Drowsy Emperor

Dunno, I like the guy. Back when he came to visit Belgrade for the military parade I got a chance to see him up close. Small guy, but with the bearing of a statesman and leader. He went to visit the graves of the Russian soldiers as part of the visit and I was startled a bit to see him crying in front of the cameras. I actually think he used to be firmly pro-western, but the US is deathly afraid of Russia and western europe, Germany in particular, coming together. That would significantly weaken their grip on the EU (since the EU is and has been devolving into Germany + everyone else) so they're pushing towards making these relations worse. First with Georgia, now Ukraine etc. I mean, US convoys supplying troops in Afghanistan used to go through Russia. Doesn't seem like something a die hard nationalist and imperialist would do, does it.

At the bottom of the article, it might as well have said: source - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

The dispute is utterly pointless. Potential nuclear weapons within first strike range of Moscow are the reasons why Putin will fight tooth and nail for Ukraine, and that is the exact thing anyone with any sort of sense would do in his position. If anything, his response has been late (prior to the coup) and mild (post coup). Trying to prove that he's a bad leader (why even bother? what's it to you? concerned for Russians, maybe? lol) flies in the face of everything that has happened since he came to power. From a ruin Russia has become a major regional power again, and on average the quality of life has improved from year to year and is world's away from what it was during the Yeltsin years. It may not be great, or ideal, but holding onto power for so many years in a country that spans two continents, with huge issues all the while having genuine constant popular support is a feat no one in the west is capable of. If you think trying to build a power base among the extremely fickle and dangerous Russian oligarchs and to get them all into the same boat is easy, you're free to try it yourself. I'm pretty sure they'd eat a lesser man for breakfast and the only thing he'd be doing is putting a stamp on their decisions. Like Ronald Reagan @ 1:00: There is some sort of rabid bias at play here, trying to prove something that entirely irrelevant to the current events.

The Russian political and cultural history, coupled with the size of the country, the issues it faces, the might of its neighbors necessitates a more authoritarian form of government. Like in China, its hard to take power, hard to hold onto it and very difficult to step down once you have it. Russia has been through several terrible ordeals in the 20th century (WW1, civil war, transition from imperial rule to bolshevik rule, WW2, communism, collapse of communism, transition to capitalism) that makes stability far more prized than "democracy". You must realize that a single generation hasn't been born in Russia in the last 100 years that has not lived through at least one major disaster and paradigm shift. Major interests in the US have been stable for a very long time, its neighbors are politically insignificant, its physically isolated from other major powers. There have been no serious upheavals since the civil war. Its a lot easier for the elite to build a consensus and to be lax about which part of the elite is in control at any given moment. The executive branch is the dominant political power in most countries today. The day when parliaments and judicial branches could control the executive has long since past. Russia and the USA are very similar in that regard. Both are federations and presidential systems in which the president and his cabinet hold most of the power and can be faced with some unpleasantness only when their party does not hold sway in the parliament. Even then, much of the time, the Duma/Congress is not a real impediment. Anyway, the problem Russia has doesn't stem from institutional issues so institutional shifts can't really solve it.

Kadyrov is Putin's guy, no doubt about that, so I imagine that connection will be highlighted, along with lots of intimations that nothing happens in Russia without Putin controlling it and that the guy who confessed is going to get a sweetheart deal for doing so. It's a bit more difficult to explain away the guy who blew himself up, but I guess you could imply that someone else blew him up as a cover story or something. It boils down to the fact that the west wants to sponsor a coup in Russia and they have trouble finding the people for it. Not because Putin is killing them off but because those they are backing are all politically compromised and reviled by most of the general populace. The betrayal and co-opting of Gorbachov and the subsequent humiliation and poverty under Yeltsin is still very fresh in Russia's collective consciousness. This guy was worth more dead than alive. That's not to say that the west had a hand in his demise (I have no idea), but it is a fact that his usefulness had peaked long ago. The only thing that may undo Russia is not this blather about economy - that's using patently American logic to a non-American issue. Its the question of succession post-Putin. Personalized governments have trouble replacing a charismatic leader with a credible successor. Like with Tito and Yugoslavia, it opens up space for internal strife.

Its a lose lose proposition. If you wipe your ass with it you get lead poisoning, if you read it your brain rots.

I'm guessing exactly 0 tears were shed for this fifth column member. He was one of the cooperative individuals in the Yeltsin government and that's enough to damn anyone in Russia to oblivion in 2015. Obviously it does Putin no good to have this happen at this particular moment (in which he's seen as defender of Russia with public support that would put most politicians in the west to shame), so those trying to pin this on him are very amusing to me. Kill a third rate, irrelevant "opposition" member in the middle of a crisis, because...his busload of supporters are a grave threat? He's going to "expose" something? roflmao And now it turns out the chechens may have killed him. Where's the narrative going to go from here? AND HOW WILL WE FIND A WAY TO BLAME PUTIN?

Who sounds more level headed here?

Even if he disobeyed the order, the right to kill another individual presumes that your life is in actual danger. Now honestly, I can't see on the video that the guys hands are raised but he did move out of the car slowly. It doesn't make sense to try to reach for a weapon anyway when the other guy already has his pointed. The cop on the other hand was clearly borderline hysterical and killed the man for nothing in response. You can hear by the tone of his voice that he's losing it. Yes, he didn't do what he was told. How would you react if a hysterical person was pointing a gun at your head for going through a red light? Heck, if anyone was pointing a gun at your head, even if they're level headed? You wouldn't get the urge, rational or not, to run, to get away? The answer is you don't know. You find out when it happens or never. I presume the guy was trying to either bolt or (ineptly) to defuse the situation by showing that he isn't going for the gun and just stepping out of the car. Neither of which are grounds to kill him. Disobedience doesn't equal aggression ffs. I mean Jesus, this was all about a red light, what's with all the commando bull****?

Looking very dangerous in that apron

The cop that shot the guy is black as well. But he was far too tense, to the point of being hysterical in the clip. Even though in the beginning he supposedly removed a gun from the glove box. He also knew the guy as well so there could have been some unresolved issues we don't know about. Regardless, as Sean Bean would put it: One does not simply go around shooting unarmed people because they might do something or other.

It should have said man in the title. Anyway http://news.sky.com/story/1412586/video-police-shoot-unarmed-black-man Look at these imbeciles going all commando on an unarmed man

*shrug* that's true, but currently Christianity or any other religion is not much of a force in europe, unlike Islam. The current attitude and hands off politics re. islam and immigration is basically "solving a problem by denying its existence", which is how the communists tried to handle unresolved ethnic tensions in Yugoslavia and one of the reasons it broke up so much worse than it could have.

Yes. What you're saying is not entirely correct. The Bible is not one book. The new testament invalidates most of the old for a Christian, and the tone and shift in beliefs between the two is huge. The old testament as a religious text is today only relevant in Judaism, to Christians its of secondary value. In fact, the old testament and the Koran were created in similar historical circumstances which is why it could be argued that they have more in common than either has with the new.

The problem with any appropriate measures regarding weeding out the fanatics from the muslim population is that they're all extra judicial. The authorities knew that these individuals were bad news, but as citizens and without any way to lose that status, and being born in France (thus without another country of origin) they couldn't be deported, and deportations are rare and complicated anyway. And they couldn't be imprisoned without actually doing something. So you end up with a ticking time bomb that you can only put under surveillance and hope to catch before it blows. The problem with Islam is that its both a political ideology and a religion. Christianity's "Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." , when interpreted literally and (honestly) sidesteps the issue of combining political rule and religion. Christians are clearly instructed not to concern themselves too much with the government of the day and not to (ab)use it to spread religion. Historical excesses to the contrary are exactly that - and patently anti-christian. Islam was conceived by a man that was both a warlord and a prophet who used the texts of abrahamic religion as a rallying cry to unite disparate tribes in a specific time and historical situation. As a warlord he had no qualms about killing (described in religious texts) as a way to achieve his political goals, very much like the Jewish tribes of the old testament. It would not be possible to achieve these goals with anything like "meek shall inherit the earth" thus the end product (Islam as a religion) is both expansive and combative by its very nature. Islam as a "religion of peace" is an attempt to represent the religion in a positive light for the purposes of PR in the west. When one reads the Koran, its clear that its anything but, which can be explained by the historical situation of the time of its writing. The American (aheist? secular?) mentality of drawing a line of equality between all religions is a disservice here - religions are simply not the same. One look at the terrible position of Christians/animists/jews/minority religions living in Muslim majority countries, especially in northen africa and the middle east tells you all you need to know what political Islam looks like towards those who aren't muslims. Atheists don't even register as its a thousand fold worse sin to be an atheist rather than, say, a christian an Islamic country. Turkey was the only country that came halfway to embracing a western mentality, but that was before the current PM regressed all the changes. What this means for the west is that anything but a completely changed interpretation of Islam is fundamentally incompatible with a secular government. Which is why there will always be incidents like this, even if the majority of the immigrant Islamic population remains passive.

A pinnacle of mediocrity? The summit. A product of political inbreeding in the stagnant pond of European politics, carefully engineered to be devoid of ideology, charisma and leadership skills.

I think Hollande's public approval ratings are below 10%. He's the most moronic of the EU bureaucratic technocrats.

All they had to do is pretend for one day that terror doesn't work.And we couldn't do even that. Terror doesn't work if you know where you stand and have clear principles. Time will show that the current policy of sitting on two chairs, one preaching "tolerance" and the other blowing up the middle east for monetary and political interests is wrong and fruitless. Its setting up citizens who believe in tolerance to end up as victims of terrorists for the profits of the few.

Well one thing is for sure, the political climate in Europe regarding Islam is changing. Partly due to the economic crisis, partly due to how unbalanced and dysfunctional the ideology of multiculturalism always was. This may have just won Le Pen the next election for her. PEGIDA protests in Germany grow daily. Come the next election cycle, politicians will have no choice but to follow suit.

The point of publishing the cartoons now is as a way to protest against the violence that happened, a middle finger to those who thought that killing the cartoonists would "shut them up" - not to actually display the content of the cartoons for informational purposes (which are crap by standards of clever satire). In this case they explicitly gave their reasoning and that reasoning is hypocritical at best.

What horse****. He's making an exception on the basis that Islamic faith doesn't condone showing pictures of muhammad (as a form of idolatry). But when the story of the woman who bashed the satanic temple display in Florida government building the other day aired: ... pictures of said display (which is obviously intended to provoke and offend) were everywhere. So, when muslims might be offended, the policy is to respect the tenets of the religion (?), but when its christianity, its a news story to gorge on like any other and "free speech". Riiight.

Sure, the caricatures Hebdo drew during the NATO bombing of Serbia were beyond despicable, and I think the magazine is a piece of trash that lives on cheap provocation rather than intelligent humor (of which there is plenty in French comics). But that's besides the point. The point is that this is Paris and not Riyad. If someone doesn't like what the French do in France (unpleasant as it may be), maybe they shouldn't be there?

\what's so insulting about it. There were plenty of "Allah akbar" suicide bombers. It was clearly targeted at those sort of people, not religion as a whole.

Do you have an example of major American news outlets that post insulting Jesus caricatures? I've never seen one, it would be incredibly foolish given the fact the US is still predominantly Christian. It would alienate a large audience. I will criticise anyone that publishes insulting and degrading material about religion. I will certainly not buy such publications, and will not be surprised if they lose advertisers or go out of business. But I will always defend their right to publish such material. That is how freedom works. The ones I've seen are usually amusing and not insulting. But then, some of the caricatures of Muhammad (the original Danish ones) weren't insulting either, and there was no reason not to print them.

Sadly enough, Charlile Hebdo belonged to the despicable discourse I described above. Is pig nosed Jesus clever satire?