China yeah, but I do believe the Kanucks are saints who only wanna do good to Cuba

But Russia's recent wars & bullying have been against groups or countries far weaker than them - Chechens, Georgia and now Ukraine. They've not fought wars against China or Kazakhstan. Going by what you said, those 2 would theoretically be Russia's greatest threats. However, China is an ally of Russia, and their only border with them is on the Manchurian side. Kazakhistan is still more or less a client state of Russia, and hardly a threat to it. In fact, before Putin came to power, when Yeltsin was running things, there were times when Moscow had a really weak hold on things, but that didn't encourage China or the stans to act up and try bullying Russia. The only group that tried it was the Chechens.

The mistake in Iraq was to try and rebuild that country after toppling Saddam. Invading them and toppling Saddam was justified, given that he was housing terrorists like Abu Nidal, and rewarding Hamas suicide bombers in Israel. But once he was overthrown, the campaign should have been over, while allowing the UN to search for the WMDs. When Bush stood on that ship the first time w/ the 'Mission Accomplished' sign, he happened to be correct! The US debacle in Iraq started after the scope of the mission became 'bringing democracy to Iraq'.

No Arab country had ever been a democracy, and translated to Arab ground realities, it just meant mob rule. In Iraq, the Shiites, being the majority, came to power, and suddenly, the persecution of Chaldeans & Assyrians started, w/ most fleeing to Syria and then Lebanon. In the meantime, in Baghdad, Iraq became a new client state of Iran, who must have been laughing themselves silly @ the Great Satan (TM) installing their puppet in Iraq, and making the formation of a Shiite Crescent easier.

In the meantime, the US wasted billions in reconstructing a country that never had any major infrastructure in the first place, aside from anything that would make waging war easier. All the while battling Iraqis of all ethnic backgrounds who hated it (except the Kurds and Assyrians). Instead, withdrawing from Iraq after Saddam's overthrow and letting Moqtada al Sadr battle it out with Zarqawi and not take any Arab refugees into the US would have been the right move.

Russian economic support to Cuba ended after the Soviet Union came apart. Question is how much longer would Raul Castro last, and whether Cuba would see another Gorby after him?

And Raul Castro can keep out American workers on boats sailing to Cuba in search of jobs /facetious

Yeah, he got succeeded by his brother. Wonder what is it about Commie countries nowadays? They started off by overthrowing monarchies wherever they could find them - Russia, Egypt, Libya, and so on. Nowadays, every surviving Communist country has de facto dynasties - North Korea, Cuba, Syria. If only the Romanovs had known and maneuvered to take over the Communist party, they may have saved themselves from getting massacred.

Maybe the interrogation/treatment of enemy combatants should be outsourced to Cuba. For a while, some were outsourced to Syria, but that's too far away, and then too, they are enemies and might like & release some of the combatants. Instead, the US could have Cuba take over all the interrogation of enemy combatants and treat them however they like, and pay Cuba a mutually agreed commission on every combatant who is executed.

The only country that had an embargo on Cuba is the US. They trade w/ everyone else - Europe, Canada and whoever else you got. Despite that, their economy is in a mess. They need a Putin

Of course! What he did had no effect during his administration nor the next 2, but kicked in 12 years later!

For non volatile memories - EPROMs, EEPROMs, Flash, erasing means setting all the data cells (within a specified area) to '1'. Programming means setting certain data cells in a given address with 0. Writing means erasing certain data cells to 1 and then programming the bits that need to be made 0 to 0.

Those were UVROMs. ROMs were series of rows and columns, with the columns that needed to be 0 connected to the ground by diodes, and the ones that needed to be 1 left floating. As others said above, they were originally etched during time of manufacture, and once out of fab and package/test, they were done. No writing evar!

But the US can't even drill oil in ANWR, despite Alaska being all for it, due to the huge opposition from environmental groups in the other 49 states. If US were to get the North Pole - contiguous sector to AK, how would they then allow drilling for oil there, given that environmental wackos can then campaign on behalf of the seals and walruses, instead of the caribou.

True about militaries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. Not so true about militaries like Russia or even China. It's one thing for the US to have invaded Iraq and liberated Kuwait in 1991, and a totally different thing for the US to send troops into Donbass and drive out the Russians. Heck, the most that the West can do if Russia decides to re-annex all ex-Soviet republics and Eastern Europe would be to impose sanctions, which would do squat, since oil alone can float the Russian economy.

Russia now has REACTOS, which is the best FOSS alternative to Windows

This is the fabled 'White Man's Burden'. Why is it the responsibility of the West to ensure that people in Muslim lands don't do what they've been doing ever since they became Muslim (which was even before many of the Western countries, such as US, Germany, Britain even existed)? Shias and Sunnis have hated each other since the death of Mohammed - how can Western (this includes Russian) influence be expected to change any of that? Particularly when the West is looked at with both envy (due to being both militarily and economically far superior) and resentment (for the same reasons).

I'm not a supporter of the Democrats, but Obama has been sensible enough as far as staying out of things goes. Mistake he's made - which can be faulted due to his not seeing anything wrong with the Muslim mobs in the Middle East (but in that aspect, he's no better nor worse than Bush) - is that he didn't pull out all US diplomats, journalists, everybody out of the region and issue a no travel warning for all these countries. Partly as a result of that, the ISIS beheadings of American journalists happened, and suddenly, the US is screaming for their blood. The correct approach would have been to warn all Western citizens to stay away, and that if they do go despite the warnings, they alone would be responsible for whatever bad things happened to them. Honestly, I have no sympathies for people stupid enough to go to Syria, and then get beheaded by ISIS. And that's hardly a reason for the US to step up to 'its world policing duties'.

In a similar vein, I also have a problem w/ Western governments detaining Muslims who want to go off to Syria to join either ISIS or Hizbullah or other Jihadi groups. My argument - why stop them? Allow them to go, but make it one way - if they do survive the conflict, don't allow them to come back. As it is, most who go there don't come back - they either die in combat, or get beheaded by their ever grateful hosts. Also, a good side benefit is that they don't stay back to commit their crimes in the West - which is a win-win proposition for both them and us.