Putin is back! Welcome back Putin!

But the precancerous polyps are still called an incident of cancer in the official record, are they not? To truly call someone cancer free, they must have never had any polyps detected.

I do not think that is the case, Draug. Colon polyps may go on to become cancerous or they may not - so you can't call them cancer yet.

Too long, didn't watch. Why don't sites with video posted have transcripts along with them? Takes 7 minutes to watch a 7 minute video, takes 1 minute to read.

Hey, shit for brains is here!

What's up in Russia besides crime, corruption, and child trafficking shit for brains?

Violent crime in Russia has actually been halved in the last decade. Fun fact.

No doubt the statistics come from the violent criminals in the Russian government.
I can imagine the questionnaire- "Do you sell half the women into sexual slavery this year compared to last?"

Charming, as always, Emac.

Hi Emac - I did read the thread, and saw how the 'argument' evolved. I haven't claimed US health care is poor - it's clearly not. However you are claiming the NHS is a disaster, which it clearly isn't.

I offered some information from an NGO which specialises in cancer, explaining why the figures you quoted are either wrong, or why they look like they do, which would suggest tings are far more comparable than your numbers suggest. I also read the DM link, and was able to offer a reason why NICE took the decision.

If you want to discuss those interpretations of the data feel free.

But all you can do is pick up on a throwaway comment about a known biased source with poor reporting on science.

Well Emac, the thing I'm thinking about is homicides. That sort of thing is tracked by international (ie. Non-Russian) groups. I can show you a Forbes report on it if you'd like.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2013/07/30/demographics-update-in-2013-russia-is-on-track-for-modest-natural-population-growth/

Who cares what you claim Pete U? The premise of the thread was the US health system was poor which makes the NHS a disaster. They aren't my numbers by the way. They are the clearly identified numbers from third parties. I reject your reason NICE made the decision just as you rejected the article's reason. How do you have a discussion with someone who doesn't discuss, but simply makes statements that ignore the basic premises of what came before and misattribute evidence? You say the source is biased. I say you are biased.

So selling women into sex slavery isn't "violent.?" International groups have access to court records. I will absolutely concede that the numbers you claim processing through the court systems are half. I would also argue that the Russian officials also take bribes so that violent crimes and other crimes never even see adjudication to show up in the records that international agencies see. The rule of law in Russia is worthless in my opinion, and reports that deal with the records of that corrupt legal system are worth only the paper they are printed on. This is an opinion. Feel free to disregard it.

The Economist agrees about the endemic nature of corruption in Russia.
" A corruption index compiled by Transparency International gives Russia 2.1 out of ten, its worst performance for eight years and on a par with Kenya and Bangladesh. Ordinary Russians are well aware of this, with three-quarters of them describing the level of corruption in their country as “high” or “very high”.
Corruption has become so endemic that it is perceived as normal. http://www.economist.com/node/12628030

Putin, When you want to silence someone with evidence of the Holodomor do you have them buried alive or just shot?

@Emac, those weren't numbers for violent crimes.Those were numbers for homicides. Those numbers did not come from the court system. Its fairly hard to bribe that off the record books, because, you know there's a census and a dead body. Corruption is a problem, yes. Violent crime and human trafficking are problems, yes. But you're dense if you don't recognize that Russia is better off now than it was 10-15 years ago.

Goldfinger you are dense if you think Russia is getting better. I guess you didn't read the article that Russia's corruption is getting worse and is now considered normal. People believe what they want to believe obviously.

That story (the article you cited) is from 5 years ago. You might well know that TI has since changed its method of measuring corruption - which is a notoriously nebulous thing to measure (as indicated by the ranges of perceptions on the surveys).

Just like Russian denial of the Holodomor has changed? Sell that bullshit to s stupid Russian. They "might" be stupid enough to believe it.

What kind of nerve gas is Putin shipping to Syria these days?

In 1998, when Yeltsin was still in power, Russia's CPI was 2.4, which at the time was worse than Kenya's CPI score of 2.5. In 2001, TI's index had Russia's perception of corruption at 2.3, with a high-low range of 0.3 to 4.2, and a standard deviation of 1.2. It's really impossible to tell if corruption is getting worse or better. Those numbers are all over the map.

Actually it isn't hard to tell unless you want to believe Russia isn't corrupt and you decide to obfuscate and ignore reality, but hey what else is new. Same old Putin. You haven't changed one bit. Why did you bother leaving if you weren't going to change at all?

The Russian people want to clean up endemic, omnipresent corruption, but the government, mafia, and cronies don't. Article after article from just the last month documents the reality of overwhelming corruption dominating Russian society.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/behind-russias-migrant-raids-a-vast-network-of-bribes-and-opportunism/278481/
http://www.thenation.com/article/175815/corruption-not-migrants-russias-problem#
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2013/08/28/Russian-defense-figure-tied-to-corruption/UPI-30181377702460/
http://www.diplomatmagazine.com/issues/2013/september-october/786-investing-in-russia.html

The fact that comparative corruption data is only available from the late 1990s and then only with about half the countries in the world speaks to the difficulty of measurement, especially trying to measure changes in levels over time.

"The Russian people want to clean up endemic, omnipresent corruption, but the government, mafia, and cronies don't."

So I hope then you'll apologize for calling the Russian people stupid?

Gosh, just provided you articles from the last month. "Deny, Deny, Deny" Same old Putin33. No, the Russian people are stupid, they have Vladimir Putin as their leader.

I like the article on investing in Russia best. It just comes out and states that the pervasive corruption chills investment.

That's certainly an improvement over posting articles from 5 years ago and passing them off as current. I also never denied anything other than it is not possible to know whether corruption is improving or not based on the measurements we have.

So now the obfuscation is we can't know anything about the scale and scope of Russian corruption. I expected more.