Why? Are you a liar?

Yeah I was going to say the same thing. You NEVER make a change that you don't have a way to backout to the previous operational state.

Not at all. It made the position of Islamist groups that were arguing from more moderate positions, and generally preferred a democratic transition to their goal (like Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots), much weaker. At the same time, it made the position of groups arguing for violent jihad much stronger - especially since, with foreign intervention in Muslim countries, they could declare jihad to be fard ayn (individually obligatory for any observant Muslim) on scriptural grounds. It also created lots of martyrs.

Think about where things were before the intervention, and where they are now. Taliban is rapidly regaining control over Afghanistan, and in the meantime Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are also rapidly Islamized by similar Salafist strains. In Pakistan, military and intelligence are stuffed with Taliban-friendly Islamists. In Iraq and Syria, large swaths are under control of an armed jihadi group that has officially declared itself to be the Caliphate, and which practices the version of Islam that even many other extremist Salafi organizations find too brutal - and they keep expanding territory and getting a steady influx of volunteers. Volunteers, I must add, that come from our own countries, and are in many cases not only our citizens by law, but are born and raised here within our culture - and yet falling under the influence of extremist preachers who convert them. Do you really think that we could see anything on that scale without the free (to them) advertising that the West gave to jihadis?

Unless you believe that intelligence gathering is an act on war (in which case every single country on the face of Earth is at war with every other country, with the possible exception of some African countries and microstates), then, no, CIA is not an organization of war.

And as a libertarian, you should be ashamed of yourself - you're engaging in exact same kind of sophistry that you decry in your opponents the statists whenever they "creatively reinterpret" some constitutional provision, like in Wickard v. Filburn.

CIA is just one TLA out of many more that are part of the same problem. This mentality, that they can do whatever the hell they want, and fuck law, due process and constitution, so long as they catch the arbitrarily defined bad guys of the day, is pervasive throughout all government agencies that have anything even remotely to do with law enforcement or military. NSA and CIA spying are links of the same chain that includes DEA no-knock warrants, police departments buying MRAPs for bragging rights etc.

And yes, there are some agencies that should literally go to jail wholesale. For example, I don't see how you can be working for DEA and not be complicit in activities that, 50 years ago, would be decried as stereotypical police state jackboot thug activity - and all that violence for the sake of suppressing non-violent, consensual activity (well, at least nominally - in practice, these days, it's more often an excuse, and the actual goal is cashing in on asset forfeiture).

Uh... I do not support the present Russian politics at all (even though I am a citizen). What I'm saying is that the separatists themselves - and many Russians - believe that they are not getting enough support from Russia, and blaming that on "traitors". "Enough support" here generally equates to moving the troops in openly.

I'm certainly not relishing the thought of an all-out military conflict between Russia and the West, either.

Thank God money evolved before humans or else we would never exist.

What makes you believe that it's Putin that's playing for that side, and not the other way around?

One thing that I'm actually seriously afraid of is that Putin will use the separatists to stage a coup inside the country. Consider this: right now, it seems clear that without outside intervention, rebels are doomed - Ukrainian forces grind them down slowly but surely, even despite the heavy losses. They know it full well, and they have been demanding help from Russian government since the declaration of independence - and then complaining that what they get is still not enough (which is true). Some of the lower-level commanders and rank and file have already been calling Putin a traitor on record. But never the top brass, like Strelkov. In fact, Strelkov is pretty much always very deferential to Putin, and called him "supreme commander" on occasion.

Now, imagine what happens when the last stronghold is overrun. The remaining forces - doubtlessly, the most loyal and battle-hardened of Strelkov's troops - will try to retreat across the border into Russia. If, by some "miracle", they are allowed to pass safely through, what do we have? A charismatic leader, widely popular in Russia itself, with a clout of an almost-martyr for the cause that most people root for, valiantly and losing the battle only because of "traitors" - even if he's not pointing any fingers at them (just makes him that much more noble, hey!). And several thousand armed loyal troops at his command. Now, what if Putin declares that the only reason why he was not able to order a direct intervention and turn the tide is because of all the traitors in the government, and that he needs help purging them? Strelkov then turns the entire Dolchstosslegende around and says that, yes, the people who were complaining about treason were right all along, but Putin was not the traitor, the traitors were the one who bound him and prevented him from acting - and marches straight onto the Kremlin. No-one would stop him; heck, I know for sure that a lot of people would cheer, and most police and military units would just step aside if not join outright. Once he arrives, we have a bloody but brief purge, with some bodies displayed for the amusement of the crowd, and Putin is now officially a dictator for life, Defender of Holy Rus or whatever titles they decide to bestow on him, with his own personal loyal guard to protect him.

Also, I would go further, and state that simply looking at bachelor degrees does not really do justice for the statistics for those being hired by the Silicon Valley firms. If you look at doctoral degrees in Computer and Information sciences, the breakdown is 73% white, 3% black, 10.7% asian, 4.5% hispanic, of which 71.4% are male, and 28.6% are female. This reflects MANY of the disparages in workforce makeup at these companies. These companies are supposedly the best of the best, and brightest of the brightest, which means it will reflect closely those same best of the best and brightest of the brightest coming out of the education system (which means doctorates, post-doctorates, etc.).

And if you look at the rest of the data (i.e. the "National Center for Education" "Digest of Education Statistics" "Table 322.30") :

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_322.30.asp

You will notice, that if you breakdown the ethnicity into percentages of degrees conferred, for "computer and information sciences" for 2011-2012, you will see there were 47,384 Bachelor degrees earned by students, of which 30,211 identified as "white" (63.75%), 5,410 as "black" (11.41%), 4,008 as "hispanic" (8.45%), and 4,254 as "asian" (8.97%). There are also another 2,360 "non-resident alien" listed which no ethnicity is given.

Now looking at people working at Yahoo!, 50% White (13% less than percentage earning degrees in USA in 2011-2012), 39% "asian" (30% more than percentage earning degrees), 4% hispanic (4-5% less than percentage earning degrees), 2% black (9% less than those earning degrees).

If you look at all the other companies on that list linked in the article, you will see roughly the same trend, with "whites" having about the same proportional makeup of the companies as there are those getting degrees, asians having a much higher percentage of the workforce than are getting degrees in the US (wow, not surprising since we are importing most of this labor via H1B, green card, immigration), and blacks and hispanics having slightly lower than the amount they graduate.

Now the lower amounts of blacks and hispanics may very well be simply due to location. The companies they looked at are Silicon Valley companies, with the majority of their workforce in California. California has a much lower percentage of blacks than say Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, etc... If you even slightly believe that the percentage of graduates are equally spread out across the nation's schools based on percentage of population in the schools, and that attendance in schools more closely mimics the population in the state (not always, there are historically african american shools as well women only or male only schools, and schools certain ethnicities would never even want to go to for many reasons), and take into consideration that most people will tend to stay close to home/family when searching for a job, and you will see that the breakdown of ethnicity in Silicon Valley tech companies is probably really not that out of step with the percentage of population in the labor market in Silicon Valley.

Yes, Ukrainians do in fact have a special place in that model - they are considered "Russians who forgot/rejected their roots" (ditto Belarusians).

At the same time, you're also correct that the current conflict raised the hostility between two nations to a level that was never seen before, and it is also felt in Russia. The rhetoric was updated accordingly: now Ukrainians are deemed to consist of two parts - the larger one that is the unconsciously subjugated Russian-at-heart majority that can be rehabilitated (by force of arms if necessary), and the minority of hardcore "true Ukrainians" who do the subjugation, and for whom hating Russia is in their very nature. The latter are generally associated with Galicia (many people have suddenly discovered that those lands have not been in Russia, or any state that Russia claims succession to, for over 700 years before the 20th century - and therefore decided that reclassifying the inhabitants as inherently hostile is alright after all).

Thing is, I don't think the people who run the country believe in all this crap. They peddle it to the population because it's an easy sell and meshes well with their policies.

For Canada, replace Comcast with Rogers.