"Meaning, you agree with me that the mutual defense clause is a sham."
No, I'm saying that a conventional response from the world's largest combined military force by a factor of 20x is just as effective a deterrent as the nuclear option which you assume is the first option.
"I guess even your vocabulary is fundamentally incapable of allowing you to see things from somebody else's perspective."
Again, I apologise if more than the most basic English confuses me, I keep forgetting how undereducated you apparently are. But no, a hypothetical scenario is something that could actually happen, the things you're proposing are historical and didn't happen but are using to drive an argument as if they did, and are therefore non-realities.
"Well yeah, that's my whole fucking point. When the Soviet Union stationed nukes in Cuba, the US responded to that provocative action by bringing the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation."
But again, you give lie to your pro-Russian bias in the way you phrase this, you claim it's the US that brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation by threatening, not Russia by actually deploying and aiming nukes. This is why you're incapable of offering any rational point to this discussion - from the very outset you have this ISIS style "US is the great satan" outlook whilst implying Russia is just an innocent bystander. That's obviously false.
"When the US expanded NATO all the way to the Russian border"
You do it again here, this is just broken. The US didn't expand anything, NATO grew when countries asked, off their own democratic back to join. Your whole world view is based around this idea that Russia gets to decide what everyone can and cannot do. Rather than realise that these countries asked to join NATO off their own back precisely because Russia had been dicks to them for decades and that that's Russia's own fault, you instead try and argue that the US expanded NATO as if the US somehow forced these countries to join, and as if it's anyone other than Russia's fault that they chose to join the West, rather than continue to sit under the East. NATO is not at fault for Russia's hostility and trampling of it's neighbours pushing them West.
"What research is that? Research disproving things your little strawman told you? I'm not him, I have no interest in understanding how wrong his viewpoints are. If you want to keep talking to him, go stand in front of a mirror and stop bothering me."
And finally deflection, refusing to confront your non-realities and broken world view by simply refusing to actually take the time to research the subject you're talking about. You're deflecting because it's too painful for you to read even a small amount of the plethora of evidence highlighting how wrong you are about things like Putin's awareness of his own military strength.
So here we are still, you're refusing to leave your non-realities behind, you still push your broken worldview, and show nothing but a massive inability to be objective, only looking at things from the Russia Today world view. So no, you can't contribute to this discussion because you highlight time and time again that you neither have a grasp of the subject material at hand, nor are you willing to even research it. Instead you post things over and over that are frankly just Russian propaganda like "The US expanded NATO" - this isn't surprising though, when you're stuck with the Russian Imperialist mindset it's not surprising that you think the only way an organisation can expand is by force, because that's how Russia works. You're oblivious to the way the West works, and that's by bringing people on side by simply giving them the advantages of being independent wealthy states. You can't understand that countries join NATO because they want to because all you know is the Russian way- and that's to make countries join your pact by outright invading them and installing a puppet dictator and secret police force to keep the population oppressed.
"Mutual defense means an obligation to respond to any attack as if it was on the home soil of any member. If Russian tanks were rolling towards the white house, would there not be an escalation to nuclear war? For fuck's sake man, the only reason the cold war didn't end with nuclear war is because both powers avoided attacking each other directly."
Er. Yes. Exactly. So why do you think that would change now? This is exactly my point, it's like you realise it whilst refusing to realise it.
You still don't get it - you still don't understand that what America would do to defend it's own soil isn't inherently what it has to do to defend foreign soil under NATO. Hell, it's not even clear if Russia did invade US soil that they'd use nuclear weapons, America has the firm military advantage so could win without doing so, thus Russia is the only party likely to do a first strike, and NATO wont use nukes unless Russia does first - it has no need for starters.
But importantly, NATO isn't touching Russian soil, so your argument is wholly meaningless, Russia is however touching foreign soil, albeit not NATO soil yet. Your argument seems to be that NATO nations shouldn't be allowed to defend themselves against Russian aggression - that's great for you as you're a Putin apologist, but you're simultaneously claiming it's not fair if NATO were to do the same to Russia, no shit, so how is it justified that Russia is the only one doing it?
"Yeah, my fragile little brain is too weak to logically argue the position of the strawman in your head."
Anger wont resolve the inherent paradoxes your irrational position has created. You'll need to try harder than that to fix your broken world view.
"You're right, I wasn't aware that the Warsaw pact included Mexico and Canada and Brazil. That's definitely news to me, and it completely invalidates everything I've said."
It doesn't have to, it's irrelevant, your whole argument makes no sense and is built on fantastical non-realities, non-realities you've had to create to counter the fact that your nonsensical ideas don't make sense in the context of actual reality.
"and the American response to that was to bring the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust"
This highlights the hypocrisy of your viewpoint, Russia stations nukes on America's border, pointing at America, and America has created an almost nuclear holocaust. What? Any rational human being can see that both sides escalated that one, I'm pretty sure the Americans didn't ask for those nukes to be positioned there and pointed at them.
So carry on apologising for Putin, being wrong, and talking about non-realities that justify your otherwise non-points. But you still haven't done any of that research I suggested, so you're continuing to be completely wrong and continuing to talk nonsense. Not much of a surprise.
"we dont drive small death traps like the rest of the world"
Um, the US has an 11.6 per 100,000 people death rate on the road, vs. France's 4.9, Germany's 4.3, or the UK's 3.5.
So people driving those "death traps" in the rest of the world are half as likely to die as you Americans are in your gigantic gas guzzlers. We typically get 50mpg and they tend to even let us drive faster too.
So yeah, nicer cars, faster journeys, less likely to die, and more money left over at the end of it.
Remind me why you think blowing cash on a fugly car that only gets 21mpg is a good thing again?
"Then what's the point of NATO? You just wiped your ass with the mutual defense clause"
Mutual defence, doesn't imply immediate escalation to nuclear defence. You're still entirely making that up. It just means mutual defence. Your rhetoric about guaranteed nuclear war is still nonsense, because the fact that world came out of the cold war nuclear war free is still proof of that. I don't know why you're even engaging in this discussion when you demonstrate exactly no knowledge of the cold war.
"Hahaha, that's awesome, basically your argument is that anything they did is evidence of your position. They didn't invade anyone? Obviously they couldn't! They invaded someone? Obviously imperialists! They stopped invading anyone? Obviously they realized they couldn't! You've set yourself up a nice little unfalsifiable fort there. Rocket science indeed."
No, my argument is that there is an incredibly vast body of proof and analysis on the topic, including statements from Putin himself admitting that his forces weren't up to it in Georgia that highlight this. Again, your lack of knowledge of this topic is wholly your problem, not mine. Don't try and spin it any other way - it's not my fault if you've no idea what you're talking about.
"How is it paranoia when the 25 years since the fall of the union have confirmed all their worst fears?"
Russia's worst fears are that it's neighbours wanted nothing to do with them? That's NATO's fault why exactly? You can't blame anyone but Russia for the fact that everyone around them wants to get as far away from them as possible.
"Haha that reminds me of those overly vague endings from Grey's Anatomy that were just sort of rambling without really saying anything relevant."
It's okay, you don't need to hurt your simple mind any further by failing to understand common words. I understand that things like paradoxes and fallacies are too complicated for you, so I didn't expect you to understand - if you did you'd be able to see why your worldview is so broken and paradoxical in the first place. It's pretty clear from everything you've said that your entire broken world view is built on the fact that you simply have no idea what the fuck you are talking about. You weren't aware of the Warsaw pact, you seem oblivious to the entirety of the cold war, and you are ignorant of the very things even Putin himself has said both about his history, his ideals, and his understanding of his own military,
Try as you might, you've proven that point that you simply can't argue from a point of ignorance- you've tried to argue, but you've yet to say anything that makes any sense, all because you have a complete lack of a grasp of basic facts.
Come back when you actually understand the topic and have managed to stop making such a repeated fool of yourself.
If nothing else go and have a read of the Russian leadership's own comments on it's military decay and the subsequent realisation from Georgia that they still weren't as prepared for war as they thought. I don't even need propaganda because pretty much everything I've said has been self-admitted by the Russian's themselves. Learn about Putin's speeches, such as where he declares the collapse of the USSR one of the greatest tragedies of our era. When you've come back, then tell me again that Putin doesn't lust for a return of Russia's imperial past, and that Putin wasn't aware that he was militarily crippled, and was surprised that they still weren't prepared in 2008.
You wont be able to of course, because by that point, having done that, you'll realise you were wrong. Well, that or just a reality denier, but you wont realise that, you'll just keep on being wrong. When even the folks you're trying to defend have contradicted you with your own words, normally you should know it's time to give up, apparently you don't though, so my bet is on reality denier.
"Haha, I should have known that would go over your head."
It went over my head because it makes absolutely no sense. Your argument is that NATO's only response to a Russian invasion is nuclear. That's obviously nonsense, if Russia carries out an invasion of a NATO nation in this manner NATO can simply respond in kind, either by say, fuelling Chechen separatism, or by similarly supporting the Estonians - mostly just giving enough weaponry to make such an invasion costly enough for the Russians to change their mind is sufficient. This basically describes pretty much every proxy battle in the cold war - nuclear war didn't happen, why do you think that's different now and the nuclear option is the only option? It isn't, you're simply spouting nonsense.
"Yes, and children are "involved" in their parents' decision making. I don't think that level of autonomy is something particularly attractive to most Russians."
Yes, as we've seen with Putin's regime, Russians prefer something much more restrictive and dictatorial. At least you got that bit right.
"Plus, how could something Putin learned when invading Georgia in 2008 have prevented him from doing something before that? Does he have a time machine or something?"
No, but obviously if nothing else, Putin isn't stupid. Before 2008 he knew full well his military wasn't upto it, he assumed it would be in 2008 and found that it still wasn't. This isn't really rocket science, I'm amazed you're struggling with it. The average person wouldn't, much less someone with even a modicum of intelligence above that.
"Yeah, but your refusal to consider another perspective has "Made in USA" printed on it in red, white, and blue."
Here's the real problem - you're the only one bringing the USA into this over and over. You're the typical type of person whose view is formed something like "Afghanistan and Iraq were bad, therefore, the US is bad. Russia hates the US, therefore, Russia is good". Obviously that's the height of ignorant dumb-think because it's a fundamental fallacy. But you're excelling at demonstrating that in your oh so binary world that the only factors are either loving Russia and hating the US, or loving the US and hating Russia. Some of us are capable of seeing the billion shades of grey in between - don't think all of us are constrained by the same type of binary dumb-think that you are clearly displaying. It's perfectly possible for someone to think that both Russia and the US have done a lot wrong - the fact you don't get that shows you're a personal that suffers from serious problems of bias, ignorance and partisanship.
"He's a guy that wants democratic reform. Of course he doesn't like Putin, why would he. But what does that have to do with what we're talking about? "
Oh keep up. You asked how I could know what Putin's thoughts are - I point out it's quite simple, you simply read things from people whom he has expressed them to and who is aware of them. I pointed to one such person, again, it's not difficult.
"Unless what you're saying is that it would be preferable to you if Russia was run by people who didn't care about their strategic weaknesses and security, which I guess I agree with. I mean, lots of people would be really happy if some of the pre-Soviet imperial conquests broke off."
Honestly, I don't care what Russia does as long as it only acts either within it's borders, or outside it's borders with consent. I think the US invasion of Iraq was completely and utterly wrong, and I despise the US for it because it's clear the fucking mess in that part of the middle east still stems from that. Similarly however I despise the fact Russia has invaded and annexed the territory of a foreign sovereign nation, whilst simultaneously admitting to committing war crimes in the process (putting civilians at risk by pretending your soldiers are civilian is a self-admitted breach of the Geneva convention by Putin).
If Russians want to sit all paranoid that's fine, but that doesn't give them the right to dic
To be fair also, someone posted a Google Maps satellite photo of the guys home. There's basically nothing behind his house (certainly no adjoining property) so the chance of the birdshot falling on anything other than grass is basically zero by the looks of it.
Given that there is so much empty space behind the property it does seem a little odd that the drone owner insisted on flying over the properties (we know this because it fell inside the property boundaries once shot down) rather than over the wealth of empty space behind the properties.
Given all this it seems pretty clear the drone operator was focussing on people's properties to spy on them, rather than just passing through.
Yeah but look on the bright side, that cost of billions will be more than made up for the fact that you no longer have to invade oil rich states where you create enemy combatants by fucking over their country and where your troops can desert in the first place.
So it seems to suit your own argument just fine- billions to become energy independent is a bargain compared to trillion dollar wars to maintain oil dependence.
Didn't Google get hammered by Apple users for ignoring some Safari setting and tracking them anyway though? If so why are other ad companies special, are they not just a similar court case away from a costly payout?
It seems that if your browser says "Do Not Track" and they track you, then they're flagrantly violating your privacy.
Sounds like it just needs people willing to take these guys to court just as Google was hauled through the courts.
"I spent one week locating the problem by digging into verbose logs: it was due to the FDIV bug, which was subtly changing the positions of some trucks."
Similar issues are actually a fairly common occurrence in network code for video games during development when the developer is fairly new to the task. A lot of people writing network code for games run into it before learning their lesson.
See this SE question and the associated links for example for some interesting points:
"Why in god's name would Russia join a military alliance headed by their biggest geopolitical rival whose sole purpose for existing is to surround Russia with thinly veiled sworn enemies, army bases, and missiles aimed at their cities and military forces? What you're talking about is on par with saying the US had every opportunity to join the Soviet satellite states like the Eastern Bloc."
Well yes, if your view is Russian-centric paranoia I can see why you'd think that, but to anyone else the reasons are obvious - people join NATO as equals and NATO only existed to defend against Russia because Russia had opted to be a threat. In contrast, the USSR held on to countless European states against their will and is trying to do so today. So on one hand you have a purely defensive organisation where everyone is an equal, and on the other you have oppressive Russian imperialism. They're quite different.
"How about if instead of the Ida-Viru region of Estonia, we're talking about a quarter of the Norwegian offshore oil drilling operations? Would you be willing to destroy hundreds of millions of human lives, including your own, and plunge the planet into decades without sunshine to stop that?"
I really have no idea what the fuck your point is. Given that those aren't even choices that exist and hence there is absolutely no context around them then you're not really making any sense. You seem to be suggesting that NATO would randomly start a nuclear war over something relatively trivial. That's a theory you've come up with with absolutely no grounding in reality.
"Perhaps NATO isn't everything you think it is, at least not against Russia."
I don't think you have even the slightest clue what NATO is. It is primarily a security pact couple with military coordination and training. If Russia joined that then it would inherently be protected from NATO as a member itself, and would be involved in NATO's decision making. The fact Russia still has imperialist ambitions and seeks to grow it's territory with force is not in any way NATO's fault, and wholly Russia's. NATO doesn't force anyone to join - countries ask, and even when they do NATO is incredibly careful about membership, hence why Ukraine and Georgia are not yet members.
"and a couple of other countries entering a pact of mutual defense with the Soviet union wherein they were obligated to attack the US in unison if any of them were attacked by the US"
Er, so you're talking about the cold war and you've never heard of the Warsaw pact? You should probably stop now.
"I'll never understand why Putin waited nearly 15 years for NATO to keep expanding before he decided to try to do all those things that he totally intended to do all along. You'd think it'd have been a lot easier to, say, annex Georgia back before they had much in the way of ties to the EU or the US, and same for the rest of those countries. Well, I guess he must be really stupid."
Well, you know, these things cost money. They don't come for free. When your country has basically gone bankrupt it starts to take a while before you can save up your roubles enough to create a viable force, and even then they'll be rusty and may still need further training and support, as Putin learnt the hard way in Georgia when his forces took way more casualties than they should have in 2008.
"Oh, what's that you say? You haven't actually talked to Putin's psychiatrist? And you're basing all your opinions on the typical American"
Psychiatrists don't write leaders biographies and do interviews for them idiot. Similarly, plenty of folks who do and have known Putin personally have written more than enough about his personality. Unfortunately, being as corrupt a dictator as Putin means you tend to fall out regularly with those around you, and we therefore have no end of people who were once close to him, and even some who still are describing his motivations. Oh, and I'm not American.
Stop being a Putin apologist when you don't know the first thing about him. You don't
I don't think you realise how much of a fail your argument is - being equal to Greece means that if shit hits the fan for us then we too get bailed out. Yes, I'd love that security blanket, in fact, that's precisely why we're in the EU because last time we fucked up and nearly went bankrupt Europe did indeed do all of that for us.
In the meantime, whilst we're doing well we get to be equal with countries like Germany and France.
Besides, the world is moving East, not West. Moving the opposite direction to the tides of change would be one of the most braindead things we could do over the next 50 years either way. We'd attach ourselves to a falling empire, whilst the rest of the world moves on into a multi-polar world involving China. There's a reason our own government regardless of the EU shunned the US and joined China's new investment bank - they're not stupid enough to tie us to the sort of past fantasy that people like you Farage, and Liam Fox long for but just doesn't exist anymore and will not exist any time in the next century at least. The British empire is gone, and America is declining as the once sole superpower, we're going to have to adapt to that reality if we want to continue to be prosperous.
You really are not mentally mature enough to be having this discussion, you're still desperately crying racism in a topic that has literally nothing to do with race. When you've got two groups fighting that are the same fucking race, then how exactly do you think racism even remotely factors in? Do you really think that just shouting racism at people somehow makes a legitimate argument even when it makes absolutely no sense?
And no, the Kurds don't control anything even approaching the entirety Turkish/Syrian border, and those that do live on that border aren't the ones Erdogan has been primarily targeting (though he has been targeting them). Most of those he has killed have been killed in Iraq.
You obviously have a hatred for the far right, and that's a good thing, but when you don't even understand the sorts of policies those groups have (I'll give you a hint: they don't care about brown people as you call them fighting other brown people) and make nonsensical arguments against them it doesn't exactly put you in a position of strength. People like you do more harm than good, because they can legitimately hold you up as an example of someone that throws terms like "racist" around when it doesn't make any sense and as such you devalue the term removing it's potency when it's necessary to call out real actual racists.
Erdogan has turned a blind eye to ISIS fighters and weapons using his country as a transit point into Syria whilst blocking Kurdish fighters from doing the same and has put far more effort into bombing Kurds.
It's got nothing to do with skin colour or religion, Turkey and the Kurds are both secular, ISIS is an Islamist group, and Erdogan is an Islamist leader, that's about it. Calling out a bad leader for doing more to oppress a group that has been in peace talks for 2 years and has been attacked by Erdogan's troops more than they've attacked Erdogans troops doesn't make me an Islamaphobe by any measure, particularly as there are more than enough muslim Kurds. Stop being so ignorant.
Your post really couldn't be more useless, "it's a nationalism issue", what's a nationalism issue exactly? bombing the Kurds? great, but how does that justify implicitly supporting ISIS by letting them transit fighters and weapons through Turkey? how does that make it okay to attack the Kurds more so than ISIS? It doesn't matter what the motivation issue is, it's wrong all the same. Erdogan has long held the belief that ISIS are more of a benefit than a problem, and that's really not good for the West. Only now that they've attacked Turkey proper in a slightly more brutal way has his calculus changed somewhat and even then his instinct is not to obliterate ISIS, but instead to use it as an excuse to hammer the shit out of the PKK, and hit the YPG too.
It's kind of sad how you had to see the problem as an issue of race and religion, I'm astounded that you'd then cry bigot - you obviously are wrestling with your own inability to keep religion and race out of a discussion it's wholly irrelevant to. Crying "Islamaphobe", talking about skin colour and shouting bigot wont detract from your own apparent bigotry where you jump to conclusions that bear no relevance to anything that was said.
His point is, how the fuck do you know where the owner is? How do you know the drone will even still be there by the time the cops turn up leaving them unable to act and wasting their time?
It makes far more sense as the GP suggested that the drone owner follow his drone to the houses he intends to fly it over and politely asks permission, rather than just doing it and expecting everyone else to somehow go and find him.
"Well, it sure as hell impressed opportunistic American politicians who have been expanding NATO for 20 years without seemingly any sort of awareness of the provocation towards Russia it entailed"
Oh nonsense, Russia had every opportunity to join NATO and become a modern progressive nation itself. The fact it decided to not do that because it still had dreams of an empire is not NATO's fault but Russia's. NATO is a security organisation and by increasing membership it increases security. Bringing Russia on board was a key aim because that would be the ultimate stability pact for Europe, but Putin killed all that and put the final nails in the coffin when it invaded both Georgia and Ukraine. Putin plays the victim because it suits, but NATO isn't the aggressor here.
Putin would've done what he did regardless, if anything NATO restricted how far he was able to go - certainly it blocked him from annexing the whole of Georgia proper, and places like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and so forth would likely be stuck once more with Russian puppet governments were it not for NATO.
Putin is an imperialist, and no amount of appeasement will or would have ever changed that. He was there as a KGB agent when the USSR collapsed and he's never forgiven that. You wont change him, and you wont help him, all you can do is stand up to him and keep him in check. He believes soviet Russia was always right, and he's determined to try and rebuild the empire he believes was stolen from Russia, failing to realise it wasn't stolen, merely that the people Russia oppressed for so long were taking their freedom back.
Yeah if Turkey's latest actions where it's killed 260 kurds are anything to go by it's pretty obvious which side Turkey is on.
Turkey is the new Pakistan, pretending to be pro-West on one hand to get nice military funding, whilst supporting the likes of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS on the other.
So if someone is driving an RC car around and you pick it up, it's yours because they left it lying around? Care to extend that to a Predator drone? If you manage to swipe it out the sky somehow with say a hack, I'm sure the government wont care because hey, they left it flying around in public airspace so tough shit. You can just take it. I imagine car theft isn't a crime in the US either, because if someone just parks their car and leaves it lying around, it's fine to just jack the engine out of it right?
Unless America's laws on property ownership are completely fucked up and broken then basically everything you say is wrong.
Here in the UK even if you find a £10 note on the floor and no one is around it's still not yours to take, you're still technically meant to hand it in to the police station, even if many people don't.
I'm not overly convinced by the Russia nuclear threat, that's not to say it's not incredibly dangerous, but I'm not convinced the Russian nuclear arsenal is even remotely world ending or similar.
The UK is struggling to afford to maintain an arsenal of 160 missiles, yet Russia's economy is drastically smaller and it's arsenal is supposedly 1600 munitions. I'd be amazed if should it come to that even a fraction of Russia's nukes actually turned out to be viable.
If you want to get an idea of the damage Russia's nukes could do, try here:
nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
Long story short, the types of nukes Russia has, combined with it's severe corruption, it's relatively small economy, I'd be amazed if Russia's nukes could at best do much more than wipe out key cities in a few European countries leaving many more cities and many other countries intact. I believe the West could survive a Russian nuclear assault, but every last Russian on Russian soil would be well and truly finished.
It doesn't seem plausible that more than a fraction of Russia's arsenal is genuinely viable regardless of what they claim. Even America with a budget over 8 times the size of Russia's is struggling with the cost of maintaining their similar sized arsenal.
Russia has recently started spending more on it's conventional forces, it's been blowing billions on a 5th gen fighter programme that is now on the verge of collapse. Just today the entirety of it's primary Apache attack helicopter counterpart (all it's Mi28s) have been grounded probably due to low quality parts, poor maintenance.
Putin's nuclear bluff is only going to be able to get him so far. It doesn't seem even remotely plausible that much of his nuclear arsenal after 25 years of decay is even remotely much of a threat if he can't even keep his helicopters in the air, and new planes being built. Nukes ain't cheap, and Russia simply can't afford them. It's trying to grow a multi-faceted defence force without the finances to do so. Good luck with that.
How many countries are the US military in against the will of the governments of those countries?
I don't believe it's any currently. I believe about the only one you can argue is Guantanamo bay in Cuba, but even there I don't believe the government believe the contract allowing them to be there is illegitimate, even if they greatly dislike it.
In contrast, how many countries are the Russians in against the will of the governments of those countries? Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova for starters:
So sorry, but Russia still loses by the metric you're claiming. They're still the bad guy. They don't get to demand consensual deployments end, whilst committing illegal deployments.
I'm pretty left wing, I despite the American right (because in real, non-American terms, it's closer to far right than it is centre right).
But I'm struggling to see how your assumption that a guy from Kentucky must be anti-gay rights and living in fear of illegal immigrants.
He could just genuinely have a firm belief in the right to privacy.
I'm not terribly sure how your prejudice is in any way better than that you're complaining about. You can't fairly judge the guy if you don't know him and haven't spoken to him.
It's perfectly possible that he'd just as well be willing to hold up his gun to defend an immigrant or a gay person. Not everyone in the American south is cut from the same cloth, something I was humbled by when I visited there with the same assumption only to find that I was completely wrong - there are still plenty of sensible well meaning people there who believe in the rights of the individual, whether that's being gay or simply being able to maintain some semblance of a private life.
I don't know if it's that simple really, the tide of far right support has grown during the economic crisis, there's something to be said for the fact that if you can hold out against it long enough whilst combating it's lies and ideas that you can stem the tide.
I think it's probably peaked in the UK (and possibly Europe in general) now, as the economy is strengthening people are moving away from UKIP et. al. again and support for the EU is growing once more as those who want to pull out for no other reason than they hate foreigners (at least, that's all I can assume given that none of their other arguments actually make any sense, and the mask slips all too frequently) are beginning to get ignored once again.
I think really this is the problem they had in Nazi Germany, the country was suffering and far right sentiment grew, the problem is it grew just large enough to corrupt the system and cement it's hold on the country.
Effectively, I believe the situation is this, there is around 5% - 10% of a population that are genuinely far-right in most European countries, but there's another 30% or so of useful idiots who are trivially swayed by populism - they like lies that sound good and phantom enemies to hate on. The trick is to prevent that 30% from giving strength to the genuine 5% - 10% of extremists by either educating them by questioning lies and seeking facts (which the media fails hard at in the UK) or just keeping them happy and so dumb to politics, because if they're happy they just don't care about anything but themselves. These are the folks who if they're employed and earning just fine don't give a shit about politics, but if they lose their job because the economy is shit will vote purely on a single "Mexicans stole your job" type soundbite they heard on the radio in passing - more detailed explanations about why they actually lost their job, which may sometimes even include some blame on their own part, are just too long winded, and too difficult for them to hear.
British politics has this problem though where for some reason the noisiest minority gets to drive the whole agenda. We also really don't have much of local powerbases where they can fail hard, the closest thing are local councils, but councils don't always listen to elected councillors anyway so they typically fail or succeed in spite of who has been elected to try and tell them what to do.
Take for example the EU referendum - in the European elections, despite a favourable demographic turnout for the far right, far right parties only won about 30% of the vote. The other 70% was won by parties whose stated aim is to remain in the EU. Yet for some reason, we're having a referendum on EU membership despite there being clear overwhelming support for staying in (recent polls put it overwhelmingly in favour of the EU). Quite why we're wasting hundreds of millions on a referendum like this just because a vocal far right minority screams the loudest I've no fucking idea - they had their referendum, it was called the European elections, and despite disproportionate positive media coverage, turnout favouring their electoral base, and so on and so forth, they still lost hard.
Probably the real problem here is that the press love sensation, so they'd rather praise the far right for causing a stir, than question them for lying their way to power with populism. As such we have this problem whereby there's no one with any real voice that can expose their wrongdoing and lies on a grander scale.
No, not even remotely close. Before the EU, the world was massively different and the EU was in ruins from a massive war.
It's like saying "Before the fall of the British empire, Britain did better with India". Right, but we're not before the British empire, just like we're not before the EU. NAFTA isn't even remotely as comprehensive a free trade agreement as what the EU has - you still have massive customs barriers as anyone that has tried to move goods between the US and Canada vs. between European states can tell you.
Of course, the EU doesn't preclude us also having partnerships with these countries as well - it's not mutually exclusive, why limit ourselves to one just because people like Farage hate foreign people that aren't largely of British cultural descent?
Um, no. Milliband was too far left for the electorate and they lost hard as a result. Why do you think that going even further left will help exactly?
The centrist candidate last time was David Milliband, the centrist candidate this time is Liz Kendall. Neither were/will be elected, even though they're the only options that would have/will make Labour tolerable to the electorate.
People voted towards the right, they would probably have tolerated something slightly more the left (i.e. actual centre), but Milliband was too far to the left to be tolerable to most people. Your solution is to swing to a leader even further away from what people wanted, really?
Gordon Brown had the same problem, he was just a little too far left to be tolerable. No one wants Brownites like Milliband, Balls, and Burnham. They want people who are willing to balance state handouts with fiscal responsibility, Corbyn is the exact opposite of that - he believes that we have infinite money that we can just use to give more and more handouts to everyone.
Good luck with that, that was exactly what lost both Brown and Milliband the election, except now you want to double down with it and do it even more, as if you believe that if you throw enough fail at something it'll become success. No, just no.
Slashdot Mirror
"Meaning, you agree with me that the mutual defense clause is a sham."
No, I'm saying that a conventional response from the world's largest combined military force by a factor of 20x is just as effective a deterrent as the nuclear option which you assume is the first option.
"I guess even your vocabulary is fundamentally incapable of allowing you to see things from somebody else's perspective."
Again, I apologise if more than the most basic English confuses me, I keep forgetting how undereducated you apparently are. But no, a hypothetical scenario is something that could actually happen, the things you're proposing are historical and didn't happen but are using to drive an argument as if they did, and are therefore non-realities.
"Well yeah, that's my whole fucking point. When the Soviet Union stationed nukes in Cuba, the US responded to that provocative action by bringing the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation."
But again, you give lie to your pro-Russian bias in the way you phrase this, you claim it's the US that brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation by threatening, not Russia by actually deploying and aiming nukes. This is why you're incapable of offering any rational point to this discussion - from the very outset you have this ISIS style "US is the great satan" outlook whilst implying Russia is just an innocent bystander. That's obviously false.
"When the US expanded NATO all the way to the Russian border"
You do it again here, this is just broken. The US didn't expand anything, NATO grew when countries asked, off their own democratic back to join. Your whole world view is based around this idea that Russia gets to decide what everyone can and cannot do. Rather than realise that these countries asked to join NATO off their own back precisely because Russia had been dicks to them for decades and that that's Russia's own fault, you instead try and argue that the US expanded NATO as if the US somehow forced these countries to join, and as if it's anyone other than Russia's fault that they chose to join the West, rather than continue to sit under the East. NATO is not at fault for Russia's hostility and trampling of it's neighbours pushing them West.
"What research is that? Research disproving things your little strawman told you? I'm not him, I have no interest in understanding how wrong his viewpoints are. If you want to keep talking to him, go stand in front of a mirror and stop bothering me."
And finally deflection, refusing to confront your non-realities and broken world view by simply refusing to actually take the time to research the subject you're talking about. You're deflecting because it's too painful for you to read even a small amount of the plethora of evidence highlighting how wrong you are about things like Putin's awareness of his own military strength.
So here we are still, you're refusing to leave your non-realities behind, you still push your broken worldview, and show nothing but a massive inability to be objective, only looking at things from the Russia Today world view. So no, you can't contribute to this discussion because you highlight time and time again that you neither have a grasp of the subject material at hand, nor are you willing to even research it. Instead you post things over and over that are frankly just Russian propaganda like "The US expanded NATO" - this isn't surprising though, when you're stuck with the Russian Imperialist mindset it's not surprising that you think the only way an organisation can expand is by force, because that's how Russia works. You're oblivious to the way the West works, and that's by bringing people on side by simply giving them the advantages of being independent wealthy states. You can't understand that countries join NATO because they want to because all you know is the Russian way- and that's to make countries join your pact by outright invading them and installing a puppet dictator and secret police force to keep the population oppressed.
"Mutual defense means an obligation to respond to any attack as if it was on the home soil of any member. If Russian tanks were rolling towards the white house, would there not be an escalation to nuclear war? For fuck's sake man, the only reason the cold war didn't end with nuclear war is because both powers avoided attacking each other directly."
Er. Yes. Exactly. So why do you think that would change now? This is exactly my point, it's like you realise it whilst refusing to realise it.
You still don't get it - you still don't understand that what America would do to defend it's own soil isn't inherently what it has to do to defend foreign soil under NATO. Hell, it's not even clear if Russia did invade US soil that they'd use nuclear weapons, America has the firm military advantage so could win without doing so, thus Russia is the only party likely to do a first strike, and NATO wont use nukes unless Russia does first - it has no need for starters.
But importantly, NATO isn't touching Russian soil, so your argument is wholly meaningless, Russia is however touching foreign soil, albeit not NATO soil yet. Your argument seems to be that NATO nations shouldn't be allowed to defend themselves against Russian aggression - that's great for you as you're a Putin apologist, but you're simultaneously claiming it's not fair if NATO were to do the same to Russia, no shit, so how is it justified that Russia is the only one doing it?
"Yeah, my fragile little brain is too weak to logically argue the position of the strawman in your head."
Anger wont resolve the inherent paradoxes your irrational position has created. You'll need to try harder than that to fix your broken world view.
"You're right, I wasn't aware that the Warsaw pact included Mexico and Canada and Brazil. That's definitely news to me, and it completely invalidates everything I've said."
It doesn't have to, it's irrelevant, your whole argument makes no sense and is built on fantastical non-realities, non-realities you've had to create to counter the fact that your nonsensical ideas don't make sense in the context of actual reality.
"and the American response to that was to bring the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust"
This highlights the hypocrisy of your viewpoint, Russia stations nukes on America's border, pointing at America, and America has created an almost nuclear holocaust. What? Any rational human being can see that both sides escalated that one, I'm pretty sure the Americans didn't ask for those nukes to be positioned there and pointed at them.
So carry on apologising for Putin, being wrong, and talking about non-realities that justify your otherwise non-points. But you still haven't done any of that research I suggested, so you're continuing to be completely wrong and continuing to talk nonsense. Not much of a surprise.
"we dont drive small death traps like the rest of the world"
Um, the US has an 11.6 per 100,000 people death rate on the road, vs. France's 4.9, Germany's 4.3, or the UK's 3.5.
So people driving those "death traps" in the rest of the world are half as likely to die as you Americans are in your gigantic gas guzzlers. We typically get 50mpg and they tend to even let us drive faster too.
So yeah, nicer cars, faster journeys, less likely to die, and more money left over at the end of it.
Remind me why you think blowing cash on a fugly car that only gets 21mpg is a good thing again?
"Then what's the point of NATO? You just wiped your ass with the mutual defense clause"
Mutual defence, doesn't imply immediate escalation to nuclear defence. You're still entirely making that up. It just means mutual defence. Your rhetoric about guaranteed nuclear war is still nonsense, because the fact that world came out of the cold war nuclear war free is still proof of that. I don't know why you're even engaging in this discussion when you demonstrate exactly no knowledge of the cold war.
"Hahaha, that's awesome, basically your argument is that anything they did is evidence of your position. They didn't invade anyone? Obviously they couldn't! They invaded someone? Obviously imperialists! They stopped invading anyone? Obviously they realized they couldn't! You've set yourself up a nice little unfalsifiable fort there. Rocket science indeed."
No, my argument is that there is an incredibly vast body of proof and analysis on the topic, including statements from Putin himself admitting that his forces weren't up to it in Georgia that highlight this. Again, your lack of knowledge of this topic is wholly your problem, not mine. Don't try and spin it any other way - it's not my fault if you've no idea what you're talking about.
"How is it paranoia when the 25 years since the fall of the union have confirmed all their worst fears?"
Russia's worst fears are that it's neighbours wanted nothing to do with them? That's NATO's fault why exactly? You can't blame anyone but Russia for the fact that everyone around them wants to get as far away from them as possible.
"Haha that reminds me of those overly vague endings from Grey's Anatomy that were just sort of rambling without really saying anything relevant."
It's okay, you don't need to hurt your simple mind any further by failing to understand common words. I understand that things like paradoxes and fallacies are too complicated for you, so I didn't expect you to understand - if you did you'd be able to see why your worldview is so broken and paradoxical in the first place. It's pretty clear from everything you've said that your entire broken world view is built on the fact that you simply have no idea what the fuck you are talking about. You weren't aware of the Warsaw pact, you seem oblivious to the entirety of the cold war, and you are ignorant of the very things even Putin himself has said both about his history, his ideals, and his understanding of his own military,
Try as you might, you've proven that point that you simply can't argue from a point of ignorance- you've tried to argue, but you've yet to say anything that makes any sense, all because you have a complete lack of a grasp of basic facts.
Come back when you actually understand the topic and have managed to stop making such a repeated fool of yourself.
If nothing else go and have a read of the Russian leadership's own comments on it's military decay and the subsequent realisation from Georgia that they still weren't as prepared for war as they thought. I don't even need propaganda because pretty much everything I've said has been self-admitted by the Russian's themselves. Learn about Putin's speeches, such as where he declares the collapse of the USSR one of the greatest tragedies of our era. When you've come back, then tell me again that Putin doesn't lust for a return of Russia's imperial past, and that Putin wasn't aware that he was militarily crippled, and was surprised that they still weren't prepared in 2008.
You wont be able to of course, because by that point, having done that, you'll realise you were wrong. Well, that or just a reality denier, but you wont realise that, you'll just keep on being wrong. When even the folks you're trying to defend have contradicted you with your own words, normally you should know it's time to give up, apparently you don't though, so my bet is on reality denier.
"Haha, I should have known that would go over your head."
It went over my head because it makes absolutely no sense. Your argument is that NATO's only response to a Russian invasion is nuclear. That's obviously nonsense, if Russia carries out an invasion of a NATO nation in this manner NATO can simply respond in kind, either by say, fuelling Chechen separatism, or by similarly supporting the Estonians - mostly just giving enough weaponry to make such an invasion costly enough for the Russians to change their mind is sufficient. This basically describes pretty much every proxy battle in the cold war - nuclear war didn't happen, why do you think that's different now and the nuclear option is the only option? It isn't, you're simply spouting nonsense.
"Yes, and children are "involved" in their parents' decision making. I don't think that level of autonomy is something particularly attractive to most Russians."
Yes, as we've seen with Putin's regime, Russians prefer something much more restrictive and dictatorial. At least you got that bit right.
"Plus, how could something Putin learned when invading Georgia in 2008 have prevented him from doing something
before that? Does he have a time machine or something?"
No, but obviously if nothing else, Putin isn't stupid. Before 2008 he knew full well his military wasn't upto it, he assumed it would be in 2008 and found that it still wasn't. This isn't really rocket science, I'm amazed you're struggling with it. The average person wouldn't, much less someone with even a modicum of intelligence above that.
"Yeah, but your refusal to consider another perspective has "Made in USA" printed on it in red, white, and blue."
Here's the real problem - you're the only one bringing the USA into this over and over. You're the typical type of person whose view is formed something like "Afghanistan and Iraq were bad, therefore, the US is bad. Russia hates the US, therefore, Russia is good". Obviously that's the height of ignorant dumb-think because it's a fundamental fallacy. But you're excelling at demonstrating that in your oh so binary world that the only factors are either loving Russia and hating the US, or loving the US and hating Russia. Some of us are capable of seeing the billion shades of grey in between - don't think all of us are constrained by the same type of binary dumb-think that you are clearly displaying. It's perfectly possible for someone to think that both Russia and the US have done a lot wrong - the fact you don't get that shows you're a personal that suffers from serious problems of bias, ignorance and partisanship.
"He's a guy that wants democratic reform. Of course he doesn't like Putin, why would he. But what does that have to do with what we're talking about? "
Oh keep up. You asked how I could know what Putin's thoughts are - I point out it's quite simple, you simply read things from people whom he has expressed them to and who is aware of them. I pointed to one such person, again, it's not difficult.
"Unless what you're saying is that it would be preferable to you if Russia was run by people who didn't care about their strategic weaknesses and security, which I guess I agree with. I mean, lots of people would be really happy if some of the pre-Soviet imperial conquests broke off."
Honestly, I don't care what Russia does as long as it only acts either within it's borders, or outside it's borders with consent. I think the US invasion of Iraq was completely and utterly wrong, and I despise the US for it because it's clear the fucking mess in that part of the middle east still stems from that. Similarly however I despise the fact Russia has invaded and annexed the territory of a foreign sovereign nation, whilst simultaneously admitting to committing war crimes in the process (putting civilians at risk by pretending your soldiers are civilian is a self-admitted breach of the Geneva convention by Putin).
If Russians want to sit all paranoid that's fine, but that doesn't give them the right to dic
To be fair also, someone posted a Google Maps satellite photo of the guys home. There's basically nothing behind his house (certainly no adjoining property) so the chance of the birdshot falling on anything other than grass is basically zero by the looks of it.
Given that there is so much empty space behind the property it does seem a little odd that the drone owner insisted on flying over the properties (we know this because it fell inside the property boundaries once shot down) rather than over the wealth of empty space behind the properties.
Given all this it seems pretty clear the drone operator was focussing on people's properties to spy on them, rather than just passing through.
Yeah but look on the bright side, that cost of billions will be more than made up for the fact that you no longer have to invade oil rich states where you create enemy combatants by fucking over their country and where your troops can desert in the first place.
So it seems to suit your own argument just fine- billions to become energy independent is a bargain compared to trillion dollar wars to maintain oil dependence.
Didn't Google get hammered by Apple users for ignoring some Safari setting and tracking them anyway though? If so why are other ad companies special, are they not just a similar court case away from a costly payout?
It seems that if your browser says "Do Not Track" and they track you, then they're flagrantly violating your privacy.
Sounds like it just needs people willing to take these guys to court just as Google was hauled through the courts.
"I spent one week locating the problem by digging into verbose logs: it was due to the FDIV bug, which was subtly changing the positions of some trucks."
Similar issues are actually a fairly common occurrence in network code for video games during development when the developer is fairly new to the task. A lot of people writing network code for games run into it before learning their lesson.
See this SE question and the associated links for example for some interesting points:
http://gamedev.stackexchange.c...
"Why in god's name would Russia join a military alliance headed by their biggest geopolitical rival whose sole purpose for existing is to surround Russia with thinly veiled sworn enemies, army bases, and missiles aimed at their cities and military forces? What you're talking about is on par with saying the US had every opportunity to join the Soviet satellite states like the Eastern Bloc."
Well yes, if your view is Russian-centric paranoia I can see why you'd think that, but to anyone else the reasons are obvious - people join NATO as equals and NATO only existed to defend against Russia because Russia had opted to be a threat. In contrast, the USSR held on to countless European states against their will and is trying to do so today. So on one hand you have a purely defensive organisation where everyone is an equal, and on the other you have oppressive Russian imperialism. They're quite different.
"How about if instead of the Ida-Viru region of Estonia, we're talking about a quarter of the Norwegian offshore oil drilling operations? Would you be willing to destroy hundreds of millions of human lives, including your own, and plunge the planet into decades without sunshine to stop that?"
I really have no idea what the fuck your point is. Given that those aren't even choices that exist and hence there is absolutely no context around them then you're not really making any sense. You seem to be suggesting that NATO would randomly start a nuclear war over something relatively trivial. That's a theory you've come up with with absolutely no grounding in reality.
"Perhaps NATO isn't everything you think it is, at least not against Russia."
I don't think you have even the slightest clue what NATO is. It is primarily a security pact couple with military coordination and training. If Russia joined that then it would inherently be protected from NATO as a member itself, and would be involved in NATO's decision making. The fact Russia still has imperialist ambitions and seeks to grow it's territory with force is not in any way NATO's fault, and wholly Russia's. NATO doesn't force anyone to join - countries ask, and even when they do NATO is incredibly careful about membership, hence why Ukraine and Georgia are not yet members.
"and a couple of other countries entering a pact of mutual defense with the Soviet union wherein they were obligated to attack the US in unison if any of them were attacked by the US"
Er, so you're talking about the cold war and you've never heard of the Warsaw pact? You should probably stop now.
"I'll never understand why Putin waited nearly 15 years for NATO to keep expanding before he decided to try to do all those things that he totally intended to do all along. You'd think it'd have been a lot easier to, say, annex Georgia back before they had much in the way of ties to the EU or the US, and same for the rest of those countries. Well, I guess he must be really stupid."
Well, you know, these things cost money. They don't come for free. When your country has basically gone bankrupt it starts to take a while before you can save up your roubles enough to create a viable force, and even then they'll be rusty and may still need further training and support, as Putin learnt the hard way in Georgia when his forces took way more casualties than they should have in 2008.
"Oh, what's that you say? You haven't actually talked to Putin's psychiatrist? And you're basing all your opinions on the typical American"
Psychiatrists don't write leaders biographies and do interviews for them idiot. Similarly, plenty of folks who do and have known Putin personally have written more than enough about his personality. Unfortunately, being as corrupt a dictator as Putin means you tend to fall out regularly with those around you, and we therefore have no end of people who were once close to him, and even some who still are describing his motivations. Oh, and I'm not American.
Stop being a Putin apologist when you don't know the first thing about him. You don't
I don't think you realise how much of a fail your argument is - being equal to Greece means that if shit hits the fan for us then we too get bailed out. Yes, I'd love that security blanket, in fact, that's precisely why we're in the EU because last time we fucked up and nearly went bankrupt Europe did indeed do all of that for us.
In the meantime, whilst we're doing well we get to be equal with countries like Germany and France.
Besides, the world is moving East, not West. Moving the opposite direction to the tides of change would be one of the most braindead things we could do over the next 50 years either way. We'd attach ourselves to a falling empire, whilst the rest of the world moves on into a multi-polar world involving China. There's a reason our own government regardless of the EU shunned the US and joined China's new investment bank - they're not stupid enough to tie us to the sort of past fantasy that people like you Farage, and Liam Fox long for but just doesn't exist anymore and will not exist any time in the next century at least. The British empire is gone, and America is declining as the once sole superpower, we're going to have to adapt to that reality if we want to continue to be prosperous.
You really are not mentally mature enough to be having this discussion, you're still desperately crying racism in a topic that has literally nothing to do with race. When you've got two groups fighting that are the same fucking race, then how exactly do you think racism even remotely factors in? Do you really think that just shouting racism at people somehow makes a legitimate argument even when it makes absolutely no sense?
And no, the Kurds don't control anything even approaching the entirety Turkish/Syrian border, and those that do live on that border aren't the ones Erdogan has been primarily targeting (though he has been targeting them). Most of those he has killed have been killed in Iraq.
You obviously have a hatred for the far right, and that's a good thing, but when you don't even understand the sorts of policies those groups have (I'll give you a hint: they don't care about brown people as you call them fighting other brown people) and make nonsensical arguments against them it doesn't exactly put you in a position of strength. People like you do more harm than good, because they can legitimately hold you up as an example of someone that throws terms like "racist" around when it doesn't make any sense and as such you devalue the term removing it's potency when it's necessary to call out real actual racists.
Yes... because Europe still didn't fix itself immediately after the war. It kinda takes time to rebuild a whole fucking continent.
"NAFTA being less comprehensive than the EU is a FEATURE, not a bug. NAFTA won't leave England on the hook for Mexico's bad debt."
No but it does leave us open to getting fucked by US protectionism just like Canada has with things like lumber, and fresh water.
Why be a bitch to America when we can be an equal in Europe as we are currently?
Erdogan has turned a blind eye to ISIS fighters and weapons using his country as a transit point into Syria whilst blocking Kurdish fighters from doing the same and has put far more effort into bombing Kurds.
It's got nothing to do with skin colour or religion, Turkey and the Kurds are both secular, ISIS is an Islamist group, and Erdogan is an Islamist leader, that's about it. Calling out a bad leader for doing more to oppress a group that has been in peace talks for 2 years and has been attacked by Erdogan's troops more than they've attacked Erdogans troops doesn't make me an Islamaphobe by any measure, particularly as there are more than enough muslim Kurds. Stop being so ignorant.
Your post really couldn't be more useless, "it's a nationalism issue", what's a nationalism issue exactly? bombing the Kurds? great, but how does that justify implicitly supporting ISIS by letting them transit fighters and weapons through Turkey? how does that make it okay to attack the Kurds more so than ISIS? It doesn't matter what the motivation issue is, it's wrong all the same. Erdogan has long held the belief that ISIS are more of a benefit than a problem, and that's really not good for the West. Only now that they've attacked Turkey proper in a slightly more brutal way has his calculus changed somewhat and even then his instinct is not to obliterate ISIS, but instead to use it as an excuse to hammer the shit out of the PKK, and hit the YPG too.
It's kind of sad how you had to see the problem as an issue of race and religion, I'm astounded that you'd then cry bigot - you obviously are wrestling with your own inability to keep religion and race out of a discussion it's wholly irrelevant to. Crying "Islamaphobe", talking about skin colour and shouting bigot wont detract from your own apparent bigotry where you jump to conclusions that bear no relevance to anything that was said.
His point is, how the fuck do you know where the owner is? How do you know the drone will even still be there by the time the cops turn up leaving them unable to act and wasting their time?
It makes far more sense as the GP suggested that the drone owner follow his drone to the houses he intends to fly it over and politely asks permission, rather than just doing it and expecting everyone else to somehow go and find him.
"Well, it sure as hell impressed opportunistic American politicians who have been expanding NATO for 20 years without seemingly any sort of awareness of the provocation towards Russia it entailed"
Oh nonsense, Russia had every opportunity to join NATO and become a modern progressive nation itself. The fact it decided to not do that because it still had dreams of an empire is not NATO's fault but Russia's. NATO is a security organisation and by increasing membership it increases security. Bringing Russia on board was a key aim because that would be the ultimate stability pact for Europe, but Putin killed all that and put the final nails in the coffin when it invaded both Georgia and Ukraine. Putin plays the victim because it suits, but NATO isn't the aggressor here.
Putin would've done what he did regardless, if anything NATO restricted how far he was able to go - certainly it blocked him from annexing the whole of Georgia proper, and places like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and so forth would likely be stuck once more with Russian puppet governments were it not for NATO.
Putin is an imperialist, and no amount of appeasement will or would have ever changed that. He was there as a KGB agent when the USSR collapsed and he's never forgiven that. You wont change him, and you wont help him, all you can do is stand up to him and keep him in check. He believes soviet Russia was always right, and he's determined to try and rebuild the empire he believes was stolen from Russia, failing to realise it wasn't stolen, merely that the people Russia oppressed for so long were taking their freedom back.
Yeah if Turkey's latest actions where it's killed 260 kurds are anything to go by it's pretty obvious which side Turkey is on.
Turkey is the new Pakistan, pretending to be pro-West on one hand to get nice military funding, whilst supporting the likes of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS on the other.
All thanks to Erdogan.
So if someone is driving an RC car around and you pick it up, it's yours because they left it lying around? Care to extend that to a Predator drone? If you manage to swipe it out the sky somehow with say a hack, I'm sure the government wont care because hey, they left it flying around in public airspace so tough shit. You can just take it. I imagine car theft isn't a crime in the US either, because if someone just parks their car and leaves it lying around, it's fine to just jack the engine out of it right?
Unless America's laws on property ownership are completely fucked up and broken then basically everything you say is wrong.
Here in the UK even if you find a £10 note on the floor and no one is around it's still not yours to take, you're still technically meant to hand it in to the police station, even if many people don't.
I'm not overly convinced by the Russia nuclear threat, that's not to say it's not incredibly dangerous, but I'm not convinced the Russian nuclear arsenal is even remotely world ending or similar.
The UK is struggling to afford to maintain an arsenal of 160 missiles, yet Russia's economy is drastically smaller and it's arsenal is supposedly 1600 munitions. I'd be amazed if should it come to that even a fraction of Russia's nukes actually turned out to be viable.
If you want to get an idea of the damage Russia's nukes could do, try here:
nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
Long story short, the types of nukes Russia has, combined with it's severe corruption, it's relatively small economy, I'd be amazed if Russia's nukes could at best do much more than wipe out key cities in a few European countries leaving many more cities and many other countries intact. I believe the West could survive a Russian nuclear assault, but every last Russian on Russian soil would be well and truly finished.
It doesn't seem plausible that more than a fraction of Russia's arsenal is genuinely viable regardless of what they claim. Even America with a budget over 8 times the size of Russia's is struggling with the cost of maintaining their similar sized arsenal.
Russia has recently started spending more on it's conventional forces, it's been blowing billions on a 5th gen fighter programme that is now on the verge of collapse. Just today the entirety of it's primary Apache attack helicopter counterpart (all it's Mi28s) have been grounded probably due to low quality parts, poor maintenance.
Putin's nuclear bluff is only going to be able to get him so far. It doesn't seem even remotely plausible that much of his nuclear arsenal after 25 years of decay is even remotely much of a threat if he can't even keep his helicopters in the air, and new planes being built. Nukes ain't cheap, and Russia simply can't afford them. It's trying to grow a multi-faceted defence force without the finances to do so. Good luck with that.
How many countries are the US military in against the will of the governments of those countries?
I don't believe it's any currently. I believe about the only one you can argue is Guantanamo bay in Cuba, but even there I don't believe the government believe the contract allowing them to be there is illegitimate, even if they greatly dislike it.
In contrast, how many countries are the Russians in against the will of the governments of those countries? Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova for starters:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So sorry, but Russia still loses by the metric you're claiming. They're still the bad guy. They don't get to demand consensual deployments end, whilst committing illegal deployments.
I'm pretty left wing, I despite the American right (because in real, non-American terms, it's closer to far right than it is centre right).
But I'm struggling to see how your assumption that a guy from Kentucky must be anti-gay rights and living in fear of illegal immigrants.
He could just genuinely have a firm belief in the right to privacy.
I'm not terribly sure how your prejudice is in any way better than that you're complaining about. You can't fairly judge the guy if you don't know him and haven't spoken to him.
It's perfectly possible that he'd just as well be willing to hold up his gun to defend an immigrant or a gay person. Not everyone in the American south is cut from the same cloth, something I was humbled by when I visited there with the same assumption only to find that I was completely wrong - there are still plenty of sensible well meaning people there who believe in the rights of the individual, whether that's being gay or simply being able to maintain some semblance of a private life.
I don't know if it's that simple really, the tide of far right support has grown during the economic crisis, there's something to be said for the fact that if you can hold out against it long enough whilst combating it's lies and ideas that you can stem the tide.
I think it's probably peaked in the UK (and possibly Europe in general) now, as the economy is strengthening people are moving away from UKIP et. al. again and support for the EU is growing once more as those who want to pull out for no other reason than they hate foreigners (at least, that's all I can assume given that none of their other arguments actually make any sense, and the mask slips all too frequently) are beginning to get ignored once again.
I think really this is the problem they had in Nazi Germany, the country was suffering and far right sentiment grew, the problem is it grew just large enough to corrupt the system and cement it's hold on the country.
Effectively, I believe the situation is this, there is around 5% - 10% of a population that are genuinely far-right in most European countries, but there's another 30% or so of useful idiots who are trivially swayed by populism - they like lies that sound good and phantom enemies to hate on. The trick is to prevent that 30% from giving strength to the genuine 5% - 10% of extremists by either educating them by questioning lies and seeking facts (which the media fails hard at in the UK) or just keeping them happy and so dumb to politics, because if they're happy they just don't care about anything but themselves. These are the folks who if they're employed and earning just fine don't give a shit about politics, but if they lose their job because the economy is shit will vote purely on a single "Mexicans stole your job" type soundbite they heard on the radio in passing - more detailed explanations about why they actually lost their job, which may sometimes even include some blame on their own part, are just too long winded, and too difficult for them to hear.
British politics has this problem though where for some reason the noisiest minority gets to drive the whole agenda. We also really don't have much of local powerbases where they can fail hard, the closest thing are local councils, but councils don't always listen to elected councillors anyway so they typically fail or succeed in spite of who has been elected to try and tell them what to do.
Take for example the EU referendum - in the European elections, despite a favourable demographic turnout for the far right, far right parties only won about 30% of the vote. The other 70% was won by parties whose stated aim is to remain in the EU. Yet for some reason, we're having a referendum on EU membership despite there being clear overwhelming support for staying in (recent polls put it overwhelmingly in favour of the EU). Quite why we're wasting hundreds of millions on a referendum like this just because a vocal far right minority screams the loudest I've no fucking idea - they had their referendum, it was called the European elections, and despite disproportionate positive media coverage, turnout favouring their electoral base, and so on and so forth, they still lost hard.
Probably the real problem here is that the press love sensation, so they'd rather praise the far right for causing a stir, than question them for lying their way to power with populism. As such we have this problem whereby there's no one with any real voice that can expose their wrongdoing and lies on a grander scale.
No, not even remotely close. Before the EU, the world was massively different and the EU was in ruins from a massive war.
It's like saying "Before the fall of the British empire, Britain did better with India". Right, but we're not before the British empire, just like we're not before the EU. NAFTA isn't even remotely as comprehensive a free trade agreement as what the EU has - you still have massive customs barriers as anyone that has tried to move goods between the US and Canada vs. between European states can tell you.
Of course, the EU doesn't preclude us also having partnerships with these countries as well - it's not mutually exclusive, why limit ourselves to one just because people like Farage hate foreign people that aren't largely of British cultural descent?
Um, no. Milliband was too far left for the electorate and they lost hard as a result. Why do you think that going even further left will help exactly?
The centrist candidate last time was David Milliband, the centrist candidate this time is Liz Kendall. Neither were/will be elected, even though they're the only options that would have/will make Labour tolerable to the electorate.
People voted towards the right, they would probably have tolerated something slightly more the left (i.e. actual centre), but Milliband was too far to the left to be tolerable to most people. Your solution is to swing to a leader even further away from what people wanted, really?
Gordon Brown had the same problem, he was just a little too far left to be tolerable. No one wants Brownites like Milliband, Balls, and Burnham. They want people who are willing to balance state handouts with fiscal responsibility, Corbyn is the exact opposite of that - he believes that we have infinite money that we can just use to give more and more handouts to everyone.
Good luck with that, that was exactly what lost both Brown and Milliband the election, except now you want to double down with it and do it even more, as if you believe that if you throw enough fail at something it'll become success. No, just no.