He may be the most divisive candidate in modern American history, but he's brought STTF back together!

Just because Jay, Josh, Jonathan, Steve, & MyNutzYourFace are now participating on STTF again is not sufficient reason to vote for BumblingDonald or LyingHillary; Bomb them = Yes / vote for them = No!

The issue is more with your interpretation.

The first issue is you use "the Ukraine." It's important to note that is how the region was referred to in the USSR, it's not how the country is referred to (properly).

The bottom line is that while Ukranians in the US (and possibly other countries) may be used to it, that's an offensive term. For example, if a Russian were to use it, that would pretty clearly signify they believe the entire country of Ukraine should still be part of the Russian "empire."

As for what happened in Ukraine. The president of the country was (pretty clearly, which become even clearer after he was ousted) very much Putin's man. Their voting makes the US seem like an objectively fair utopia (same with Russia). The people (without any US help/influence) were already very fed up.

As for Crimea. Putin has made sure to continue to populate that area with either Russians or pro-Russians (same with Eastern Ukraine) and there is no grey area in the manner of him seizing that area completely illegally according to national and international law. The referundum happened while the area was occupied by Russia.

So, the base facts you state are in a very basic sense true but the resulting interpretation of the events seems very odd to me.

I don't know enough about the rest of your post to even want to comment. Although I do think it's reasonable to add that your initial statement that Russia should be more of an ally seems odd too. Putin leads Russia and has for quite a while now. He pretty much 0% wants to be allies with the US. How should the countries be closer allies? I mean, I guess he would if the US helped him restore the Soviet empire and/or something like that. But that really doesn't make any historical, humanitarian, or logical sense.

Putin's Valdai speech and his UN speech are both well worth reading

Valdai text is here: http://thesaker.is/18960/

UN Speech text is here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/283010015...een&from_embed

I think anyone who has only seen Russia through the eyes of US media will be surprised.

Yugo, the Crimea is historically Russian, it was moved into the Ukraine highly artificially, The Crimeans speak Russian and use the cyrillic alphabet, unlike the rest of the Ukraine.

Accusations that the deposed president of the Ukraine was a political puppet surfaced because he opted for a free trade agreement with Russia rather than with the EU. He was democratically elected in free and fair elections.

I haven't seen the conflict with Ukraine primarily through the eyes of the US media. Most of what I glimpsed seemed to be of poor quality in the first place, like all media. I don't really pay attention to politics to begin with.

I work with a group of developers in UA so I have learned mainly from their perspective.

Saying the former president was elected from a "free and fair" election is at best, partially true. He already was elected previously but their supreme court nullified the election results. Then he was able to get elected running under a platform to join the EU.

But once it was finally time to act upon that he completely changed course and afterwards it became pretty darn clear he was being backed by Putin. It's not like he was undecided on the issue previously when he was elected. That was one of the main reasons he was able to get elected in the first place.

This of course led to more protesting and Putin ran a full press invading Crimea and then Eastern Ukraine. It's not like this was a random coincidence.

I'm not really sure what point you're making by posting those speeches. That the US and/or UN is not blameless in terms of foreign policy and conflicts? That is not really central to what I'm talking about. I was discussing your interpretation of what happened in Ukraine. It seems really, really off to me. You made it sound like the US went in and was responsible for the coup (the president's own decisions, poor handling of the protesting, and being supported by Putin was responsible for that) and misrepresented the Crimea referendum (which took place during occupation, lol).

So much could be said, but being tired I'll just say this. The US, and the rest of the developed world, are being run by global corperations for corperations. If we can't figure out how to stop that, we will (the vast majority of the population) lose. As I have no clue how we can overcome a system that is entrenched world wide, I have little hope. I am trying (and failing) to ignore it all and just live my life, make sure my kids feel loved, and ignore all the crap wrong in the world. If there is one thing I'm sure of it is this. The more you understand how it all really works together, the media, governments, political parties, think tanks, foundations, centers, academics, etc, the more depressing and alarming it becomes. I already know far too much and haven't figured out how to unsee it. I need to learn to ignore it all, but have no idea how.

Btw Joss, I have been saying for well over a decade we would all be better off if the just drafted congress. Put up some minimum qualifications and pull names out of a hat, put them on a base with lots of barbed wire to keep our lobbyists, and put them to work. If it was my patriotic duty and I was unlucky enough to be picked, yeah I'd be in congress or president, same as I would have gone to war with the same scenario. I think anyone that actually seeks out the job is already someone that we don't want doing the job.

Btw again Joss, there are things that happen you have to be a full emotional part of to understand. You can read about JFK's assassination, the Cuban missile crisis, the Iran hostage drama, 9/11, but you won't ever understand it really. It has less to do with the facts than the emotion. My mom can still tell me exactly where she was and what she was doing and feeling when she heard JFK was assassinated, and still gets emotional in the telling, I can do the same for 9/11.

I guess the best I can do is use this example. I can, and have, read lots about northern Ireland, but I know I won't ever really "get" it, because I didn't live it, it wasn't part of my culture, my upbringing. You will have the same problem making sense of some US matters.

I feel like I did a ****ty job saying what I'm trying to say, but I don't know how to explain it better.

I think this is essentially the Trump candidacy. Like, it's not as if he has ever prepared a coherent strategy about any significant issue of the campaign so far.

I'm currently reading Taleb's Antifragility and he suggests the benefit of a similar thing of sorts - inserting a healthy dose of randomness into political systems.

Says Athens actually did something similar for choosing many officeholders by lottery (amongst the (nonslave/male?) citizenry). The (Athenian) idea being that wealthy/connected/corrupt people could just buy votes, and that the rulers should be subjected to the ruled.

A random congress and potus would be terrible but it could be better than what we've got.

But, the solutions to problems caused by the multinationals, billionaires, think tanks etc can only come from popular movements. 40 hour work week, overtime, desegregation, clean air, clean water, reduction of nukes, voting rights, gay rights, none of that happened because politicians lead the people, but because they followed.

Unfortunately "the people" can't do a million things at once. Getting Citizens United overturned or an amendment would be a good start.

(SCOTUS is far from immune to popular movements)

A random congress would just get preyed upon by a professional handler class who are answerable to no one. It would almost certainly be worse.

The gist is to insert *some* level of randomness into the process. Obv. in practice there's a whole host of issues that come with.

Even if you chose 10-20% via lottery registration, there's lots of ways lobbyists could corrupt people (hiring relatives, hiring people post-term to cushy jobs if they deliver favorable votes, etc.).

It's a good thought experiment and consideration at the least, there's so many worse ways than American democracy, yet it's also not necessarily the end-all GTO/max exploit political system that we are conditioned to accept.

We used to have a great randomness feature in the UK political system with the House of Lords.

After the first generation received a hereditary peerage, the subsequent generations were random. There used to be teachers, postmen, bus drivers, butchers, bakers and so on, but then the system was changed so that the Lords became entirely political appointees, or one of 100 hereditary peers elected to the job - and therefore people who wanted to be political activists.

Inherited wealth rarely lasts for more than few generations, so the number of Lords who actually had a lot of money or any substantial role in a large corporation was relatively small.

IMO it was a change for the worse.

I saw an episode of Rick Steve's where he stayed in some English Castle that the family rents out at very reasonable rates - because they need money. The 10th heir of Lord Stuffingbottom or w/e who showed him around the castle seemed borderline ******ed.

Some of those buildings are easily avalable on airbnb, they make fantastic group holiday destinations (eg, birthdays/weddings/etc.)

Can you promise me a dimwitted 10th-generation Lord to show me to my room?

Can attest that Josem has good taste in Airbnb rentals.....

I tried to rent out my place on airbnb, but the IOM government says that it is illegal since I do not have a microwave or TV.

Do you have thrift stores?

Yah, but then I have to pay money for a license to have a TV when I'm trying to reduce the stuff I own, not add to it.

How does that license policy work with monitors/computers/internet?

Gramps,

If you can figure it out, good luck to you: http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/

I don't have a TV, don't watch live TV, so I'm pretty confident that I'm fine.

I think you were replying to me, not Gramps, which would mean that you're just calling me old.

i think he was just saying you're old