>> Noting of course that Law Enforcement already has access to numbers you have called and all SMS & MMS messages you have sent by subpoena to the carrier responsible for your service.
That's a poor excuse. Those calls may have been made in a different country.
IMHO if your only/main source of news is the western media, you get a very one sided, anti-Russian point of view. Things are really not that black and white, they almost never are in the global politics.
I have read both Western and Russian sources on the conflict.
Let's just say that I find the Western sources on the matter much, much more trustworthy. It's very clear that Russia is running a propaganda campaign, which is apparently reasonably effective within Russia but less convincing when you have access to other sources of information.
The Russian propaganda campaign was even fairly effective at spreading the rumor on Western social media that the Ukrainian opposition movement consisted mostly of fascists, when in reality there was a fascist group that was associated with it but a relatively small percentage overall of the opposition to Yanukovych.
After Russia snuck unmarked Russian soldiers into Crimea, which comes dangerously close to counting as perfidy, it was pretty clear that Russia and Russian sources could not be trusted on this matter.
Now, are you trying to claim that Russia did not send troops onto Ukrainian soil to annex Crimea, and is not supporting the separatists in the east with at least arms and training? Or are you trying to claim that doing so is somehow justified, and if so, under what justification?
The Russians just need a little Lebensraum. The West has continued its policy of containment even after the fall of the Soviet Union. This can be seen in the aggressive expansion of the EU and of NATO. It is necessary that Russia have scope to influence its neighbors and build partnerships in order for it to be a free and prosperous nation.
I do get the feeling that Putin is a bit smarter and a bit less insane, but I would be hesitant to bet on it. The apparent concentration of power in one individual makes Russia scary as hell at the same time as being very brittle.
There actually is, if by Russia you mean Russian government. Support to "Novorossiya" simply can't achieve anything, perhaps only help it last a little bit longer. When Russia wanted to change the status quo it had legal excuses and it acted openly and forcibly. Half-measures take you nowhere.
lambda's already replied about the relative trustworthiness of different media sources. However, lambda's earlier post was limited to why a US company can interfere with the contracts of non-US companies. The problem, of course, is that Red Hat can get into legal trouble if it does business, directly or indirectly, with the targeted companies, but Red Hat's independent partners are under a different legal system, and may well get into trouble by breaching their contracts at Red Hat's insistence.
Most contract law systems include the notion of force majeure, which significantly limits the liability for breach of contract in such circumstances. Government sanctions is a common example of force majeure.
Out of curiosity, besides the Russian government-owned media and various crackpot conspiracy theory sites claiming, among other things, that the Jews did it, what news sources are presenting a pro-Russian point of view of this calamity?
Most contracts have "through no fault of the undersigned" waivers in them. i.e. acts of god or government are often covered in some way within the contract language, making parties not liable for hurricanes and changes in law that cause contracts to become null. There's probably some kind of responsibility in these kinds of cases, but it's not going to fall under the usual termination of contract terms. And, whatever responsibilities that exist can be difficult to enforce without the state backing up the wronged party.
Edit: Which is why investors often choose not to invest in companies based in countries that have a history of economic or political instability. It can be difficult to hold someone to their obligations after investing if the state itself isn't going to consistently side with the rule of law. Russian and Chinese investors, for example, were they not already dealing with an even more unpredictable state, would possibly choose not to invest in the US because of unpredictable relations. But, most international investors consider US law to be predictable and stable and safe for investors.
In international contracts, the activity might be legal under one state but illegal under another. Which law applies? Without some reasonable language to cover it, I guess one could end up with one party to the contract between a rock and a hard place. Their legal entity in one nation bound by a contract in that nation, with their legal entity in the other nation bound by the laws of the land. I don't know the intricacies of all of this, but I suspect things could get ugly without some defined behavior built into the contract in such instances.
Only if Russian law would somehow exclude the notion of force majeure (which it does not) or Russian courts would decide to make political decisions (which they definitely could and routinely do). In the latter case, American companies would have to seriously think if the profitability of the business in Russia is enough to warrant the enforcement risks due to political courts.
I don't tunnel HTTP/HTTPS requests to doubleclick.net at all to begin with (I use a whitelist for HTTP/HTTS), but if someone were to do too many DNS requests for the same domain in a short period of time I drop those requests as it means the Source IP I'm seeing is actually the IP of the victim of a DNS Amplification attack and sending them the response would make me a participant in that attack.
Heard this idea a few times, e.g. a "Social time bomb". Very hard to actually make work, as it depends on friends to check achievements and punish the originator.
Willpower is the greatest force in our world and 99.999999% of us have a limited quantity of it. Drugs, alcohol, tobacco addiction; overeating and lack of exercise; not working or studying hard enough. Are you really trying to say anybody can overcome those by "doing and completing something because its important to you"?
Actually, if something is important enough to someone, they are always motivated to do it. Period. No tricks needed. Of course, it's not often in life that one finds things that are that important. Some people never find such things. And that is sad, and sadly common.
War has always been a game of each side adapting their offensive/defensive weapons to their opponents' defensive/offensive improvements. I expect that to continue. But that doesn't prevent me from admiring clever optimizations along the way.
That's a poor excuse. Those calls may have been made in a different country.