Should just cut North Korea off the internet anyway, not like ordinary people there can access it so it would only harm the ruling elite. Preventing Fat Kim from watching lolcatz videos on YouTube would probably be a far more effective sanction than anything else anyway.

Even in the UK growing up before the world wide web was a thing you'd just wander on down to the closest building site where the builders often left porn mags lying around or go round to the kids house whose dad creepily collected page 3 girl pictures to find it.

It's always been a nonsense and always will be, kids will find porn whatever you do. You can't legislate natural curiosity away.

It's not even applied to all ISPs. I don't have any of this and haven't had to ever opt in or out of anything.

So sure you can go to one of the big 5 nanny state friendly ISPs and pay nothing for over-contended shit broadband with useless support when it goes wrong, or you can just go to one of the other 200 ISPs where none of this is even an issue.

You say I'm wrong but nothing, absolutely nothing backs up your claims. It's all nonsensical bullshit that is completely contradicted with what's actually happening in reality.

"Why should I buy into artificial Russia - West conflict when it's already long obsolete?"

Because some people still crave power and suffer tribalist tendancies? Do you really have this little understanding about the world, how old are you, 10?

"But pretty much all what Putin's government does would be ignored if he was, say, French president. And such double-standard is what I abhor. "

No it wouldn't. The US and the UK suffered a massive blow to their reputation due to their shenanigans in Iraq. There is no double standard - you invade a neighbouring country, you create laws that discriminate against minorities, and you get called out on that. Look at Uganda, it similarly got attacked for it's anti-homosexuality laws.

Again, I can only assume you're about 10, or 13 or something. Your complete naivety of the world is astounding and I can't believe anyone could reach adulthood with such an insanely weak understanding of the world around them.

You're exactly right. I work in finance as a software developer in the UK and had to undergo a criminal records check, a credit reference check, and 10 years worth of employment references checked.

None of it was an issue though as I'd already had all this a few years before when I was given security clearance to work on a number of defence projects at a previous employer, but that's another example of an industry you don't just go into without some serious checks on your history.

Finance and defence are two major industry sectors which will do these sort of checks pretty much routinely on new employees.

Minor correction - this changed with the introduction of the UK's Supreme Court, whose judges are politically appointed.

The government of the time created it specifically so that they had a top court they could take advantage of when they found that whole independent judiciary thing inconvenient.

You're right we've always had a great system and we do still have a great system for the most part, but the UK's Supreme Court has put an end to that to some degree as the government can always just escalate to them when it doesn't get it's own way.

"I thought it was to overturn the decisions of national establishment and replace them with decisions made by a supranational establishment instead."

That's what it does, the person you're responding to gave the reason as to why that's what it does - to prevent anything like Nazi Germany happening again where the government turned on select minorities of their own people leaving those groups with no one to turn to for justice.

"With respect of the human rights laws, they seem to be more of a stick to beat the government with than anything used to really protect human rights"

Completely wrong. They're a stick to beat the government with because the government is repeatedly violating human rights.

"the latest scam from the ambulance chasing human-rights lawyers is the case of a foreign criminal who used the human right to a family life to defend himself from being deported after serving his sentence. Only in this case, he was had threatened to kill his family and was banned from seeing them."

Ah, I see, you're a Daily Mail reader. I forgive your confusion about human rights then.

"Is state snooping on communications against our human rights? Is it against the human rights legislation?"

If it's done arbitrarily which it is then yes absolutely, it's a violation of the right to a private life. I'm not a threat to the state, I never have been and never will be. There is no legitimate reason for the state to arbitrarily harvest my e-mails and browsing history. The European Convention on Human Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights both state this giving exemptions only for the purposes of law enforcement, but given that there's no reason I should be a target of law enforcement then that get out clause is irrelevant, hence why it is a clear breach of my rights.

Interestingly I was surprised they praised it for being 12 year old technology. This puts it around the kind of era where processes were just brutally inefficient, where they were just chucking out silly amounts of heat down a path they couldn't continue on because processors were getting too hot and dying too early.

So I'm surprised they cite stability and reliability as a reason for maintaining a processor of this age as the advance in processors over the last 12 years has largely been in efficiency, reduced heat waste, increased stability, lower power consumption.

I'd have thought a newer processor would've been superior in every way than something from 12 years ago. I understood this argument when 12 years ago meant something like a 386 or 486 that didn't even need a heat sink, but 12 years ago from now means something disgustingly inefficient and high power consumption.

It's not just video games either for what it's worth, I've seen it in the great Lego debate recently.

Lego has increased the ratio of male/female characters in sets (for IP it controls) so that you now have a fairly fair split of male/female builders, firefighters, police, and even criminals. I've seen a number of feminists criticise this for not being appealing enough to girls and for fire engines still being boys sets.

Yet Lego also do a line of girl only sets with just female characters, where everything is pink and so forth, there's even a Disney princesses line and guess what? They criticise this for forcing girls to conform to gender biases and so forth.

So even toy companies like Lego just cannot win no matter what they do.

"What benefit? Russian gas was very reliable and inexpensive."

Reliable compared to what? inexpensive for whom?

I can only guess you've been paying no attention to world affairs because Russian gas was only reliable if you did what Putin wanted. Did you miss the whole gas cutoffs to Ukraine and parts of Europe the last time Ukraine tried to pave it's own destiny? Did you not see the prices Russia was demanding of Ukraine the second time Ukraine tried to pave it's own destiny?

Yes Russian gas is inexpensive and reliable if you do what Putin wants and that's exactly what abusers do. Just like the guy who gives some whore cheap drugs to fulfil her addiction whilst she gives him blowjobs and cuts off the supply when she decides she wants to try and get a better life for herself. Europe shouldn't have to be Putin's whore when there are better alternatives available.

"And now, thanks to the hubris of some stupid politicians we'll probably have to import the way too expensive LNG from USA."

Have you not been paying attention to prices over the last week or so? Have you missed the news in recent years about an increasing tendency towards renewables? Have you missed the growth of fracking in Europe? All these things mean that whatever happens Europe is going to be paying less for energy over the next decade than it has to Russia over the last decade.

"That will lead to a recession. In fact, thanks to the sanctions Germany has already only narrowly avoided it, but it still can happen next year."

Nonsense. The UK is now well out of recession and equally has a sizeable export market to Russia that has now been destroyed. Europe's been in and out of recession for many years since well before this occurred. Europe's economic woes have nothing to do with Russian sanctions - the fact the UK economy is doing so well when it took such a different economic path that it was heavily criticised for is evidence of that. The impact of sanctions is negligible compared to the structural economic flaws of many major European nations like France and Germany. France is too busy propping up a failed economic model with government subsidies rather than modernising and Germany is still intent on competing in manufacturing with China whilst trying to maintain 1st world living and working conditions making it economically uncompetitive to do so. If the sanctions were the cause then given the massive financial focus of the sanctions the UK wouldn't be looking at 3% growth this year when finance is one of the UK's most important industries.

"Trade is what keeps peace, but apparently, it is now too long ago since the last war, several EU chickenhawks are eager for a new one so they've started an economic war already."

Wait what? Ukraine and Georgia were major trading partners of Russia. Russia still opted to invade them both. Trade is only a stabilising factor if you're dealing with countries that have grown out of childish imperialist tendencies, something Russia still has a major problem with. You seem to have completely forgotten how this whole thing started, it's like your memory of the situation only goes back about a month. Europe has spent the last 20 years trying the whole trade based approach to improving relations between Europe and Russia. It clearly has not worked.

"Russia may need the income, but their debt is miniscule compared to every single first world country and their people are accustomed to bad times."

Countries set a budget, how much they intend to spend based on how much they make. Putin set a budget recently that requires around $150bn more than his country is likely to make in the next year. It doesn't really matter how small his debt is, when he's got a spending plan so utterly out of whack with the amount his country is going to earn through falling fuel prices and sanctions then any advantage they have now will be irrelevant within 12 to 24 months because it will have been more than wiped out - especially as the cost of borrowing for them was high because of their past default and has continued to skyrocket due to the current direction their country is being taken in so that they can't simply continue to borrow their way through the problem like the West has been able to. These combined factors make your point irrelevant - if the interest you're paying on your debt puts you in a spiral you can't get out of, or you have to make cuts so deep to prevent that debt that you kill any hope of growth shrinking your economy yet further then it really doesn't matter what kind of equity you started out with.

"After the hell of the 90ies nothing would scare Russians, they can wait it out for a while."

On the contrary, now that they've had a taste of what the benefits of a more prosperous country is like the last thing they want is to go back to the post soviet turmoil of the 90s that Putin is pushing them back to. It's one thing when poverty is all you've known, it's a whole other when you've had a taste of prosperity and don't want to go back to that. Especially when everyone else around you including those nations you once treated as your underlings are becoming increasingly prosperous.

Why is it embarassing for the EU at all? it was embarassing that the EU was sending so much money to a country desperate to rip it to pieces in the first place, the fact that Bulgaria loses out and has to find money from elsewhere is small fry compared to the massive benefit of Europe finally starting to ween itself off of Russian gas which gave Putin a stranglehold over vast areas of European politics. Europe gets to be independent again, Gazprom, a de-facto Russian state owned organisation doesn't get to control the gas and pipeline.

It could've been a problem for the EU if it meant energy prices had gone up, but the massive decline of oil prices, the subsequent decline of gas prices means that that one single major disadvantage has been more than wiped out.

It's not Europe that's seeing $100bn wiped off of it's economy by falling gas and oil prices. Turning Putin away on this one and getting what they wanted anyway because Russia is so desperate for income was just icing on the cake.

""massive gas pipeline that will travel from Russia, transit through Turkey, and stop at the Greek border â" giving Russia access to the Southern European market. In effect, Russia will still have access to the Southern Stream endmarkets""

Which ironically means that it's piped into Europe proper by third parties, which is all the European Union was asking for in the first place because the EU doesn't like the same company to control both supplies and pipelines.

Or in other words, Russia's new project is an embarrassing climb down for Putin dressed up as something completely different. He's basically just doing what the EU asked with a slight diversion to maintain control of the whole thing as far as he can (i.e. through Turkey, a non-EU state).

"The Brits seem a bit hamstrung when it comes to dealing with internal security. That's not to imply that the UK is somehow more careful about justice or respectful of privacy and citizens' rights than the US: the UK has an obvious (and at times overbearing) internal security apparatus that is ineffective in dealing with some major internal security problems."

Without knowing what the security services are doing in the background it's really hard to say whether this is the case. The thing you have to realise is that the UK does have a very strong separation between it's judicial system and politics, but just because someone like Zatuliveter didn't get arrested or deported doesn't mean she isn't being monitored by them.

It's easy to condemn failure to deport Abu Hamza but look at Abu Qatada - the UK stripped his and his families rights away left and centre but couldn't deport to Jordan for a decade and spent millions in and out of court trying to get rid, and guess what? when they finally did, he went on trial in Jordan and was found not guilty.

So whilst I agree there are people the state recognises as threats but doesn't have the strength to prove but it can't just make use of politically appointed judges to deal with them because it has that much greater separation of the judiciary and politics than the US has - ultimately it doesn't matter what the state does or doesn't believe, it still has to satisfy an independent judiciary at the end of the day.

Now this has been changing somewhat in recent years, obviously there have been the countless calls to do away with the human rights act, and pull out of the European Court of Human Rights - things the government cannot control and there has of course been the creation of the UK's supreme court, which is a new top court with politically appointed judges (some argue this is how they got the ruling they wanted against Assange even though it seemed to conflict with UK law).

So it's ultimately that cleaner separation between politics and justice that causes the UK authorities the headaches we see. It's a double edged sword - good in that we don't end up with rulings that satisfy the politicians rather than the public, but bad in that we can't deal with cases like those you cite where even the public support the government on them but the judiciary still stick vehemently to the letter of the law.

Okay I guess you're living in your own world and I can't really discuss things any further. I really have no idea what's going on in your world but it has nothing to do with what's happening to reality.

There is plenty of unified stances in the West, and Russia doesn't want to be part of it, he wants his own groupthink that he controls.

That's what's happening in the real world FWIW, what's happening in your world may be completely different so there's no point comparing.

Agreed, I don't think Putin is funding all or maybe even any anti-franking protests because like you I'm anti-fracking but also most definitely anti-Russian imperialism. However he IS funding the far-right in Europe. See here for example:

http://www.theweek.co.uk/europ...

al Jazeera has a decent article on the reasoning behind it here also:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indep...

There are other far right parties in the UK that Russia likely has a hand in funding but are much harder to prove. One example is UKIP in the UK. Some years back a Lib Dem MP in the UK, Mike Hancock got in trouble for having an affair with a young girl (less than half his age) because the security services warned she was a Russian spy and a Russian whistleblower (a general) outed her as such also. The MP in question was on a number of British security committees. The girl in question, Katia Zatuliveter, was allowed to stay in the UK because the courts ruled there was not enough evidence of her being a spy. Case closed, end of story. Right?

Fast forward a couple of years, and we get a news story that seems completely unrelated, UKIP announces that it's got a new donor that's defected from the Tories, he donates £100,000 to UKIP. The Tories state that they've no idea who this guy is and investigation into official finances show that the guy was bluffing about having been a major Tory donor, despite claims of having donated over £100,000 to the Tories it seems he'd only ever donated about £20,000. The guy responds by saying he's "offended" by the Tories belittling his donation and ups his UKIP donation to £1million. It seems odd that UKIP and this guy were willing to lie about the scale of relevance he had to the Tories in order to pretend it was a much more major coup than it was, but so what, who cares, what has this got to do with anything?

Well, this little known small fry Tory donor, Arron Banks, defecting to UKIP to become a major political donor is married to none other than a Katia Zatuliveter, the claimed Russian spy who he was married to before, during, and since she "cheated" on him with strategic defence knowledge filled MP Mike Hancock.

All a massive coincidence? Maybe. But given that we know Putin is overtly funding France's far-right national front it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to think he might be subversively funding similar far-right parties like UKIP (who have gone out their way to try and pretend they're not far right and are respectable even though their far-right nature shines through when they fuck up almost weekly) in the UK too.

So funding fracking protests? Maybe, probably not. Funding attempts to rip Europe apart? Well we know for a fact it is in some countries, we just don't know quite how far it reaches.

I wondered after the European elections why Europes elite didn't opt to listen to the eurosceptics, and opted to continue on a path of integration rather than giving the eurosceptic view the time of day in light of the amount of support the eurosceptic crowd had gained with it's well funded campaigns across Europe. It didn't make sense that they'd just ignore them altogether, but now I wonder if these guys know full well about all the Russian money being poured into far-right and eurosceptic campaigns then they may well recognise that much of the eurosceptic vote is simply Russian stirred dissent.

All those claims Russia made about the West stirring discontent in the Ukraine rather than it simply being a grass roots campaign for change that's been going on in the Ukraine since at least 2004 with their orange revolution? It seems that whatever Russia is accusing the West of doing, it is most definitely doing itself- even if you're willing to give the benefit of the doubt on some of it such as UKIP funding it's out in the open that Putin and his cronies are funding at least some of the major far-right parties in Europe - the fact they funded France's far-right national front isn't even in dispute as it's been admitted by all sides already.

So because you don't support fracking, and aren't funded by Putin in opposing it, you must realise that that doesn't mean he isn't funding at least some initiatives to divide and rip Europe apart - the fact he's doing this to at least some degree is established fact, it's just a question of to what degree exactly - some of it is overt, some of it is increasingly covert. How much of it is being done covertly is anyone's guess.