Raising the ante amid fears of a new arms race, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia will directly target the United States should Washington deploy new intermediate-range missiles in Europe.
Russia is not looking for confrontation and remains open to arms control talks with Washington, but Moscow will respond to any threats to its security, Putin said Wednesday at his annual state of the nation address to both houses of parliament and his government ministries.
The U.S. political elite’s adherence to “American exceptionalism” has created a “destructive” anti-Russian policy of sanctions on Moscow, Putin said. But the U.S. should calculate the risks before taking any steps to that would threaten Russia, he said.
“They can count, can’t they?” the Kremlin leader said of U.S. political leaders. “Then let them count the speed and the range of the weapons systems we are developing.”
Putin has in the past blamed Washington for the breakdown of talks on arms control. But his remarks Wednesday were some of the sharpest yet since the U.S. announced last month that it would withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a landmark Cold War-era arms control treaty. The pact banned either country from producing, testing and deploying short- and intermediate-range land-based missiles.
Russia will not hesitate to escalate in response to any U.S. moves to put new missiles in Europe, Putin said. Moscow has viewed NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe as U.S.-led aggression toward Russia.
“The United States demonstratively neglected the provisions of the INF treaty when deploying launchers in Romania and Poland," Putin said, referring to NATO missile defense systems in Romania and a U.S. proposal to place them in Poland.
“We don't want confrontation, particularly with such a global power as the U.S.," Putin said. “But Russia will always respond.”
Cog wrote:Iran was never complying with the deal.
Cid_Yama wrote:Cog wrote:Iran was never complying with the deal.
Only idiots like you don't believe our own intelligence analysis.
derhundistlos wrote:Question: Identify one person more than any other destined to suffer the eternal tortures of hell in a pain amplification chamber.
Answer: Below.
This land is your land..... Wildlife…..
Trump Administration Authorizes ‘Cyanide Bombs’ to Kill Wild Animals:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... e-services
Overall, Americans could expect to live 78.6 years at birth in 2017, down a tenth of a year from the 2016 estimate, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Men could anticipate a life span of 76.1 years, down a tenth of a year from 2016. Life expectancy for women in 2017 was 81.1 years, unchanged from the previous year.
Joe Oiler takes care of the grounds at the Spring Hill Cemetery in Charleston, W.Va. The state led the nation in overdose deaths in 2017. (Chris Dorst/Charleston Gazette-Mail/AP)
Drug overdoses set another annual record in 2017, cresting at 70,237 — up from 63,632 the year before, the government said in a companion report. The opioid epidemic continued to take a relentless toll, with 47,600 deaths in 2017 from drugs sold on the street such as fentanyl and heroin, as well as prescription narcotics. That was also a record number, driven largely by an increase in fentanyl deaths.
Since 1999, the number of drug overdose deaths has more than quadrupled. Deaths attributed to opioids were nearly six times greater in 2017 than they were in 1999.
In May 2016, a group of national health experts issued an urgent plea in a private letter to high-level officials in the Obama administration. Thousands of people were dying from overdoses of fentanyl — the deadliest drug to ever hit U.S. streets — and the administration needed to take immediate action. The epidemic had been escalating for three years.
The 11 experts pressed the officials to declare fentanyl a national “public health emergency” that would put a laserlike focus on combating the emerging epidemic and warn the country about the threat, according to a copy of the letter.
“The fentanyl crisis represents an extraordinary public health challenge — and requires an extraordinary public health response,” the experts wrote to six administration officials, including the nation’s “drug czar” and the chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The administration considered the request but did not act on it.
asg70 wrote:The hits just keep on coming.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/clim ... tions.html
That anyone here would support Trump is the height of cognitive dissonance.
... All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. - Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)
... It's not really surprising that people with personality disorders are drawn to political power—narcissists crave attention and affirmation, and feel that they are superior to others and have the right to dominate them. They also lack empathy, which means that they are able to ruthlessly exploit and abuse people for the sake of power. Psychopaths feel a similar sense of superiority and lack of empathy, but without the same impulse for attention and adoration.
But pathocracy isn't just about individuals. As Lobaczewski pointed out, pathological leaders tend to attract other people with psychological disorders. At the same time, empathetic and fair-minded people gradually fall away. They are either ostracised or step aside voluntarily, appalled by the growing pathology around them.
As a result, over time pathocracies become more entrenched and extreme. You can see this process in the Nazi takeover of the German government in the 1930s, when Germany moved from democracy to pathocracy in less than two years.
Democracy is an essential way of protecting people from pathological politicians, with principles and institutions that limit their power (the Bill of Rights in the US, which guarantees certain rights to citizens is a good example).
This is why pathocrats hate democracy. Once they attain power they do their best to dismantle and discredit democratic institutions, including the freedom and legitimacy of the press. This is the first thing that Hitler did when he became German chancellor, and it is what autocrats such as Trump, Vladimir Putin and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán have been attempting to do.
... In the US, there has clearly been a movement towards pathocracy under Trump. As Lobaczewski's theory predicts, the old guard of more moderate White House officials—the "adults in the room" – has fallen away. The president is now surrounded by individuals who share his authoritarian tendencies and lack of empathy and morality.
It seems as if the UK is also, closer to pathocracy than ever before. The recent exodus of moderate Conservatives is characteristic of the purges which occur as a democracy transitions into pathocracy.
... the danger of democracy transitioning into pathocracy is always real. It is always closer to us than we think, and once it has a foothold, will crush every obstacle in its way.
(from Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, by Andrew Lobaczewski)Definition: pathocracy (n). A system of government created by a small pathological minority that takes control over a society of normal people
dohboi wrote:... All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. - Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)
– Chapterhouse: Dune by Frank Herbert
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