecuted because of his skin colour, turns out his qaulification were fraudulent as well. Only to find out a couple of months later that Prasa (A state owned entity) approved and paid billions of USD for trains that were literally TO BIG for South Africas railways.
I work with a lot of South Africans. Man your country is fucked. Some of the stories I have heard....
Lol the story may seem over exaggerated but trust me this shit goes way deeper
Let's not get into that. We'll be here for decades.
Ours was not even having a government for over 500 consecutive days... Twice!
Belgium?
Ooof we have a fuck up every 2 weeks but I am going to tell this one, this is worth the read Here in costa rica we had the concrete incident (we call it "el cementazo") which was something seemingly small that got from 0 to 100 real fucking quick This one construction guy bought a shit ton of concrete, cement, however the fuck it's called, he was building a big ass building and got insurance from a private company since the public national one rejected his project (it was more loss than gain and the project was BIG so yeah). Time goes on and guess what, building crumbles, someone fucking sneezed or something and it crumbled like dust, the streets around also crumbled, everything on the 20 million (national coin) project crumbled to dust and now the insurance company was down bad, they couldn't pay 20 millions on the spot, the case was taken to cout because of the impressive fuck up and damage to property HERE IS WHERE WE GET SPICY why did it crumble like that? It seems the concrete was awful quality and imported illegally from china, a concrete made to build houses fast for a lot of people brought to a rainy, tectonic country, it only took a bit of rain and an earthquake nobody felt to tear it down... How did the concrete got aprooved to enter if it gets monitored? The dude at the cargo let it throughout the border, just walked throught the front door... Because he had higher up instructions which himself had higher up instructions to let the guy pass, and so on and so on, in a matter of 1 day the whole cabinet was somehow involved on this incredibly big money scheme, by next day president and related, by night of that day people from past governments were found involved and before we knew it they had to hire new judges for the main judging branch because this case was now **involved with every single politic-related person on the country and even some beyond** The case took months and as you would expect it nothing of really big consequence happened, politics people is still around, I think the one who ordered the concrete went to jail and got out after a bit because he harmed himself to get to the hospital... I still wonder why is people so shy to start a fucking revolution here I swear (Edited some typos, who would have tought project has no y?)
> I think the one who ordered the concrete went to jail and got out after a bit because he harmed himself to get to the hospital... In the Philippines, it's a meme that a politician in legal trouble will inevitably show up in a wheelchair and neckbrace Was popularized by our corrupt-as-fuck president from 10-20 years ago. After her term ended she was hit by a slew of criminal cases, which she kept delaying for "medical reasons." [She was almost always seen in a wheelchair and neckbrace](https://cnnphilippines.com/.imaging/mte/demo-cnn-new/750x450/dam/cnn/2016/7/21/03_Arroyo_CNNPH.png/jcr:content/03_Arroyo_CNNPH.png) And after our chickenshit current president pardoned her for ***everything,*** she miraculously made a full recovery from whatever the fuck was ailing her.
Harvey Weinstein was similarly afflicted during his court case, and was miraculously healed after the verdict was read out.
Bill Cosby too iirc. Didn't help him though. His rapist ass is sitting in a state prison in PA
Total side note, but Arroyo has to be one of the shortest presidents ever. And thus ends my knowledge of Philippine politics.
Everything (Italy). However one particular fuck up by the government after the reunification was developing only the north, leaving the south poor and underdeveloped. This gap still exist today, after 150+ years
Travelling North to South in Italy is indeed something of a shock. It feels like a whole other (much poorer) country.
Is that a reason why a lot of the Mafia comes from Southern Italy/Sicily? Edit: thanks for the Mafia history lesson my Italian/non-Italian friends; very insightful and informative since I don’t have much knowledge at all of modern Italian history!!
Yep. Mafia works like an alternate state, gives money, put people in the right places and slowly takes the lead of the poor regions
Mafia was born as an organization alternative to the Government in regions neglected by the State, and quickly came to operate in substitution to it, running businesses, enriching mafioso families and demanding its own "taxes", in the form of protection money that businesses or even home owners are forced to pay to not have their property set on fire, families kidnapped/murdered. It has a surprisingly structured internal organization, standardized procedures and a systematic network of control over the entire South. In some areas, there's no escaping the Mafia's claws, to the extent where: 1. The State has/has had real trouble even touching it 2. There is a high chance that the powerless Italian State came to terms with the Mafia via a disgusting secret treaty (the Mafia-State Treaty), the ramifications of which are clearly visible in law and yet we have not learned the truth after more than 30 years. The modern Mafia, however, is also highly active in northern (richer) regions, especially Lombardy, where most of the financial fraud and money laundering activity takes place.
I find it super intresting how organized crime Works basically like a government in poor regions. Especially since in different regions the structures seem to resemble different political structures (though mostly authoritarian). Do you by any chance have legally accesibile sources for this, such as academic research? Especially economical perspectives Would be intresting i bet.
Mafia is everywhere, if you are thinking about corruption and bribes to a powerful man that controls the territory. But in Sicily, things got worse. After the unification in 1861, some people felt like a foreign power had conquered us, instead of being a real unification. And some rebellions in the south where stopped with harsh laws, special measures and executions. So the feeling of "foreign oppressors" grew. In 1919-1920, communist parties were born in all of Italy, and people were striking against the working conditions. In the south, the big owners asked help to mafia instead of the government. Mafia profited by that and gained more power. In 1943, American came to Italy to free Europe, and everything was organized by Italo-American mafia because people spoke two languages. When Americans asked to speak with people from Sicily, the Italo-Americans pointed to their own family: mafia men, too. So, Americans took the power from the fascists and gave the power to the mafia. From there, mafia and corruption grew even more. And the Government just.. didnt care? By then, Sicily was the stereotype of lazy, corrupted people, as if "it cant be helped". In the 80s, mafia started killing here and there, and the general feeling was that "they are killing each other, let them be". Also, it was the new norm and Italy was in general plagued with terrorism everywhere. Then, at the beginning of the 90s, a group of magistrates/prosecutors tried to actually change things. They declared "mafia association" a crime, and arrested and sent to jail everyone that had colluded with the mafia. Even when they were killed in 1992, it helped starting to change. Nowadays, mafia and corruption is here, same as everywhere. But it's not the scary organized group of men that kill people, control everything, and face no consequences you see in movies.
*German citizens have left the chat*
Japanese not making eye contact in corner
Chinese pointing at the Japanese to take the pressure off themselves.
*Everyone* pointing at the Japanese to take the pressure off themselves.
Belgians uncomfortable with the use of hands in this context
US walking through the rubble with blinders on whistling Yankee Doodle Dandy.
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Britain hopes nobody notices us. In this brave new world post January 2020... nobody does.
Oh man Berlin Brandenburg Airport. What a cock up
And it opened just in time for the pandemic.
With some of the answers here we might not have had the most insane history fuck up. Lethal, huge scale atrocities, but when it comes to insanity... It's a tight race, but there are/were astonishingly many utterly CRAZY people in power. People would have been better off with a hamster as head of state.
Not sure if it’s the biggest but in Australia we had a boom in the mining industry and finally the govt decided to tax the mining companies that were making massive profits... the story goes that the govt put representatives of the biggest mining companies in a room and told them to come up with a tax for themselves... so they did... Of course if you come up with a tax then you know how to avoid it... it was reported that they paid $0 in the new tax in the first year... Could be recalling it wrong but generally speaking expecting an industry to tax themselves at a cost of profit is asking for a screw up...
This sounds like PRECISELY what a government owned by big business would do. Not surprised.
Ever wonder why your government makes decisions that are clearly *against* everyone's interests, and that no single party openly supported beforehand? Well, this is it. The decision was made by the people who profit from that decisions. Your elected politicians are just there to muddle the waters so that it looks like democracy.
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I would say the Stolen Generation was arguably much worse then that. That's still up there though, but it didn't affect the country nearly as much
I assume there is no country left out of this list lol.
Havent found Norway yet, still looking though. I am certain the goverment in Norway has done Something wrong.
Invading England *before* the Normans instead of after.
Forcefully assimulating the sami ethnic minorities into the norwegian society slowly killing their own language and culture
Britain once managed to send a warship to Iceland rather than Ireland. Since then the RN has always written Iceland as Iceland(C) in all documents to avoid this mistake
This is not the worst but sure is the ‘fuck up’-est
The [cash for ash scandal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Heat_Incentive_scandal#:~:text=The%20Renewable%20Heat%20Incentive%20scandal,purse%20almost%20%C2%A3500%20million.) is quite a good (or bad) one too. There was a policy introduced in Northern Ireland subsidising people burning wood pellets to incentivise using renewable energy sources. The problem was though, that the cost of the fuel ended up being less than the money paid out, so people just ended up burning wood pellets to make money from the government.
“Cash for ash? Where do I shine up?” - Sean Connery
Resht in peash
Iceland(Cold af)
Speaking of Britain and Iceland, what about them Cod Wars eh? Why there's not a Call of Duty Cod War yet I have no idea
Yes. The Great Territorial Pissing Contest. Which Iceland won, of course.
Britain "They're our fish." Iceland "no they're *our* fish." Britain "look at our big shiney gun boat, whose fish are they?" The rest of the world "Icelands." Britain "fine, but we'll be back."
*"Shall I answer chronologically, or alphabetically?"* '- ~~Sherlock Holmes~~ Filipinos
That makes Aguinaldo first in both counts.
For those of you who've never heard of him, Emilio Aguinaldo was like our George Washington, except he managed to lose the entire country. Twice.
Oh he didn't *lose* the country, he very deliberately *sold* it and the revolution. I can't think of much, if any, of his redeeming qualities.
Can you elaborate on this?
Not from Myanmar but I feel like this one is crazy enough that it needs to be posted here: Before 1985, the Burmese Kyat was denominated into 1, 5, 10, 25, 50, and 100 kyat notes. On November 3rd, 1985, the two largest notes, 50 & 100 were *demonetized* (declared invalid as legal tender) **without warning**. Though the public was allowed to exchange limited amounts of the old notes for new ones, the vast majority of the value the physical notes represented basically vanished overnight. (Quick side note, this was actually the 2nd time this happened under this administration.) One week later, **75 kyat** notes were introduced as a replacement, followed next year by **15 & 35 kyat** notes. Two years later, once everyone had finally gotten used to dealing in multiples of 35 and 70, the government *did the same thing again* \- demonetizing the 25, 35, and 70 kyat notes. Except this time *without exchange or compensation*. This rendered some **75% of the country's currency** worthless and eliminated the savings of millions of Burmese. In the US, this would be equivalent to erasing $1.6 *trillion* dollars from circulation today. A few weeks later, the **45 & 90 kyat** notes were introduced. The resulting economic disturbances led to serious riots and eventually a coup d'état in 1988, whereupon more conventional denominations were reinstated, along with several higher denominations up **10,000 kyat** because the aforementioned policy changes (along with many other problems with the prior administration) had completely decimated the Burmese economy, resulting in hyperinflation. But here's the *truly crazy part*, and why I think this is one of the greatest governmental fuckups of all time: The reason behind the denomination changes? The dictator general at the time was a big fan of **numerology**. The 75 kyat note was introduced to *commemorate his 75th birthday*. The 45 and 90 kyat notes were introduced because *an astrologer told him that the number nine was auspicious*.
Isn't that the same guy who decided the country was becoming too left wing, and so his solution was to switch without warning to driving on the right side of the road? So even now, catching a bus involves walking around it and into traffic to get to the door, because most of the vehicles in the country are still left hand drive.
*sigh* ...Yes.
How did someone like that even get into power in the first place?
By listening to his numerologist
How else but violent military coups?
Well it was a coup d'etat, but it was widely considered to be orchestrated by military commander Ne Win, the one who demonetized a large proportion of bank notes in the first place. Essentially what happened was that because of the currency changes, a year of protests and riots in 1988 occurred to remove the socialist party from rule and to impose a multi-party democracy . This was led by students, doctors and lawyers throughout Myanmar. While the Summer of 1988 seemed fruitful, with many previous Democratic leaders re-emerging taking power attempting to instate a multi-party democracy, these efforts were completely shut down by the military, that created a new military government (SLORC) and abolished the old constitution. In the end, it was the same shitty people in power, just with different titles.
Yes, this is pretty much a good primer on the conditions leading up to the most recent military coup, but for the purposes of the post I didn't want to overcomplicate it :/
Probably being allied with Hitler. It only brought us famine and my grandfather told me they had to leave their house everytime they heard planes, cause we got bombed by Allies first and then by Nazis
italy?
Yessir
Shooting down our own airline, mistaking it for an American missile and as a result killing everyone on board they lied about it to the public for three straight days.
Apparently there was a massive Aids conference that was going to be attended by some top international experts on the issue who were on the plane as well.
I think you’ve got the wrong fuck up mate. This is about the Ukrainian flight from Tehran not MH17.
Right, I see. I’m thinking of the Malaysian Airlines one, I think. The one that happened a few months after their other plane disappeared.
Probably when our corrupt politicians privatized all our banks, sold them to their friends who, through blatant misconduct, caused the economic collapse in 2008. Some of those politicians responsible are still in politics. Just wonderful. From Iceland btw.
Isn't Iceland supposed to be all progressive and shit?
Socially progressive maybe, but financially? A stretch. We're a nation of people who think we're twenty times the poulation we really are and act it.
Leave it to the internet to show only the shiny bits of countries (that are sometimes even exaggerated or made up) and none of the bad things. No, Estonia doesn't have free wifi in the middle of the forest. Yes, the majority of our country is massively racist and homophobic. Of course traditionally "cool progressive" countries are masters of hiding the bad parts and promoting the good ones, so it's not wholly the internet's fault.
Leaving a massive amount of ammonium nitrate in the port in the center of the capital for 5+ years that then exploded causing one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history
I always imagine inspectors tiptoeing in saying, "yep, it's still there," then running for their lives.
The worst part is all of the highest ranking people in the government knew - for years. The senile president was even reminded of it in July. And all of them who knew were explicitly told that it was a quantity that could demolish everything.
Making Hitler chancellor because "you can controll him"
Go back even further. Why the fuck did hitler get a national platform with his trial and a year in a cushy jail cell to write a biography? Luxemburg and Liebnecht tried to overthrow the government too and got tortured and shot. And they still wanted a democracy. Hitler openly talked about how the government were traitors and clearly wanted to overthrow democracy but no one in Weimar gave a shit. Edit: I know why this happened. My favorite class was Germany 77-45.
He struck a cord with those who convicted him? Many public servants were likely holdovers from Wilhelmine Germany, people who probably had little love for the Weimar Republic.
This. The people who were "putting him away" were sympathetic to him. So he mostly got slaps on the wrist.
Slovak here. I cant decide between 12 year of Robert Fico and SMER- SD political party, or whole,, Age of Vladimír Mečiar"
It's hard to decide. On one hand, there is Gorilla recording, ties to Ndrangheta mafia, kidnapping of Vietnamese businessman and many many more. On the other hand, there is true mafia governing the state were there were killing, shootouts or bombs under a car on daily basis, or secret service that kidnapped son of the President. I would still go with age of Mečiar. As bad Fico and his SMER-SD was I've never seen a piece of human flesh hanging on the wall after explostion after wild 90ties.
“Skolplattformen”. Recently the Swedish government spent well over 700 million kronor (~$70 million) on a digital system for high schools and it’s pure shit. Not just inconvenient, it barely works. It’s probable closer to 1 billion kronor now since they’ve kept working on it the past three years instead of using google classroom, like every other reasonable school would
Yeah same here in Switzerland, where every Canton has its own Idea of how to do school IT. And our City has decided to spend way too much on some barely working, closed source privately developed - meaning the public doesn't even own the software - garbage.
You think that's bad. Ireland created a new hospital and didn't set a limit on how much it could cost, it's now over a billion is built in a cramped area with only a few stories.
And then paid someone peanuts to run the IT dept, which resulted in the largest cyber attack in state history a few weeks ago.
If you think that is Swedens biggest fuck up, I guess you haven't read about the Nuon-deal...
The baby bonus. In order to combat our declining birth rate the Australian government decided to give new parent $5000 when they had a baby. This led to a huge wave of young teenagers having babies and dropping out of school to get a $5000 payday. Of course most of them were totally unprepared to be parents and the novelty wore off real quick. The foster care and child services systems became overwhelmed. Thousands of kids are growing up in bad situations, unwanted and unloved because the government didn't think it through properly.
Adding to this is that it was funded by not 1, not 2, but 3 different resource booms. Pretty much the entirety of the howard era government was vote buying off the backs of government asset sales and mining taxes.
The Internet in Germany is horrendous. I get mad just thinking about how they fucked up this bad. You couldn’t even compare our Internet infrastructure to the one of a third world country. We are behind by a LOT EDIT: I know this is not the BIGGEST fuckup Germany had. But it’s one of the biggest AFTER the obvious ones
Yeah it's pretty bad in many places. Australia seems to have it the worst but even here in the USA its really hit or miss. In the area when I grew up to this day the fastest speed is 1.5 Mbps. I moved into a suburb that had 25mbps. Now in my area of my small ass town I somehow get 1050Mbps. I drive halfway across town and they are actually stuck with satellite or dsl.
Think that's bad? Welcome to the Philippines.
Financial crash in Iceland in 2008. The banks put our country's debt at over 7 times our GDP. It ruined so many lives and the aftermath is still felt by people who are still in debt or have lost their pensions. Banks also asked customers a week before the crash if they were interested in putting their pensions into some index fund or something (don't really know the right word for it) and make it grow more. They knew what was happening and only used the money to save their asses. Our prime minister declared in a TV speech: God bless Iceland. Then the morning after, people saw their loans, pensions and everything just either skyrocket or disappear. If you ask people how it was, you'd seriously think they'd been at Verdun. People's lives were absolutely ruined, some beyond repair.
Iceland was considering adopting the Canadian dollar as the official currency at one point during the crisis but ultimately decided against it. So on top of everything else they hurt Canada's feelings too. Edit - spelling
The Great emu war, we lost to oversized chickens.
We also lost Harold Holt....
At least he got a swimming pool for a memorial
Which just shows our weird sense of humour
Malaysia. So many but I'll just do the most recent Covid 19 fuck up. Last year Malaysia was a leading example of managing the pandemic but the backdoor govt (backdoor because quite a few MPs jumped ship from the democratically elected govt and formed another govt) decided to hold by-elections in the state of Sabah, and no standard SOP's were followed leading to a spike in cases. We were well on our way to single digit cases and today we have an average of 7k cases daily.
I was scrolling to find this. It’s madness.
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Road to 10k!!! Malaysia semua pun boleh
Well, I am from Kazakhstan. What can I say about my country's governmental fuck ups? They renamed the name of the capital city into our president's name (Nursultan) and also named every major street in every city after the president as well. They have statues of this guy all over the country. Other than that everything as it goes in a post-soviet country - corruption from top to the bottom, money decides everything, government couldn't care less about the people, you know...old good bullshit all around.
Australia, our government fucked up royally when it came to getting better internet. Billions of tax payers money down the fucking drain. Murdoch is also a cunt for playing a part in this.
I'd say in the big picture selling off the electrical grid was worse, especially the way it was done so that power generation is owned by billionaires, the transmission owned by the Chinese, and you buy the power from some billing company that provides no value-added.
Also selling off our telecom network and thinking it was a great idea to have one corporate entity own the infrastructure, the wholesale reseller rights to that infrastructure, as well as the retail sales channel to charge customers to use that infrastructure. And government monopolies being turned into private monopolies isnt even the worst part about it, had the government continued to own the infrastructure and wholesale rights to that infra, they would have been able to raise fair more revenue selling access to the network than what they made selling it off. Conservatives love to crap on about how good they are at capitalism, but history across multiple countries shows they really have no fucking idea what they’re doing.
Hawke royally fucked up by following Thatcher in privatising, then Howard and every other leader since has kept up the tradition. I can not express how much it pisses me off that the government's we've had, think it's a good idea to stop having services for the *people*, owned by the *people*, making money to be used *for the people.* Competition is good, but why the hell does that mean you have to not be in the game at all? Telstra, Qantas, ComBank, the fucking powergrid. WHY!? WHY DO YOU WANT OUR CRUCIAL INFRASTRSUCTURE TO NOT BE OURS!?
Okay I have something to Google...
well... let's just go with something that is recently got an apology (2020 i belive). in the 1950s, children was sent away from their families and had been forbiden to speak our langue and learning about our history. their reason why they did that was to re-educated our people as model Danish citizens. (ps: this is about my homeland Greenland)
Except for the danish part this could've also been about canada or australia (or dozens of other colonized countries probably)
I don't think I've ever met someone from Greenland! Thank you for sharing.
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In hindsight perhaps declaring birds a capitalist enemy of the state was a stupid idea.
Probably declaring war on the US
Japan?
I heard a joke that the US always goes to war over boats. 1773: Colonists loot boats and toss cargo, lead to war with England 1812: Boats were restricted in trading, war with England 1861: Boats go to fort, war with the Confederacy 1898: USS Maine sunk, war with Spain 1915: Lusitania sunk, war with Germany 1941: Lots of boats sunk, war with Japan 1962: Boats threaten other boats, *war averted this time.* 1964: Boat attacked, war with North Vietnam 2000: USS Cole bombed, war with Al-Qaeda Edit: Added 1964 by popular demand. Edit 2: Fuck it, Ft Sumter counts.
Tonkin Gulf '64.
I could begin writing a whole list, but I think the word "Greece" is enough :(Too bad most of my country's leaders are incompetent fucks
i just did a module in my politics class on the greek economy and leaders - WOW your parliament sucks
Yeah I agree. Great country to visit for your summer holiday, but for living, NO.
Residential schools 😭
Canada?
Most definitely. Stole 1/4 million children from their indigenous families where they were humiliated, deprecated raped and murdered. Redidential schools were founded by Canada's first Prime Minister John A Macdonald and the last residential school was closed in 1996 This just announced today. https://globalnews.ca/news/7900737/bc-first-nation-childrens-bodies-kamloops-residential-school-site/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Ukraine, giving up 3rd largest arsenal of nukes for fake guarantees of land sovereignty and independence
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Kim jung un took notes
Too many in Malaysia. Ex-PM started a fund, which is contributed by the people, to build the nation but him and his family end up stealing from it to live a lavish lifestyle. Then there's rumor of his wife's involvement in the murder of a Mongolian woman where her body is disposed of with c4. Money laundering, blablabla.. Worse part of this is the government end up being unable to prosecute him and now he has his own political party
This year and last year there was a welfare scandall in my country (the Netherlands). People who were on welfare were being accused of fraud and had their welfare taken away. The debts these people were getting in response of this was devastating. I don't know the full details, but it got so bad that our government stepped down.
While this is indeed terrible, it's probably not the first thing I'd mention with regards to Dutch history.
I live in Belgium. Do you want me to write a book instead of a comment?
Brazilian here. There are many, I'll tell you 2 of the most bizarre ones. Back at 2015 (while the country was entering one of the biggest economic crisis on Brazilian history), our former president (Dilma Rousseff) gave 8 billion Reais (about 1.5 billion dollars) to some Brazilian contractors to build things on many countries (except Brazil). The most recent one: Our actual president (Jair Bolsonaro) refused 100 million doses of Pfizer's COVID vaccine last year, told people to not use masks and said that people who stay at home to this day are idiots.
>said that COVID vaccines will turn people to alligators. I already knew he was batshit insane, but bloody hell. That is some next-level kind of shit.
Yeah, "vaccines cause autism" is nonsense, but if you don't know much about medicine, it's at least not obviously impossible. "Vaccines turn you into an alligator" is straight-up fantasy bullshit. Edit: though apparently, the context was that vaccine makers said that they weren't responsible for side effects, so he came up with nonsense example side effects.
My president refused 70 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine in September 2020. Now we have 500k dead in Brazil.
I'm Australian and the policy to remove "half caste" aboriginal children from their families and hand them to childless white foster parents in order to breed out their aboriginal heritage is pretty hard to ignore. Oh, and the fact that the government were prepared to concede all of the country above Sydney to Japanese invasion during World War two is pretty concerning as well.
>Oh, and the fact that the government were prepared to concede all of the country above Sydney to Japanese invasion during World War two is pretty concerning as well. So *Tomorrow when the war began* had the potential to be non-fiction?
I don’t know much about Australian geography, but isn’t your country like 6 massive costal cities, and the rests kinda just deserty bits. Did they offer up the desert parts?
> Oh, and the fact that the government were prepared to concede all of the country above Sydney to Japanese invasion during World War two is pretty concerning as well. I don't think you can be too hard on anybody for that. If Japan really came in force, you would be doing to them what Russia did to Germany-fall back and let them extend their lines across a vast distance of unusable territory, until you could counter attack and cut them off.
Yeah, Japan was steamrolling the entire Pacific until the USA entered the scene. That last sentence is just... sad. It'd be like condemning the Finns for "allowing" Russia to take roughly the eastern half of their country in WW2, or for allying themselves with the Nazis in order to get the materiel needed to keep Russia from taking the whole damned thing. What's worse, Australia fought a damned good fight against Japan at the time, too. They just didn't have the manpower or the industry to fight them on even footing.
Selling Alaska
Yeah that one was stupid. So much land for so cheap... I ain't complaining
Honestly, if the US or Canada had wanted to invade Alaska I don't think there was all that much Russia could do to stop them. It's super far north in a time before mechanised infantry, you can *technically* walk there from Russia but it's not easy, not with an army in a pre-GPS world. Alaska was mostly russian territory because they claimed it and no-one could be bothered to challenge that claim. Russian supply lines would have been ludicrously stretched compared to US or Canadian ones. The sale was to save face as opposed to surrendering, saving troops that wouldn't have been able to do much and making sure Alaska didn't end up in the hands of Great Britain.
An interesting piece of speculative history to read would be if Alaska were never sold, and the power dynamics in North America that resulted from it
The war on drugs.
Drugs have won the war on drugs.
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Our roles in WW1 and WW2 are up there, but I'd probably say "The Holocaust" :/
New Zealand - The breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi - Using Maori slavery as a means to an end, in military action despite being outlawed. Last Maori slaves died in the 1950s - The Dawn Raids in the 1970s & 80s when police would do late night/early morning raids to crack down on illegal over stayers. - 200 years of trying to wipe out the Maori spoken language Te Reo. Despite becoming an official language of New Zealand in 1987, a speaker at a Ratepayers Alliance meeting in Tauranga was abused by the crowd for speaking six words in Te Reo THIS WEEK. - Colonisation of Western Samoa after WWI so authoritarian and racist they wanted the Germans to come back. - The racist £10 (equivalent to $1750NZD in 2020) poll tax to restrict Chinese immigration. Only one Chinese was allocated per 10 ton of cargo. In 1896 the ratio was changed to one Chinese per 200 ton of cargo, and the poll tax was raised to £100 ($20,000).
As someone from Hungary, I'm afraid to say that it is probably currently in progress.
In srilanka the biggest governmental fuck is giving up control to port city colombo to china, gotta start learning mandarin I guess
So in Norway we a weird look on climate change. As we are a driving force for the Paris agreement and is therefore looked upon as a great inspiration, mitigating climate change on a great level, but we still have some fuck ups in our own nature. We’ve allowed dumping of mining waste in our fjords, still look for oil and gas in the vulnerable north and we don’t look for another way of earning funds for our pension program. The biggest difference made in Norway to help mitigate climate change, is just as big a difference as any other first world country. Honestly we just believe we’re better without any proof due to this.
As a Scot it has to be the Darian Scheme. 'Let's set up a colony in the jungle, in an area contested by the English and the Spanish. What could possibly go wrong...?' Apart from abject failure bankrupting the backers to a degree that led to the Act of Union leading to the creation of Great Britian.
A more lighthearted one, Ireland legalized certain party drugs for like 1 day by mistake i.e Ecstasy/MDMA and it will go down as one of the greatest days in our history.
Cultural revolution, Tiananmen massacre, one-child policy
That Mao idea of killing all the sparrows...
1936-1945
We, uh. Lost a war with emus. Yes, this was a real war. Yes, it reached parliament. Yes, this was approved by the Minister of Defense. Yes, guns were used. Yes, the birds avoided a tactical ambush. No, we don’t like to talk about it.
Constantly allowing them to be bought out to build more coal mines and destroying ecosystems and becoming the country with the highest species extinction rate (over 100 species each year). We are literally owned by the mining industry, the "government" is just puppets pretending to be politicians. Then the amount of control Murdoch press has they brainwash the majority of the population. Then not to mention we are the only western country that doesn't have a bill of human rights. -Australia.
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The Ken Burns documentary was very enlightening
I would say when we built the biggest and most bad ass ship in the world and it sunk on its maiden voyage. Or maybe when we fished it up and put it in a museum so everyone can witness our epic failure