"Mutual defense means an obligation to respond to any attack as if it was on the home soil of any member. If Russian tanks were rolling towards the white house, would there not be an escalation to nuclear war? For fuck's sake man, the only reason the cold war didn't end with nuclear war is because both powers avoided attacking each other directly."

Er. Yes. Exactly. So why do you think that would change now? This is exactly my point, it's like you realise it whilst refusing to realise it.

You still don't get it - you still don't understand that what America would do to defend it's own soil isn't inherently what it has to do to defend foreign soil under NATO. Hell, it's not even clear if Russia did invade US soil that they'd use nuclear weapons, America has the firm military advantage so could win without doing so, thus Russia is the only party likely to do a first strike, and NATO wont use nukes unless Russia does first - it has no need for starters.

But importantly, NATO isn't touching Russian soil, so your argument is wholly meaningless, Russia is however touching foreign soil, albeit not NATO soil yet. Your argument seems to be that NATO nations shouldn't be allowed to defend themselves against Russian aggression - that's great for you as you're a Putin apologist, but you're simultaneously claiming it's not fair if NATO were to do the same to Russia, no shit, so how is it justified that Russia is the only one doing it?

"Yeah, my fragile little brain is too weak to logically argue the position of the strawman in your head."

Anger wont resolve the inherent paradoxes your irrational position has created. You'll need to try harder than that to fix your broken world view.

"You're right, I wasn't aware that the Warsaw pact included Mexico and Canada and Brazil. That's definitely news to me, and it completely invalidates everything I've said."

It doesn't have to, it's irrelevant, your whole argument makes no sense and is built on fantastical non-realities, non-realities you've had to create to counter the fact that your nonsensical ideas don't make sense in the context of actual reality.

"and the American response to that was to bring the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust"

This highlights the hypocrisy of your viewpoint, Russia stations nukes on America's border, pointing at America, and America has created an almost nuclear holocaust. What? Any rational human being can see that both sides escalated that one, I'm pretty sure the Americans didn't ask for those nukes to be positioned there and pointed at them.

So carry on apologising for Putin, being wrong, and talking about non-realities that justify your otherwise non-points. But you still haven't done any of that research I suggested, so you're continuing to be completely wrong and continuing to talk nonsense. Not much of a surprise.

"we dont drive small death traps like the rest of the world"

Um, the US has an 11.6 per 100,000 people death rate on the road, vs. France's 4.9, Germany's 4.3, or the UK's 3.5.

So people driving those "death traps" in the rest of the world are half as likely to die as you Americans are in your gigantic gas guzzlers. We typically get 50mpg and they tend to even let us drive faster too.

So yeah, nicer cars, faster journeys, less likely to die, and more money left over at the end of it.

Remind me why you think blowing cash on a fugly car that only gets 21mpg is a good thing again?

"Then what's the point of NATO? You just wiped your ass with the mutual defense clause"

Mutual defence, doesn't imply immediate escalation to nuclear defence. You're still entirely making that up. It just means mutual defence. Your rhetoric about guaranteed nuclear war is still nonsense, because the fact that world came out of the cold war nuclear war free is still proof of that. I don't know why you're even engaging in this discussion when you demonstrate exactly no knowledge of the cold war.

"Hahaha, that's awesome, basically your argument is that anything they did is evidence of your position. They didn't invade anyone? Obviously they couldn't! They invaded someone? Obviously imperialists! They stopped invading anyone? Obviously they realized they couldn't! You've set yourself up a nice little unfalsifiable fort there. Rocket science indeed."

No, my argument is that there is an incredibly vast body of proof and analysis on the topic, including statements from Putin himself admitting that his forces weren't up to it in Georgia that highlight this. Again, your lack of knowledge of this topic is wholly your problem, not mine. Don't try and spin it any other way - it's not my fault if you've no idea what you're talking about.

"How is it paranoia when the 25 years since the fall of the union have confirmed all their worst fears?"

Russia's worst fears are that it's neighbours wanted nothing to do with them? That's NATO's fault why exactly? You can't blame anyone but Russia for the fact that everyone around them wants to get as far away from them as possible.

"Haha that reminds me of those overly vague endings from Grey's Anatomy that were just sort of rambling without really saying anything relevant."

It's okay, you don't need to hurt your simple mind any further by failing to understand common words. I understand that things like paradoxes and fallacies are too complicated for you, so I didn't expect you to understand - if you did you'd be able to see why your worldview is so broken and paradoxical in the first place. It's pretty clear from everything you've said that your entire broken world view is built on the fact that you simply have no idea what the fuck you are talking about. You weren't aware of the Warsaw pact, you seem oblivious to the entirety of the cold war, and you are ignorant of the very things even Putin himself has said both about his history, his ideals, and his understanding of his own military,

Try as you might, you've proven that point that you simply can't argue from a point of ignorance- you've tried to argue, but you've yet to say anything that makes any sense, all because you have a complete lack of a grasp of basic facts.

Come back when you actually understand the topic and have managed to stop making such a repeated fool of yourself.

If nothing else go and have a read of the Russian leadership's own comments on it's military decay and the subsequent realisation from Georgia that they still weren't as prepared for war as they thought. I don't even need propaganda because pretty much everything I've said has been self-admitted by the Russian's themselves. Learn about Putin's speeches, such as where he declares the collapse of the USSR one of the greatest tragedies of our era. When you've come back, then tell me again that Putin doesn't lust for a return of Russia's imperial past, and that Putin wasn't aware that he was militarily crippled, and was surprised that they still weren't prepared in 2008.

You wont be able to of course, because by that point, having done that, you'll realise you were wrong. Well, that or just a reality denier, but you wont realise that, you'll just keep on being wrong. When even the folks you're trying to defend have contradicted you with your own words, normally you should know it's time to give up, apparently you don't though, so my bet is on reality denier.

"Haha, I should have known that would go over your head."

It went over my head because it makes absolutely no sense. Your argument is that NATO's only response to a Russian invasion is nuclear. That's obviously nonsense, if Russia carries out an invasion of a NATO nation in this manner NATO can simply respond in kind, either by say, fuelling Chechen separatism, or by similarly supporting the Estonians - mostly just giving enough weaponry to make such an invasion costly enough for the Russians to change their mind is sufficient. This basically describes pretty much every proxy battle in the cold war - nuclear war didn't happen, why do you think that's different now and the nuclear option is the only option? It isn't, you're simply spouting nonsense.

"Yes, and children are "involved" in their parents' decision making. I don't think that level of autonomy is something particularly attractive to most Russians."

Yes, as we've seen with Putin's regime, Russians prefer something much more restrictive and dictatorial. At least you got that bit right.

"Plus, how could something Putin learned when invading Georgia in 2008 have prevented him from doing something
before that? Does he have a time machine or something?"

No, but obviously if nothing else, Putin isn't stupid. Before 2008 he knew full well his military wasn't upto it, he assumed it would be in 2008 and found that it still wasn't. This isn't really rocket science, I'm amazed you're struggling with it. The average person wouldn't, much less someone with even a modicum of intelligence above that.

"Yeah, but your refusal to consider another perspective has "Made in USA" printed on it in red, white, and blue."

Here's the real problem - you're the only one bringing the USA into this over and over. You're the typical type of person whose view is formed something like "Afghanistan and Iraq were bad, therefore, the US is bad. Russia hates the US, therefore, Russia is good". Obviously that's the height of ignorant dumb-think because it's a fundamental fallacy. But you're excelling at demonstrating that in your oh so binary world that the only factors are either loving Russia and hating the US, or loving the US and hating Russia. Some of us are capable of seeing the billion shades of grey in between - don't think all of us are constrained by the same type of binary dumb-think that you are clearly displaying. It's perfectly possible for someone to think that both Russia and the US have done a lot wrong - the fact you don't get that shows you're a personal that suffers from serious problems of bias, ignorance and partisanship.

"He's a guy that wants democratic reform. Of course he doesn't like Putin, why would he. But what does that have to do with what we're talking about? "

Oh keep up. You asked how I could know what Putin's thoughts are - I point out it's quite simple, you simply read things from people whom he has expressed them to and who is aware of them. I pointed to one such person, again, it's not difficult.

"Unless what you're saying is that it would be preferable to you if Russia was run by people who didn't care about their strategic weaknesses and security, which I guess I agree with. I mean, lots of people would be really happy if some of the pre-Soviet imperial conquests broke off."

Honestly, I don't care what Russia does as long as it only acts either within it's borders, or outside it's borders with consent. I think the US invasion of Iraq was completely and utterly wrong, and I despise the US for it because it's clear the fucking mess in that part of the middle east still stems from that. Similarly however I despise the fact Russia has invaded and annexed the territory of a foreign sovereign nation, whilst simultaneously admitting to committing war crimes in the process (putting civilians at risk by pretending your soldiers are civilian is a self-admitted breach of the Geneva convention by Putin).

If Russians want to sit all paranoid that's fine, but that doesn't give them the right to dictate what their neighbours can and cannot do any more than the US can - if you have a problem with the US but not with Russia, then your worldview is fundamentally broken, because Russia is guilty of all the US' wrongs and then some.

But when your worldview is fundamentally broken in that way, it's not terribly surprising that you're also saying things that are either naive to what went on during the cold war, or simply make no sense requiring the enforcement of false choices. Fallacies are of course the only way you can fix the paradoxes in your mind that your broken, nonsensical and hypocritical worldview has inherently created.

To be fair also, someone posted a Google Maps satellite photo of the guys home. There's basically nothing behind his house (certainly no adjoining property) so the chance of the birdshot falling on anything other than grass is basically zero by the looks of it.

Given that there is so much empty space behind the property it does seem a little odd that the drone owner insisted on flying over the properties (we know this because it fell inside the property boundaries once shot down) rather than over the wealth of empty space behind the properties.

Given all this it seems pretty clear the drone operator was focussing on people's properties to spy on them, rather than just passing through.

Yeah but look on the bright side, that cost of billions will be more than made up for the fact that you no longer have to invade oil rich states where you create enemy combatants by fucking over their country and where your troops can desert in the first place.

So it seems to suit your own argument just fine- billions to become energy independent is a bargain compared to trillion dollar wars to maintain oil dependence.

Didn't Google get hammered by Apple users for ignoring some Safari setting and tracking them anyway though? If so why are other ad companies special, are they not just a similar court case away from a costly payout?

It seems that if your browser says "Do Not Track" and they track you, then they're flagrantly violating your privacy.

Sounds like it just needs people willing to take these guys to court just as Google was hauled through the courts.

"I spent one week locating the problem by digging into verbose logs: it was due to the FDIV bug, which was subtly changing the positions of some trucks."

Similar issues are actually a fairly common occurrence in network code for video games during development when the developer is fairly new to the task. A lot of people writing network code for games run into it before learning their lesson.

See this SE question and the associated links for example for some interesting points:

http://gamedev.stackexchange.c...

"Why in god's name would Russia join a military alliance headed by their biggest geopolitical rival whose sole purpose for existing is to surround Russia with thinly veiled sworn enemies, army bases, and missiles aimed at their cities and military forces? What you're talking about is on par with saying the US had every opportunity to join the Soviet satellite states like the Eastern Bloc."

Well yes, if your view is Russian-centric paranoia I can see why you'd think that, but to anyone else the reasons are obvious - people join NATO as equals and NATO only existed to defend against Russia because Russia had opted to be a threat. In contrast, the USSR held on to countless European states against their will and is trying to do so today. So on one hand you have a purely defensive organisation where everyone is an equal, and on the other you have oppressive Russian imperialism. They're quite different.

"How about if instead of the Ida-Viru region of Estonia, we're talking about a quarter of the Norwegian offshore oil drilling operations? Would you be willing to destroy hundreds of millions of human lives, including your own, and plunge the planet into decades without sunshine to stop that?"

I really have no idea what the fuck your point is. Given that those aren't even choices that exist and hence there is absolutely no context around them then you're not really making any sense. You seem to be suggesting that NATO would randomly start a nuclear war over something relatively trivial. That's a theory you've come up with with absolutely no grounding in reality.

"Perhaps NATO isn't everything you think it is, at least not against Russia."

I don't think you have even the slightest clue what NATO is. It is primarily a security pact couple with military coordination and training. If Russia joined that then it would inherently be protected from NATO as a member itself, and would be involved in NATO's decision making. The fact Russia still has imperialist ambitions and seeks to grow it's territory with force is not in any way NATO's fault, and wholly Russia's. NATO doesn't force anyone to join - countries ask, and even when they do NATO is incredibly careful about membership, hence why Ukraine and Georgia are not yet members.

"and a couple of other countries entering a pact of mutual defense with the Soviet union wherein they were obligated to attack the US in unison if any of them were attacked by the US"

Er, so you're talking about the cold war and you've never heard of the Warsaw pact? You should probably stop now.

"I'll never understand why Putin waited nearly 15 years for NATO to keep expanding before he decided to try to do all those things that he totally intended to do all along. You'd think it'd have been a lot easier to, say, annex Georgia back before they had much in the way of ties to the EU or the US, and same for the rest of those countries. Well, I guess he must be really stupid."

Well, you know, these things cost money. They don't come for free. When your country has basically gone bankrupt it starts to take a while before you can save up your roubles enough to create a viable force, and even then they'll be rusty and may still need further training and support, as Putin learnt the hard way in Georgia when his forces took way more casualties than they should have in 2008.

"Oh, what's that you say? You haven't actually talked to Putin's psychiatrist? And you're basing all your opinions on the typical American"

Psychiatrists don't write leaders biographies and do interviews for them idiot. Similarly, plenty of folks who do and have known Putin personally have written more than enough about his personality. Unfortunately, being as corrupt a dictator as Putin means you tend to fall out regularly with those around you, and we therefore have no end of people who were once close to him, and even some who still are describing his motivations. Oh, and I'm not American.

Stop being a Putin apologist when you don't know the first thing about him. You don't have to listen to me, but you should at least listen to people who most definitely do know the situation before spouting nonsense like this guy:

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

Oh wait, don't tell me, he's a Western spy or something because RT told you so? Yep, thought so.

I don't think you realise how much of a fail your argument is - being equal to Greece means that if shit hits the fan for us then we too get bailed out. Yes, I'd love that security blanket, in fact, that's precisely why we're in the EU because last time we fucked up and nearly went bankrupt Europe did indeed do all of that for us.

In the meantime, whilst we're doing well we get to be equal with countries like Germany and France.

Besides, the world is moving East, not West. Moving the opposite direction to the tides of change would be one of the most braindead things we could do over the next 50 years either way. We'd attach ourselves to a falling empire, whilst the rest of the world moves on into a multi-polar world involving China. There's a reason our own government regardless of the EU shunned the US and joined China's new investment bank - they're not stupid enough to tie us to the sort of past fantasy that people like you Farage, and Liam Fox long for but just doesn't exist anymore and will not exist any time in the next century at least. The British empire is gone, and America is declining as the once sole superpower, we're going to have to adapt to that reality if we want to continue to be prosperous.

You really are not mentally mature enough to be having this discussion, you're still desperately crying racism in a topic that has literally nothing to do with race. When you've got two groups fighting that are the same fucking race, then how exactly do you think racism even remotely factors in? Do you really think that just shouting racism at people somehow makes a legitimate argument even when it makes absolutely no sense?

And no, the Kurds don't control anything even approaching the entirety Turkish/Syrian border, and those that do live on that border aren't the ones Erdogan has been primarily targeting (though he has been targeting them). Most of those he has killed have been killed in Iraq.

You obviously have a hatred for the far right, and that's a good thing, but when you don't even understand the sorts of policies those groups have (I'll give you a hint: they don't care about brown people as you call them fighting other brown people) and make nonsensical arguments against them it doesn't exactly put you in a position of strength. People like you do more harm than good, because they can legitimately hold you up as an example of someone that throws terms like "racist" around when it doesn't make any sense and as such you devalue the term removing it's potency when it's necessary to call out real actual racists.

Yes... because Europe still didn't fix itself immediately after the war. It kinda takes time to rebuild a whole fucking continent.

"NAFTA being less comprehensive than the EU is a FEATURE, not a bug. NAFTA won't leave England on the hook for Mexico's bad debt."

No but it does leave us open to getting fucked by US protectionism just like Canada has with things like lumber, and fresh water.

Why be a bitch to America when we can be an equal in Europe as we are currently?

Erdogan has turned a blind eye to ISIS fighters and weapons using his country as a transit point into Syria whilst blocking Kurdish fighters from doing the same and has put far more effort into bombing Kurds.

It's got nothing to do with skin colour or religion, Turkey and the Kurds are both secular, ISIS is an Islamist group, and Erdogan is an Islamist leader, that's about it. Calling out a bad leader for doing more to oppress a group that has been in peace talks for 2 years and has been attacked by Erdogan's troops more than they've attacked Erdogans troops doesn't make me an Islamaphobe by any measure, particularly as there are more than enough muslim Kurds. Stop being so ignorant.

Your post really couldn't be more useless, "it's a nationalism issue", what's a nationalism issue exactly? bombing the Kurds? great, but how does that justify implicitly supporting ISIS by letting them transit fighters and weapons through Turkey? how does that make it okay to attack the Kurds more so than ISIS? It doesn't matter what the motivation issue is, it's wrong all the same. Erdogan has long held the belief that ISIS are more of a benefit than a problem, and that's really not good for the West. Only now that they've attacked Turkey proper in a slightly more brutal way has his calculus changed somewhat and even then his instinct is not to obliterate ISIS, but instead to use it as an excuse to hammer the shit out of the PKK, and hit the YPG too.

It's kind of sad how you had to see the problem as an issue of race and religion, I'm astounded that you'd then cry bigot - you obviously are wrestling with your own inability to keep religion and race out of a discussion it's wholly irrelevant to. Crying "Islamaphobe", talking about skin colour and shouting bigot wont detract from your own apparent bigotry where you jump to conclusions that bear no relevance to anything that was said.

His point is, how the fuck do you know where the owner is? How do you know the drone will even still be there by the time the cops turn up leaving them unable to act and wasting their time?

It makes far more sense as the GP suggested that the drone owner follow his drone to the houses he intends to fly it over and politely asks permission, rather than just doing it and expecting everyone else to somehow go and find him.

"Well, it sure as hell impressed opportunistic American politicians who have been expanding NATO for 20 years without seemingly any sort of awareness of the provocation towards Russia it entailed"

Oh nonsense, Russia had every opportunity to join NATO and become a modern progressive nation itself. The fact it decided to not do that because it still had dreams of an empire is not NATO's fault but Russia's. NATO is a security organisation and by increasing membership it increases security. Bringing Russia on board was a key aim because that would be the ultimate stability pact for Europe, but Putin killed all that and put the final nails in the coffin when it invaded both Georgia and Ukraine. Putin plays the victim because it suits, but NATO isn't the aggressor here.

Putin would've done what he did regardless, if anything NATO restricted how far he was able to go - certainly it blocked him from annexing the whole of Georgia proper, and places like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and so forth would likely be stuck once more with Russian puppet governments were it not for NATO.

Putin is an imperialist, and no amount of appeasement will or would have ever changed that. He was there as a KGB agent when the USSR collapsed and he's never forgiven that. You wont change him, and you wont help him, all you can do is stand up to him and keep him in check. He believes soviet Russia was always right, and he's determined to try and rebuild the empire he believes was stolen from Russia, failing to realise it wasn't stolen, merely that the people Russia oppressed for so long were taking their freedom back.