Drowsy Emperor

Jesus Christ, where do you come up with these theories. The Spanish monarchy is more decorative than anything in their current political system.

Er, call me naïve, but wouldn't this be solved by having cops earn more than a pittance? Encourage smart, hard-working, committed and motivated youths to pursue a career in law enforcement, instead of recruiting just about anyone that can pass a drug test. Societies have the police forces they pay for, like everything else. Actually I read in an article that recruits scoring higher than a certain number in IQ tests in the US were undesirable for cops. Whether this was limited to a particular state I can't recall. It does make sense. Thicker people tend to follow orders to the letter and are less likely to question them.

Unfit individuals shouldn't be cops, regardless of sex. Still, it's a 2v1 situation. When attempting to subdue violent and corpulent individuals, it's common to see 4 or 5v1. Wrestling is hard. Fitness helps, but training and numbers trump that by far. My personal reaction to that is "meh", though. Two weeks ago we had a new "Public Security Law" passed that makes recording cops an offence with fines up to 30.000€, and insulting a cop now carries a penalty of 600€. Contempt of cop is finally in the letter of the law. There is no judicial review for any of that, and the word of a cop is evidence enough. It doesn't really matter how fit a woman is, against a strong man she has literally no chance to subdue him. If he gets truly violent while she attempts to do it its a tragedy waiting to happen. I mean, if you literally can't perform one of the tasks the job demands even at your hypothetical maximum performance then you aren't suited for it? I don't see it as a question of equality or inequality but common sense. I presume there are lots of other jobs within the police force that women can perform in all respects. Anyway, regarding this case - yes wrestling is hard, but those two were damn poor at it. Fines for recording cops are ridiculous. They're state employees, doing a public job so what plausible reason can there be for making it punishable by law.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUuajAwMhcQ Sydney gets its own scandal. The first thought that crossed my mind when watching these videos is that women shouldn't be cops. They took way too long to get the job done, aggravating the crowd and making a scandal in the process. Notice the completely ineffectual beating with the stick (due to lack of strength and skill) that did nothing to subdue the woman. If a relatively thin woman gave them so much trouble how would they fare trying to restrain a fit man?

And Friedman agrees: Friedman is a political scientist, who founded Stratfor in 1996. He accepts that “Ukraine is of fundamental importance to Russia,” and will continue to be alarmed about further Western encroachment. “As difficult as this is for Westerners to fathom, Russian history is a tale of buffers. Buffer states save Russia from Western invaders. Russia wants an arrangement that leaves Ukraine at least neutral.” Sanctions not workingFriedman, who was born in Hungary before emigrating with his parents to the US, says Russia has the ability to emerge from US led sanctions and the recent drop in the ruble due to falling oil prices. “Russians' strength is that they can endure things that would break other nations. It was also pointed out that they tend to support the government regardless of its competence when Russia feels threatened.” Friedman believes that the implementation of sanctions will not have the desired effect the US and EU hope. He points to the fact that President Vladimir Putin is “still enormously popular.” Also he has learned that the Russian mindset is different to that of those in the West, partly because the population has become accustomed to political and economic upheaval over the last century. “The most important lesson I might have learned in Russia — ‘might’ being the operative term — is that Russians don't respond to economic pressure as Westerners do, and that the idea made famous in a presidential campaign slogan, ‘It's the economy, stupid,’ may not apply the same way in Russia.”

Actually, the solution to the crisis is very simple. Forcing Poroshenko to the negotiating table to accept the inevitable division by threatening to cut financial help to Ukraine after which both sides could just proclaim their own "victory", tap themselves on the back for "achieving peace" to save face and lift the sanctions and that will be the end of it. This is the only outcome simply because: 1. the Ukrainian army cannot defeat the east as long as it enjoys Russian support 2. Russia will not stop supporting the east at this point regardless of what the west demands. They've invested too much in it already. If push comes to shove the regular Russian army will enter and roll over Ukraine. That was in fact discussed in the Duma a few days ago. That is how much the Russians value Ukraine and those are the lengths they're willing to go. 3. sanctions are not going to change anything So its either the above (a), which means that the US/EU get to keep their puppet government in Kiev or wasting time in the current mutually destructive economic war (b) which could ultimately leave them without a puppet in Kiev or simply full out nuclear war over Ukraine ©, which will leave most of us dead over nothing

Common sense really. At least someone in the EU has it. you don't even see what you did there, do you? russian crisis is no big deal, but at least one guy in the west isn't happy about russian collapse and he is the one with common sense. ... ... *shrug* maybe you will figure it out. regardless, as we noted earlier, few folks is happy about a possible russian collapse, even if such a thing were predictable. am not certain why you honestly believe that folks in the west is happy 'bout russia economic collapse. as noted above, food sanctions by russia were a joke as far as hurting the west, but collapse o' russian economy and the plummeting ruble is cause for concern. example: volkswagen does big business in russia. the plummeting russian currency makes it extreme difficult for russians to buy foreign goods such as german autos. volkswagen has taken a serious hit this year, and the russian crisis is partial the cause. russia attempted to halt/slow the slide of the ruble by raising interest rates to SEVENTEEN freaking percent, but not even that slowed the fall. russians will have considerable difficulty buying many foreign goods for the foreseeable future, and a serious and enduring russian recession is now a forgone conclusion. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fault-for-the-rubles-collapse-lies-with-mr-putin/2014/12/16/3f9a8a1a-8548-11e4-a702-fa31ff4ae98e_story.html?tid=gravity_1.0_strip_2 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/15/russias-economy-is-doomed-its-that-simple/ we prefer wsj as the audience o' that periodical is business folks, so the editorializing is kept to a minimum... in spite o' number's amusement. nevertheless, the washington post articles is helpful... even got graphs for those o' you visual learners who clear ain't getting a clear picture from text explanations. the problem with faymann's comments is that he didn't offer an alternative. he made a general appeal for peace negotiations and a neutral role... the stuff that has been attempted with putin many times in the past. putin predation and intransigence has made so that many in the west is no longer willing to waste efforts on faymann pleas. nobody other than a few investors who is waiting for crisis to bottom out before they swoop in to pluck the russian carcass is wanting a russian collapse, but putin miscalculations (stupidity) and earlier western enabling has created a situation in which even tougher sanctions may be the only viable option available. however, we will once again note that Gromnir were never pleased with sanctions as this situation were so complete and utter predictable. HA! Good Fun! Unlike you I have direct experience with debilitating sanctions and I know for a fact its not a big deal as people make it out to be, and that's in a state that was both very poor and poorly led compared to Russia in 2014. Russia can weather these sanctions for years if necessary, although I expect them to be over much sooner due to pressure from inside the EU. Business circles in Austria have ties to Russia, as do many in Germany and across the EU and they are losing a lot of money in this process. It was their concerns that the Austrian chancellor was voicing in general. Austria in particular can't possibly be happy about losing millions they could have made through South Stream and that's what the chancellor is talking about. The insistence on "putin's predation" or intransigence means you don't have the basic grasp of the chronology of events that led to the current situation and your insistence of turning a blind eye to the geopolitical aspect of everything that happens in Ukraine and the US/EU role (at this point documented and proven) in it means you're too biased to offer a sensible point of view in this discussion. You fail to grasp that Russian interests in Ukraine are so vital as to trump any economic pressure the west can put in place, as the possibility of losing the effectiveness of their nuclear weapons is more important than all the money in the world, what the common Russian can and cannot buy and any other mundane concern. There is nothing that the sanctions can do that's worse than having Ukraine as a NATO forward base, and the sooner you grasp this basic fact the sooner you can put your thoughts in order and start making sense.

Its not true because... you have a better grasp on EU politics than the Austrian chancellor?

Altogether too much is made of the Russian crisis, as if the Russians haven't been through far worse. Serbia is a tiny country but it endured years of western sanctions, while fighting a war, without any of the considerable advantages the Russians have in natural resources, reserves, alternative trade partners - anything really. One adjusts and gets by. Its not even worth discussing. Yesterday the Austrian chancellor spoke against a new round of sanctions: Common sense really. At least someone in the EU has it.

Precisely the point is that the political crisis wasn't avoidable. When Yanukovich fell their options were limited, an asymmetric and drastic response became necessary and it was either what transpired or something even more drastic such as a full out invasion of Ukraine. This is neither noble nor just, merely a logical and predictable outcome given what Ukraine means to their national security. They had to act, therefore they have to endure the sanctions for as long as necessary. Mistakes made in the economic arena have no bearing on the entirely political events leading up to this crisis, even if they are a factor now. Its possible to argue that letting the situation in Ukraine develop on its own up until the putsch was stupid, and I'd even agree with that, but everything that came afterwards was pure necessity.

In events regarding legal disputes he can usually provide a fairly informed and balanced argument. I guess I was trying to discern whether the root of what he was saying lies in ignorance or ideological bias.

intransigence and predation indeed I'm going to put this as short as possible: 1. predation: investing several million dollars to oust a legally elected president of a foreign country for political, military and economic gain 2. intransigence: insisting that everyone complies with the new status quo or "suffer the consequences", even when they cannot for vital security reasons

Lol @ "russian stupidity". I guess they should have just stood and watched as NATO flipped yet another country and installed military bases on their borders within 2-3 years. The Russians are trying to make the best of a disastrous situation, but that situation was created by the US and is sustained by the US. US officials in Ukraine were caught on tape discussing their part in the events that transpired, the costs of the entire endeavor and juicily ended that particular conversation with "**** the EU" which just goes to show how much a factor the EU is in anything. So there can be no talk of conspiracy at this point. Besides, even as the conflict wound down the "EU" kept the sanctions up - most likely to buy time for a spring offensive by the Ukrainian "government". If a complete halt of the war came to be, Poroshenko would have to accept the current front lines as new borders of sorts - regional, federal or otherwise. And Poroshenko can't hold on to power in Ukraine unless he makes an effort to take that part of the country back with military force. The current climate in Kiev is one of wartime frenzy and a loser's peace isn't a real option. So every promise of "ceasefire" from his camp is in fact a time buying tactic. Outside Ukraine the US in particular wants the conflict to go on. Obama has signed for new military aid: http://www.ibtimes.com/us-russia-relations-obama-signs-bill-giving-weapons-ukraine-allowing-economic-1763106 and what is that, if not an attempt to keep the war and sanctions in place? Yes it would be bad for some US businesses for Russia to implode, but that's not the goal anyway. The goal is to destabilize Russia by creatin a climate where Putin is "unacceptable" in the business circles, alienating his elite from him, and then helping them fund a "revolution" to put a puppet in the Kremlin. The potential political and economic gain out of this is immense, and currently the costs for the US to keep this thing going are trivial. The costs are not trivial for some EU countries but they are (treated as) third rate citizens within the community with no say in the matter as Germany, UK and France run the show.

Germany never had a chance to win WW2, except, maybe, if it stopped after taking most of Europe. Even that is debatable as the USSR and the US probably would have declared war eventually anyway. Drawing the USSR into the fight as well, and then the Americans, losing was a foregone conclusion. It doesn't matter how good your military is when you're outmatched in both population and industrial production. Everyone makes mistakes, Hitler did, Stalin did etc. but single mistakes don't make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. The red army purges prior to the war prove that even the stupidest mistakes can be absorbed.

What utter garbage. Taking as much territory as possible? Neo-orthodox empire? Before we engage in loony conspiracy theories, how about some simple logic. Russian actions in Georgia,and Ukraine are a direct attempt to counter NATO expansion in its own back yard. That is easily proven by the way NATO/US has been courting these countries and egging them into a conflict with Russia, which you yourself remarked with Georgia. The ultimate risk in Ukraine and other nearby countries that the Russians are afraid of is the so called "rocket shield", supposedly against Iran and North Korea. The point of this system is to in fact render the Russian nuclear response obsolete by installing rockets that can provide first strike capability. These rockets would be able to hit Moscow within minutes, way before the Russians could respond. In this situation, the risk of full out war with Ukraine is nothing compared to the long term threat of letting the large neighbor slide under the influence of NATO, have NATO bases and ultimately nukes right next door. The situation is further complicated by Crimea, where the Russian black sea fleet is. If they did not take Crimea they would have eventually lost a strategically important port by being pushed out by the puppet government. The same applies to eastern Ukraine, letting the puppet government stabilize and welcome NATO would mean letting the previous two things eventually come to pass. It is thus obvious that these actions are in fact a desperate reaction to politically and militarily offensive moves the US has been making in the region and are in no way an attempt at "empire" building.

More or less, the British Empire ran on basically three different approaches. Get native leaders to run things for you with tame soldiers/ police. If not that then support the second strongest ethnic group against the strongest. If neither of those two work then the gloves are well and truly off, including torture- though the British were hardly the worst* and despite the White Man's Burden rhetoric were considerably more prosaic and realistic about things than the US with their manifest destiny/ messiah complex and uncomfortable and incompatible mix of naive idealism and sociopathic application. *US ain't the worst either by a decent amount too, comparatively speaking it would probably be Belgium, or early Spain. But, Britain has had a long history of doing things at very least equivalent to what the US has done, up to recently and historically- as have most imperial powers. The counter insurgency work against the IRA certainly employed a lot of informants and such which were effective, but also employed arbitrary arrests and torture. The response to the Maomao insurgency in Kenya involved copious torture which has only recently been somewhat admitted, and for which there will be no punishment. They essentially invented modern 'legal' collective punishment via the Boer War concentration camp. The Sepoy rebellion in India involved such humane punishments as tying prisoners to cannons then firing them through their bodies. And of course ten of millions of Indians starved on the British watch. It all tended to get justified similarly as well, as being stuff that at least 'worked'; even when it didn't. People argue so strongly that torture works as a moral insulation; it is essentially cognitive dissonance, not wanting bad words applied to people/ countries you like, wanting them to be better than others and yes, to have done bad things for The Greater Good (the greater good). The Harvard study on the use of waterboarding as torture illustrates it pretty well. Prior to 2004 waterboarding was almost always referred to as torture by the US press- afterwards it almost never was. That is why some people so desperately want the US either not to have tortured or for it to have all been worth it. But if it doesn't work and provided no usable intelligence then you have to accept that you just had a bunch of our guys waterboarding and raping prisoners with dogs for absolutely no gain. It doesn't make a lick of logical or objective sense, but makes a whole lot of subjective sense. There's also pretty much nothing you can do to persuade people that they're wrong about it precisely because it's so interwoven into a person's fundamental beliefs. I'm not saying the British were "nice", just a tad more subtle on average. The practice of building an empire always ends up looking the same everywhere, the justifications are always similar and the differences are a matter of nuance. Although the Belgian conduct in Congo was so far beyond ruthless that you have to wonder what sort of people were running the country at the time.

I did not say it was disproved, merely unreliable. The circumstances here are strange, not because torture itself was involved but the fact that there were more than a few people tortured who had no relations to terrorism whatsoever (why the hell were they incarcerated in the first place?) and because the torturers were told to continue even though their opinion was that there was nothing more to be learned. Besides that, the real deal here is the human rights abuse accusations that the US uses as a political weapon against other countries that people find galling. Do the Chinese, Russians etc. int agencies engage in unsavory activities? Sure. Are they habitually attacking other countries for it in the political arena and using it as a pretext for war on the other side of the globe? No, not really. If the US did not take a position of moral superiority there would be little ground for this event to become a major scandal. If newspapers said "Russian prisons all over the world", everybody would say "no surprise there" and shrug it off. But as long as Washington engages in the "good guy" "bad guy" Manichean rhetoric, coining terms such as "axis of evil" you can hardly be surprised that when it rains ****, it pours.

I can't be arsed to drag out the manual but there are short codes for information that represent a category of reliability depending on various factors, such as the source, how the information was found out etc, and they go from fairly certain to rumors. Information gained from torture is claimed to be "notoriously unreliable" so its on the lower end of the scale. Trusted informants, whether out of ideology or money are much more reliable which is why most intelligence services invest in people and networks first and foremost. It is generally a major failure of an intelligence service if it has to depend on coercive methods to gain necessary information because of how unreliable it is. It is the intelligence equivalent of grasping at straws, but they'll all engage in it regardless. Regarding the conduct of the US. When reading up on Iraq post invasion many UK intelligence officers and soldiers criticized their US counterparts for "living in a bubble" and being unwilling to engage and invest in field intelligence gathering (as in working with people on the ground) and preferring to heavily use electronic methods instead. They also commented on a culture of security paranoia among US troops and how it was negatively affecting their relations with the populace. The British, as a relatively small nation with a large empire learned that heavy handed methods generally don't work best, and if nothing else, know very well how to organize an intelligence community. If they didn't they'd have never held India with the equivalent of a dozen men. By extension, its easy to conclude that the US will engage more, on average, in violent methods because: a.) its not going to get as much good information out of its networks b.) its a large country with a large military force so it cares less for subtlety and will use overwhelming force simply because it can In this particular case an even larger disconnect was evident. I have read that interrogators were suggesting to their superiors and the "central" that they believed that the prisoners told everything they knew. And they merely received orders to continue. So you have your own command not trusting that the people its delegated this task to know their job? Or maybe they simply wanted torture done for torture's sake? You can argue its moral superiority here on "account of lives saved" but we can be pretty sure that no lives were saved otherwise the government PR campaign would be all over "successfully foiled terror plots" in its own defense, instead of releasing a very bad looking and at the same time heavily censored version of the document. And if you don't achieve a worthwhile goal, what's left? And to what purpose?

Nope, I was approving that you weren't trying to justify or downplay it. I have a KGB manual and it doesn't say that torture doesn't provide results, its says that the information received isn't reliable, which amounts to the same thing. Doesn't say they were giving up on it either though. I'm fairly certain that all secret services of the world torture and assassinate individuals, I just can't stand people presenting it as something its not/whitewashing it. I hope you don't get riled up when someone tortures a US agent/soldier whatever though, if its all in the game... well, its all in the game?

^ At least he's honest about it.

I can't take the suggestion that "free market should reign" in healthcare seriously. If it was up to the free market anyone unable to pay would be left in the street to die. On the other hand, a cartel based policy in which the state is complicit is a disaster but that's no longer the state as an expression of the will of the majority, rather as an oligarchy setting things up according to its own interest. Americans misunderstand european statism as communism. In Europe it is expected and desired that the state should handle things that are for the common good, (indeed it was the extremely conservative and imperialistic rule of Bismark in Germany that came up with pensions, a fact that would probably send american conservatives into a seizure), and that belief significantly predates communism as an ideology. The idea of "free" communal services predates statism by centuries, going as far back as the beginning of the human race. Anyway I don't see what's wrong with it. A society in which everyone has free access to education, the best health care available (the former Yugoslavia used to pay even very expensive trearments for its citizens in foreign countries when they couldn't be provided within the state) etc. is a happier and productive place than one where everyone is struggling to get by. Within that type society at least you know what you're paying when you pay your taxes.

Everything in USA healthcare is regulated. EVERYTHING. That's deliberate. It has been for most of the 20th century. The State gets more power over you and requires people to seek The State to access it. Corporations get anti-market practices that cartel service and prevent competition. I worked in healthcare for over 6 years--everything from clerical work, paramedic, nuclear diagnostics, and laboratory analytics. Even the BLANKET WARMERS have regulations about where they must be located. The stories I could share. State domination of healthcare is ultimately why I backed out of med school and became a welding engineer & inspector instead. Well if the corporations get cartel service (I assume you're referring to the inability of the government to negotiate the price of medications, which in effect is a gift to those companies) is state regulation to blame or the fact that corporations own the state and can dictate their terms? I don't see state regulation as a bad thing of itself if the state is truly the master of the house and acts in the interest of the majority, but allowing private interests to create those regulations while posing as the state is a disaster. Anyway, Serbia's health care is on a constant downward spiral, but even so everyone who has insurance (and everyone has it) can get almost everything for free or with relatively cheap participation (that can pile up for those that need handfuls of different meds). And that's in an essentially dead economy with something like 30% unemployment rate. So, its obviously a matter of political will in the US, not feasibility.

Baby steps towards WW3 in Europe are a bit more important than either

When its Russians doing it its chavunistic nationalism but when european heads of state are giving financial and literal support to an armed rebellion (full of extreme right types) then that's what? Spreading freedom and democracy? The difference between outright annexing a part of a country (and Crimea has never, historically, belonged to Ukraine) and controlling it by proxy through a puppet government is purely one of form. Russia took Crimea from Ukraine? Boo hoo. The US and the EU took Ukraine from Ukrainians, only they're far too much under the influence of war propaganda to see it now. The end of Yanukovich was the end of Ukrainian independence and came about, ironically, precisely because he wanted to make an independent move and accept Putin's credit. I fail to see how Russia's nationalism in their own "back yard" is worse than EU's/US's colonialism in eastern europe. What WW1 has taught us is that aggressive expansion with disregard for the interests of large countries will lead to them using aggressive measures to protect those same interests (European empires > Germany WW1, US> Japan WW2). What WW2 has taught us is that attempting to crush and humiliate a major player in world politics will lead to even worse backlash than the first time around. Was critical thinking at such a premium that you had to take at face value the shallow explanations of high school history classes? Finally, the point of the sanctions is to pressure the mondialist (as opposed to patriotic) and amoral financial elite in Russia. To ruin their business is a way to undermine Putin's support until they flip and start scheming to bring him down. They don't care who is in power (unlike the populace) and would probably like another Yeltsin best whose door they used to kick in whenever they needed anything.

Sci-fi went out of fashion and publishers reinforce that opinion by choosing what comes out on the market. A friend of mine who is a writer by trade told me that getting a sci-fi novel published with a real publisher is next to impossible, while you can toss in any fantasy story you want and they'll go along with it. The popular imagination isn't in sci-fi anymore and the writer talent pool is much smaller than it used to be. Same with sci-fi movies. While there are quite a few sci fi movies, most are set in the present day and aren't really sci-fi (superhero movies lean towards fantasy rather than science fiction). I haven't seen a landmark sci-fi film since the Matrix and even that was a serious step down from the Solaris, Stalker, Odyssey 2001, Blade Runner etc. films. Its normal, these things come and go. Sci-fi was the fantasy of the space age generation. Plus, to be honest, a good sci fi book requires some education and mental effort to read and the masses are worse than ever in that respect. Sword waving fantasy is far more approachable. *cough* the dragons are coming *cough*