It's hard for me to know why Putin is doing what he's doing. When he moved on Crimea, was he doing it because of the advance of European influence closer to Russia's borders? He's short on good allies unlike 'the west', so can he let people chip away at his comfort zone? Or is he a crazed imperialist?

I don't know. Why don't I know?

Because my government have shown themselves over the years to be a bunch of twats who will literally tell bare faced lies, whilst smiling, and when confronted with the horrors of what they've done they throw their heads back and laugh like a fucking sea lion swallowing a fish whole. And that's what they've done to their OWN PEOPLE. To other countries countries we declare war and send in the multinationals to rape their resources. I consider the invasion of Iraq equally dodgy as the invasion of Crimea. So my moral compass for what's ok and not ok no longer has a baseline.

On the other side, a bunch of people who used to know how the world worked back in 1970 probably thought propaganda was the best way to whip up some nationalistic pride and resentment toward the reds, but in 2017 the majority of young people don't trust a single word they say. So these 70 year old media mogul billionaires can't even tell a believable truth anymore - even if Putin's tanks were half way down my street i'd have to clap eyes on them before i could be sure.

Plus Russia's leadership is Putin himself, he's the spearhead, and he's very cunning. Our leadership is spread across a set of democratically elected people, half of which are both incompetent and self interested, while half of those remaining are merely one or the other. It's easier for one person to look competent and assured. Someone like Merkel has to share the associated incompetency of whatever the German equivalent of her 'cabinet' is.

I found that last sentence pretty chilling.

"What are you in for?"
"Obeying the law when it didn't matter."
"I don't even understand what that means."
"It's a new criminal offence meaning i didn't unconditionally surrender my free will to a law enforcement agent in a routine stop."

Lot of people in various places around the internet saying the driver definitely swerved into the bike on purpose, which i'm not gonna rule out. But i've known enough very timid/nervous drivers who have reacted bizarrely under pressure to not rule that out either.

Yeah... i just really, really wish it didn't have Gosling in it. It's not that i dislike the man, it's just that i can only ever see him as ryan gosling rather than the character he's playing. I think he's a terrible choice for such a seminal film title, but i'll be pleased if this is the exception to the rule.

I think he had one single expression on his face for the entire trailer, including the behind the scenes interview...

Should be President.

Haven't yet seen that bit, but if it was the English blonde woman (Sara Pascoe), when i've seen her she has played up to being a bit scatterbrained. I think it's sensible to have an uninitiated joker keeping things silly when you're having a comedy show dedicated to politics.

Could have easily torn both quads there..

This reminds me very much of that old game "Flashback."

I was just thinking a few weeks ago that a rehash of that type of game would do really well.

If you're lonely and vulnerable, groups of people that show interest in you are very alluring. I'm sure there must be some scientologists who fork out wads of cash or tow the line because it's one way to buy friends and/or a life.

The outcome was astonishing, even i couldn't believe it and i've been campaigning for it since 2015. All of this might be out of date 3 hours after i post it, because things are happening fast.

Theresa May has decided to go into government with the DUP propping her up. If you have kept up in the last 6 weeks or so with all the smears about Corbyn/IRA/Sinn Fein and terrorism, then you should understand that the DUP is basically the *other* side of the irish conflict. They are socially conservative and many of their beliefs fall in line with sharia laws; abortion illegal (including for sexual assault or incest cases), homophobia wrong and harmful to society, creationist beliefs, climate change deniers. That list might have less impact to some in the US but in British politics, it's out there on the fringe, quite extreme.

In a month from tomorrow there will be the July marches in Northern Ireland (and elsewhere in UK), and we already saw a march yesterday where unionists (~DUP supporters) trashed a nationalist pub (~Sinn Fein supporters).

So now consider. Nationalists have been dragged through the dirt by Conservative MPs and in the press; accused of being terrorists in order to smear Corbyn to stop him getting power. Whereas unionists are being courted by the Conservative government, and the press turning a blind eye to the DUP and their connections to domestic terrorism.

The northern irish peace process was a great achievement and still stands despite bad feeling on both sides. Part of the good friday agreement that ensures this peace says that the UK and Irish governments must act as neutral mediators in times of disagreement between factions in NI.

So now it becomes clear why Jeremy Corbyn refused to criticise either the unionists or the nationalists in particular - as a true leader with a fucking brain in his head, he understood that to take sides or score points would be to risk Britain's safety and the safety of communities in NI. The reason people were able to smear him as a terrorist sympathiser and danger to this country is *because* he refused to say or do anything that endangered this country.

And it becomes rather worrying that the tories have risked all of that hard work and all of our safety in order to keep power for just a little bit longer. There are already talks of a legal challenge from nationalists.

The good side to this is that it seems doomed to failure. May's credibility is broken, in the UK and in Europe. The alliance with the DUP almost certainly can't happen or last very long. The only alternative leaders to May would make the Conservatives less popular. Polls that saw this surge coming are predicting now that Labour would do even better if another election happened right now. The last time this happened was Ted Heath, whose minority government did not last long, and Labour took over after a few days, and won an election a few months later.

Austerity is well and truly broken as an ideology.

Oh, and all the talk of "the death of social democracy" in europe was actually the death of triangulating centrists who have become completely alienated from ordinary people. Socialism lives.

@bobknight33 it seems you are becoming increasingly unhinged in your defence of your guy in here. To people reading, it might look a bit like desperation, so if you're gonna spin this then you need to turn the intensity down a few notches.

I didn't catch all of it as there's a lot of UK politics going on, but from what i saw, he seemed very precise and forthcoming with detail. I cannot imagine for one second that this guy has any doubt in his mind what lying under oath would mean for him. He doesn't have a history of lying that i could find, and Trump himself praised him highly on selection. Combination of these things make me very skeptical that he's lying.

I can't rule it out, but there's an easy way to test this, surely? You have Trump go through the same thing, same consequences, and let his truth come out. It would clear this whole mess up, simple. In the past bob has said of fleeing black suspects "nothing to hide, nothing to fear", so i suppose he'd be supportive of this?

@Diogenes

You're kind of unfairly painting it as a choice between division by "largest" or division by 7 billion complicated individual plans. What i was talking about was division by number of people that live there. That way you're not unfairly giving US citizens a "god" given right to pollute the Earth more. Maybe that's why China is gaming the system, if the system was gaming them.

Your best argument would be to say it's by size of economy and presumably you need the industry and manufacture and all the pollution that goes along with it, so US gets #1 spot. I would argue that the effect is counteracted by two things.

First, China is a less developed nation than the US. Some Chinese cities obviously pollute far, far too much but in rural areas there may not be the skills/infrastructure for higher technology energy production. America having a larger economy and being more developed is better placed to invest, update and pollute less per person.

Second, America is a modern democracy and can be held to account by its citizens, whereas China is relatively oppressive, far more likely to imprison protesters, and not strictly subject to election. You guys can do something, so do it. Or at least let a Chinese guy count as much as an American

It could also be that China doesn't give a shit, of course, and would go off on a fertility drive or something.. Or then again maybe they'd improve their mortality rates. Who knows.

I was with you up to this. I don't think this really makes much sense. The "abstraction" is taking individuals as a whole, that the US and China are separate entities. That's our interpretation. The facts are that we are all polluting individuals living on Earth, and we all have a footprint, mostly dictated by politics in the area.

Imagine you and 3 friends got on a plane with slightly too heavy bags, and a Chinese guy with 5 friends got on a plane with slightly under-weight bags, and the plane can't take off. It makes no sense to say "only the total weight matters, your 6 bags are heavier than our 4, one of you leave your bags behind." Or am i missing something here?

Don't get me wrong, i'm not defending Chinese pollution or manipulation of figures. But if most of the world lived in a particular place, you'd expect most of the world's pollution from that place. "The climate doesn't care" in fact supports the opposite point that you're making, i think - the climate doesn't care that you're two countries, you're all just individual people supplying small amounts of pollution which makes up the whole. Surely producing less pollution per person is a good thing for the environment and it is upon those who produce more individually to curb their use?

Bob i hate to break it to you, but America has started to become a little bit of a joke in the rest of the world... Your rude, pig headed and frankly severely lacking in intelligence and personal skills president is taking you backwards. But that's no indictment on Americans, because many states have thankfully backed the climate accord, and if non-Trump aligned Americans are to blame for anything, it is only not being able to force the correct candidate through to beat Trump. If we want the drift of American political opinion in Europe these days, we have to watch late night talk shows rather than listening to the president.

Three things happened RE: Paris accord.
One - the American president has used a European stage to demand spurious money from Europe and turned them publicly into opponents rather than allies. Even the worst Brexiteers had the good grace to make that claim on smaller stages where they could be laughed at - it's banter, not a serious political point, except to Trump! Apparently friendship is now an issue of economics, so if Russia decided to start a war, America's involvement might depend on how much it costs to be involved (or who Trump's personal mates are, or what Russia has on him) despite being a key cause of war.
Two - other countries including China all came together to show international brotherhood *against Trump*. This is now Trump's position in the eyes of worldwide public opinion; Trump stands opposed to the entire rest of the world save two countries Syria and Nicaragua! America has *stepped away* from the rest of the world. So now the rest of the world is by definition leading America, showing her the way.
Three - Trump has shown us that he is not interested in listening to the best logical reasoning, the best mathematical models, from the combined talent of the best minds that this planet has produced. So he's completely unreliable.

I think even Trump's fiercest proponents must now start to admit, in private, that they didn't get what they thought they were getting. He is a psychological child with the arrogance of a rich grown man.

There are some that suggest May or the tories in general are trying to lose the election so that Labour WILL take the backlash. Ultimately no way to know how that will go, but right now there is severe backlash towards the tories and the narrative is swiftly changing towards Labour. I see an election win as the start of a very, very long conversation. Activists will have to continue the fight, press standards will have to be changed either through public pressure or through legislature. And in Britain that might happen because the press here are the most distrusted in europe (52% disapproval, or 52% considered biased/corrupt, or something).

I said in the past that the UK was ready to change. Essentially, the narrative was there to be taken right back, but I didn't know if Corbyn's team had the skill to do it. I have to say that I am blown away by Labour's campaign, it has been almost flawless. I say that because i think the narrative is there to be taken on Brexit. The tories called the referendum to hold onto power. They arrogantly called the general election to consolidate power, with Brexit talks imminent, only to whine about being too busy to do interviews because they're thinking about Brexit! They have then made a catastrophic hash of their campaign, u-turned 5 or 6 times, contradicted themselves, and generally shown themselves to be weak, without answers, and bullies. In 10 years time, who knows what we will think? But in the short term at least, this can be framed as a "they fucked it up, but we'll take over in a crisis and try to fix it."

At the end of the day, a Corbyn government has always been so out of the question that i don't know what to expect if that were to happen. Is another referendum on leaving out of the question?

At the very least, for now, i would say Brits prefer the idea of Labour sorting out Brexit than the Tories, and the average attitude towards Brexit in the country is rather one of resigned acceptance - we know it's bad, but we did it, so now we better get on with it. But we're very suspicious, and don't want to get shafted by irresponsible or reckless politicians. True for the left and right, but obviously for different reasons.