does anyone actually sit through Putin answering questions from Russians every year? I've tried - could never make it through the whole charade. I guess it doesn't help that I'm not a Russian citizen.
His speeches and answering sessions are very popular among educated Russians. My girlfriend is Russian and says that in original Russian they are much better than in the english translation, because he uses a lot of wordplays and hinting at things by choice of particular synonyms.
I cannot stand watching politician's speeches. I find them mostly meaningless and full of empty promises.
I generally find opposition speeches better than ruling party speeches. Have you seen Farages speech in the EU parliament just after the Brexit vote? Very personal, very particular, very british.
It's a relief to me when they actually sit down and do an investigative report or interview someone instead of just letting them give a speech.
That is true, but unfortunately there are almost no investigative journalists left, and what is sold under that name is largely just sensationalist crap. Basically, TV invented clickbait long before the Internet did - "The government build a new road in Somevillage. Stay tuned to find out what it did to this generation old farm."
Both candidates went into the race knowing the rules. Crying baby over the "popular vote" is like saying you should've gotten the 100m dash gold medal because your running style was more beautiful. Might be true, but you knew that it's a race for speed when you started.
That is also where Hillary Clinton lost the election. She should have never been the candidate in the first place. A bag of rice would have had better chances to win against Trump. She was the worst possible candidate to throw at Trump. You could've picked a stripper from the nearest table dance bar and they would have presented less of an attack surface for Trump.
So very funny. There were eight years of Obama rule during which all of these reforms could have been at least attempted. Funny how now that their favorite candidate lost everyone is coming out of the woodworks complaining about the system and asking for reforms.
Sorry guys. The proper moment to request reforms if you are really worried that the system is broken is after your favorite candidate won.
This way, it just looks like a lot of "bwuahaha, my side lost an election, that is sooo unffaaaaiiiiirrrr".
I respect Lawrence, once had a short phone conversation with him on another topic. I agree that the US political system is completely broken and needs wholesale replacement. I don't think this is the right way and the right time to do it.
RT is definitely biased, as is every other news channel. I don't watch TV for this reason. I argue with people - including total dumbfucks - on the Internet exactly so I get things from outside my bubble.
I enjoy watching long, unedited, original takes of world leaders. There are some great talks of Putin from various conferences, for example. Damn the guy knows how to speak. There are some wonderful speeches from Obama, same thing. I had much fun listening to the speeches Trump made, because it is easy to spot the patterns and the manipulation techniques (he is a good manipulator, but an inexperienced politician, so it's very visible). I avoid Merkel because everything she says is just cringe-worthy. Same for Hillary Clinton, impossible to listen to her, whoever writes her speeches needs to be fired. I liked Nigel Farages speeches in the EU parliament, and in my own country I have a small number of favorite opposition party parliament members who regularily give great speeches.
I avoid the news like the plague. The simple fact that stories by necessity must be cut down to 30 seconds or 2 minutes or whatever ensures that no matter how much good will for balance and neutrality there might be, it is guaranteed that there will be at least a slant.
Are you really that dense? There's a word for people who are unable to put themselves into the minds of other people, but it's in the middle of the night here and I can't remember it. It's somewhere in the dictionary of mental disorders, look it up.
Thank you for this perfect example of why half of America despises the other half that is like you so much that they were happy to vote for someone like Trump simply because he promised to fuck your kind up.
No, that is bullshit. There are many real problems, US propaganda is not a problem by itself. It contributes to many problems, though (for example, many european economies are recovering slower than they would without anti-russian sanctions. Russia, meanwhile, is replacing imports from Europe with imports from China, Asia, India, etc. so our economies are being damaged long-term).
That's the point I'm making. Both sides take the moral high ground against the other side, which ultimately only proves that they are both full of shit.
It's an open secret that the USA influences media and public opinion in Europe as well, it is just less obvious because a) they have more experience doing it in a subtle way, Russia is still coming from an authoritarian state propaganda perspective and b) it is somehow legitimized through the use of NGOs, "cooperative partnerships" and the "american friendship".
Funny how those who are all for tolerance when it comes to "their" people (gays, blacks, minorities, women, etc.) now use the exact kind of language against the Trump supporters. You all need to go back and re-read "The Wave". Just this time don't imagine that you're the kids in the rebellion. You're not. You just need a different script, against poor and stupid rednecks.
You are all funny, from aside. I laugh about the Trump voters who really think a billionaire asshole will bring back jobs that he was busy outsourcing to China just a year ago. And I laugh just the same about Clinton voters who really think that all the Trump voters are just uneducated poor who don't understand what's going on. That's the exact attitude that the Soviets used in Russia just before they took control of the revolution and replaced socialism with a red-fascist central state, to make sure the poor uneducated plebs don't hurt themselves and can be led into a better future by the smart, bright people who know how the world works.
There is so much arrogance in those crying over the defeat now. And too little sitting down and really understanding what happened, without name-calling and low-level psychological defense mechanisms.
She didn't lose by voters despising her, she got 2 million more vote,
From what I could gather over here, basically half the people who voted for HC actually voted against Trump and would have preferred any other option if there had been one.
Fake news and propaganda built around the emails certainly helped. We'd regularly read selective misleading quotes here from her emails, hoping nobody actually would go read the full email.
I never read even one of the quotes, because the scandal is not in what the emails contained, the scandal is that a high ranking official breaks the rules in a way that would have landed a soldier or a low ranking official in jail.
he also had his hacker hack actual election related data and one voting machine manufacturer.
So why were these things hackable in the first place? If you can't run your election securely, you have no business running an election. Use paper ballots and hand-counting like the rest of the civilized world does for good reasons.
It's time to get real about elections. There's no point in having a large wall of security around the US, if a foreign power can rig an election and stick a puppet into power to control security. Now you Trump lot insist he's not Putin's puppet, but he certainly did provide political cover for those hacks, he certainly repeated Putin's false propaganda about Aleppo, and he certainly has strong business links to Russia.
Wow so much in there.
a) not everyone who points out what a corrupt person HC is automatically is a "Trump lot" b) Aleppo is full of propaganda from all sides. European media, for example, regularily uses the word "Syrian rebels", conveniently ignoring that there are non non-islamist fighters left in Aleppo. They also use the word "civilians", conveniently ignoring that even respectable NGOs point out that for all we know, the only civilians left in Aleppos rebel controlled areas are the families of the islamist fighters, who are paid by Daesh to stay there. c) If a foreign power can rig an election, your election system is fucked up and needs wholesale replacement d) Your claim that Trump is a puppet, much less Putins puppet, is just words. You are entitled to your opinion, just make it obvious that it's only an opinion. e) Russia is a huge country with 144 million people. If you're into international business, chances are good you have some business links to Russia. Pretty much all of Wall Street has, for example, but I've not heard anyone call Wall Street "Pro-Putin". f) if you were really concerned so much about Trump, why you didn't prevent the DNC putting up literally the only imaginable candidate who could possibly lose against him in the election?
So if Putin invades a country could we trust the US to follow its agreed defense pacts?
Because Russia is such an aggressor... Wake up to your own countries propaganda, dude.
There is an answer on Yahoo Answers listing 5 countries that Russia invaded between 1890 and 2008, compared to 50 countries invaded or subject of military interventions by the USA in the same time period.
This list of countries invaded by Russia covers a longer time period, and again shows comparatively low aggression compared to most western countries.
If you really still believe the tall tale of the Russian aggressiveness, you shouldn't talk about propaganda. You're a textbook example of a propaganda victim.
And you think that the west needs to look up "propaganda" on Wikipedia? There has been anti-russian propaganda in Europe at least since the first World War. Of course there is Russian propaganda as well, and German, and British and American, and Chinese - everyone plays this game.
Putin is leading a full-scale propaganda war against the west, intended at undermining trust in our democarcies and our institutions.
Someone send him a mail that he can save that money for other things, we're doing a splendid job at accomplishing that goal all by ourselves.
If you still trust our institutions after they've been taken over completely by neocons and neoliberals, after the financial crisis and the bank bail-outs, after (America) GWB and HC and all that shit or (Europe) the Cyprus robbery, the undermining of the elected government in Greece or the anti-democratic actions against the regional governments in Spain - if you still think that our institutions work for the good of the people, I have a lot of bridges that just got 10% off and you should buy them right away before someone else snatches them up.
It has nothing to do with boosting e-commerce and startup culture.
This "we are an app company" is just like the software patent fiasco. Take a well-known process, add "with a computer" to it and file for a patent.
This is the same. Take an existing industry, add "with an app" to it - and pretend that everything that is true about that industry doesn't apply to you, because you are something completely new and different.
As if HC needed help in not being trusted and being generally despised. She is literally the only candidate who could have possibly lost to Trump. The only person actually susceptible to his style of personal attacks and no content.
With the DNC actions and the trickery and deceit they used to get Clinton past Sanders, no further propaganda was necessary to demolish HC. If some imaginary russian PR agency had been tasked with invention stories that put HC into a bad light, they couldn't possibly come up with such a shit. They would've been told "come on guys, it has to be at least borderline believable".
Russia didn't need to do anything here. HC demolished her chances all by herself.
One might also notice that this exposure alone would either incentivize the spread of the rule of law, or bringing back more industry to the US. All without a new government agency, new powers, or a bevy of new laws - but instead government just DOING WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE DOING in the first place.
Correct. The problem is that in the age of cheap-cheap-cheap, government agencies are short on resources and trapped between political bullshit.
Police looks the other way on a lot of smaller crimes on the streets not because they enjoy very much ignoring them, but because they don't have the men to do everything and it's better to focus on serious crimes.
I'm not american. Your "crazy crimes" don't even raise an eyebrow over here.
Its also a little silly to think that people are going to be sent off with no medical provisions at all. No, there won't be facilities to do heart transplants, but treatments will be available.
Of course. I'm not talking about standard issues. I talked about problem management. If you have a standard procedure to handle it, it's not a problem.
Don't transfer your fear onto me.
Not talking about you specifically. I said that psychology and problem management will be major challenges. I didn't say they're a reason to not go to Mars or that it will be impossible or bla bla bla. I said that these are major challenges, beyond the purely technological.
Its a little strange and sad that for all of the advances we have made, that one of the results is people with free-floating fear. So many are one thought away from being afraid to live more than a block away from a Hospital - just in case.
Never heard of such people, and I think you are making a classic argument here that 0.01 should be rounded to 1.0
Understanding that you are 6-12 months away from any help, and without a guarantee that it will come at all is not a fear, it's a fact. Understanding that there is nothing you can do by yourself, contrary to earth where you can always at least try (to live off the land, to build a raft, to treck to the nearest village, etc.) is another fact.
Making your base so that it can handle even unexpected emergencies under these circumstances is not a small challenge, mostly due to the consequences inherent in the word "unexpected". In such a mission, you have to plan for black swans, and that's not a very easy thing to do.
The problem isn't that in the end you'll die on Mars. The problem is avoiding to die in the beginning, before you've had a chance for any of the fun stuff.
The problem is not only technological. The problem is psychological and problem management.
Psychological, being in a submarine is a thing in itself. So much that even the russian navy put only volunteers into subs. Now imagine living in an enclosed space not for a few months, but for the rest of your life.
Problem management is going to be a biggie. Basically, no matter what goes wrong, you are on your own. Even in the most remote places on earth, if things go really, really bad, you can radio for help and if you can hold out for a few days, you will be ok. Not to mention that even the most hostile places on earth are several orders of magnitude more friendly to human life than Mars.
Slashdot Mirror
does anyone actually sit through Putin answering questions from Russians every year? I've tried - could never make it through the whole charade. I guess it doesn't help that I'm not a Russian citizen.
His speeches and answering sessions are very popular among educated Russians. My girlfriend is Russian and says that in original Russian they are much better than in the english translation, because he uses a lot of wordplays and hinting at things by choice of particular synonyms.
I cannot stand watching politician's speeches. I find them mostly meaningless and full of empty promises.
I generally find opposition speeches better than ruling party speeches. Have you seen Farages speech in the EU parliament just after the Brexit vote? Very personal, very particular, very british.
It's a relief to me when they actually sit down and do an investigative report or interview someone instead of just letting them give a speech.
That is true, but unfortunately there are almost no investigative journalists left, and what is sold under that name is largely just sensationalist crap. Basically, TV invented clickbait long before the Internet did - "The government build a new road in Somevillage. Stay tuned to find out what it did to this generation old farm."
Finally someone says it !
Both candidates went into the race knowing the rules. Crying baby over the "popular vote" is like saying you should've gotten the 100m dash gold medal because your running style was more beautiful. Might be true, but you knew that it's a race for speed when you started.
That is also where Hillary Clinton lost the election. She should have never been the candidate in the first place. A bag of rice would have had better chances to win against Trump. She was the worst possible candidate to throw at Trump. You could've picked a stripper from the nearest table dance bar and they would have presented less of an attack surface for Trump.
So very funny. There were eight years of Obama rule during which all of these reforms could have been at least attempted. Funny how now that their favorite candidate lost everyone is coming out of the woodworks complaining about the system and asking for reforms.
Sorry guys. The proper moment to request reforms if you are really worried that the system is broken is after your favorite candidate won.
This way, it just looks like a lot of "bwuahaha, my side lost an election, that is sooo unffaaaaiiiiirrrr".
I respect Lawrence, once had a short phone conversation with him on another topic. I agree that the US political system is completely broken and needs wholesale replacement. I don't think this is the right way and the right time to do it.
Bridge's Uganda director denies the allegations, says the government hasn't even granted them an audience,
So in short, they couldn't get permission, decided to just ignore that and go ahead anyways, and now they're crying?
The mental maturity of a 3-year-old at work.
RT is definitely biased, as is every other news channel. I don't watch TV for this reason. I argue with people - including total dumbfucks - on the Internet exactly so I get things from outside my bubble.
I enjoy watching long, unedited, original takes of world leaders. There are some great talks of Putin from various conferences, for example. Damn the guy knows how to speak. There are some wonderful speeches from Obama, same thing. I had much fun listening to the speeches Trump made, because it is easy to spot the patterns and the manipulation techniques (he is a good manipulator, but an inexperienced politician, so it's very visible). I avoid Merkel because everything she says is just cringe-worthy. Same for Hillary Clinton, impossible to listen to her, whoever writes her speeches needs to be fired. I liked Nigel Farages speeches in the EU parliament, and in my own country I have a small number of favorite opposition party parliament members who regularily give great speeches.
I avoid the news like the plague. The simple fact that stories by necessity must be cut down to 30 seconds or 2 minutes or whatever ensures that no matter how much good will for balance and neutrality there might be, it is guaranteed that there will be at least a slant.
Are you really that dense? There's a word for people who are unable to put themselves into the minds of other people, but it's in the middle of the night here and I can't remember it. It's somewhere in the dictionary of mental disorders, look it up.
Thank you for this perfect example of why half of America despises the other half that is like you so much that they were happy to vote for someone like Trump simply because he promised to fuck your kind up.
No, that is bullshit. There are many real problems, US propaganda is not a problem by itself. It contributes to many problems, though (for example, many european economies are recovering slower than they would without anti-russian sanctions. Russia, meanwhile, is replacing imports from Europe with imports from China, Asia, India, etc. so our economies are being damaged long-term).
That's the point I'm making. Both sides take the moral high ground against the other side, which ultimately only proves that they are both full of shit.
It's an open secret that the USA influences media and public opinion in Europe as well, it is just less obvious because a) they have more experience doing it in a subtle way, Russia is still coming from an authoritarian state propaganda perspective and b) it is somehow legitimized through the use of NGOs, "cooperative partnerships" and the "american friendship".
So the Russians do it as well. Pot, meet kettle.
Funny how those who are all for tolerance when it comes to "their" people (gays, blacks, minorities, women, etc.) now use the exact kind of language against the Trump supporters. You all need to go back and re-read "The Wave". Just this time don't imagine that you're the kids in the rebellion. You're not. You just need a different script, against poor and stupid rednecks.
You are all funny, from aside. I laugh about the Trump voters who really think a billionaire asshole will bring back jobs that he was busy outsourcing to China just a year ago. And I laugh just the same about Clinton voters who really think that all the Trump voters are just uneducated poor who don't understand what's going on. That's the exact attitude that the Soviets used in Russia just before they took control of the revolution and replaced socialism with a red-fascist central state, to make sure the poor uneducated plebs don't hurt themselves and can be led into a better future by the smart, bright people who know how the world works.
The arrogance is unbelievable.
Mod this AC up, he is right on the money.
There is so much arrogance in those crying over the defeat now. And too little sitting down and really understanding what happened, without name-calling and low-level psychological defense mechanisms.
She didn't lose by voters despising her, she got 2 million more vote,
From what I could gather over here, basically half the people who voted for HC actually voted against Trump and would have preferred any other option if there had been one.
Fake news and propaganda built around the emails certainly helped. We'd regularly read selective misleading quotes here from her emails, hoping nobody actually would go read the full email.
I never read even one of the quotes, because the scandal is not in what the emails contained, the scandal is that a high ranking official breaks the rules in a way that would have landed a soldier or a low ranking official in jail.
he also had his hacker hack actual election related data and one voting machine manufacturer.
So why were these things hackable in the first place? If you can't run your election securely, you have no business running an election. Use paper ballots and hand-counting like the rest of the civilized world does for good reasons.
It's time to get real about elections. There's no point in having a large wall of security around the US, if a foreign power can rig an election and stick a puppet into power to control security. Now you Trump lot insist he's not Putin's puppet, but he certainly did provide political cover for those hacks, he certainly repeated Putin's false propaganda about Aleppo, and he certainly has strong business links to Russia.
Wow so much in there.
a) not everyone who points out what a corrupt person HC is automatically is a "Trump lot"
b) Aleppo is full of propaganda from all sides. European media, for example, regularily uses the word "Syrian rebels", conveniently ignoring that there are non non-islamist fighters left in Aleppo. They also use the word "civilians", conveniently ignoring that even respectable NGOs point out that for all we know, the only civilians left in Aleppos rebel controlled areas are the families of the islamist fighters, who are paid by Daesh to stay there.
c) If a foreign power can rig an election, your election system is fucked up and needs wholesale replacement
d) Your claim that Trump is a puppet, much less Putins puppet, is just words. You are entitled to your opinion, just make it obvious that it's only an opinion.
e) Russia is a huge country with 144 million people. If you're into international business, chances are good you have some business links to Russia. Pretty much all of Wall Street has, for example, but I've not heard anyone call Wall Street "Pro-Putin".
f) if you were really concerned so much about Trump, why you didn't prevent the DNC putting up literally the only imaginable candidate who could possibly lose against him in the election?
So if Putin invades a country could we trust the US to follow its agreed defense pacts?
Because Russia is such an aggressor... Wake up to your own countries propaganda, dude.
There is an answer on Yahoo Answers listing 5 countries that Russia invaded between 1890 and 2008, compared to 50 countries invaded or subject of military interventions by the USA in the same time period.
This list of countries invaded by Russia covers a longer time period, and again shows comparatively low aggression compared to most western countries.
this list shows 5 countries in the last 20 years invaded by Russia. A similar list for the USA would have at least 15-20 countries listed.
If you really still believe the tall tale of the Russian aggressiveness, you shouldn't talk about propaganda. You're a textbook example of a propaganda victim.
And you think that the west needs to look up "propaganda" on Wikipedia? There has been anti-russian propaganda in Europe at least since the first World War. Of course there is Russian propaganda as well, and German, and British and American, and Chinese - everyone plays this game.
Putin is leading a full-scale propaganda war against the west, intended at undermining trust in our democarcies and our institutions.
Someone send him a mail that he can save that money for other things, we're doing a splendid job at accomplishing that goal all by ourselves.
If you still trust our institutions after they've been taken over completely by neocons and neoliberals, after the financial crisis and the bank bail-outs, after (America) GWB and HC and all that shit or (Europe) the Cyprus robbery, the undermining of the elected government in Greece or the anti-democratic actions against the regional governments in Spain - if you still think that our institutions work for the good of the people, I have a lot of bridges that just got 10% off and you should buy them right away before someone else snatches them up.
Jeb? You mean Jeb Bush? Like that was not another easy target.
the entirety of "the system" working to prop her up
You understand that that is exactly what Trump used against her, yes?
Make sure to call it "Foodr" or you can't play with the cool boys.
(sorry, the domain is already gone. Maybe "Eatr"? It's for sale)
It has nothing to do with boosting e-commerce and startup culture.
This "we are an app company" is just like the software patent fiasco. Take a well-known process, add "with a computer" to it and file for a patent.
This is the same. Take an existing industry, add "with an app" to it - and pretend that everything that is true about that industry doesn't apply to you, because you are something completely new and different.
As if HC needed help in not being trusted and being generally despised. She is literally the only candidate who could have possibly lost to Trump. The only person actually susceptible to his style of personal attacks and no content.
With the DNC actions and the trickery and deceit they used to get Clinton past Sanders, no further propaganda was necessary to demolish HC. If some imaginary russian PR agency had been tasked with invention stories that put HC into a bad light, they couldn't possibly come up with such a shit. They would've been told "come on guys, it has to be at least borderline believable".
Russia didn't need to do anything here. HC demolished her chances all by herself.
One might also notice that this exposure alone would either incentivize the spread of the rule of law, or bringing back more industry to the US. All without a new government agency, new powers, or a bevy of new laws - but instead government just DOING WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE DOING in the first place.
Correct. The problem is that in the age of cheap-cheap-cheap, government agencies are short on resources and trapped between political bullshit.
Police looks the other way on a lot of smaller crimes on the streets not because they enjoy very much ignoring them, but because they don't have the men to do everything and it's better to focus on serious crimes.
Safety culture is ascendant now,
I'm not american. Your "crazy crimes" don't even raise an eyebrow over here.
Its also a little silly to think that people are going to be sent off with no medical provisions at all. No, there won't be facilities to do heart transplants, but treatments will be available.
Of course. I'm not talking about standard issues. I talked about problem management. If you have a standard procedure to handle it, it's not a problem.
Don't transfer your fear onto me.
Not talking about you specifically. I said that psychology and problem management will be major challenges. I didn't say they're a reason to not go to Mars or that it will be impossible or bla bla bla. I said that these are major challenges, beyond the purely technological.
Its a little strange and sad that for all of the advances we have made, that one of the results is people with free-floating fear. So many are one thought away from being afraid to live more than a block away from a Hospital - just in case.
Never heard of such people, and I think you are making a classic argument here that 0.01 should be rounded to 1.0
Understanding that you are 6-12 months away from any help, and without a guarantee that it will come at all is not a fear, it's a fact. Understanding that there is nothing you can do by yourself, contrary to earth where you can always at least try (to live off the land, to build a raft, to treck to the nearest village, etc.) is another fact.
Making your base so that it can handle even unexpected emergencies under these circumstances is not a small challenge, mostly due to the consequences inherent in the word "unexpected". In such a mission, you have to plan for black swans, and that's not a very easy thing to do.
The problem isn't that in the end you'll die on Mars. The problem is avoiding to die in the beginning, before you've had a chance for any of the fun stuff.
That may be true (don't know enough about chinese history to say for sure), but the GP was talking about jews. Stalin and Mao didn't target jews.
That's why modern government systems have checks and balances and separation of powers.
Which work great to keep idealists pragmatic, but fail utterly when all branches of the government are run by the same type of bureaucrats.
The problem is not only technological. The problem is psychological and problem management.
Psychological, being in a submarine is a thing in itself. So much that even the russian navy put only volunteers into subs. Now imagine living in an enclosed space not for a few months, but for the rest of your life.
Problem management is going to be a biggie. Basically, no matter what goes wrong, you are on your own. Even in the most remote places on earth, if things go really, really bad, you can radio for help and if you can hold out for a few days, you will be ok. Not to mention that even the most hostile places on earth are several orders of magnitude more friendly to human life than Mars.