There are 7.9 billion people on earth who are not academy members.  It’s not a big deal.

Fortunately she’s safe (for now), fined and released after a 14 hour (!) interrogation.

“One can say, “This is terrible and we stand with Ukraine and its democracy” without even putting themselves into hot water”

The whole reaction seems just.... strange. I can understand that people were initially reacting to the misreported quote - but once it became clear he’d not said what was claimed, instead of winding down people just kept on raging. Like they’re angry at the guy for merely existing. Which would be fair enough really -…

Which members of his family directly contributed to atrocities in Northern Ireland “very, very recently” ? And which atrocities in particular?

Oh, will you look at that:

I’m shocked I tell you, shocked.

Never underestimate the power of Americans to make everything about themselves.

If only the article had included such a detail:

Exactly - with all the attention that part of what he (apparently) said is getting, you’d have though *someone* might have been able to get the actual quote.

Fair point, I should put an icon in some day.

Because it is obvious, from context, what the quote meant. Saying that the US doesn’t have a diplomatic relationship with Russia would be absurd. There are other countries the US has no diplomatic relationships but they’re not ones with massive armies with which the US could potentially come into conflict with.…

What knots was I tying myself in? Did you mean isavage ?

They, very clearly, mean the US does not, at present, have *good* diplomatic relationships with Russia. The kind of relationship you’d need to ask for the release of someone from prison as a favour.

It’s not impossible, or even terribly unlike he *did* say something along those lines - what is worrying is that it’s being reported in multiple places as something he said, when *none* of the sources has a quote.  Someone claims someone else said something and nobody checks if they actually did or not.

Good thing he didn’t say anything about Africa then...

We have the full quote: “It’s very alien to see this in Europe. We are all behind you” that’s it. Same thing reported in numerous sources and they all have the same quote. Daily Mail have made their own assumptions about what that implies (which is more than a little of a stretch) and then the writer here has…

Except your headline is a direct lie because he didn’t actually say that at all. Some one writing for the Daily fucking Mail said that, and you just assumed it was true and have repeated it.

Middle eastern countries aren’t in Europe though.  Do you have a map?

For gods sake - stop posting the same thing in *every* thread.   Neither of those sources back up the claim made in the headline - did you actually read them?