There is an article from the Brookings institute that supports your position-
"In 2006, President Victor Yushchenko attached high priority to securing a NATO membership action plan (MAP). By summer, Kyiv looked on course to attain a MAP when alliance foreign ministers met that December. Curiously, Moscow did not come out hard against the idea. The prospective MAP derailed, however, after Yushchenko appointed Victor Yanukovych as prime minister. During a September visit to Brussels, Yanukovych said he did not want a MAP. The proposal died given the divided position of Ukraine’s executive branch.
Yushchenko called for a MAP again in January 2008, this time with the support of Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko and Rada (parliament) Speaker Arseniy Yatseniuk. Moscow came out in full opposition. When Yushchenko visited the Russian capital that February, he had to stand alongside and listen to President Vladimir Putin threaten to target nuclear missiles on Ukraine. Instead of lobbying allies to support a MAP for Kyiv, Washington waited until the April Bucharest summit, where President George W. Bush attempted to persuade his counterparts to grant Ukraine (and Georgia) a MAP. However, a number of allied leaders by then had made up their minds and opposed the idea. Concern about Russian opposition undoubtedly played a role."
There are a lot of moving parts that I find really interesting. The successes and failures of the players that led up to the war, as well as the domestic and global changes brought about in consequence (Is China doing more than "watching the tigers fight"?) affects the world.
I'm not well-versed in this area, but from what I've been reading, it doesn't look as if NATO simply acceded to Russia's demands- From the NYT in November of 2008:
"At a NATO meeting in Bucharest, Romania, in April, the United States failed to persuade NATO to offer the usual application process, known as a membership action plan, to Ukraine and Georgia. Instead, NATO leaders agreed that one day each country would join, without committing to a timetable."
(Edit: I haven't been able to find much to relate the failure to convince to an accession to Russian demands.)
I get what you're saying about being disinclined to accommodate after Russia's adventure in South Ossetia / Georgia in August of that year; the Nov 2008 article focused on the US push for NATO membership:
"The United States has started an unexpected diplomatic initiative in Europe, urging NATO allies to offer Georgia and Ukraine membership in the alliance without going through a lengthy process and fulfilling a long list of requirements, NATO diplomats said."
I need to take the time to find more unbiased information on the conflicts of the region over the past 15-20 years. It's complicated, with a lot of issues in play that seem to go back at least a century. My knee-jerk, scratching-the-surface opinion is that while I believe Russia is ruled by oligarchical mobsters headed by Putin, I can understand, if not sympathize with, their reaction as Western powers have established footholds in bordering countries.
Honest question, for I don't know the answer: If NATO had dissolved 30 some-odd years ago, and the US had fallen from a world to regional power (albeit with nuclear weapons), and then the Warsaw pact had established bases in Canada and Mexico, would outcomes be more or less stable?
William Burns, the current Director of the CIA and former ambassador to Russia, would disagree with you.
"In 2008, Burns, then the American ambassador to Moscow, wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” "
Could the system that disables a vehicle when impairment is detected also be triggered remotely in vehicles that are always "connected"? If so, under what circumstances could this take place?
The WEF puts a lot of work into creating outcomes that track with its philosophies; it is playing the long game and strategic decisions -are- being made at get-togethers like Davos. Potential Young Global Leaders are vetted and recruited, among other things.
Klaus Schwab, 2007:
“What we are really proud of now, is the young generation. Like Prime Minister Trudeau, the President of Argentina, and so on. So we penetrate the cabinets. So yesterday, I was at a reception for Prime Minister Trudeau, and I know that half of this cabinet, or even more than half of this cabinet, are actually Young Global Leaders of the world.”
From the WEF Young Global Leaders website:
"Our growing membership of more than 1,400 members and alumni... Aligned with the World Economic Forum’s mission, we seek to drive public-private co-operation in the global public interest."
I'd like to know exactly what Klaus and the WEF leadership consider to be "global public interest".
I've listened to several speeches from both him and his advisor Yuval Harari and at first glance Klaus's preference seems like some version of tightly controlled, top-down corporatism.
I found a number of statements made by Harari to be particularly disturbing, including one he made in a session (paraphrased here) that they don't need most of us (which begs the question who the "public" is in "global public interest"). If you hold that personal opinion, fine, but when you're closely allied with an organization whose stated intention is to reshape how the world works, that places the "opinion" into a different context, regardless of whether it could be acted upon or not. There's more from him about genetic superiority, blah blah... In my opinion, he's a scary guy.
I like to think of it as wishful thinking. I fantasize about winning the lottery, too.
>> The question is simply whether the level of corruption reaches the level...
Yeah, agreed. I couldn't point to a single instance where an attempt to eliminate corruption did not eventually spawn unintended (bad) consequences. Working to manage it seems to be the best alternative.
Right wing, left wing, meh. To me (i.e. Opinion), it's difficult at times to distinguish between the two when looking at the highest echelon on each side.
I think my slide into cynicism regarding humans who achieve power, regardless of their stated political philosophies and alignments, started after finishing "The Dictator's Handbook". I read here some posts advocating getting rid of this or that, or saying we should do it "this way", but even though I agree in a wishful kind of way, it's just not how human beings are wired... No matter how virtuous a system may be, it seems to take only the inevitable one or two odd instances of corruption to start the rot that will bring it down.
Could be wrong, and not about to get into a back and forth about the politics involved, but I thought that Deputy Assistant Director Strzok was removed from the Mueller investigation and eventually canned from the FBI, and FBI attorney Lisa Page was let go because of the content of the messages between them regarding Trump and Flynn that surfaced during the course of some hearings.
If memory serves, another FBI lawyer plead guilty to altering a document sent to the secret FISA court so a false justification would exist for someone in the new administration to be surveilled. I think the lawyer got a suspended sentence instead of prison.
Not focused either way on Trump, just thought that there actually was something to the GPs post.
Edit: Wasn't it Zuckerberg himself that said the FBI reached out to him about limiting the visibility of certain news?
I didn't lie on my tax returns, either. In 2011 the IRS kicked off an audit, saying that I owed a little more than $50k in unpaid taxes because of inappropriate deductions. (The auditor was a contractor, who's company I found out later, was paid based upon "successful" claims against taxpayers after an audit.)
After contacting the accountant that does our taxes and asking her to represent us, she showed up in the guy's cubicle, filed the paperwork for dispute, and started the audit process.
A week after she showed up to represent us, we received a letter from the IRS stating that we now owed north of $100k. Felt like intimidation to me. After a week of our accountant going over each and every scrap of paper with this guy, turned out that the IRS owed us $2300, which we agreed to give to our accountant for representing us. The contract auditor, according to our accountant, was belligerent and abusive. (edit- we wouldn't have had a chance against this guy without our accountant)
Yes, there are plenty of people that lie on their returns, but I've come across many, many stories like mine as well. Telling the truth on a return is no guarantee that the IRS will not audit you, and I believe that uncalled-for audits are much more prevalent than is generally believed.
(Edit) Not exactly the same thing, but when you say "... because I don't lie on my tax returns." it reminds me of "If you've done nothing wrong, you don't have anything to worry about".
The question I ask to both of those statements is "According to whom?"
"In 2006, President Victor Yushchenko attached high priority to securing a NATO membership action plan (MAP). By summer, Kyiv looked on course to attain a MAP when alliance foreign ministers met that December. Curiously, Moscow did not come out hard against the idea. The prospective MAP derailed, however, after Yushchenko appointed Victor Yanukovych as prime minister. During a September visit to Brussels, Yanukovych said he did not want a MAP. The proposal died given the divided position of Ukraine’s executive branch.
Yushchenko called for a MAP again in January 2008, this time with the support of Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko and Rada (parliament) Speaker Arseniy Yatseniuk. Moscow came out in full opposition. When Yushchenko visited the Russian capital that February, he had to stand alongside and listen to President Vladimir Putin threaten to target nuclear missiles on Ukraine. Instead of lobbying allies to support a MAP for Kyiv, Washington waited until the April Bucharest summit, where President George W. Bush attempted to persuade his counterparts to grant Ukraine (and Georgia) a MAP. However, a number of allied leaders by then had made up their minds and opposed the idea. Concern about Russian opposition undoubtedly played a role."
There are a lot of moving parts that I find really interesting. The successes and failures of the players that led up to the war, as well as the domestic and global changes brought about in consequence (Is China doing more than "watching the tigers fight"?) affects the world.