Or just use a different browser. I use Firefox, Opera and Yandex, I accepted the update, but I haven't been bothered because I never open IE. (OK, OK, except for updates).
All of this underhanded nagging to upgrade really aggravates me to the point that I'm now willing to investigate using an alternate OS. Good Job Microsoft!
Well, at least they got you to change operating system...!
No, the last thing we need is people who think you should die for expressing your opinion having greater military capability. And the way to make that not worth it to them is to have countermeasures that are wildly more sophisticated than what they have to fight with.
What else is the regime in Kiev to be called? Even the current (illegal) "President" Petro Poroshenko has publicly admitted that the overthrow of his predecessor, President Yanukovych, was illegal.
'In a remarkable document, which is not posted at the English version of the website of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, but which is widely reported outside the United States, including Russia, Poroshenko, in Ukrainian (not in English), has petitioned the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (as it is being widely quoted in English): '“I ask the court to acknowledge that the law ‘on the removal of the presidential title from Viktor Yanukovych’ as unconstitutional.” 'The official Ukrainian news-agency, Interfax-Ukraine, headlined this on June 20th, “Poroshenko asking Constitutional Court to recognize law stripping Yanukovych of presidential title as unconstitutional”'.
As for "Russia Insider" being owned by the Russian government, can you please post details of how you know that to be true? If you don't, I'll assume your statement is unsupported.
It's irrelevant anyway. The reason I read sources such as RI and RT (among many others) is that the Western mainstream media are completely useless as impartial sources for international news. For a variety of reasons they have all been substantially subverted by Western governments - ironically, it is the Western MSM that is effectively government-owned, whereas RI and RT are relatively accurate and objective.
And, whereas you and others persist in calling me a troll, I am beginning to be fairly sure that it is you who are (mostly, at any rate) trolls. You do not seem to be in the least interested in facts, figures, logic, sources, or truth. If anyone dares to disagree with you, you simply insult them in the hope that they will give up in disgust. Well, I shan't. I am sure that many Slashdotters have open minds and want to know the truth, and it is worth putting up with a little childish mudslinging to help them.
Well, this is a new nadir even for Slashdot. Moderating a request for information as "Troll". Amazingly, the readership of the British "Daily Mail" are far more opeminded than Slashdot seems to be.
How many Russian trolls inhabit/. to mark this crap informative? Every single word is straight out of the Russian propaganda playbook. Not a single statement resembles reality.
'This is Karl Rove territory. The principle seems to be, "Whatever you do that is evil, blame your opponent for it first." I propose to call this The Rove Doctrine'. http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
Though this should not be surprising since there is no word for truth in the Russian language.
"Pravda". Although any linguistics expert will tell you that, if a language did lack a word for "truth", that would actually suggest that the speakers did not know how to lie.
The fact this St. Petersburg-based Russian troll used Russian insider as their source should be the clearest evidence this is nothing but blatant propaganda on the part of the Kremlin trolls.
'This is Karl Rove territory. The principle seems to be, "Whatever you do that is evil, blame your opponent for it first." I propose to call this The Rove Doctrine'. http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
A classic piece of "poisoning the well". In case you haven't heard, it's a standard logical fallacy used to avoid meeting an argument with any actual facts.
Thank you for your civil and compellingly logical argument.
Incidentally, I am not a "Russian troll" - although that may be your way of coping with any facts and opinions you don't like. I am British and quite conservative by inclination, and I base my conclusions on the facts - as best I can determine them after examining all the evidence and opinion I can find. If you ask why I am standing up for the Russians in this case, it is simply because I was brought up and educated to respect truth. Also it is a British tradition to take the side of the "underdog", which at the moment is very definitely Russia.
WTF? The only claims I've ever seen to the effect that MH-117 had been shot down by *another plane* have come from the Russians.
Everybody else says and has been saying all along that it was a Russian-made AA battery, probably used by the rebels after getting it from the Russians. The Dutch investigation appears to confirm this.
Of course the Russians are the only people saying MH-17 might have been shot down by a fighter. The Ukrainian Armed Forces had the only fighters in the country at that time. (They may all have rusted to bits by now, or fallen to pieces for lack of maintenance). So if a fighter did the deed, it could only have been on the orders of the Kiev junta.
The term "Russian-made" is an interesting though disingenuous piece of sophistry. Of course, as Ukraine was part of the USSR, all its military equipment was "Russian-made" (although it might have been manufactured and even designed anywhere in the USSR, including Ukraine itself). Logically, the fact that a weapon is "Russian-made" implies that it might be used by the UAF - or not. It definitely cannot be used to imply that it wasn't used by the UAF. Incidentally, it would be interesting to notice where the weapons come from that ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups use. Namely the USA; although the US armed forces lose so much of their weapons and equipment through negligence and sheer forgetfulness that it's hard to know if this is deliberate or not in any given case. However the Russian helicopter that was shot down and destroyed by terrorists while trying to rescue the crew of the shot-down Su-24 was definitely hit by an American TOW missile.
The Dutch inquiry hasn't decided much of anything, and certainly hasn't published much useful evidence. Here is some insight into the feelings of the victims' relatives: http://www.rt.com/news/310195-...
I have never understood why the owners and editors of a news outlet would call it "The Daily Beast". The name was first invented by Evelyn Waugh in his famous novel of journalistic corruption "Scoop". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Waugh makes it perfectly clear that "The Daily Beast" closely reflects the preferences of its owner, Lord Copper, who is ignorant, violently prejudiced, and deeply unpleasant. In short, it's a gutter-press rag which cannot even be trusted to get the bare facts right, and whose opinions are deeply biased.
I don't usually read "The Daily Beast", and a quick scan of TFA confirms the wisdom of that choice. I have better things to do than waste time incredulously reading sentence after sentence of rancid, vicious libel - which is transparently fictional. Two issues are touched on, MH17 and the Su-24. (The whole idea that social media can provide any reliable evidence in such matters is, like everything else "The Daily Beast" publishes, obviously ridiculous).
1. The salient facts about MH17 are that, whereas most airliner crashes are investigated within a few months and comprehensive reports published, nearly two years after the MH17 crash no satisfactory report has been published. The only really indisputable fact is that the disaster happened over the territory of Ukraine, which is therefore responsible until proof is given of some other agency. The Ukrainian authorities failed to close the airspace, although they knew it was dangerous; they claim that both their civil and military radars were switched off at the time (completely unbelievable); and they immediately blamed Russia within minutes of the crash, although they could not possibly have had any hard evidence so soon. (Especially without any working radars). Further, the US government immediately claimed that "the Russians did it" and that there was a whole mass of evidence; yet to this day they have not published a single scrap of that evidence. Satellite images would be a good start - it is known that US satellites were in position to see everything that happened. The only conceivable reason why that imagery has not been published is that it contradicts the official US/Ukrainian story. Whether MH17 was shot down by a SAM or by air-to-air missiles fired from a fighter, or by cannon fire, or some combination of these, has not been determined. Whichever was the case, the facts strongly suggest Ukrainian agency rather than the Russians or the Donbass militias, as it was directly contrary to their interests. The Ukrainian regime, on the other hand, systematically lies and continually engages in self-destructive behaviour.
2. The salient facts about the Su-24 assassination are that the Russian aircraft encroached on Turkish airspace for only a few seconds (if at all); that the F-16 that shot it down came from an airbase over an hour's flight away, so it must have been refuelled in the air and loitered waiting for the Su-24; and that the accurate interception and engagement, without the use of the F-16's attack radar, prove that NATO radar systems must have vectored it in. Nothing else is really important, although it could be mentioned that Turkish military aircraft regularly encroach far more severely on the air space of Syria and Greece; and that the Russian aircraft was attacking murderous Takfiri terrorists, proving that Turkey shot it down in order to protect those terrorists, who are its (and the USA's) creatures.
Anyone who is interested in getting at the truth might care to look at the following two articles (out of hundreds that I could cite):
"They would panic if you started playing bits from Tom Clancy films or TV shows like Dexter. Then, once several people are picked up by law enforcement, only to find they've been duped, they may reconsider the error of their ways".
Or they may subject them to severe questioning, indefinite imprisonment, or extraordinary rendition. http://www.brightknowledge.org...
In addition, if both conditions are clearly posted in the vehicle, then the rider can choose not to board that vehicle.
I guess I just don't see a problem here unless the surveillance is being done without the rider's knowledge.
Well, I do. It means that you have to choose between reasonable privacy and using the public transport network that has been built and run with your money. That means you don't get to ride on the bus if you value your privacy or have anything to say that you don't want to share with about 5 million government employees and their families and friends.
Rosa Parks was just complaining about having to ride in the back of the bus. Nowadays nobody gets to ride anywhere in the bus if they value privacy. That's progress of a kind.
I challenge your premise. The journalism I read has to be written by someone - and, I hope, researched too. That all takes work, which (in theory) is worth money. But it does NOT have to be paid for by anyone. It might just be done by someone who wants to do it.
"Quite simply – if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist. And that's as true for the latest piece of journalism as it is for the new album from Muse."
Oh yeah? So is it true for Linux? Or LibreOffice?The other day, when I downloaded the latest version of LibreOffice, I made a voluntary donation. But that was MY choice - I could download their software from now untul Kingdom Come and I wouldn't have to pay a penny.
John Whittingdale is talking sheer nonsense. Try these:
"Quite simply – if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist. And that's as true for the latest piece of journalism as it is for the alphabet, the number system, the periodic table, the English language (and all other languages)..."
Frankly, these days I reckon that the more a piece of journalism costs to read, the less worth while reading it is.
Ironically, a very similar scheme has been evolved by armed forces through the years. When you join the army, navy or air force you undertake to obey orders unhesitatingly and unquestioningly, no matter what your personal opinion might be. Indeed, basic training usually aims to drive all personal opinion clean out of your mind. So, in a way, the armed forces recognize that when danger threatens we must return to "the way of the ape" and subordinate ourselves wholly for the good of the group.
I think it's not so much that people like tyranny, as that we instinctively want a strong leader. We evolved from communal apes whose groups - varying in size from a single family to a clan of perhaps 200 - could only survive if they had strong, undisputed leadership. Such a leader (we might call him a "silverback", even though the phenomenon applies to chimps and many monkeys, too) may not always be right, but he must be decisive. A study of natural history programs, or books, or even a few visits to the Zoo, show that leaders often assert their authority in unfair ways. They randomly bite and strike others, apparently just to keep them apprised of who is the boss. Because when a crisis occurs, or a decision has to be made, the rest of them must wait for his call and then obey it unquestioningly.
None of this sounds very nice from a human philosophic, political science, or ethical viewpoint. But that's just the way it is. The alternative, of not having a clear-cut leader, tends to be fatal for everyone in the group.
So while clever academics (from Plato on) devise their schemes of ideal government, we remain instinctively apes with ape instincts and needs. When there is trouble, we find we want a strong leader to tell us what to do. It's not a matter of thought, it's something that leaps out of our hindbrains and takes us over - just as you pull your hand away when you tocuh a hot surface, without having any time to think about it.
The obvious (glaringly obvious, actually) example is Russia. Between 1991 and 2000, Russia as a nation was virtually annihilated. Then Putin took over and gradually began putting it back together.
You will no doubt object that it was the oligarchs, not the government, that nearly killed Russia in the 1990s. But they could not have done that without the active assistance of the pathetic Yeltsin government.
One day, the Russian government will no doubt start to grow too big. Because Russia is the largest nation in the world, however, and has such immense resources proportional to its population, the government has a lot of room for growth.
In the USA, the process has almost run its course. In the 1790s, the USA was sparsely populated and had immense space and resources to take up. Since then, government has consistently expanded faster than the nation and its economy. Today we have an unsustainable situation in which a tiny fraction of super-rich individuals own more property than the rest of the nation put together. Virtually all of those oligarchs are hand-in-glove with the federal, state and local governments - jsut as in Russia in the 1990s. Unluckily for Americans, there will be no Putin to come along and give them a fresh start. The American federal cancer (sorry, government) has metastasized and grown too much. It probably could not be removed without killing the patient.
Stick around a while and see, if you have a taste for blood and disaster.
Exactly as I said. The government keeps sweeping up more and more and more resources, until there is literally not enough left for those few people who are not part of the government or sheltered by its patronage.
Have you ever heard of a government that reduced its consumption of resources from any one year to the next? Ever?
The way the US electoral system is set up, it doesn't matter how smart or dumb the voters are. They still only get to vote for a Republican or a Democrat, which are basically the two hands of the man behind the curtain. He's smiling broadly, although the curtain hides his face.
In the USA a smart person has essentially two choices.
1. Join the rich swindlers - if you have the swindling talent, the brass neck, and no conscience.
Slashdot Mirror
Or just use a different browser. I use Firefox, Opera and Yandex, I accepted the update, but I haven't been bothered because I never open IE. (OK, OK, except for updates).
All of this underhanded nagging to upgrade really aggravates me to the point that I'm now willing to investigate using an alternate OS.
Good Job Microsoft!
Well, at least they got you to change operating system...!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ma...
No, the last thing we need is people who think you should die for expressing your opinion having greater military capability. And the way to make that not worth it to them is to have countermeasures that are wildly more sophisticated than what they have to fight with.
The Russians have already done that.
Why are all these bullshit political stories on Slashdot lately?!
Have you considered the influence of money?
What else is the regime in Kiev to be called? Even the current (illegal) "President" Petro Poroshenko has publicly admitted that the overthrow of his predecessor, President Yanukovych, was illegal.
'In a remarkable document, which is not posted at the English version of the website of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, but which is widely reported outside the United States, including Russia, Poroshenko, in Ukrainian (not in English), has petitioned the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (as it is being widely quoted in English):
'“I ask the court to acknowledge that the law ‘on the removal of the presidential title from Viktor Yanukovych’ as unconstitutional.”
'The official Ukrainian news-agency, Interfax-Ukraine, headlined this on June 20th, “Poroshenko asking Constitutional Court to recognize law stripping Yanukovych of presidential title as unconstitutional”'.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com...
As for "Russia Insider" being owned by the Russian government, can you please post details of how you know that to be true? If you don't, I'll assume your statement is unsupported.
It's irrelevant anyway. The reason I read sources such as RI and RT (among many others) is that the Western mainstream media are completely useless as impartial sources for international news. For a variety of reasons they have all been substantially subverted by Western governments - ironically, it is the Western MSM that is effectively government-owned, whereas RI and RT are relatively accurate and objective.
And, whereas you and others persist in calling me a troll, I am beginning to be fairly sure that it is you who are (mostly, at any rate) trolls. You do not seem to be in the least interested in facts, figures, logic, sources, or truth. If anyone dares to disagree with you, you simply insult them in the hope that they will give up in disgust. Well, I shan't. I am sure that many Slashdotters have open minds and want to know the truth, and it is worth putting up with a little childish mudslinging to help them.
Why should I Google for something - with no certainty that it even exists - when someone has claimed that he has seen it?
Well, this is a new nadir even for Slashdot. Moderating a request for information as "Troll". Amazingly, the readership of the British "Daily Mail" are far more opeminded than Slashdot seems to be.
How many Russian trolls inhabit /. to mark this crap informative? Every single word is straight out of the Russian propaganda playbook. Not a single statement resembles reality.
'This is Karl Rove territory. The principle seems to be, "Whatever you do that is evil, blame your opponent for it first." I propose to call this The Rove Doctrine'. http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
Though this should not be surprising since there is no word for truth in the Russian language.
"Pravda". Although any linguistics expert will tell you that, if a language did lack a word for "truth", that would actually suggest that the speakers did not know how to lie.
The fact this St. Petersburg-based Russian troll used Russian insider as their source should be the clearest evidence this is nothing but blatant propaganda on the part of the Kremlin trolls.
'This is Karl Rove territory. The principle seems to be, "Whatever you do that is evil, blame your opponent for it first." I propose to call this The Rove Doctrine'. http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
A classic piece of "poisoning the well". In case you haven't heard, it's a standard logical fallacy used to avoid meeting an argument with any actual facts.
The Dutch inquiry have tracked down the fucking serial number of the SAM from the shrapnel.
Link, please. And what is the serial number, since you have this important information?
Fuck off you Russian troll.
Thank you for your civil and compellingly logical argument.
Incidentally, I am not a "Russian troll" - although that may be your way of coping with any facts and opinions you don't like. I am British and quite conservative by inclination, and I base my conclusions on the facts - as best I can determine them after examining all the evidence and opinion I can find. If you ask why I am standing up for the Russians in this case, it is simply because I was brought up and educated to respect truth. Also it is a British tradition to take the side of the "underdog", which at the moment is very definitely Russia.
WTF? The only claims I've ever seen to the effect that MH-117 had been shot down by *another plane* have come from the Russians.
Everybody else says and has been saying all along that it was a Russian-made AA battery, probably used by the rebels after getting it from the Russians. The Dutch investigation appears to confirm this.
Of course the Russians are the only people saying MH-17 might have been shot down by a fighter. The Ukrainian Armed Forces had the only fighters in the country at that time. (They may all have rusted to bits by now, or fallen to pieces for lack of maintenance). So if a fighter did the deed, it could only have been on the orders of the Kiev junta.
The term "Russian-made" is an interesting though disingenuous piece of sophistry. Of course, as Ukraine was part of the USSR, all its military equipment was "Russian-made" (although it might have been manufactured and even designed anywhere in the USSR, including Ukraine itself). Logically, the fact that a weapon is "Russian-made" implies that it might be used by the UAF - or not. It definitely cannot be used to imply that it wasn't used by the UAF. Incidentally, it would be interesting to notice where the weapons come from that ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups use. Namely the USA; although the US armed forces lose so much of their weapons and equipment through negligence and sheer forgetfulness that it's hard to know if this is deliberate or not in any given case. However the Russian helicopter that was shot down and destroyed by terrorists while trying to rescue the crew of the shot-down Su-24 was definitely hit by an American TOW missile.
The Dutch inquiry hasn't decided much of anything, and certainly hasn't published much useful evidence. Here is some insight into the feelings of the victims' relatives: http://www.rt.com/news/310195-...
I have never understood why the owners and editors of a news outlet would call it "The Daily Beast". The name was first invented by Evelyn Waugh in his famous novel of journalistic corruption "Scoop". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Waugh makes it perfectly clear that "The Daily Beast" closely reflects the preferences of its owner, Lord Copper, who is ignorant, violently prejudiced, and deeply unpleasant. In short, it's a gutter-press rag which cannot even be trusted to get the bare facts right, and whose opinions are deeply biased.
Is it an attempt at "irony"?
I don't usually read "The Daily Beast", and a quick scan of TFA confirms the wisdom of that choice. I have better things to do than waste time incredulously reading sentence after sentence of rancid, vicious libel - which is transparently fictional. Two issues are touched on, MH17 and the Su-24. (The whole idea that social media can provide any reliable evidence in such matters is, like everything else "The Daily Beast" publishes, obviously ridiculous).
1. The salient facts about MH17 are that, whereas most airliner crashes are investigated within a few months and comprehensive reports published, nearly two years after the MH17 crash no satisfactory report has been published. The only really indisputable fact is that the disaster happened over the territory of Ukraine, which is therefore responsible until proof is given of some other agency. The Ukrainian authorities failed to close the airspace, although they knew it was dangerous; they claim that both their civil and military radars were switched off at the time (completely unbelievable); and they immediately blamed Russia within minutes of the crash, although they could not possibly have had any hard evidence so soon. (Especially without any working radars). Further, the US government immediately claimed that "the Russians did it" and that there was a whole mass of evidence; yet to this day they have not published a single scrap of that evidence. Satellite images would be a good start - it is known that US satellites were in position to see everything that happened. The only conceivable reason why that imagery has not been published is that it contradicts the official US/Ukrainian story. Whether MH17 was shot down by a SAM or by air-to-air missiles fired from a fighter, or by cannon fire, or some combination of these, has not been determined. Whichever was the case, the facts strongly suggest Ukrainian agency rather than the Russians or the Donbass militias, as it was directly contrary to their interests. The Ukrainian regime, on the other hand, systematically lies and continually engages in self-destructive behaviour.
2. The salient facts about the Su-24 assassination are that the Russian aircraft encroached on Turkish airspace for only a few seconds (if at all); that the F-16 that shot it down came from an airbase over an hour's flight away, so it must have been refuelled in the air and loitered waiting for the Su-24; and that the accurate interception and engagement, without the use of the F-16's attack radar, prove that NATO radar systems must have vectored it in. Nothing else is really important, although it could be mentioned that Turkish military aircraft regularly encroach far more severely on the air space of Syria and Greece; and that the Russian aircraft was attacking murderous Takfiri terrorists, proving that Turkey shot it down in order to protect those terrorists, who are its (and the USA's) creatures.
Anyone who is interested in getting at the truth might care to look at the following two articles (out of hundreds that I could cite):
http://russia-insider.com/en/t...
http://russia-insider.com/en/s...
"They would panic if you started playing bits from Tom Clancy films or TV shows like Dexter. Then, once several people are picked up by law enforcement, only to find they've been duped, they may reconsider the error of their ways".
Or they may subject them to severe questioning, indefinite imprisonment, or extraordinary rendition. http://www.brightknowledge.org...
In addition, if both conditions are clearly posted in the vehicle, then the rider can choose not to board that vehicle.
I guess I just don't see a problem here unless the surveillance is being done without the rider's knowledge.
Well, I do. It means that you have to choose between reasonable privacy and using the public transport network that has been built and run with your money. That means you don't get to ride on the bus if you value your privacy or have anything to say that you don't want to share with about 5 million government employees and their families and friends.
Rosa Parks was just complaining about having to ride in the back of the bus. Nowadays nobody gets to ride anywhere in the bus if they value privacy. That's progress of a kind.
As do many other bosses and leaders.
I challenge your premise. The journalism I read has to be written by someone - and, I hope, researched too. That all takes work, which (in theory) is worth money. But it does NOT have to be paid for by anyone. It might just be done by someone who wants to do it.
"Quite simply – if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist. And that's as true for the latest piece of journalism as it is for the new album from Muse."
Oh yeah? So is it true for Linux? Or LibreOffice?The other day, when I downloaded the latest version of LibreOffice, I made a voluntary donation. But that was MY choice - I could download their software from now untul Kingdom Come and I wouldn't have to pay a penny.
John Whittingdale is talking sheer nonsense. Try these:
"Quite simply – if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist. And that's as true for the latest piece of journalism as it is for the alphabet, the number system, the periodic table, the English language (and all other languages)..."
Frankly, these days I reckon that the more a piece of journalism costs to read, the less worth while reading it is.
Ironically, a very similar scheme has been evolved by armed forces through the years. When you join the army, navy or air force you undertake to obey orders unhesitatingly and unquestioningly, no matter what your personal opinion might be. Indeed, basic training usually aims to drive all personal opinion clean out of your mind. So, in a way, the armed forces recognize that when danger threatens we must return to "the way of the ape" and subordinate ourselves wholly for the good of the group.
I think it's not so much that people like tyranny, as that we instinctively want a strong leader. We evolved from communal apes whose groups - varying in size from a single family to a clan of perhaps 200 - could only survive if they had strong, undisputed leadership. Such a leader (we might call him a "silverback", even though the phenomenon applies to chimps and many monkeys, too) may not always be right, but he must be decisive. A study of natural history programs, or books, or even a few visits to the Zoo, show that leaders often assert their authority in unfair ways. They randomly bite and strike others, apparently just to keep them apprised of who is the boss. Because when a crisis occurs, or a decision has to be made, the rest of them must wait for his call and then obey it unquestioningly.
None of this sounds very nice from a human philosophic, political science, or ethical viewpoint. But that's just the way it is. The alternative, of not having a clear-cut leader, tends to be fatal for everyone in the group.
So while clever academics (from Plato on) devise their schemes of ideal government, we remain instinctively apes with ape instincts and needs. When there is trouble, we find we want a strong leader to tell us what to do. It's not a matter of thought, it's something that leaps out of our hindbrains and takes us over - just as you pull your hand away when you tocuh a hot surface, without having any time to think about it.
The obvious (glaringly obvious, actually) example is Russia. Between 1991 and 2000, Russia as a nation was virtually annihilated. Then Putin took over and gradually began putting it back together.
You will no doubt object that it was the oligarchs, not the government, that nearly killed Russia in the 1990s. But they could not have done that without the active assistance of the pathetic Yeltsin government.
One day, the Russian government will no doubt start to grow too big. Because Russia is the largest nation in the world, however, and has such immense resources proportional to its population, the government has a lot of room for growth.
In the USA, the process has almost run its course. In the 1790s, the USA was sparsely populated and had immense space and resources to take up. Since then, government has consistently expanded faster than the nation and its economy. Today we have an unsustainable situation in which a tiny fraction of super-rich individuals own more property than the rest of the nation put together. Virtually all of those oligarchs are hand-in-glove with the federal, state and local governments - jsut as in Russia in the 1990s. Unluckily for Americans, there will be no Putin to come along and give them a fresh start. The American federal cancer (sorry, government) has metastasized and grown too much. It probably could not be removed without killing the patient.
Stick around a while and see, if you have a taste for blood and disaster.
"The real cause is always resource conflict..."
Exactly as I said. The government keeps sweeping up more and more and more resources, until there is literally not enough left for those few people who are not part of the government or sheltered by its patronage.
Have you ever heard of a government that reduced its consumption of resources from any one year to the next? Ever?
The way the US electoral system is set up, it doesn't matter how smart or dumb the voters are. They still only get to vote for a Republican or a Democrat, which are basically the two hands of the man behind the curtain. He's smiling broadly, although the curtain hides his face.
In the USA a smart person has essentially two choices.
1. Join the rich swindlers - if you have the swindling talent, the brass neck, and no conscience.
2. Emigrate.