Is there a signed treaty? No. But the US SoS (James A. Baker III) and the German Foreign Minister (Hans-Dietrich Genscher) are on the record in 1990

Genscher is on video tape stating very clearly: "Wir waren uns einig, dass nicht die Absicht besteht das NATO-Verteidigungsgebiet auszudehnen nach Osten. Das gilt übrigens nicht nur im Bezug auf die DDR, die wir da nicht einverlaiben wollen, sondern das gilt ganz generell."

In English: we are in agreement that there is no intention of expanding the NATO security zone eastwards. This applies not only to the GDR, which we do not intend to incorporate, but in general."

Or how about Baker's words, Feb. 9, 1990, St. Catherine's Hall at the Kremlin:
"If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the East."

And the minutes show Gorbachev as having said:
"Certainly any extension of the zone of NATO is unacceptable."

To which Baker replied:
"I agree."

Again, no treaties, nothing. But some people, myself included, make the argument that unequivocal statements of a nation's highest-ranking diplomat are to be taken seriously, unless overruled by explicit, written agreements.

And from what we've heard from Gorbachev over the years, he took them for their words.

Admittedly, having been replaced by Yelzin who received massive "help" from the US might have made Gorbachev a little grumpy.

What remains at the end is this: NATO was created as a defensive alliance against the Soviets and wasn't dissolved when the Soviet Union collapsed. The highest-ranking diplomats of the primary players at that time (US, FRG) are on the record with promises that NATO wouldn't expand eastwards after the German reunification. Now NATO is closer to Russia's border than ever and the Ukraine had a democratically elected government (they were thugs, but elected) overthrown by forces that had massive support from the US. As a result, fascist militias wearing SS insignia are roaming free in Novorossiya, with government support.

If I were Russia, I'd be pissed.

But I'm in Germany, so now I have a strongman in charge of Russia, a thug who has journalists and opposition in general killed, on the one side, and the Americans who installed a Nazi-sympathising regime in Ukraine on the other.

What's not to like about it.

So when the US establishment then goes on a full-blown bender to position Russia as a scapegoat for now having to live with President Trump, they are playing with fire just to distract from their fucked-up domestic policies.

And we're not even touching on the hypocrisy of the US being outraged when some foreign nation meddles in their internal affairs. Of course Russia tries to influence US politics in their favor. Guess what, so does the UK, France, Germany, NZ, China, Japan, even bloody Luxembourg for all I know. Just like the US exerts influence on German politics (ie German Marshall Fund, Atlantikbrücke, etc), and on politics of every other nation of significance.

Your video, Why the Chicken Got Domesticated, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

@gorillaman

It's almost as if some countries have different cultural values than the United States. For example:

Japan:
--Distributing pornography is illegal and punishable by up to two years in prison and a $25,000 fine (under Article 175 of the Penal Code, which defines pornography as showing the naughty parts of a man or woman, hence mosaics on all Japanese porn)
--Domestic violence and rape laws are often unenforceable
--LGBT community has almost no legal recourse in the face of discrimination of virtually any kind (housing, work, banking, etc.)

America itself has its share of bat-shit insane laws (from the rest of the world's perspective at least) such as legalized death penalty, and "well-intentioned" Christians are still fighting to deny gay people the right to marry in court at this very moment.

Should we come to the conclusion that Americans and Japanese people are "bad people" because these laws exist? Or maybe, as Ahmed Ahmed suggested, we should stop lumping huge groups of people (in the case of Muslims literally millions of people from an extremely culturally diverse group of countries) together and assuming they're all alike and believe exactly the same things?

Dubai & the UAE:
Shari'a
Torture
Slavery
Homosexuals, adulterers and apostates can be stoned to death.
Abortion, blasphemy, public displays of affection, premarital sex, all illegal and punishable by flogging.
Domestic violence against women is legal.

Qatar:
Shari'a
Sodomy, extramarital sex, alcohol consumption, blasphemy, apostasy, proselytism all illegal and punishable variously by flogging or imprisonment.

Kuwait:
Blasphemy, homosexuality, transgenderism, public displays of affection, eating or drinking in public during ramadan, alcohol, pornography and 'sending immoral messages' are all illegal.
Domestic violence and marital rape is legal.

Indonesia:
Islamist violence against religious minorities is widespread.
Muslims are pushing hard to criminalise homosexuality.
Female applicants to the military and police are subjected to 'virginity tests'.
Shari'a in Aceh province includes the flogging of homosexuals among its atrocities.

Tunisia:
Homosexuality and blasphemy are illegal.
Persecution of the LGBT by both government and private groups is common and increasing.

Mali:
~90% prevalence of FGM
Half the country under islamist control, with all the oppression, murder, torture and rape that implies.

Its called leading the nation. Obama did do that.

He is a pussy on the world stage. Line the sane -- nope he backed down,,
He also backing down to Putin.

Even North Korea call him “wicked black monkey” .

Obama and Dangerfield - No Respect.

His has failed on domestic and national policy.

Finally, some hope: http://www.politico.eu/pro/belgian-regional-government-set-to-block-eu-canada-trade-deal/

In a sign of increasing frustration on the Canadian side, the normally cheery Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned Thursday that not signing CETA would issue a “deplorable” message that Europe is heading towards an “unproductive path” post-Brexit.

Deplorable, you say?

The fact that power over trade — one of the EU’s core negotiating competences — has shifted to Europe’s 38 national and regional parliaments is a major embarrassment for Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. In July, he was pushed by French and German Socialists into designating CETA as a “mixed agreement” requiring ratification in national and regional assemblies.
(...)
The decision was highly controversial, because Juncker and his chief lawyers believed this wasn’t necessary from a legal point of view, but was a gesture of political goodwill.

A gesture of political goodwill. Or as we call it: a Hail-Mary attempt at keeping it alive, because both the French and the German government are facing serious domestic pressure on this issue. If they hadn't acknowledged parliament's vote on this, CETA might have been taken out back and shot in the head already, like it fucking should be.

The notion that guns and mercenaries from the west are flooding in is simply untrue. You have the curious responsibility of explaining how the US has been incapable of removing Assad if it has provided such overwhelming support as you claim. What is true, is that Assad overreacted to the Arab Spring protests, unlike say Jordan decided to fire on protests almost immediately and brought a civil war on his hands.

Meanwhile, we also know the origin of the trajectory of the Sarin rockets fired were from areas of government control. We know Assad had a chemical weapons program. We know the volume of the attacks was almost certainly unattainable by anyone other than a state actor. We know that most of the victims were either civilians or the opposition. It's also a curious that these attacks only seemed to occur in Syria.

Again your idea that oil is still a motivation for US involvement in the Middle East is an outdated concept. The US surpassed Saudi Arabia as the largest global producer in the world thank to shale oil. The price of oil has crashed as a result and will likely remain low for a prolonged time as a result. The only beneficiary who stands to gains from revisiting the conflict between the US and Russia is Putin because it boosts his domestic popularity to be locked in a struggle with the US.

Many governments in the Middle East regularly throw out the excuse that anything that goes wrong (and is usually their fault) is a result of a US conspiracy. Egypt has regularly done it, Turkey has just recently blamed the attempted coup on the US even though the incentives for the US are clearly for a stable government there to provide a base from which to attack ISIS in Iraq. You should not be so gullible as to believe this is always the case just because the US has intervened covertly in the past.

Because 'Republicans' aren't a single hive mind organism, and a lot of them care about things like an active foreign policy. Domestic power and obstructionism only get you so far.

Obama ran on HOPE and CHANGE and look what that brought.
Worse than Jimmy C.

What a train wreck, domestically and internationally.
And now he is listed as one of the the worst US President.

Dick heads like you voted for this man not because of experience but because he is black. ZERO experience! YEA that is a good enough reason.


Vote for Hillary because :
She is a Woman
She is a cheater ( DNC scandal)
She is married to a pedophile
She is too faced on woman's rights
She is part of the corrupt ruling elite
She has foreign policy experience- everything she touched went bad.

YEA that is a good enough reason.


So what change do you want? Clinton sound like more of the same. OBAMA and Clinton are not taking ISIS seriously TRUMP, as miss guides as his words are will be taking ISIS out.

NUKES? same shit was said about OBAMA when he was running. BS .

I, like most, don't need absolute proof, proving that kind of thing unless it's ridiculously done in writing is impossible. The appearance is enough, but more than that, it's clear, I have no question about it and would require some incredible evidence to the contrary to think differently at this point. It looks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, it swims like a duck, it flies like a duck, it lays eggs like a duck...I'm just going to go ahead and call it a duck. DWS cheated and lied to force a Clinton nomination. The DNC purged it's voter rolls, gave Sanders zero support and actually worked against him while doing whatever the Clinton campaign asked them to, no matter how biased it was, under her leadership, then she was given an important job in the campaign and will likely get a cabinet position for her immoral, unethical work done for Clinton's benefit. If that's not quid quo pro, it doesn't exist.

Yes, Clinton and her campaign have had zero insight on how they appear, and are still indignant about people not just loving her because....woman.

Clinton helped put her in position to help win the election, then hired her when that work got her fired. her job WAS to regulate elections to be fair, and her complete and utter failure in doing that job is why she has a job as the head of Clinton's campaign today....and is one reason Clinton will lose.

Perhaps a few might say that, they're wrong. It was stolen by every means possible, no matter how unethical it was to purge voter rolls in poor areas but not affluent areas, or to close most polls in poor areas and limit the hours of the few left opened, but actually increase the hours and number of polls in affluent areas. He lost for a number of reasons, but largely because the DNC did their job for Clinton and worked actively against him the entire election while smiling and lying to our faces about 'fairness' and 'impartiality'. No leap at all to make that claim, my feet don't have to leave the ground.

Yes, since she REWARDED DWS's guilt with a top level position in her campaign and a promise of more important jobs to come, that guilt transfers to Clinton. Had she come out publicly and said 'this behavior is inappropriate, unethical, and I won't have anything to do with a person who clearly has no respect for the rules/laws' she might not be so guilty...but she did the opposite.

Um...didn't Bush himself say her name in a public interview? That's how I recall the Valerie Plame incident.

I'm talking about a person who's job it was to be impartial who was clearly heavily biased and lied about it for a full year publicly....and the person she performed these unethical acts for that rewarded her after it became public.

You're helping Trump win because Clinton can't, and shoving her down our throats as the DNC and her supporters have guarantees a Trump win. She's unelectable, and her supporters have blinders on to her myriad of faults and flaws.

In this country, we are supposed to vote for a person we want to win, not against someone. If people did that, there might be a chance at not having Trump, but because Dumbocrats and Retardicans both vote against the other, and every idiot follows along, we get this.

"Most qualified? Most experienced?" Not more so than Johnson, who has more experience actually governing than she does by far. You might not agree with his policies, but he's not immoral, not unethical, not hated by a majority of Americans, not batshit crazy, and is a candidate. he only has less chance of winning because people think like you and want to vote for someone who sucks ass because they're against someone who is an ass. That leaves us all covered in shit, no matter who wins.
Sanders has far more experience governing than she does. What the hell are you talking about? She has one thing going for her, her stint as Sec of State, but her record there is abysmal and not a positive for most Americans when seen as a whole. She has no experience in domestic policy beyond her short time as a senator, while Sanders has been one for how long? Again, what the hell are you talking about?

Rewarding incontrovertibly unethical behavior with a top position says everything that need be said.

OK, if you want the most reliable president, why didn't you vote for Sanders, who actually keeps his stated positions and votes on them, completely unlike Clinton.

I agree with your characterization, but it's the Clinton campaign that's the rolling dumpster fire and the Sanders campaign that was a Honda Accord that got hit by the rolling dumpster fire and pushed off the road. Now it's a rolling dumpster fire VS a leaky 40000 gallon septic tank, and they're both poised at the top of the hill with all of us stuck in the danger zone.

You have ZERO proof she was hired quid pro quo. Absolutely zero. Do you honestly think Clinton would risk any bad optics whatsoever if she thought DWS wouldn't help her win? That was the Rodman analogy. Clinton hired her to help win the election, not to regulate elections to be fair.

And even Sanders supporters said the nomination wasn't stolen. He lost. He lost mainly because he didn't appeal enough to minority voters. You have to take a massive leap of cynicism to make that claim.

You're making it sound like Clinton hired Alan Grayson. That's my point.

Then you magically transfer DWS's guilt directly to Clinton. Did Clinton do that, or did DWS? I'm pretty sure it was DWS. I hated George W. Bush as president. That didn't make me magically transfer guilt about the Valerie Plame incident directly to him because there's no evidence he was responsible for outing her as a CIA operative.

And again, you're also talking about the leader of the Democratic Party favoring a lifelong Democrat over a dude who just decided to join for a Presidential run. When I think of a candidate who is personally corrupt, I think of Nixon. He broke a law. Clinton didn't break any laws whatsoever. NONE! She didn't even do anything. DWS didn't break any laws for that matter. She shouldn't have done what she did, but good lord, you're blowing this way out of proportion.

How exactly am I helping Trump win? Because I'm gonna vote for Clinton over Trump, Stein, and Johnson?! You're gonna have to explain to me how I should help Trump lose. Do I vote for Trump?! Do I vote for some other candidate who has absolutely zero chance of winning?

And all evidence does not argue against Clinton being the most qualified candidate out of the remaining candidates. She is BY FAR the most experienced candidate in government. You can sit there and rail about the hiring of DWS to help campaign all you want, but there is no possible way you can possibly make the claim that she isn't the most experienced out of the remaining candidates. She was the most experienced candidate among all primary candidates, too. That's an undeniable fact. All evidence at the very least doesn't say she isn't the most qualified. None of the 2016 primary candidates came remotely close to her experience in foreign policy. None of them came close to her experience in domestic policy.

This isn't to say experience is everything. But you're making a very flimsy argument about her being personally corrupt, and then claiming the ridiculous assertion that all evidence says she's not the most qualified candidate, even though she's clearly the most experienced.

And yes, we don't know how good or bad a President she would be. You also can't know if a specific Honda Accord will be more reliable than a specific Chevy Corvette either. That doesn't stop me from buying the Honda Accord without batting an eye if I want the most reliable car.

Only in this case, it's more like a Honda Accord vs. a lit on fire dumpster on wheels.

Thank goodness I'm a white male, so the least in the crosshairs of a Trump presidency I can be without also being a billionaire.
That said, I think you're mostly right...assuming he doesn't abuse the powers of the presidency...but it is a near certainty that he will abuse them.
Legally, he can do little, properly even less domestically, but since when does Trump follow the rules.
Let's just look at Texas, who made a clearly illegal law designed to close planned parenthood clinics, knowing full well it would be struck down, but it had the effect they wanted of closing those clinics in the interim, and they won't be re-opening. Expect Trump to use that, and other underhanded tactics to do things the president "can't" do, knowing that if his rule is struck down, it will already have done it's job. I think he'll be more damaging than you do both because the Republicans are going to back him AND because he'll just go around congress when they won't.
I realized yesterday that one plan they undoubtedly have is, as soon as he's president, his children will start illegally taking people's property by force to expand their empire, and Trump will pardon them for the crimes they commit in the thefts. I expect the Trumps to actually be multi billionaires by the end of his presidency (assuming the dollar is still worth anything), not just claim it. There's no way that family doesn't see this as a way to make money.

The problem is outcome.

Yes, domestic violence is often perpetrated by women. The difference is that it doesn't usually result in serious injury to the man.

Obviously, anyone assaulting anyone is wrong. But given that males abusing women results in much more serious injury, it's clearly the greater problem.

Self defense is a perfect reason to hit anyone, regardless of gender. There's no reasonable excuse to hit someone first (unless you're boxing).

According to a Harvard study, 70% of one sided domestic abuse is perpetrated BY women, not against women. When both sides participate, it's about 50/50.
http://newscastmedia.com/domestic-violence.htm

It seems that teaching women to not hit is ignored in favor of teaching men to not hit.

@ChaosEngine

Did you even read the article I linked? It makes a pretty strong case that at the time the wording was intended to imply every citizen's responsibility as well as right for "collective self-defense," as in everyone should own a gun so they can help out in the event of an invasion.

In other words, you're flat out wrong when you say the 2nd amendment wasn't about self-defense--that's precisely what it was about. It wasn't about personal (i.e. individual) self-defense at the time of its inception but it has since been found to include that meaning because the idea that people should keep guns at home but only use them to defend against foreign attackers and not domestic ones, such as a home invader, was found to be patently absurd. And yes, eventually militias faded away, but the idea that citizens have a right to own firearms for sport or protection--whether it be from wildlife or other humans--had already been legally established for a long time.

I'm not sure why your tone is so dismissive in this thread. You live in New Zealand, am I correct? Yes, you're right, you're quite lucky to live in a country where your government protects you from growing your own food by throwing all those dangerous gardeners in prison.

Look, New Zealand has a shit-ton of guns (about one for every four people) as well and people own them for a variety of reasons, from sport to self-defense. You have a lower crime rate, which can be attributed to a variety of factors but not conclusively to the strict gun laws, as people in New Zealand do in fact still commit crimes with guns.

So... what's the point you're trying to make?