213374U

Thanks. So are you saying that Snowden being tried, fairly or not, would actually be healthy for the US as a whole? That's an interesting (and hopeful!) idea, but I'm not sure I believe it. I haven't really followed the Manning case—did his conviction have much impact with the average Joe? Also, I'm curious that you say that charges of treason against Snowden wouldn't really hold in a fair trial. Do you have any precedent you are basing this opinion on? I was under the impression that there is no whistleblower protection under US law. Is there something in the Constitution that could be used to leave him in the clear?

LOL I have very little doubt after this that you are an alt/caricature of someone else. Seriously, good job.

Punishing criminals is a good thing. Revealing criminality is a good thing. What Snowden did was criminal. You work it out, sparky. AFAIK, there is very little room to argue that Snowden couldn't be tried for treason and espionage under US law. Whether he's a criminal or not would depend on the verdict. I have no idea how extenuating or aggravating circumstances (if any) would apply to the case, and maybe Enoch or Gromnir could share their expertise. Now, what happens if exposing criminality is also a criminal offense? I remember reading that, in the intelligence community, analysts and operators often cannot discuss certain matters with their immediate superiors because of how the mindboggling clearances game is set up. This madness reaches the highest levels of the hierarchy, with four-star officers not being allowed to know about the tools their subordinates use. So if you can't discuss stuff with someone whose job is to supervise and coordinate your work... is there any hope of revealing wrongdoing by a state actor without breaking the law? When was the last time Congress uncovered and acted against secret illegal government initiatives? Honest question, btw. They don't have Snowden so they can't try him. But they do have the NSA ringleaders, and nothing has been done about it. What is up with that?

Except that there has been shots fired in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and I would also point out that Germany's invasion in Czech was also quite bloodless, but it was still invasion, as are every occurrence where foreign army goes in country uninvited by its government regardless of do you think that government is legitimate or not, or do you think that country is evil or not, or etc.. And using wrong doings of others as basis of your own wrong doings is just plainly idiotic reasoning, if you want to be the "good guy" I tried to find evidence of violent clashes between Russian and Ukrainian servicemen, and all I could find was this. So maybe you were right, but note that BBC warns that "none of the accounts could be independently confirmed". Do you have more occurrences? And yes, let's go back to 1938 Czechoslovakia for the nth time. WWII is one of my favorite historical topics, not only the war itself but especially the lead-up, including the rise of the nazis and the roles that Britain and France played since the end of WWI. Hitler carved Czechoslovakia up with the acquiescence of Britain and France, but I'm not sure how this historical event or the comparison you are making are relevant or even what exactly you are suggesting, based on retrospect. That France should have immediately declared war on Germany? Remember that, back then, Czechoslovakia was a young country (much younger than Ukraine is today, if you consider it the successor of the Ukrainian SSR), existing only as the result of the border redrawing that followed the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after their WWI defeat. The parts of the old Kingdom of Bohemia that were closer to Germany ("Sudetenland", later) were contested territory because the Czechoslovaks had marched troops to secure them after WWI, but they were populated by ethnic Germans. There was little historical or practical reason for the Allies to resist Hitler's demands on this issue, as there is little historical or practical reason for NATO to respond to the events in Crimea with force today. This is from the purely utilitarian perspective of "let's try and avoid another industrial war in mainland Europe because the last one was a ****ing nightmare to clean up", which is, unfortunately, at odds with the sadly extended view that every historical leading figure that tried to avoid war with the best of intentions and to the best of their ability was a weak-minded Hitler appeaser, and hardliners calling for war were prescient heroes. Remember that those people had, unlike modern armchair historians, lived through WWI, and the hell of Ypres and Verdun was still very much alive in everyone's minds. "But... but, Hitler!" Yeah. What about it? Finally, I'm not using wrongdoings for anything, and that you suggest this shows that you missed the point. You either respect the rule of law, or you don't. Both the referendum in Crimea and the dismissal of Yanukovych were unconstitutional, according to the current version of the Ukrainian Constitution. But you cannot claim that the actions of those you like are lawful and the rest aren't—this is a long-running inconsistency throughout the different iterations of this thread, and it's this inconsistency based on the manichaean "us=good/others=bad" rule of thumb is what I used as a basis to bring up the Iraq war and the Libyan no-fly zone. Indeed, it could be said that BruceVC et al are only consistent at maintaining this inconsistency. But let me be perfectly clear: there are no good guys here because this is power politics. Except in the case of the EU. That is more like fumbling about in the dark while you try to follow a hundred different and conflicting directions. Please, please, point out to us uneducated peons the general legal principle that allows for the dismissal of the HoS outside of the legal procedures outlined to that end in the Constitution or ancillary legislation. "Bailing on the people" is not a reason or motive that you will find anywhere in the Ukrainian Constitution, among other things, because it makes no sense. The ****ing Head of State doesn't "bail" on the people unless the "people" (read: fascist militias) are out for his blood, which is exactly what happened. This is the very definition of a coup. The President does not "lose constitutional legitimacy" at your leisure, he is removed from office after he has been impeached, declared medically incompetent, or dies only. So what are these "higher provisions" you speak of? This is a really, really tired debate, especially because the point was already discussed to death in the other thread(s): No offense 2133 but that's not how I remember the debate you and Tagaziel had. I remember you guys discussed various interesting points for several days and despite the fact Tagaziel proved conclusively that he was right around the fact that Yanukovych wasn't removed from power illegally you refused to acknowledge this But you are right, this has been discussed to death. I would like us to focus on the current destabilization of eastern Ukraine by Russia. Is there any justification for it and what is the realistic outcome to the situation? Do you accept that Russia is playing a major part in the protests and occupation of Ukrainian government buildings? None taken. I couldn't possibly take offense at your creative remembering of how things went down, to wit, both Tagaziel and kgambit bailing on the discussion after failing to bring up any piece of legislation, legal principle, doctrine or papal bull that fit within Ukraine's present legal framework with regards to the procedure used to dismiss Yanukovych. You'd know this if you had actually been following the thread back then or had even bothered to look up the rest of the exchange I posted. Do I accept that Russia is playing a major part? Ah, but regardless of what I answer, you will be quick to change your definition of what a "major part" actually means so you can continue to feel vindicated in your anti-Russian stance. How about you dig up the facts instead of playing the loaded questions game? Yanukovych was neither overthrown nor was the Parliament pressured into impeaching him. Yanukovych committed high treason and while a case can be made that charges should be pressed before the impeachment procedure was pressed, Ukraine was facing a constitutional crisis. It was an emergency measure implemented to ensure that the nation can continue to function. Wow. For someone with a law background, you sure are quick to discard due process and presumption of innocence. Impeachment processes are designed to provide stability and prevent political persecution—even more so in the case of the President, who is supposed to be the ultimate guarantor of constitutional order (i.e. the rule of law). Abrogating these principles opens the door to whatever abuses anyone with a sufficient majority wishes to impose, and that is usually considered a bad thing, regardless of the symbol of the majority. I'm not arguing that it was wrong to kick Yanukovych out, I'm arguing that it was unlawful under the then- and current legal frameworks. The constitutional crisis was triggered very much because the President was ousted illegally, after the Feb 21 agreement was signed. You cannot both rebel against the corrupt, oppressive establishment and be perfectly lawful about it. So let's call a spade a spade?

Please, please, point out to us uneducated peons the general legal principle that allows for the dismissal of the HoS outside of the legal procedures outlined to that end in the Constitution or ancillary legislation. "Bailing on the people" is not a reason or motive that you will find anywhere in the Ukrainian Constitution, among other things, because it makes no sense. The ****ing Head of State doesn't "bail" on the people unless the "people" (read: fascist militias) are out for his blood, which is exactly what happened. This is the very definition of a coup. The President does not "lose constitutional legitimacy" at your leisure, he is removed from office after he has been impeached, declared medically incompetent, or dies only. So what are these "higher provisions" you speak of? This is a really, really tired debate, especially because the point was already discussed to death in the other thread(s): The resolution passed by the Rada does not fall within any of the above. There are no other scenarios in which the President's mandate is liable to be interrupted before his term is up. The Rada cannot simply make up new scenarios and majorities where it can lawfully dismiss the President, regardless of the excuses they have come up with post-hoc. Well, of course they are going to justify their actions somehow. That does not change the fact that any actions taken based on reasons outside of those prescribed in the Constitution are unlawful. The Rada is not above the supreme law of the land and they cannot override it, regardless of majorities.

I see your Russian illegal annexation and raise you an unconstitutional presidential ouster and a Crimean secession referendum. And no, "sovereignty" does not mean that a country (or whatever the hell you are applying the word to, maybe you can clarify) can do whatever and everyone else JUST SHUT UP, because governments are only sovereign under a liberal prism if they a) act in the best interests of the people, and b) uphold the rule of law. And they are always sovereign in lieu of the people, the primary source from which sovereignty flows. As for your "question", let me pose a question to you instead. Which do you think is worse, an internal coup and subsequent invasion* by a foreign power or an invasion by a foreign power and subsequent forced government change? *Reminder that there have been no shots fired in the Russian "invasion" of Ukraine. But I guess peeps consider the enforcement of a no-fly zone that results in some NATO members running out of ordnance more reasonable and lawful than a series of non-violent sieges that end with 80% of the defenders defecting to the other side and a referendum. Because the UN says so, and I heard somebody in the UN once won a Nobel Piss Prize.

Well, the comparison is certainly warranted. But I'd argue that, much like suicide, it's not so much how things really are as how people perceive they are. Things here are pretty bad, and have been for a few years now (bad from our coddled, postmodern perspective—1929 Capitol Plaza squatters would surely laugh). Illegal immigrants are interned in overcrowded "immigrant housing centers" that are rather like prisons with poor conditions (there has been at least one case of inmates dying of disease and lack of proper medical care). That doesn't seem to stop African immigrants from trying to jump the border fence en masse every other weekend. Is that really a better prospect than what these people face in their countries, do they even have all the facts before they leave home? I think the idea that "everything is AWESOME in the west" and the fact that it is awesome indeed to go to sleep every night on a full stomach are both factors to be considered when analyzing immigration. But as you say, it's a complex phenomenon.

I think they do it on purpose, sometimes. You know, for the lulz. Exhibit #1:

They just assumed everyone just Ctrl+Y'd their way through the whole trilogy. Or maybe this is in revenge for players chunking Drizzt at every opportunity. Imoen herself suggests this is because the Bhaal essence is simply more concentrated in charname than in her. This is later confirmed by Yaga-Shura in ToB—unsurprisingly, charname has more Bhaal essence than anyone!!1 Regardless, WotC have determined that, to mark their release of 5th ed., the guy who fought Melissan for the right to ascend to godhood and won is just a level 4 fighter. Take that, BG fans! And that's not even the worst part, tbh. I thought charname becoming a duke of Baldur's Gate and the marshall of Flaming Fist was pretty cool, though. Yeah, I actually liked the concept for the first act, with the the attack on the crowd and the result of the assassination attempt being largely irrelevant to what ends up happening. And it's kinda clever that they dug up Viekang. But given the absurd power levels of famous people in the FR setting, it's weird that they chose this particular bit of lore to create an entry-level adventure.

"The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless." -Alan Moore On another forum I post on, someone posted this about 30 minutes ago. Bit strange.

What's this? Letting RL get in the way of your online battles? For shame.

Um. The first video shows that a few outnumbered law enforcement officers are unwilling to escalate the situation after confronting an angry crowd in the middle of nowhere. Some seemed willing to talk it down but after the the failed tasering, the crowd isn't exactly receptive. I'm actually impressed that no one was beaten down and arrested. I suppose reinforcements were dispatched shortly after? I chuckled when the guy recording said "I'm recording your brutality". When adrenaline kicks in it's hard to remember that cops are people too. Yeah. Wake me up when they take over the city hall and the local precinct.

I don't think you understand what spurious actually means. But seeing how you can't seem to distinguish between "perpetuate" and "perpetrate", this shouldn't come as a surprise. I wonder if you actually do this sort of thing on purpose, like oby's occasionally mangled grammar. If that's the case, props for the low key trolling. I'll start off by saying that I'm not terribly interested in 9/11 conspiracy theories and don't really follow the latest trends. Regardless, the first four points are circular logic, "this is the truth because it's the officially accepted version and the official version is the true one". The fifth point has some merit, but if you dig a bit into the official 9/11 findings, you can see the conclusions fail to address some relevant issues. Not in my opinion, but in that of people in the know. It's probably not realistic to expect a final report that squashes all possible doubts, but that's not a blank check for sloppiness. The fifth point is, by far, the one that best proves just how uninformed and biased you are. The NSA has openly admitted to colluding with big tech firms to organize a massive, automated illegal surveillance ring. This is not a conspiracy theory, it's a full-fledged, straight up, no-nonsense, billion dollar conspiracy that was exposed only because an insider blew the whistle. Start by reading up on XKEYSCORE and PRISM and go from there. This stuff isn't even secret, it's on the NYT and Wikipedia, for Pete's sake. None of this means that every conspiracy theory out there is to be believed. But it means you should be careful with what sources you choose to trust and that you should be mindful of attempts to dismiss claims or questions solely by virtue of them being labelled "conspiracy theories" regardless of their merit. edit: oh, I just realized that your reference to Assange and Snowden was in relation to 9/11. It was so irrelevant and tangential that I didn't catch it immediately, sorry. So I guess that your point is that since they didn't unconver anything about 9/11, everything that is outside the official reports must be false. Yep, and the Pope not making any mention of the flying spaghetti monster proves that it doesn't exist. True story.

Imoen herself suggests this is because the Bhaal essence is simply more concentrated in charname than in her. This is later confirmed by Yaga-Shura in ToB—unsurprisingly, charname has more Bhaal essence than anyone!!1 Regardless, WotC have determined that, to mark their release of 5th ed., the guy who fought Melissan for the right to ascend to godhood and won is just a level 4 fighter. Take that, BG fans!

Only that's not at all what's being suggested in this thread. I'm curious, why do people insist on putting stock on what official and mainstream sources say, by default, without any sort of critical review or personal fact checking, when said sources have been known to stretch the truth, misrepresent, make mistakes and outright lie in the past. I suspect this is related to the theorised innate psychological vulnerability of people to authority figures, but there has to be more to it than that. The argument is not "believe every conspiracy theory because otherwise you are sheep", and turning it into that is very much strawmanning. The argument is, "when there is conflicting evidence and expert opinions, why do you choose to believe one version over the other?" Heh, the link I posted a few pages ago questioned even whether this is an actual choice at all, and this is reinforced by the cognitive dissonance videos Valsuelm posted. Arguably, there is no difference between the conspiracy crackpot that takes every word that comes out of Alex Jones' mouth as gospel, and the honest-to-god upstanding citizen that believes it's his duty to trust every press release by an alphabet agency—both have renounced their ability to form their own opinions, relying on others to provide prefabricated ones instead. So why the selective derision?

Oh, wow. I somehow missed this gem. So it's "nothing personal", but you go out of your way to single someone out and belittle him in your usual holier-than-thou, fake ass amicable and thoroughly revolting condescending tone? LOL You think running a state is like playing a game? If they attack, well I'll just reload and prepare my border. Russia is preparing it's borders for any eventuality, it could be an attack force but more likely it's a defensive force. The government in Kiev is not, what you would call a beacon of stability and a lot of random **** could still happen. You would agree that common logic dictates that you shore up the borders with the country you are in conflict with. My money's actually on Putin giving the go-ahead under the guise of protecting ethnic Russians at certain point after **** hits the fan in Donetsk and elsewhere, depending on how some things play out. The gov't in Kiev may be stooges and shills but they aren't about to attack Russia anytime soon.

Because you are conflating peacetime and wartime economies. They are nothing alike. You can spend billions of oil dollars on advanced foreign weapons systems, and that only guarantees that you will have the prettiest military parades around. You can purchase some of the hardware, but you cannot buy a pool of experienced training officers, field experience, an integrated military and economic doctrine, effective inter-service coordination, etc. So a huge GDP is going to matter very little if all you do is buy expensive toys abroad and play the stock markets. I'm also not accepting the leap you are making so lightly that it's "easy" to build a nuke → it's easy to build a credible strategic nuclear force, because it isn't. Delivery systems are as important as the warheads themselves, but ballistic missiles are only one part of the equation. Extensive testing is also required unless you are going with licensed designs—but nobody does that unless they are part of a major military alliance, which makes the point moot. Designing, building, storing and maintaining the readiness of different types of nuclear arms is not "easy" or cheap by any stretch of the imagination, requiring a whole industry dedicated to production and the fulfillfment very specific training needs. The list of countries you list is simply not realistic; some of them such as Japan and Germany are legally bound to forsake nuclear weapons (Germany by the Two Plus Four Agreement, Japan by their post-war Constitution). Ukraine never developed nuclear weapons on their own, and seeing how they lack the ability to train submariners anymore, the suggestion that they can become a nuclear power is... interesting. South Korea is probably the only one in your list with the know-how and industrial potential to do it, but they have no reason to as that would escalate tensions with NK and they are on the long list of freeloaders off the American defense umbrella anyway. But by far the most insane of suggestions is Taiwan—an admission or proof that the ROC is close to completing a nuclear program would inevitably lead to war in the South China Sea, something that none of the major players in the area really want. Of course, this is also without getting into domestic dissent problems that may arise from pursuing nuclear ambitions. In the words of Bruce Lee, "knowing is not enough, we must apply". Having the potential is one thing, tapping it is another entirely. So, to sum up, becoming a major nuclear player requires not only a significant economic effort, but also a degree of international political independence unattainable by anyone... outside of great powers. This sacrifice of international influence is fine and dandy so long as one is a member of a major military alliance where one or more of the members are already nuclear-armed, and for as long as their interests and goals are aligned with those of the nuclear members. But this effectively means those countries are relegated from leading to following in critical matters, which is precisely the mark of a second rate power. No, in 1964, the Soviet Union was a superpower, prepared to go toe-to-toe in a nuclear slugging match with the only other superpower to an uncertain outcome. This was with an economy that was already nominally several times smaller than that of the bloc they opposed. Gajillions of dollars on paper meant little back then, as they mean little today, when trying to gauge the importance of countries relative to one another. And this is also without accounting for the problem of increasing financialization of Western economies. You say that economic reasons GDP shows that Russia is no longer to be considered a great power—I say this approach paints an incomplete picture, provided concrete examples of this, and am explaining why making judgments based on that picture is foolhardy. I'm also not too convinced of the usefulness of trying to determine whether one country or another presently meets an arbitrary set of criteria to be included in one arbitrary category or another, especially when those categories are inherited from the study of history, a discipline that is based on retrospect and whose goal is not at all to make assessments of the present or predictions for the future. I'm fairly certain that to Eastern Europe, the power of Russia is pretty great at the moment, and this perspective is probably shared by many in Western Europe too. So for the purposes of this discussion, does it really matter if a hundred years from now, historians will place 2014 Russia right up there with 1914 Britain, 1556 Spain, or 360 Sassanid Empire or not?

Yep, that would probably be a good set of criteria for assessment of "great powers"—before 1945. Today, anyone with enough nukes to turn the planet into one huge glass parking lot and the means to deliver them, has more influence than anyone who doesn't. That alone puts Russia in the big leagues, because any use of conventional force carries the risk of escalation. The whole diplomacy game changes when war is absolutely out of the question. A purely economic perspective (and one limited to GDP, at that) is going to paint a decevingly weak picture of Russia, which is why I cannot subscribe to Rostere's purely economic assessment. For reference, GDP in 1964 for the European members of NATO minus Luxembourg and Iceland (Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, UK, Turkey) was $2.389 tn, while for the USSR it was $1.010 tn (edit: adjusted for inflation, 1990 int'l dollars). This is at the time of peak Soviet influence in world affairs, and I'm not even factoring in the US or the rest of western Europe. Try and convince someone in 1964 that the USSR wasn't a great power. Hell, try and convince anyone that they weren't a superpower. Granted, it's not the eight-fold difference you have now, but then neither are there Combined Arms Armies deployed to overrun Germany in seven days anymore, which were as much a pillar of Soviet influence as their strategic arsenal and their raw economic output. The case of pre-war Germany is also interesting, because GDP figures cannot reflect the critical shortages of raw materials that ultimately doomed their war effort from an economic standpoint—and it still took the combined might of the Allies and Soviets to defeat them with a nominal economic power that was just ~70% of the combined GDP of France and the UK in 1938. The bottom line is, when push comes to shove, GDP isn't going to be a good method to compare the relative weights of countries, by itself.

A cheap sociopath. As the old adage goes, "you get what you pay for".

I think this is the key. It's not that Babchenko's post is inaccurate, it's that inflammatory tirades can, and have been written by journalists/activists/political contrarians for just about any country. If anyone produced any of Michael Moore's rants, they'd be grateful that posts here cannot be downvoted to oblivion (yet). For the more academically inclined, one can always cite Noam Chomsky, which is certain to trigger a deafening *YAWN* from our audience. Yet this guy automagically gets our full support because he hurls much vitriol at those we have been taught to hate, regardless of the quality of his analysis, the veracity of his claims, or the degree to which subjectivity taints his views. Ah, but it seems the two minutes of hate just ended. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

That's pretty cool. Especially the Anonymous one. What the hell is that, anyway? A RPG of sorts? Thanks, I wish we would get input from people living there more often. So you believe the disturbances in south east Ukraine are being blown out of proportion by the media? In addition, what exactly do you mean by "responsibilities inherent to the budget deficit", though? I'm really interested because it's something that's deeply ingrained in the austerity discourse, but in my experience, it amounts to "cut down on welfare, because". Can you shed some light on the fiscal situation of Ukraine and the measures announced by Kiev? What is the really unjustifiable public spending that absolutely must go to <insert meaningless economic jargon> the economy? Not being able to read Russian or Ukrainian, it's difficult to see the whole picture.

That's the problem with the appropriation of symbols. The Star of David is undisputably a symbol of Jewish identity, but also of Zionism... yet they are not one and the same. Should the policy of zero tolerance for racism be extended to political ideas too? Should mods err on the side of caution whenever anything that could be construed anti-semitism pops up? A case could be made either way. I agree though, he knows what he's doing.

The vehicle, or rather, the remains thereof, posted by Woldan looks closer to this: It's an armored ("Frag 5 armor") HMMWV—not quite as "mine resistant" as the actual MaxxPro MRAP you posted. Impossible to know for sure what it was before the blast, though. In the picture there seem to be fragments flying around, too, which is weird considering how beaten up it is already.

Donetsk activists proclaim region's independence from Ukraine This will end well.

Burce aren't you going to ask for a source, or some link so you can prove it's not a lie. I thought you had a big speech about how you were all about truth now. http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/kulturdebatt/valkomna-till-ryssland-kara-krimbor/ There is original article in Swedish newspaper and original writer is Arkadij Babtjenko, here is link to Russian wikipedia about him. He has published books about his experiences in Chechen Wars and works as journalist and war correspondent for Novaya Gazeta Nice post, sorry Sarex and 2133 guess you will just have to accept this one Unlike yourself, I'm not in the business of accepting or rejecting anything based solely on how much lube it needs to fit in with my preconceptions.