Immediately following the end of the article, I found this:

Log in to Medium and "recommend" this story.

[infinite facepalm]

How about because when NATO ignores Russian security concerns and expands recklessly, Russia responds with low-level, plausibly deniable invasions and destabilizations in the states they feel are strategically within their sphere, much like the US does with literally the entire Western hemisphere.

1. we went over this moron. "it's ok for russia to do bad things because USA does bad things" intellectual and moral bankruptcy

first off fuck the usa. it's committed many crimes in this world. but more importantly, your "two wrongs make the right" thinking only goes to show you lack morals and principles. in your world it's ok for anyone to commit any crime they want at any time. the justification being someone else got away with the same crime once, so they should be able to too. it's sophistry and empty contrarianism

it's like "i hate the usa so i have to love the iranian bomb program." or "i hate iran so i have to love american imperialism." both suggestions are fucking idiotic, and it's the way you think about russia and the usa. in reality, populated with people with actual principles, you can hate both iran, and the usa, for their separate crimes. likewise, it's totally possible to hate the usa, and russia, and not give one or the other a pass because "it's not fair mommy, that kid got away with shoplifting too" like an immature douchebag, which is what you are with your words here. by thinking this way you're just announcing your own intellectual and moral failure

2. if NATO did not exist, russia would be doing the same, or worse. why do you blame the malice of one party on someone else? it's like you lack a basic abstract social model of cause and effect in your mind, something developed by most people in elementary school

example: lets say the USA invades canada in 10 years. according to your logic, we can say it's bin laden's fault, because of 9/11, which did this to american politics, and that to american concerns, and turned them into raging warmongers, etc. so it's all bin laden's fault for the usa attacking canada. completely stupid. but that's your logic here

some moron like yourself would agree with this contrived bullshit, because you believe NATO is somehow to blame for what *russia* does. get it? do you possibly sense the social problem you have on assigning responsibility and accountability for what one person does to another person?

another example: i dent your car. you pull out a gun and blow my head off. according to your wife beater logic, i'm at fault for getting my head blown off. because i dented your car

but in reality, you have many choices to responding to me denting your car. swear at me. ignore me. ask me to pay. punch me. insult my friends and family. dent my car back. make jokes. whatever. how you respond to the stresses of life is about YOUR character and YOUR thinking, and you're only demonstrating your own low character and weak mental capacity at understanding who is responsible for what

in fact, blaming your bad choices on who you choose to victimize is called avoiding responsibility. and for you to fall for this lame "poland wanted to dance with NATO so russia had to beat up ukraine" wife beater stupidity, and your other "the usa does bad things so it's ok for russia to do bad things" two wrongs make a right idiocy, it tells us you are person of no morals who blames your bad choices and your crimes on others

your geopolitical analysis tells us nothing about the reality of russia and NATO, and only about your own intellectual and moral failure

your country is probably some broken shithole with many problems all due to local corruption and bad domestic choices, but blind pride means you believe what some chest thumping demagogue feeds you "it's all the usa's fault because they did bad thing {X} to our country in the cold war 50 years ago" and so you never take any responsibility for your own failures, invent fantastic bullshit cause and effect chains of reasoning for why what you do wron gis actually someone else's fault, and you never fix your fucking problems or even admit you created them

some kid hit you in the face in elementary school once, and you carry that chip on your shoulder your entire life and blame all your failures on what that kid did to you long ago. no, you're just a loser with weak character who looks to point blame rather than just fixing your own fucking problems

do you know what the usa did to japan?

they NUKED them

did the japanese whine and bitch and blame their eternal poverty and squalor and local corruption on the usa forever thereafter? no. japan has national character, they built themselves right back up to a world power status. for a while in the last century they dominated. only 40 years after being fucking nuked. and they are FRIENDS with the usa

that's a country with character. you? you are the problem in this world. you are an example of why your country is a fucking cesspool. it's in your two-wrongs-make-a-right "logic" and your wife beater "logic"

for you commenting on geopolitics doesn't inform us, it is merely a window for us into your own pathetic failed weak mentality, illustrated by how you rationalize immorality and irresponsibility

china is outpacing india economically and militarily

india better catch up

if india had any cojones it would also be more assertive on the issue of tibetan independence. mongolia exists because russia could outweigh china's imperialism. tibet does not exist because india could not do the same

because the govt doesn't require you report to a govt building to get your cash and undergo a registration and a background check, genius

*rolls eyes* WWII ended 70 years ago; Stalin's gone, Putin's here. Do you have an actual point to make or are you just farming karma from the Europeans?

Yes, so where do you get this "Pax Americana" baloney? The Cold War? Please.

Of course this may not really be a Windows 10-specific issue since they slipped a "Diagnostic Tracking Service" into previous versions (such as Win7) through Windows Update earlier this year.

According to this, that particular update was 3068708, which is "recommended" and thus (as far as I can tell) not automatically installed under default settings.

(Note: please correct me if I'm wrong! Also, feel free to list any other malicious updates which should be avoided, or other strategies to harden Windows 7 against Microsoft snooping. I just reinstalled and would like to make sure I get all that stuff right before I start using sensitive data.)

That statement, while probably true, entirely misses the point.

Since I was responding to the guy who claimed the effective US corporate income tax rate was over 50%, I'd say it's exactly on point.

Now we have a situation where the US receives zero tax from multinationals instead of 13%. If the US had lowered its corporate income tax rates, perhaps the US would actually be receiving 13% from those multinationals instead of 0.

I guarantee, if we were collecting 13% from multinationals, the line out of the American Enterprise Institute would be, "This is unacceptable! We need to make the tax rate 0% on corporations so we can be just like Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba, where rich people are left alone and colored people serve them drinks!"

Here are some countries that have 0% corporate income tax:
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bermuda
Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba
Cayman Islands
Guernsey
Isle of Man
Jersey
Vanuatu

You know what they all have in common? You or I can't live there unless we win the lottery, and the only jobs in those countries are hotel maid and lickspittle.

well, to collect the reward they have to show up at the govt office and submit to a little background examination, so...

I see you've enjoyed the capitalism too.

You just backed into my main point. Capitalism exists quite comfortably in socialist countries. They're not mutually exclusive. In fact, they can work quite nicely together in the same civil society.

You need to add capital gains and corporate taxes if you want to know how much the US government actually gets from every dollar earned by a corporation:

http://taxfoundation.org/artic... [taxfoundation.org]

I thought you objected to politically-motivated reports.

The papers and news reports you point to are bogus

Says the guy who just cited tax foundation dot org.

The Chinese have little interest to invade and occupy other countries

so what is going in the spratlys exactly, moron?

nevermind with india, senkakus, paracels, etc.

you have to at least try to make sense

when i say "language evolves," that does not evoke random douchebags on the in the internet, it evokes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

good!

no

india and china have many minor border disputes, but also two major disputes over absolutely huge areas that are indeed mostly mountainous, but i don't know why that magically makes them unimportant

these are very large areas, read up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

and then we can get into the issue of tibetan independence...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...