Iran's Theocracy is also far more efficient way of governing a country, that North Korea's Communism. Iran also has plenty of oil and gas to sell — and use the proceeds to fund their nuclear weapons. Also, Iran has over 75 million people — better than 3 times as much as North Korea.
These are all substantial differences not to be trivialized.
Do you have evidence that they were pursuing The Bomb in violation of Clinton era agreements? [...] all the information I can find seems to show the entire thing went into a rapid "build a nuke quick" tailspin only after Bush called them part of the Axis of Evil
First of all, according to the timetable in the above highly "informative" post, NK started to demand compensation from the US on pain of having their nuclear program restarted in 2000 — before Bush even got elected. They increased the demands and threats by June 2001 — three month before 9/11 and the very coinage of the "axis of evil" term (January 2002). That takes care of any accusation, Bush's rhetoric was somehow responsible for aggravating the gentle hearts of the North Korea rulers.
Do I have evidence of them continuing their nuclear-weapons work after promising to suspend it in 1994? Of course — that they were confident in making the above-mentioned threats is the evidence, they kept on the work. And that they were able to test a nuke shortly afterwards is proof.
What *was* Clinton's damage?
His fault, if we must, once again, lies in supplying North Korea with foodstuffs and energy, which helped (if not allowed) the regime to continue nuclear-weapons work and hastened the work's completion. But whether or not Clinton was stupid is not so relevant now — for Obama certainly is.
The naivete was and remains astounding — who, but a pampered Westerner could believe, a belligerent hermit like North Korea or Iran would ever stop trying to arm itself over a piece of paper?
Iran has seen, what happened to North Korea, which fooled the West, and to Libya'sQaddafi, who came clean. Both lessons are clear and expecting Iranians to be dumb enough to not make the right conclusions is to exhibit racist anti-Persian bigotry.
October 16 - The Bush Administration first reveals that North Korea has admitted operating a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of the 1994 agreement. They have NOT, apparently, admitted having any nuclear weapons.
So, what are you blaming Bush for again? I mean, Clinton's fault is patently obvious — he should not have trusted North Koreans to stop the program, which his deliveries of food and energy helped move along.
What could Bush have done in 2001 or 2002 to undo Clinton's damage?
But, whether there was any fault in Bush's administration is irrelevant — what is relevant is that Obama — with your pollyannish approval — is about to make the same mistake as Clinton made in 1994. Lifting sanctions against Iran will help them with their nuclear weapons program. And they will continue it.
The lack of follow through with NK in the Bush administration should be part of your discussion
What?!! "Follow through" what exactly? Bush took office in 2001, is it his fault, that NK continued their nuclear weapon program after promising to stop in 1994?
You may also want to consider the state of the Iraqi nuclear program as a result of IAEA and UN treaties and observation in the 90's
Iraq remained under sanctions during those years — the same sanctions Iran will now see removed.
Liberalization of marijuana? But that's individual States' achievement...
Being able to claim to have "normalized relationship" with Iran (and Cuba) will — for generations — be trumpeted as "success" by sympathetic historians. Or so he hopes...
No, it is ok to negotiate Iran onto a path that delays them from getting a nuke for the next 15 years, as opposed to the current path where, according to Netanyahu, they will have a nuke in the next year or two
It really is too bad, this discussion will be "archived" in 12 months and so it will be impossible to reply to you then ask you to eat a crow. If Iran does not have a nuke in 12-24 months, it would not be for lack of trying.
Do you honestly believe, Iranians haven't learned the lesson taught collectively by Bill Clinton and North Koreans? In 1994 the previous Democrat President went through the same motions Obama is doing now. NY Times wrote in 1994:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18— President Clinton approved a plan today to arrange more than $4 billion in energy aid to North Korea during the next decade in return for a commitment from the country's hard-line Communist leadership to freeze and gradually dismantle its nuclear weapons development program.
Had you and I met back then, you would've called me a war-mongering hater over my doubts, North Koreans can be trusted. But I woud've been right for they have been caught lying a number of times since. Its most recent test of a nuclear weapon was in February 2013.
The lesson of dealing with the West is perfectly clear: you agree to whatever and still work on your nukes as hard as you can. Once you have them, nobody can do anything other than keep asking critics to stop hating.
And you think that they auto makers aren't doing that deliberately?
No, they don't do it deliberately.
But they deliberately do not not do it either — that is, they don't care to make it easier for you to fix your car or find spare parts.
One thing, that prevents manufacturers from going completely bonkers with a design, is the cost of insurance — if a model is too hard (read "expensive") to fix, your insurance will rise, and smarter consumers — whether they do the repairs themselves or not — take it into consideration before buying. But, being able to do repairs — hardware or software — just is not a factor to most people. Or else Apple's products would never have reached the popularity they now enjoy.
And also, going bonkers with a design is what many people want — Corollas, for example, are very easy to repair (or were 10 years ago). They are still a great model, but I like my Quattro better:)
The constitution defines treason as making war against the United States.
You seem to imply, one can only become a traitor by shooting at American personnel, but that's not true. The term "making war" is subject to interpretation (not unlike the term "reasonable").
And, for another example, does giving somebody money — which they'll use to buy arms or train soldiers to fight the United States — qualify? Another yes...
And now we've arrived to bringing one's dollars to Castro's island... No, it is not the same as actual treason. But it can be "close", and it is not "usurpation" for the government to seek to limit it.
And yet, you aren't free to, for example, join a foreign military to fight Americans. Doing so — despite all the liberties Founding Fathers acknowledged you have — would still make you a traitor in their eyes.
Banning you from spending any money in Cuba — an enemy of the US — seems to be of the same sort of limitation as that.
If history is any guide, the lodgings for such tourists will be available with young willing women and conveniently pre-bugged for you. According to FBI, Cuban intelligence actively recruits Americans with methods including blackmail...
If you dance with the devil, then you haven't got a clue...
Cue-in the knuckle-dragging simpletons sincerely equating Castro (Peace be Upon Him) with Bush (spit) or Lavrenty Beria with Joe McCarthy, to tell us, how the US is "worse" than a regime headed by the same Dear Leader for 50 years.
Are you accounting for your time, gasoline, wear on your car, opportunity cost, membership fees, etc.
Yes. For us most of those costs do not apply — we shop at Costco for certain food items, which are only sold there. For example, no actual supermarket around us in the last few months had the blueberries, that my kid would eat, but those from Costco's go in great — to the point of successfully competing with "gummy bears".
Are you accounting for the fact that many people don't live conveniently close to a Costco [...] don't have the storage space or vehicle capacity [...] don't own a car
No, none of these applies to me so I don't care. Amazon, evidently, does care, however — and I think, that's great. They want your money and are trying to make it easier for you to spend it on the stuff you need. Capitalism at its finest.
My point is that there is no one size fits all economic answer
You are preaching to the choir. I started this thread stating, "I'm already loving it"...
are you seriously going to claim that your week is SO packed that you don't even have 1 hour to spend grocery shopping? Really?
Because I must spend time grocery shopping, I'm forced to cut down on leisure. I'd rather be planting tomatoes or playing with my kid for an extra hour per week.
Using your hourly billing rate as an opportunity cost only works if you would actually forgo that income
Well, I look at it like this: my time is divided between things I have to do and those I want to do. Though some of these overlap, shopping (especially for routine commodities — rather than researching a gift, for example) is solidly in the former category.
I am not an accountant and do not know, how it "works" for the purposes of taxation, et other book-keeping cætera, but if I didn't have to shop for these, I'd be able to get more work done and earn more money. And I would've enjoyed it more.
So you admit your are lazy rather than otherwise occupied.
It takes more than an hour — especially, if I were to follow your bizarre request and avoid Wal-Mart. Which, at today's rates for experienced Software Engineers, is around $100 (considering taxation). Amazon's deliveries need to be a lot more expensive to justify my spending over an hour of the precious personal time on errands per week.
technology and smart phones have made people so fucking lazy.
I for one was lazy decades before I got my first cellular (and not so smart) phone.
The only problem is, most of this stuff is cheaper at Costco — when they are having a sale, one can load-up until next year's sale of the same commodity.
But this seems like it would be darn convenient. So much so, I'm prepared to revisit the price difference. Everyone here is busy and if a single button-press can really replace a trip to the store, it just might be worth it...
Just wait for these inv... undocumented Earthlings to really figure things out. In addition to medicines, they'll also be eligible for schooling, tax "credits", food stamps, "Obamacare" and other assistance. Some of these hand-outs will be illegal (in the US), but they will happen and no one will be punished for allowing it to happen.
Well, for starters, civil forfeiture is about your non-living stuff, and the 4th Amendment applies to YOU
By that logic, attaching a GPS-tracker to your car would not fall under the Amendment either.
No, the Amendment does not just cover your person, but also "houses, papers, and effects". How can those be taken away by a cop without not only a trial, but even a Judge-issues warrant, I do not know... It is just so glaringly unconstitutional, it boggles the mind.
An obsession with "humanities" is just as dangerous as the one with engineering.
But the one obsession to rule them all is that with idea, that the government needs to step in and ensure everybody is doing, what the government (currently) considers best. It not only robs the citizens of freedom to decide for ourselves and our children, it also leads to danger and lost lives.
Consider the earlier change of government's doctrine to the exact opposite direction: for decades fat used to be bad for you, but not any more — now it the sugar, that's evil — how do they tell the last dying diabetic, it was all a mistake?
We are now collectively executing a similar pivot from "humanities" to engineering, for better or worse. But the underlying assumption remains: were it not for the omniscient and benevolent government officials, the adorable (mostly) individual slobs they've got for citizenry wouldn't learn or do anything to improve their own lot themselves.
Can we get rid of this obsession, please? Then we wouldn't need to worry about the others so much...
yeah, given that we're not any closer to an AI that would NEED those three laws
The robots Asimov imagined (whatever their brain) did not have to be bound by the three laws. They were deliberately designed that way.
And that's exactly the complain — the brains we currently devise are not being built those hard limits.
they don't make any choices nor do they ponder the choices or have any capability to make a choice.
Yes, the "syntactic" ones do not. But we are on the verge of real ("semantic") AI, and those better have some limits built-in, or some nasty predictions might materialize instead of Asimov's comfortable robot-assisted world.
Well, the opposition to the Korean war — as I outlined from the get-go — never rose to anywhere the same pitch. Not while the war was running, not later. Soldiers returning from Vietnam war were "baby-killers", but those who came back from Korea were not. The "peace-movement" being infested by stooges is a confirmed theory that explains all of the known facts. It may be difficult for you to accept, probably, because you and/or your parents participated — without knowing, who got the ball rolling, of course, being sincere useful idiots — but that's what it is.
Meanwhile, I noticed, that every post I make here gets marked as "Troll" within minutes and I'm getting tired of it. So I'm not posting again — you aren't going to admit it and the anonymous collective with too many mod-points are too cowardly to speak-up.
As it turns out it was actually a very well informed protest movement as the invasion of Iraq was by any metric a disaster.
The currently-existing "disaster" was not at all inevitable, and it did not become a disaster for any of the reasons known at the time.of those coordinated protests.
but I doubt many [Russians] are actually backing the invasion
Yes, unfortunately, many are. Though Putin's support is nowhere near he enjoys in Russia (86%), plenty in the diaspora approve of him or outright like him.
Fringe opinion-makers whom I'd never heard of. I don't think they're really affecting anything.
Well, you may not like Michael Savage, but he certainly is not "a fringe"... And the already mentioned Justin Raimondo has his loyal following.
It should be noted that the West's hands aren't completely clean in this. NATO was started as an anti-Russia alliance
There you go! NATO was meant to check USSR's advancement further into Europe — without it more countries would've shared the fate of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and others. Because while NATO membership was voluntary, membership of the Warsaw Pact was not. And the Pact invaded those, who tried to get out. What's "unclean" about NATO, I'll never know.
expanding into former Warsaw pact countries after the end of the Cold War was absolutely moronic. Without that expansion there's a decent chance that everyone is still on relatively good terms.
Huh? If they weren't NATO-members, Baltic states would've been taken over by the same "polite" troops long ago. Moldova and Georgia were invaded before Ukraine.
But, it is interesting... So, in your peace-loving opinion, NATO should've rejected Eastern Europe's attempts to join it to please Russia... Just how do you justify this? What sort of ethical standards do you have? What books did momma read to you? Should the wisest of the Three Pigs have rejected his brothers' attempts to hide in his masonry house — so as not to aggravate the Wolf? Wow!
Again remember many grew up in the USSR, people are going to naturally defend their side.
I grew up in the USSR too, you insensitive clod.
But in a fight between Russia and Ukraine many will be drawn to defend the entity they identify more with from their youth.
Not sure, how this is "news for nerds", but I like it. Amazon have been quite amazin (sorry) over the years. So much so, I fear, when they stop being quite so amazing, it will take a while for decent competition to spring back up.
the court should be quite capable of determining without the help of advantageous timing by prosecutors to avoid their pervue
Yes, I'm sure, a court would be quite capable of dismissing any attempts to muddy the waters by an unrelated crime. The defense could've just as well brought up one of the agents' past jaywalking or some even a more serious (alleged) misdeed.
The prosecutor would've objected on the grounds of irrelevancy and the judge would've sustained the objection right away.
Seriously, imagine: "Your honor, we ask for this DUI case to be dismissed with prejudice on account of the arresting policeman stealing the whiskey bottle from my client's car after arresting him..."
Nonsense. The "fruit of the poisonous tree" metaphore refers to illegally-obtained evidence. Stuff stolen from the evidence locker — after it was legally collected — has nothing to do with it.
You're not overestimating the enemy's impact, you're accusing your ideological opponents of being stooges.
The links I've posted by now confirm beyond reasonable doubt, that they (or some of them, anyway) are, in fact, stooges. That's a settled question. Just how many — that's a problem of (under/over)estimation.
a) People expect a lot more of the US than Russia
Khm, it does not seem like many people think, Russia is doing anything wrong.
b) by invading Iraq it helps legitimize things like Ukraine
Your Bush-blaming fails. Putin's number one justification (at least within Russia) was not Iraq, but Kosovo — for over a year now Russians online are arguing, that if it was Ok for the US to run a referendum there, it is Ok for Russia to run one in Crimea. (That, unlike Americans in Kosovo, Russian occupiers of Crimea had an obvious conflict-of-interest seems to have escaped their attention.)
Greece in particular might have a legitimate problem
Greece is an EU-member and can break the union's consensus-driven foreign policy.
in the English speaking West Russian propaganda is a joke.
It is good, you've kept a level head, but I've already given you a number of links to English-speaking opinion-makers, who were affected by KremlinTV. Another aspect you are ignoring is the Russian-diaspora living in the West. They still watch nostalgic movies on Russian channels and the propaganda "analysis" in between. Then, when asked about current events by their non-Russian peers, they help spread Putin's point of view.
I just came back from Germany — both in Munich and Frankfurt there are pro-Putin signs on the walls and fences. His support there is mostly among Socialists, but those assholes are a considerable power there — and Merkel has to defend herself from their sniping.
Putin's evil is, indeed, obvious to those paying attention, but there are too few of those in the comfortable West today — the others' short attention spans can be easily swayed by his propaganda efforts.
Slashdot Mirror
Iran's Theocracy is also far more efficient way of governing a country, that North Korea's Communism. Iran also has plenty of oil and gas to sell — and use the proceeds to fund their nuclear weapons. Also, Iran has over 75 million people — better than 3 times as much as North Korea.
These are all substantial differences not to be trivialized.
First of all, according to the timetable in the above highly "informative" post, NK started to demand compensation from the US on pain of having their nuclear program restarted in 2000 — before Bush even got elected. They increased the demands and threats by June 2001 — three month before 9/11 and the very coinage of the "axis of evil" term (January 2002). That takes care of any accusation, Bush's rhetoric was somehow responsible for aggravating the gentle hearts of the North Korea rulers.
Do I have evidence of them continuing their nuclear-weapons work after promising to suspend it in 1994? Of course — that they were confident in making the above-mentioned threats is the evidence, they kept on the work. And that they were able to test a nuke shortly afterwards is proof.
His fault, if we must, once again, lies in supplying North Korea with foodstuffs and energy, which helped (if not allowed) the regime to continue nuclear-weapons work and hastened the work's completion. But whether or not Clinton was stupid is not so relevant now — for Obama certainly is.
The naivete was and remains astounding — who, but a pampered Westerner could believe, a belligerent hermit like North Korea or Iran would ever stop trying to arm itself over a piece of paper?
Iran has seen, what happened to North Korea, which fooled the West, and to Libya's Qaddafi, who came clean. Both lessons are clear and expecting Iranians to be dumb enough to not make the right conclusions is to exhibit racist anti-Persian bigotry.
So, what are you blaming Bush for again? I mean, Clinton's fault is patently obvious — he should not have trusted North Koreans to stop the program, which his deliveries of food and energy helped move along.
What could Bush have done in 2001 or 2002 to undo Clinton's damage?
But, whether there was any fault in Bush's administration is irrelevant — what is relevant is that Obama — with your pollyannish approval — is about to make the same mistake as Clinton made in 1994. Lifting sanctions against Iran will help them with their nuclear weapons program. And they will continue it.
What?!! "Follow through" what exactly? Bush took office in 2001, is it his fault, that NK continued their nuclear weapon program after promising to stop in 1994?
Iraq remained under sanctions during those years — the same sanctions Iran will now see removed.
But then, what's going to be his legacy? Not Obamacare, not peaceful Iraq (or Libya), not economic recovery, not lower unemployment, not reductions in income disparity.
Liberalization of marijuana? But that's individual States' achievement...
Being able to claim to have "normalized relationship" with Iran (and Cuba) will — for generations — be trumpeted as "success" by sympathetic historians. Or so he hopes...
It really is too bad, this discussion will be "archived" in 12 months and so it will be impossible to reply to you then ask you to eat a crow. If Iran does not have a nuke in 12-24 months, it would not be for lack of trying.
Do you honestly believe, Iranians haven't learned the lesson taught collectively by Bill Clinton and North Koreans? In 1994 the previous Democrat President went through the same motions Obama is doing now. NY Times wrote in 1994:
Had you and I met back then, you would've called me a war-mongering hater over my doubts, North Koreans can be trusted. But I woud've been right for they have been caught lying a number of times since. Its most recent test of a nuclear weapon was in February 2013.
The lesson of dealing with the West is perfectly clear: you agree to whatever and still work on your nukes as hard as you can. Once you have them, nobody can do anything other than keep asking critics to stop hating.
No, they don't do it deliberately.
But they deliberately do not not do it either — that is, they don't care to make it easier for you to fix your car or find spare parts.
One thing, that prevents manufacturers from going completely bonkers with a design, is the cost of insurance — if a model is too hard (read "expensive") to fix, your insurance will rise, and smarter consumers — whether they do the repairs themselves or not — take it into consideration before buying. But, being able to do repairs — hardware or software — just is not a factor to most people. Or else Apple's products would never have reached the popularity they now enjoy.
And also, going bonkers with a design is what many people want — Corollas, for example, are very easy to repair (or were 10 years ago). They are still a great model, but I like my Quattro better :)
Of course it is close.
You seem to imply, one can only become a traitor by shooting at American personnel, but that's not true. The term "making war" is subject to interpretation (not unlike the term "reasonable").
How about passing secrets to the enemies — or spreading their propaganda? Yes.
And, for another example, does giving somebody money — which they'll use to buy arms or train soldiers to fight the United States — qualify? Another yes...
And now we've arrived to bringing one's dollars to Castro's island... No, it is not the same as actual treason. But it can be "close", and it is not "usurpation" for the government to seek to limit it.
And yet, you aren't free to, for example, join a foreign military to fight Americans. Doing so — despite all the liberties Founding Fathers acknowledged you have — would still make you a traitor in their eyes.
Banning you from spending any money in Cuba — an enemy of the US — seems to be of the same sort of limitation as that.
If history is any guide, the lodgings for such tourists will be available with young willing women and conveniently pre-bugged for you. According to FBI, Cuban intelligence actively recruits Americans with methods including blackmail...
If you dance with the devil, then you haven't got a clue...
Cue-in the knuckle-dragging simpletons sincerely equating Castro (Peace be Upon Him) with Bush (spit) or Lavrenty Beria with Joe McCarthy, to tell us, how the US is "worse" than a regime headed by the same Dear Leader for 50 years.
Yes. For us most of those costs do not apply — we shop at Costco for certain food items, which are only sold there. For example, no actual supermarket around us in the last few months had the blueberries, that my kid would eat, but those from Costco's go in great — to the point of successfully competing with "gummy bears".
No, none of these applies to me so I don't care. Amazon, evidently, does care, however — and I think, that's great. They want your money and are trying to make it easier for you to spend it on the stuff you need. Capitalism at its finest.
You are preaching to the choir. I started this thread stating, "I'm already loving it"...
Because I must spend time grocery shopping, I'm forced to cut down on leisure. I'd rather be planting tomatoes or playing with my kid for an extra hour per week.
Well, I look at it like this: my time is divided between things I have to do and those I want to do. Though some of these overlap, shopping (especially for routine commodities — rather than researching a gift, for example) is solidly in the former category.
I am not an accountant and do not know, how it "works" for the purposes of taxation, et other book-keeping cætera, but if I didn't have to shop for these, I'd be able to get more work done and earn more money. And I would've enjoyed it more.
False dilemma. I'm both lazy and busy.
It takes more than an hour — especially, if I were to follow your bizarre request and avoid Wal-Mart. Which, at today's rates for experienced Software Engineers, is around $100 (considering taxation). Amazon's deliveries need to be a lot more expensive to justify my spending over an hour of the precious personal time on errands per week.
I for one was lazy decades before I got my first cellular (and not so smart) phone.
The only problem is, most of this stuff is cheaper at Costco — when they are having a sale, one can load-up until next year's sale of the same commodity.
But this seems like it would be darn convenient. So much so, I'm prepared to revisit the price difference. Everyone here is busy and if a single button-press can really replace a trip to the store, it just might be worth it...
Just wait for these inv... undocumented Earthlings to really figure things out. In addition to medicines, they'll also be eligible for schooling, tax "credits", food stamps, "Obamacare" and other assistance. Some of these hand-outs will be illegal (in the US), but they will happen and no one will be punished for allowing it to happen.
By that logic, attaching a GPS-tracker to your car would not fall under the Amendment either.
No, the Amendment does not just cover your person, but also "houses, papers, and effects". How can those be taken away by a cop without not only a trial, but even a Judge-issues warrant, I do not know... It is just so glaringly unconstitutional, it boggles the mind.
And of course, our hopey-changey President insists on making a prosecutor, who made herself particularly infamous using such confiscations, into a new Attorney General...
An obsession with "humanities" is just as dangerous as the one with engineering.
But the one obsession to rule them all is that with idea, that the government needs to step in and ensure everybody is doing, what the government (currently) considers best. It not only robs the citizens of freedom to decide for ourselves and our children, it also leads to danger and lost lives.
Consider the earlier change of government's doctrine to the exact opposite direction: for decades fat used to be bad for you, but not any more — now it the sugar, that's evil — how do they tell the last dying diabetic, it was all a mistake?
We are now collectively executing a similar pivot from "humanities" to engineering, for better or worse. But the underlying assumption remains: were it not for the omniscient and benevolent government officials, the adorable (mostly) individual slobs they've got for citizenry wouldn't learn or do anything to improve their own lot themselves.
Can we get rid of this obsession, please? Then we wouldn't need to worry about the others so much...
The robots Asimov imagined (whatever their brain) did not have to be bound by the three laws. They were deliberately designed that way.
And that's exactly the complain — the brains we currently devise are not being built those hard limits.
Yes, the "syntactic" ones do not. But we are on the verge of real ("semantic") AI, and those better have some limits built-in, or some nasty predictions might materialize instead of Asimov's comfortable robot-assisted world.
Except the accusation against the corrupt agents is theft, not taking bribes.
Well, the opposition to the Korean war — as I outlined from the get-go — never rose to anywhere the same pitch. Not while the war was running, not later. Soldiers returning from Vietnam war were "baby-killers", but those who came back from Korea were not. The "peace-movement" being infested by stooges is a confirmed theory that explains all of the known facts. It may be difficult for you to accept, probably, because you and/or your parents participated — without knowing, who got the ball rolling, of course, being sincere useful idiots — but that's what it is.
Meanwhile, I noticed, that every post I make here gets marked as "Troll" within minutes and I'm getting tired of it. So I'm not posting again — you aren't going to admit it and the anonymous collective with too many mod-points are too cowardly to speak-up.
The currently-existing "disaster" was not at all inevitable, and it did not become a disaster for any of the reasons known at the time.of those coordinated protests.
Yes, unfortunately, many are. Though Putin's support is nowhere near he enjoys in Russia (86%), plenty in the diaspora approve of him or outright like him.
Well, you may not like Michael Savage, but he certainly is not "a fringe"... And the already mentioned Justin Raimondo has his loyal following.
There you go! NATO was meant to check USSR's advancement further into Europe — without it more countries would've shared the fate of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and others. Because while NATO membership was voluntary, membership of the Warsaw Pact was not. And the Pact invaded those, who tried to get out. What's "unclean" about NATO, I'll never know.
Huh? If they weren't NATO-members, Baltic states would've been taken over by the same "polite" troops long ago. Moldova and Georgia were invaded before Ukraine.
But, it is interesting... So, in your peace-loving opinion, NATO should've rejected Eastern Europe's attempts to join it to please Russia... Just how do you justify this? What sort of ethical standards do you have? What books did momma read to you? Should the wisest of the Three Pigs have rejected his brothers' attempts to hide in his masonry house — so as not to aggravate the Wolf? Wow!
I grew up in the USSR too, you insensitive clod.
Point is, their propaganda works
Not sure, how this is "news for nerds", but I like it. Amazon have been quite amazin (sorry) over the years. So much so, I fear, when they stop being quite so amazing, it will take a while for decent competition to spring back up.
Yes, I'm sure, a court would be quite capable of dismissing any attempts to muddy the waters by an unrelated crime. The defense could've just as well brought up one of the agents' past jaywalking or some even a more serious (alleged) misdeed.
The prosecutor would've objected on the grounds of irrelevancy and the judge would've sustained the objection right away.
Seriously, imagine: "Your honor, we ask for this DUI case to be dismissed with prejudice on account of the arresting policeman stealing the whiskey bottle from my client's car after arresting him..."
Nonsense. The "fruit of the poisonous tree" metaphore refers to illegally-obtained evidence. Stuff stolen from the evidence locker — after it was legally collected — has nothing to do with it.
The links I've posted by now confirm beyond reasonable doubt, that they (or some of them, anyway) are, in fact, stooges. That's a settled question. Just how many — that's a problem of (under/over)estimation.
Khm, it does not seem like many people think, Russia is doing anything wrong.
Your Bush-blaming fails. Putin's number one justification (at least within Russia) was not Iraq, but Kosovo — for over a year now Russians online are arguing, that if it was Ok for the US to run a referendum there, it is Ok for Russia to run one in Crimea. (That, unlike Americans in Kosovo, Russian occupiers of Crimea had an obvious conflict-of-interest seems to have escaped their attention.)
Greece is an EU-member and can break the union's consensus-driven foreign policy.
It is good, you've kept a level head, but I've already given you a number of links to English-speaking opinion-makers, who were affected by KremlinTV. Another aspect you are ignoring is the Russian-diaspora living in the West. They still watch nostalgic movies on Russian channels and the propaganda "analysis" in between. Then, when asked about current events by their non-Russian peers, they help spread Putin's point of view.
I just came back from Germany — both in Munich and Frankfurt there are pro-Putin signs on the walls and fences. His support there is mostly among Socialists, but those assholes are a considerable power there — and Merkel has to defend herself from their sniping.
Putin's evil is, indeed, obvious to those paying attention, but there are too few of those in the comfortable West today — the others' short attention spans can be easily swayed by his propaganda efforts.
What relevance to his facilitating drug-trafficking does the prosecuting agents' unrelated misconduct have?
Bitcoin, banknotes, or gold — whatever the pigs tried to steal — he is still guilty of a (different) crime.
Hopefully, he and the duo of thieves will share the prison floor running into each other for years to come...