"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.

Yeah if Turkey's latest actions where it's killed 260 kurds are anything to go by it's pretty obvious which side Turkey is on.

Turkey is the new Pakistan, pretending to be pro-West on one hand to get nice military funding, whilst supporting the likes of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS on the other.

All thanks to Erdogan.

So if someone is driving an RC car around and you pick it up, it's yours because they left it lying around? Care to extend that to a Predator drone? If you manage to swipe it out the sky somehow with say a hack, I'm sure the government wont care because hey, they left it flying around in public airspace so tough shit. You can just take it. I imagine car theft isn't a crime in the US either, because if someone just parks their car and leaves it lying around, it's fine to just jack the engine out of it right?

Unless America's laws on property ownership are completely fucked up and broken then basically everything you say is wrong.

Here in the UK even if you find a £10 note on the floor and no one is around it's still not yours to take, you're still technically meant to hand it in to the police station, even if many people don't.

I'm not overly convinced by the Russia nuclear threat, that's not to say it's not incredibly dangerous, but I'm not convinced the Russian nuclear arsenal is even remotely world ending or similar.

The UK is struggling to afford to maintain an arsenal of 160 missiles, yet Russia's economy is drastically smaller and it's arsenal is supposedly 1600 munitions. I'd be amazed if should it come to that even a fraction of Russia's nukes actually turned out to be viable.

If you want to get an idea of the damage Russia's nukes could do, try here:

nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

Long story short, the types of nukes Russia has, combined with it's severe corruption, it's relatively small economy, I'd be amazed if Russia's nukes could at best do much more than wipe out key cities in a few European countries leaving many more cities and many other countries intact. I believe the West could survive a Russian nuclear assault, but every last Russian on Russian soil would be well and truly finished.

It doesn't seem plausible that more than a fraction of Russia's arsenal is genuinely viable regardless of what they claim. Even America with a budget over 8 times the size of Russia's is struggling with the cost of maintaining their similar sized arsenal.

Russia has recently started spending more on it's conventional forces, it's been blowing billions on a 5th gen fighter programme that is now on the verge of collapse. Just today the entirety of it's primary Apache attack helicopter counterpart (all it's Mi28s) have been grounded probably due to low quality parts, poor maintenance.

Putin's nuclear bluff is only going to be able to get him so far. It doesn't seem even remotely plausible that much of his nuclear arsenal after 25 years of decay is even remotely much of a threat if he can't even keep his helicopters in the air, and new planes being built. Nukes ain't cheap, and Russia simply can't afford them. It's trying to grow a multi-faceted defence force without the finances to do so. Good luck with that.

How many countries are the US military in against the will of the governments of those countries?

I don't believe it's any currently. I believe about the only one you can argue is Guantanamo bay in Cuba, but even there I don't believe the government believe the contract allowing them to be there is illegitimate, even if they greatly dislike it.

In contrast, how many countries are the Russians in against the will of the governments of those countries? Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova for starters:

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

So sorry, but Russia still loses by the metric you're claiming. They're still the bad guy. They don't get to demand consensual deployments end, whilst committing illegal deployments.

I'm pretty left wing, I despite the American right (because in real, non-American terms, it's closer to far right than it is centre right).

But I'm struggling to see how your assumption that a guy from Kentucky must be anti-gay rights and living in fear of illegal immigrants.

He could just genuinely have a firm belief in the right to privacy.

I'm not terribly sure how your prejudice is in any way better than that you're complaining about. You can't fairly judge the guy if you don't know him and haven't spoken to him.

It's perfectly possible that he'd just as well be willing to hold up his gun to defend an immigrant or a gay person. Not everyone in the American south is cut from the same cloth, something I was humbled by when I visited there with the same assumption only to find that I was completely wrong - there are still plenty of sensible well meaning people there who believe in the rights of the individual, whether that's being gay or simply being able to maintain some semblance of a private life.

I don't know if it's that simple really, the tide of far right support has grown during the economic crisis, there's something to be said for the fact that if you can hold out against it long enough whilst combating it's lies and ideas that you can stem the tide.

I think it's probably peaked in the UK (and possibly Europe in general) now, as the economy is strengthening people are moving away from UKIP et. al. again and support for the EU is growing once more as those who want to pull out for no other reason than they hate foreigners (at least, that's all I can assume given that none of their other arguments actually make any sense, and the mask slips all too frequently) are beginning to get ignored once again.

I think really this is the problem they had in Nazi Germany, the country was suffering and far right sentiment grew, the problem is it grew just large enough to corrupt the system and cement it's hold on the country.

Effectively, I believe the situation is this, there is around 5% - 10% of a population that are genuinely far-right in most European countries, but there's another 30% or so of useful idiots who are trivially swayed by populism - they like lies that sound good and phantom enemies to hate on. The trick is to prevent that 30% from giving strength to the genuine 5% - 10% of extremists by either educating them by questioning lies and seeking facts (which the media fails hard at in the UK) or just keeping them happy and so dumb to politics, because if they're happy they just don't care about anything but themselves. These are the folks who if they're employed and earning just fine don't give a shit about politics, but if they lose their job because the economy is shit will vote purely on a single "Mexicans stole your job" type soundbite they heard on the radio in passing - more detailed explanations about why they actually lost their job, which may sometimes even include some blame on their own part, are just too long winded, and too difficult for them to hear.

British politics has this problem though where for some reason the noisiest minority gets to drive the whole agenda. We also really don't have much of local powerbases where they can fail hard, the closest thing are local councils, but councils don't always listen to elected councillors anyway so they typically fail or succeed in spite of who has been elected to try and tell them what to do.

Take for example the EU referendum - in the European elections, despite a favourable demographic turnout for the far right, far right parties only won about 30% of the vote. The other 70% was won by parties whose stated aim is to remain in the EU. Yet for some reason, we're having a referendum on EU membership despite there being clear overwhelming support for staying in (recent polls put it overwhelmingly in favour of the EU). Quite why we're wasting hundreds of millions on a referendum like this just because a vocal far right minority screams the loudest I've no fucking idea - they had their referendum, it was called the European elections, and despite disproportionate positive media coverage, turnout favouring their electoral base, and so on and so forth, they still lost hard.

Probably the real problem here is that the press love sensation, so they'd rather praise the far right for causing a stir, than question them for lying their way to power with populism. As such we have this problem whereby there's no one with any real voice that can expose their wrongdoing and lies on a grander scale.

No, not even remotely close. Before the EU, the world was massively different and the EU was in ruins from a massive war.

It's like saying "Before the fall of the British empire, Britain did better with India". Right, but we're not before the British empire, just like we're not before the EU. NAFTA isn't even remotely as comprehensive a free trade agreement as what the EU has - you still have massive customs barriers as anyone that has tried to move goods between the US and Canada vs. between European states can tell you.

Of course, the EU doesn't preclude us also having partnerships with these countries as well - it's not mutually exclusive, why limit ourselves to one just because people like Farage hate foreign people that aren't largely of British cultural descent?