[Bolding added.]
Antisemites are everywhere and some will undoubtedly jump at a chance to act out violently, but everyone who acts out violently didn’t start out as a violent anti-Semite.
While you may not believe this, the people shouting gas the Jews may not actually be anti-Semites even though what they are saying is anti-Semitic and horribly callous, but they are being radicalized and becoming more dangerous.
[“So you are outright blaming Israel for the rape torture and murder of women and children by Hamas on Oct 7.”]
In a short answer...YES! Where these so called women when they were attacked? Were they in a Kibbutz? the short answer again is...YES! Well what is a Kibbutz? A Kibbutz is an illegal settlement by Jewish aliens from another country. That’s right these people are in Kibbutz’s are stealing Palestinian land and killing Palestinians in the west Bank like they have a license to kill! So do I blame the oppressed for fighting back? Do I blame the oppressed for hating their oppressors? the short answer is...NO!
A travel ban is supposed to stop terrorism? These people are willing to blow themselves up for their religion. How are you going to stop that with a stupid travel ban?
Better idea: 1. Give Palestine back to the Palestinians. 2. Carve out a Muslim state in Europe, say in the middle of Germany and give them funding till they’re on their feet. 3. Get our troops out of the Middle East. 4. Enact strict hate crime laws against anti-Muslim speech.
You are blaming the exection of Christ on the Romans, when in fact the Jews plotted to kill Christ and brought him before the Roman governor, Pilate. See Matthew 26: 3-5, which includes the passage “Jesus’ enemies, the chief priests and the elders, met in secret in the house of Caiaphas, the high priest, to make plans to kill Jesus.”
Also Pilate left the decision to execute Christ up to the Jewish mob, who were inspired by the Jewish Sanhendrin to condemn him. See, e.g. Mark 15: 1-15.
Please revise your post to report that it was the Jews and not the Romans who were responsible for Christ's crucifixion.
Clearly ALL present day Jews are not to blame for the crimes of the Apartheid Jewish state, but those with dual U.S. Israeli citizenship and those who send money back to Israel and those who lobby the U.S. congress in support of Israel share in the negative karma Israel incurs by its mistreatment of the Palestinians.
Moreover, what does a Democrat do when he comes to the realization that his party is corrupt and is controlled by the Jewish lobby? The 1400 people who died, did not die in vain. They are martyrs and they are the catalyst for peace, if there ever is peace in the Middle East. Our eyes are opened, our so-called liberal left leaders are not the enlightened people we thought they were. To wit, see the Jim Jordan (bastard) committee hearing on freedom of speech and the Hamas-Israel war. The Gaza supporters were escorted out of the hearing. The Israel supporters on the committee and on the panel steamrolled the discussion. Did anyone else see the hearing? The 11,000+ Palestinian civilians who were murdered by Israel died in vain.
[“If you weren’t so Putinized and full of propaganda I would be angry. Instead, I will just LMFAO.”]
"Putinized” is as good a word as any to cancel someone, if you want to believe in absolutes. There are no absolutes or few. There is only gray or something that resembles it. One absolute is 11,000+ dead civilians or some large number in Gaza, the “urban” place. If you can believe what you are saying and it makes you laugh, amazing. The angry birds will arrive and terminate my membership here most likely. Maybe you’ll win a vacation to the “Holy Land.”
[Submitter’s note: Micah Xavier Johnson was the Black supremacist perpetrator of the July 2016 massacre of police officers in Dallas.]
The late US Army sniper/marksman Micah Xavier Johnson demonstrated the only way to EFFECTIVELY deal with white supremacist terrorists. He put five of ‘em in their graves. Begging Klansmen to stop murdering our folks would be like begging a rabid dog not to bite you.
Why would a woman say STFU?
For a simple reason. The one we men have to imagine because we've never experienced it.
BECAUSE THEIR VOICES HAVE BEEN SILENCED AND PATRONIZED AND TRIVIALIZED AND SUPERSEDED FOR CENTURIES!
Men have no more idea what it feels like to be silenced than white people know what Jim Crow felt like.
And in THIS PARTICULAR CASE ...
Men have nothing legitimate to say. Women suffer in the millions from male sexual aggression and from being silenced about it afterwards.
And men, even apparently the "well meaning" progressives here, refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of their suffering.
As a man, I feel deeply, deeply ashamed of what "we" do to satisfy our aggression urges.
Now, the specific question of this original diary was whether this is good tactics.
Well, what does history tell us? How many examples are there of oppressed people being delivered thru patient, silent acceptance until their oppressors decided to alleviate their suffering? Can you name one?
Protest is about raising your voice in holy, righteous anger. That's what this whole damn web site is about. No one is going to take suffering seriously until sufferers raise their voices and refuse to be silenced. If you don't get that basic dynamic, better step away from political activism.
Ends don’t justify means.
So you’re opposed to killing someone in self defense? Or is it just when it’s a left wing government that you believe this?
There is some lesson to be learned in the fact that there has been no successful left-wing dictatorship to date.
That’s just false. There’s been as many successful left wing dictatorships as right wing. Americans just mythologize the right wing dictatorships as being “efficient” and “making the trains run on time.” But the USSR was a successful left wing dictatorship.
Really? Now it’s somehow “self defense” for a government to kill its own citizens (so long as the government is “left wing”)?
The point is that the ends do sometimes justify the means, and unless you oppose violence as self defense then you agree with that.
And it starved to death millions of Ukrainians on purpose because they wouldn’t get along with the Party line. Not to mention the other millions murdered in Stalin’s later purges.
Indeed, just like the US genocided Native Americans. In fact, the US is responsible for more death than the USSR. Since we’re talking about ends and means and all. Because right now it sure seems like that’s just a talking point that liberals push to pretend like communism is the greatest evil ever while ignoring everything that capitalism has done and is doing.
The reason for all of this is the US-arranged coup that resulted in a Ukrainian civil war, and the stated intention of Zelensky to join NATO.
Russia should have acted more forcefully after the coup, making it clear that risk of a NATO-Russia war was great and probable unless the US stopped its interference. Missile attacks on Ukrainian military facilities should have been undertaken, while its army was weak and disorganized.
During the Vietnam war, American planes mined Haiphong Harbor and killed Soviet sailor there. Goose-Gander algorithm applies here.
I’ll never understand why Putin spent so much time whining like a rejected schoolboy about US moves, which he should have known would be relentless if not stopped with force.
Placing a Russian military base in Venezuela would also have been productive, and remains a possibility.
[Italics original. Bolding added.]
Most religious people are not attacking science. And attacks on science and logic often come from non-religious grifters who make money off their ridiculous claims that aliens built the pyramids, etc. And I suspect there are quite a few atheists who believe that crap. And then there’s ridiculous, anti-scientific assertion that a child can be born in the wrong body...
Whatever happened to the Chavez/Maduro supporters around here?
They would be here, but they're only halfway through the Caracas bread line
The bread line caused by Obama, Hiterly and the CIA blowing up the economy?
Ok. Everyone is getting plenty to eat. The stores are full. No one’s starving. The capitalists are refusing to produce goods, causing artificial shortages. And when they import goods, they divert almost all of it to Colombia or the Black Market.
How bout if you economic geniuses tell me how you can have mass shortages in a capitalist economy? And capitalists run the whole Venezuelan economy.
I’m waiting. Come on, geniuses, let’s hear how you get mass shortages of goods in a free market economy. It’s not even possible.
OK, this one isn’t satire, apparently. Capitalists in Venezuela aren’t permitted to function as capitalists. They don’t have access to raw materials either foreign or domestic, and they’re only allowed to sell below their costs production. Thus there’s no production. It’s true that a lot of production is diverted to Colombia or (more commonly) the domestic black market, but the chavista idea that the producers are diverting it isn’t correct. Rather, it’s the people who arbitrarily have first dibs on buying at ridiculously low mandated prices (typically the government’s most fervent supporters, curiously enough) who are doing that.
Not one thing you say here is true.
The stores are full. There are only shortages of a few things, and those tend to be basic items. There have been deliberate and artificial shortages of other things such as toiletries, medical goods, etc. This was all done to blow up the economy to get rid of the Chavistas. They have raids every week of warehouses full of hoarded goods. The last raid captured 21 million syringes. There are lots of people with plenty of money who want to buy stuff. And there are shortages. What sort of crap is that? So produce goods to supply the people with dollars waiting to buy stuff. Capitalism 101.
The oppositon has admitted many times that they are sabotaging the economy. The latest one was when an opposition leader said they were “boycotting the economy.”
What you say is nonsense. They have access to all of the goods they need to produce anything they want. Anyway the stores are full. Just not of the stuff people want to buy at the prices they want to pay. 95% of the goods in the stores are not covered by price controls. Price controls only cover a few basic goods. The prices are too low, but the government keeps raising the price controls to deal with business demands.
This entire crisis has unfolded as Maduro has stocked his government full of rightwingers from the business community and opposition. So this “failure of the Left” happened under the watch of rightwingers. Maduro has seriously caved to many of the demands of the Opposition. In fact a lot of people think he is a sellout. So this crisis happened after Maduro met demand after demand of the opposition. But the Opposition are like Republicans on Steroids. They keep moving the goalposts.
You know why those price controls were put in in the first place? Because the Opposition tried to blow up the economy. They had a lockout strike 10 years ago in which they shut down the economy by closing the doors of their businesses. This created artificial shortages and inflation raged. So Chavez put in price controls. They’ve since been lifted on many goods. So the Opposition forced the price controls in the first place.
You are wrong that goods are not diverted from production. The government gives dollars to import goods. First of all, the business sector generally takes these dollars and either invests them overseas in the US or diverts them to the money black market where they can sell them at a markup. So a lot of the dollars to import stuff are immediately diverted to the black market. In fact, the business sector is not producing anything. They would rather just play the money market. What goods are produced are diverted immediately to the black market or shipped to Colombia for a markup.
Fully 35% of goods imported are immediately diverted to Colombia where they can sell them for more money.
This whole mess is caused by a black market in currency which is a whole other ball of wax. This was caused by currency controls, but those were put in due to opposition meddling too. The opposition was shipping their money out of the country to the US instead of investing it. It’s called capital flight. Chavez put in price controls to stop that as he had to. Venezuela continues to lose $50 billion/year to capital flight. It’s still a huge problem. The currency controls were no big deal for a long time until the oil price blew up, then everything went to hell, and a black market for currency rose which screwed up everything.
Really this whole mess has been caused by the decline in oil prices, which incidentally was done by “leftwing” heroes like Obama and Hitlery. They negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia to spike production to crash the price of oil. The purpose was “screw Russia.” A secondary purpose was to screw some other US enemies like Venezuela. So it’s the US and your pals the Saudis who crashed the price of oil as part of a scam to crash the Russian economy.
Price controls only cover maybe 5% of goods, and even that is iffy. So rice is covered, but a rice dish with chicken in a package is not. So chicken is covered, but not rotisserie chicken which the stands have plenty of. True there is a low profit on the price controlled stuff.
The capitalists had been refusing to produce this stuff as soon as the controls went in because the profit margin was too low. They could make a profit, but not enough of one. So the government was importing all that stuff on the price controlled list. Then the oil price blew up and the government went broke, so they had no money to import price controlled stuff. So shortages. Then a lot of planned sabotage.
PS you realize that the markets in the wealthy and middle class areas are full, right? Including all that price controlled stuff. There are no shortages of one thing, not even price controlled stuff, in the wealthier areas. Tell me how this is because capitalists can’t function.
The main problem is the black market in dollars. The way to deal with that was to float the currency, but Maduro did not have the balls to do it. This is a policy failure, but it’s not leftwing or rightwing. But to float the currency is a tough decision and it would hurt a lot of people. They did a partial float though. The black market dollars are now worth 4X the government rate, but before it was 90X the official rate.
Seeing as price controls only cover a small % of items, where do you get off with this “price controls ruined the economy” stuff.
Besides a lot of the price controls allow for a modest profit. I think some are below the cost of production but not most. And Maduro keeps raising them anyway.
Keep supporting fascists abroad while opposing them at home. It’s a grand tradition in the Democratic Party all the way back to 1900.
(I am aware Daily Kos is not a fundie organization. It’s just the source of the information.)
A pregnant 13 year old doesn’t have to be a negative thing says Texas anti-abortion crusader
Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) are hubs of false advertising, anti-abortion organizations that try to trick people into thinking they’re clinics offering abortion or abortion referrals—when in reality, they offer drugstore pregnancy tests and pressure to continue the pregnancy. They’re about to get much, much more sophisticated in that mission.
One Corpus Christi CPC is planning a massive expansion to a 20,000-square-foot facility with a coffee shop, thrift store, and “a ‘man cave’ with a pool table, where men will be approached by a certified marriage counselor as they wait for the women they impregnated,” The Washington Post reports.
…”Post-Roe needs to have prenatal. We’re taking care of the whole woman.”…
…“I’ve seen a lot of 13-year-olds do phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. It doesn’t have to be a negative thing.” Child rape leading to pregnancy doesn’t have to be negative, she says.…
Russian media is suddenly explicit about what Russia is really doing in Ukraine. Citing Vasily Zenkovsky's writings from 1931, propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov laid it out: "Russia will never cede Ukraine to anyone... it has to be part of Russia, even against Ukraine's own will."
The notoriously ignorant right-winger and anti-vaxxer Candance Owens went from denying the validity of vaccines to encouraging her 4.1 million followers on Instagram to follow her regimen of using colloidal silver as a daily supplement.
“Yes, colloidal silver!” Owens says enthusiastically in her latest Instagram video. “I take colloidal silver every single day, I love colloidal silver. That is a great one. That is another one that people probably know nothing about.”
And just in case you’re interested in staving off illness with colloidal silver, the Mayo Clinic clearly says the stuff isn’t safe or effective for anything basically. “Silver has no known purpose in the body. It's not an essential mineral.”
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center reports side effects of using colloidal silver that include: seizures, skin burns, near renal failure, hospitalization, neuropathy, acute myeloid leukemia, and death.
I haven’t heard of everyone in that photo, but the ones I do know of—Maya Forstater and Kathleen Stock—are not loathsome at all but admirable.
Biological sex is real, and it is not “assigned” at birth (except perhaps in the case of rare intersex people) but determined at conception. That is not an opinion, a philosophy, or a “view” but a fact. How it is even controversial is beyond me. (And it isn’t promoting “literal genocide.”) The idea that someone should get fired from her job for saying so, or be threatened with murder and bullied by masked berserkers, to the point where she is driven from her academic post, is abhorrent. That’s what is loathsome. And those very bullies—the ones who attack attendees at an academic lecture (McGill University), shut down film showings (Edinburgh University and elsewhere), throw hysterics at the idea of a rapist being called by his actual birth name and remanded to the men’s prison where he should have been in the first place, argue that male athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sports as long as they’ve tinkered with their hormones (in the real world, that’s called “cheating”)—those are the same people who claim “persecuted minority” status.
[…]
I have been reading Forstater and Stock. And “transphobe” is a pretty meaningless word. I have yet to see anything “phobic” or “hateful” in anything they’ve written. The phobia and hate from the trans activists who shut down lectures and film showings, insist that cheating in sports is a human right, bully and even physically assault people (usually women) they view as “transphobes” is all too obvious. The death and rape threats are coming from them.
Nope, you’re right. “Gender dysphoria” is, by definition, a psychological disorder predicated on “general dissatisfaction with reality’’. In short, there is biological reality, and then there’s wishful thinking. To quote the great Dave Chappelle, “...to what extent do I have to participate in your self-image?” I consider that a fair question.
Homeopathy saved my daughter
when Western medicine could not. Western medicine had put her through years of extensive and intrusive examinations and constantly on antibiotics to the point that her auto-immune system is forever damaged and no antibiotics will work for her, should she come down with medical problems.
I will always stand by the use of homeopathic remedies in tandem with Western medical treatments, most especially if Western Medicine has no answers.
Many thanks to Dr. Seva Khalsa who saved my daughter from kidney disease and the possibility of kidney transplant and/or remaining in a wheel chair the rest of her life. A medical doctor in Clovis, NM treating children, adults and most specifically senior citizens with kidney disease ended up studying Khalsa's remedies and ended up writing a medical paper that was distributed to doctors everywhere, because she was so amazed at the treatments and how they worked on bladder and kidney disfunction. She has since used the treatments and healed many of her patients.
Open your minds, study homeopathy before you condemn. The ignorance about homeopathic medicine must end and it is interesting to learn how many people are being treated and made well, all around the world.
Yes, there are quacks in any profession.
Thanks to SB 1029—filed by Republican state Sen. Bob Hall of Texas, who has a history of outrageous beliefs—there’s a considerable chance almost all forms of safe and age-appropriate gender-affirming health care will be made illegal in the state. And that includes trans adults. In fact, it not only covers both youth and adults but even nonsurgical treatments. The legislation also seeks to allow medical malpractice lawsuits for life against providers and insurers who cover gender-affirming care.
For emphasis: This anti-trans health care bill isn't seeking to only bar youth from safe, age-appropriate health care. It’s seeking to stop adults from accessing it, too.
The bill argues that these procedures are not in the “best interest of the health of the patient” but instead are being offered for the “monetary gain” of “health care facilities.”
The bill seeks to ban public funding for any and all gender modifications, including vasectomies, hysterectomies, and castration. It also seeks to limit puberty blockers and hormones used to “affirm the patient’s perception of the patient’s sex.” (Meaning: Such care would still be available for folks born intersex, for example.)
In terms of possible malpractice claims, the bill seeks to establish providers as liable, including for the patient’s medical, pharmaceutical, and mental health costs post-procedure. This bit isn’t the most eye-catching, admittedly, but it’s deeply concerning because of the possible fallout. It’s hard to find safe and affordable gender-affirming care as it is. If physicians are worried about such a wide-ranging and lifelong liability, it’s entirely possible folks will just ... stop offering it.
The video games have zero measurable effect. Kids in other developed countries play the exact same games. They don’t shoot up schools, or kill their sisters.
The problem is the guns. Period.
In fact there is ample research concluding that video games reduce empathy and increase meanness.
And there is a truly bizarre streak on the left that makes slippery-slope arguments for anything that can remotely be considered “speech,” including games where you get little squirts of dopamine for shooting people, that bears a unique resemblance to the bizarros on the right who make slippery-slope arguments for anything that can remotely be considered “firearms.”
When “freedom" is defined as “the right to be an asshole,” we become a society of assholes.
And “My rights over your dead body” is the ultimate in selfish cowardice.
To quote a former Google employee who has since gone dissident, “there are a thousand of us on the other side of your screen, whose job is to break down your self-regulation [ability to rationally control your own behavior].”
Anyone who wants to rationalize that, has no right to complain about The Regime.
In the UK, there is in fact a lot of trouble with BOYS bothering girls in unisex school restrooms—sexual harassment, attempts to photograph girls attending to their business, and so forth. One young girl had to go to the hospital after a boy “donkey-kicked” the stall door, slamming it into her forehead. I can’t believe the profound naivete, sheer stupidity, and disregard for girls’ safety and privacy that fed into that policy. And there have also been incidents of trans-identified men assaulting women and girls in restrooms—one of the prisoners in that Scottish women’s prison where Adam Graham was sent is doing time for that very crime. The quote from Rep. Holt sounds perfectly sensible and not “weird” at all. (OMG, I’m agreeing with a Republican!”)
[“Then police the non-queer students who are abusing the system. If it isn't the trans kids then why should they suffer for the cis kids' abuse (a kind of double jeopardy)?”]
How do you “police” school restrooms? Hire more security guards?
If trans-identified men commit crimes at the same rate as men in general, why would we expect trans-identified boys to be any different from other boys when it comes to antisocial behavior?
And incidentally that word qu**r is still offensive to a lot of people, both gay and straight. And there’s no such thing as “cis.”
The extreme activists’ use of language to demean women is a big stumbling block. There’s nothing hateful or phobic or even unreasonable in objecting to clunky and demeaning phraseology such as “people who menstruate,” “uterus-haver,” “vulva owner,” and “chestfeeding.” (As though women are just a collection of reproductive parts.) The NHS in England recently produced a poster promoting screening for cervical cancer without once using the word woman! And then there’s that Scottish asshole, going by the name Jess Bradley I believe, who wrote an op-ed for the Huffington Post claiming that there’s no such thing as a real woman.
Last month, trans activists (one of whose slogans is “no debate”) shut down a lecture at McGill University by a law professor specializing in human rights, screaming at the students who were trying to attend, pushing, shoving, threatening, knocking at least one woman down, until the lecture had to be cancelled—one of the activists claimed that simply attending that lecture constituted a hate crime. Similar behavior has cancelled showings of the documentary “Adult Human Female” at Edinburgh University and other venues. A conference on feminism in academe last weekend did carry on to the end, although some of the attendees were threatened, one had her phone stolen, and the screaming from outside the lecture hall went on and on. And then there were the protesters in Edinburgh holding signs advocating terrorism (“Decapitate all t**fs,” said one) while two female members of the Scottish Parliament smirked and grinned in front of them. That photo is easy to find on the internet. The two politicians said they weren’t aware the signs were there, even though it was a small demonstration.
Changing the words of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is, of course disrespectful to her. And it’s flat-out intellectual dishonesty—on a par with the historians and theatre people who insist that Joan of Arc was “non-binary” when that concept was invented about ten minutes ago. And we should refer to Joan as “they.” Queen Elizabeth I got the same treatment from the same bunch of lying incompetents (a powerful, intelligent head of state, you know, must not really have been a woman at all). I don’t know what Elizabeth herself would have to say about that, but I’ll bet it would be worth hearing.
Progressives! Do you give a rat's ass about equal rights? How'bout the whole rat?
Join the Just One Rat campaign!
It's nonviolent! It's fun! It's probably illegal but so are sit-ins!
Go to your local pet shop. Buy one rat, the mangey gray ones they sell for cheap, as snake-food for people who have large snakes.
Get some kind of small container with a way of having fresh air. A can for tennis balls might work, if you punch holes in the lid. A previously-used Chik-Filth-E bag might be perfect for the job because you can leave it under the table with the top almost entirely unrolled, so the rat can escape on its own.
Go into a Chik-Filth-E during dinner hour, when lots of homophobes will be taking their families out to get salmonella. Keep your secret rat container carefully concealed. Choose your seating tactically. You want to be in an area where no matter which way the rat wants to go, it has to cross an open area where people will see it. Be sure you're not sitting where any obvious cameras can see you.
When you release the rat, don't be the first to spot it. Let someone else spot it. As soon as you hear someone say "eek a rat!" or similar words, you can say "Eww I think I'm gonna' be sick" and exit. Or you can exit early, before anyone else sees the rat.
It's even more fun if you have an accomplice who came in at about the same time as you, but showed no sign of knowing you, and who sat somewhere else that had a commanding view of the entire room. Your accomplice can stay behind to take cellphone video of the rat and the other patrons' reactions, and can also serve as a witness that the rat came from somewhere other than the area where you were sitting. For example, "I think it crawled out of the trash can over there..."
All it takes is ONE rat in the middle of a crowded dinner hour, to make all kinds of merriment that will last and last.
Submitter’s note: Daily Kos is just the source of the story, I’m aware they are not fundies. Newt Gingrich was being interviewed by NBC News Correspondent Scott Wong when he said this. Also, he has actually spoken quite a bit about J6.
“What do you think about the January 6 Committee?” Wong asked Gingrich on Thursday.
“I don’t,” said Gingrich, who was asked multiple times during a gaggle on Capitol Hill about the committee.
“You have no thoughts about the committee itself?” asked Wong.
“I think you have a learning disability,” said Gingrich, pointing a book at Wong.
“Excuse me,” said Wong.
“The fact is, I’ve said three or four times, I don’t talk about it,” said Gingrich, pointing at his own head.
“Try the phrase: I don’t talk about it,” he added.
[Yes, and Xi is actively engaged in, among other things, genocide. So, murderous autocrats gonna murderously autocrat.]
Then you should post credible evidence of this. You might not realize these accusations have been denied and are based on a limited number of sources that have been largely discredited.
In fact, the recent International Tribunal held in the UK to independently review the charges did not make such findings, and rather, found that other countries making such accusations and enacting sanctions (including the USA) did not do so on the bias of evidence proscribed by International law.
This means the ICC, the UK Tribunal and the US Justice Department agree, the charges of genocide are not verifiable. It is worth noting the US Justice Department previously ruled that intelligence and evidence available did not constitute genocide.
You say Xi is guilty of muderous atrocities?
Really, that is a ridiculous charge you cannot back-up.
Since Daily Kos is a fact based site, I suggest you post a story on this topic and research the subject with due diligence, otherwise you are just making extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence, and given courts and independent tribunals have not found this, you might find yourself had pressed to do so.
That failing, perhaps you can post a story on the Yellow Cake smuggled by Iraq that justified the Iraq War,where the US government went to war on false pretenses without actual evidence, that killed upwards of 500,000 Iraqis
Then perhaps you can present to us justification for actual genocides such as the carpet bombing of civilians in North Korea and even worse the bombing of Laos that killed 20% of the population and made it the most intensively bombed country in history — a well-planned campaign to eradicate people.
White-splaining— LMFAO.. SMH.. Sigh.. I am not White. I’m Black.
I’m not White-splaining, because I have no perspective on the White experience; nor care to — I’m speaking as a Black person who has seen racism their entire lives. Do you understand what that’s like?
So to see it here is disturbing—
Maybe you read what I wrote but your own reactionary senses thought “this is a White man” so you immediately assumed I was “White-splaining” or “Man-splaining” .. which just means, you’re not really trying to engage with me in a conversation — but instead tell me why I should shut the fuck up because I’m somehow privileged.
You’re sitting here telling me I have no idea what racism is when I’ve been beaten within an inch of my life by the Cleveland Police Department; when I’ve bad a bottle broke across my face for being a so-called “nigger” at the age of 8 by a bunch of teenage White boys; when I was told I didn’t belong in my neighborhood because I looked like a dope dealer—
Think about your own prejudice to assume SO much about me simply because I said Dear Leader is making racist comments?
Just stop.. and think about what you just said— just slow down for a minute.. damn.
Your response is something of a non sequitur: being a black person who has seen racism his entire life is no more incompatible with white-’splaining than being a woman is incompatible with man-’splaining. White-’splaining is defined by its content, not by the color of the speaker or writer. (Note that I am not commenting either way on the merits of Raucous Indignation’s charge.)
Wow. this is a first on this blog. A black man being accused of whitesplainin. And someone actually defending it as a non sequitur. #arglebargle
Interview with Gen McMaster.
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/local/military/article133566199.html
The Taliban: “these people are the enemy of all civilized people —”
Their vision: “if you listen to them, just as if we were to listen to the Nazi Party in Germany in the late 1930s, they tell us what they’re going to do if they’re able to gain power.”
The mission: “we need soldiers engaged in these conflicts—to protect our own vital interest and really the interest of all civilized people.”
So the guy views these issues as a battle for civilization, a battle between the civilized world and forces as brutal and inhuman as those of the Nazi regime in the 30s that led to a World War.
With this appointment, does anybody doubt that we are going to WAR (expanding current conflicts, opening new fronts, putting islamophobia at the cornerstone of our foreign policy and application of military force abroad).
I’m very troubled by this appointment. McMaster sounds like an ideologue to me. And someone pre-disposed (like Flynn) to understand current conflicts as a clash of civilizations. As I see it, he’s a perfect fit for this administration.
The Taliban who committed mass-murder against (Shia) Hazara and other ethnic groups, and who destroyed Buddhist and Muslim antiquities including the Buddhas of Bamiyan? You think opposing the Taliban makes one Islamophobic? You have GOT to be kidding.
McMaster speaks about a “clash of civilizations” and how this is what motives our military actions in the region. Why aren’t they just murderous drug lords who adhere to a misguided ideology.
You don’t think fighting wars that are a “clash of civilizations” is a recruitment tool to Taliban and ISIS and upends up our involvement and goals in the region. Folks seem to have forgotten their history here?
Did you actually READ the interview you posted?? Because there is nothing about ‘clash of civilizations’ in the sense that people like Bannon, Flynn, or Navarro might use it. McMaster simply argues that the three Taliban factions are dangerous, and should be taken as seriously in terms of their goals as the Nazis should have been in the 1930s. Given the history of the Taliban, I think that is fair. Do you want to defend the Taliban?
I want to see liberals exerting a will to power. I want to see liberals using power to shape the world in the mold of their ideals. I want to see liberals completely crushing conservatism under their boots. I want to see that — no WE NEED to see that or else, climate change and environmental destruction will burn the planet out from under us all and nothing will matter.
That is what is at stake — the very survival of human civilization.
The baby is 50% his when she wants money for it, but 100% hers when she wants to decide whether or not to keep it ... and if she decides to keep it, then it’s 100% hers to decide which — if any — man will play a role in raising it.
I think what a lot of men would like to see is some consistency about the role of the father, rather than laws and social expectations that seem only to assign “responsibility” on the basis of which will give the mother the greatest power over the child — and any man in the child’s life — and the greatest access to Other People’s Money.
Men are frustrated by the attitude, embodied also in the law, that “He’s not good enough for me and ‘my’ child, but his money sure is! And I deserve to have the government make him give it to me! Even when he doesn’t have it because he’s already in jail for not giving it to me!”
No-fault divorce should be limited to young childless couples or empty nesters, and alimony should be completely banned: if you want him to support you with his income and his property, then you have to stay with him. Alimony allows women to have their cake and eat it too: i.e. posture as strong and independent, yet collect a “relationship pension” indefinitely, and even have it grow with the man’s income or at least have it fixed based on what the man was making even if his circumstances change. If you have a child and want to divorce the father, then you should have to prove wrongdoing on his part (either to yourself or to the child) — not just “I really think I can do better” — and then if you want child support, then you need to settle for joint custody — and meaningful joint custody, not just one weekend a month and every other holiday. Unilaterally terminating not only your relationship with him but also his relationship with “my” child, then turning around and demanding money for “his” child — after you fought so hard to kick him out of the child’s life — is just a nakedly cynical move.
“Anarchy” (literally, no-rule, or rule-by-none) is the shortest-possible-lived state of affairs: in a general population, once an overall rule by government is removed, myriads of local rulers will immediately emerge — rulers of one over another by who is stronger in any way and more willing to resort to coercion — from playground bullies to petty warlords.
All those abusive ex-boyfriends under restraining orders? An anarchy can’t and won’t enforce those — so guess who’ll be back?
Any armed yahoos in the neighborhood? Heck, any drug houses? You thought you might have trouble keeping your property before— consider it all “tax” to the new Capo. Yeah, that’s how fast the “anarchy” disappeared.
Totally ignorant comment about how anarchism actually works.
As I said just upthread, anarchists turn authority over to the people, themselves, in an organization based on community and worker self-management. It is self-governance from below, where no one is allowed to have autocratic authority over the people. People can be delegated (with mandates) to take on tasks on behalf of the community, but the delegation can be revoked and recalled at any time. Anyone who tried to impute authority to themselves would have to justify it to the collective assembly of the community.
The community assembly would have a militia to defend against any force that would try to impose authority from above. They would have layers of complex organization extending from the small local assembly to international federations, all answering to the people at the bottom.
There are examples of anarchism working. It is a highly organized social structure with safeguards in place to avoid the problems you have imagined would exist.
please cite specific instances where anarchy didn’t lead to warlords.
Please cite an anarchist society that factually did “lead” to warlords.
Somalia.
Closer to home in space if not in time, Bleeding Kansas before the Civil War, and most of Missouri during the War, where roving bands of partisans for both sides intimidated, extorted and murdered with impunity.
The Spanish anarchists’ inability to fend off foreign aggression, by itself, points out a fundamental weakness of an anarhcist society. Even if its internal workings were Utopian, it still could not resist a well organized assault by a ruthless authoritarian enemy.
You can of course use the “no TRUE Scotsman” dodge to avoid acknowledging that any of these fit your definition of TRUE anarchism, but then we’re back to arguing abiut hypothetical Utopias instaed of real societies.
No, Somalia is not really anarchist. Name any anarchist organization with any large influence in Somalia. You're applying not anarchism as a sociopolitical organization of socialism from below, but anarchy in the sense of chaos. These are not the same concepts.
As to the anarchists in Spain not being able to fend off a coalition of aggressive nations and forces that vastly outnumbered them, that’s just nonsensical as an argument, since a good social form of community organization does not magically make such a society omnipotent against massive forces brought against them.
[Opening prayer in Tennessee Senate]
I pray for the people of Tennessee who have been so downtrodden by the wicked courts from on high that they have been subject to tyrannical judiciary. And I pray that you would save Tennessee from the edicts of Washington DC that would go against the plain wishes of the people of Tennessee, particularly pertaining to the 9th and 10th Amendment.
I pray that you would sanctify this state, that it would be holy and would be a leader among the other states. That they would see that there is a God that lives, that you love the people of Tennessee. That you gave your life that we might be saved from our sins. I pray that you would forgive the many sins of carelessness or lethargy or desperation. The compromises.
Oh lord save Tennessee for Jesus sake, and I pray that your will would be done that you would be our coverage, that we would not be forced into these edicts from Washington DC or any other quarter, but let the people know that our coverage is the same as with Moses and the children of Israel when they went through the wilderness with only the divine providence of almighty God.
So I pray that everywhere there are meetings, and there is considerations and deliberations, that you would give these men and women who have been elected, give them the backbone and the remembrance of the Tennessee Declaration of Rights, Article 1, Section 2 — we are ordered to resist arbitrary power.
We have to play to win. That’s what the other side is doing. They cheat; they lie; they steal. If we do not play to win, we will lose. If the Republicans will not respect the basic framework of democracy, if they will not play by the rules, then we cannot afford to respect them, either.
There is much more at stake here — not just the shape of our politics and our Republic, but the future of the whole planet. The greatest threat we face is that of climate change, and we can’t afford to let this country fall to a party that denies science. If the price of saving the planet is a few decades of dictatorship in one country, then so be it.
Which is why I live by Sherlock Holmes’ comment in one film, reversing the gender: “Men are not to be trusted — not the best of them.”
I learned that one early, when a young man pretended to come to my aid when I was being harrassed after school, only to pick up a rock and order me to take my clothes off — then he Didn’t Understaaaand why I didn’t think that was hilarious.
There have been too many stories about women finding out that their nice, sweet, kind, “feminist” husbands or boyfriends have been trolling vicious things to women anonymously in their spare time.
Men are not to be trusted. Not the best of them.
I remember living in Manhattan in the late 1980s and always knowing which ATMs still dispensed $5s. That way you could get as close to all of the money in your account out, when you needed to buy — oh, I dunno — some stuff that came in a little bag?
And that, fellow Kosians, is why the Powers That Be would love to do away with cash.
No more little baggies of happy vegetation, no more secret dissident activities, but instead, everything you do, tracked, reported, analyzed, and predicted.
Well, this latest incident has a black athlete falsely accused of sexually assaulting his white girlfriend and here is a new twist to the story — she has always asserted that she was never assaulted or raped by this guy and even slept with him and proactively kept sending him messages of support once the investigation began!!!! So who are the villains of this piece? The administrator and some idiot fellow trainer/student in the alleged victim’s training program took it upon themselves to declare that she was assaulted.
You cite two cases as reported by the same libertarian website, unrelated in every way except they involve sex and college students. In one, a man is, apparently, wrongly accused of assault. In the other, a man is, apparently, the victim of assault.
But your first sentence tries to link them by simply calling both men “victims” and intimating this is some ominous, nascent trend that hasn’t ruined the lives of many men “yet” — and when it does, it will somehow be the fault of “overreaching leftists.”
The problem of men on campus being falsely accused of sexual assault is dwarfed by the problem of men on campus not being punished for sexual assault, and the problem of men on campus being sexually assaulted by women is insignificant compared to the problem of women on campus being sexually assaulted by men.
This attempt to construct a level of equivalence between injustices done to men with injustices done to women as regards to rape is disgusting.
I find you disgusting to accept any level of sexual assault against anybody, including men. Who gave you the right to decide who’s rape is significant enough? I don’t agree with a lot of what the diarist wrote, but your sexist response to false accusations and male rape is absolutely deplorable.
If you get raped do I get to decide whether your trauma is significant?
Sorry, while I’m all for the police de-escalating if possible, when you have a knife and are stabbing a police officer, the public belongs on the officer’s side and there is a chance of the police officer killing the criminal — and unless the officer does something wrong, they deserve the public’s support.
Supporting every criminal killed by a police officer over the police is a good way to take the wrong side and discredit the movement against police abuse.
[...]
There’s a difference between opposing police injustice and opposing police, period, cheering wrongful attacks against them.The right likes to pretend the left can’t tell the difference.
Sadly it seems in some cases they might be correct.
You two are morons. The police are nothing but gangsters with badges, engaging in murder and hiding behind “fear for their lives”.
It’s too bad the piggie got stabbed, but given the long history of police violence AGAINST POC AND LGBT FOLX, the woman (sadly murdered by the pig) was absolutely in the right to defend herself.
Wow. So collective guilt for police. Because there has been police abuse, she was right to stab this officer.
And if the officer was just defending himself, then he murdered her wrongly and is a “piggie”.
You’re simply wrong, and no friend to the cause of justice to anyone.
IF the facts come out the officer did anything wrong, THEN criticize that.
Officer used deadly force when he should have de-escalated. She was acting in self defense.
Fuck the Police.
You don’t know that, and certainly haven’t proven it here. Maybe he should have, and maybe he couldn’t.
You assert she stabbed a police officer in self-defense without any evidence. Prove it.
She obviously feared for her life.
If it’s a good enough excuse for the cops, surely she can use it, too...
No, it’s not obvious. And the phrase is, reasonably feared for her life.
And no, it’s not enough.
If you go take a schoolroom hostage with a gun, you have reason to fear for your life from the police.
That doesn’t suddenly give you justification for killing police.
Right, right, “if she had only cooperated”—
A trans woman of color DOES have reason to fear for her life when confronted by a police officer. So yes, she was REASONABLY AFRAID, and fully justified.
Being a trans woman of color, or a white non-trans person, or any other race or orientation, doesn’t mean they can’t can’t be a criminal.
And no, simply being a trans woman of color does not give her justification to stab a police officer in fear for her life.
That is insane to claim and makes me have more sympathy for police when I hear anyone in the public even things that way.
At what point does innocent until proven guilty kick in?
When we no longer live in a rape culture.
[Thread 1:]
Nice to see the usual dudebros in here fighting to maintain rape culture. Way to go guys.
You’re either with us or against us, amirite?
Uh, yes. Quite literally. You’re either for ending rape culture. Or you’re not.
I’ve never seen anyone here who is not for ending rape culture.
lol Uh huh.
Uh huh. If you’re serious about that charge, now is where you name names right?
Well, first of all, I pretty much already did. Second, I’d like to thank you and every mediocre man like you for adhering to the same trolling pattern for the last several decades. It’s makes it so easy to spot you all from a mile away.
To be clear, so folks know whether they really should flag your posts for making such a baseless and disgusting accusation... You’re accusing alx9090 and and Roln of being in favor of a rape culture. That right?
Sure go ahead. Flag away. I’m tired of dealing with men who repeatedly blame victims at this site and do everything they can to maintain the status quo of rape culture. Heaven forbid we deal with actual sexism on the left. Much better to just shut us women up, isn’t it?
It must be tough to continue thinking of yourself as a good person when you realize you've been part of the sexual harassment problem all along.
[Thread 2:]
Who needs justice? I’ll get us a rope. Let’s go find us some guilty-looking folks. We can string `em up and feel better about ourselves. Doesn’t matter if they even did anything.
Oh please. You guys really need to get better material. Why don’t you go back to victim blaming Louis CK’s victims and pretending those women consented to what he did.
OR, and here’s an idea, you can deal with the idea that this diary makes guys like you uncomfortable for reasons you’re not willing to admit or even deal with. Much Easier to just attack women and let us know that as long as you’re alive, none of us are ever really safe.
Setting aside the presumption of innocence is the issue for me.
You were asked a serious question and you gave a slogan answer that had nothing to do with it — unless you really do intend to do away with the bedrock principle of modern justice and the presumption of innocence.
It’s always been hard to make a point with you because you so frequently use hate indiscriminately (“dudebros” is the n-word to my ears) against people who by and large support you.
[Thread 3:]
Innocent until proven guilty only applies to a court of law. The same courts and laws which have denied justice to sexual assault and rape victims pretty much since forever.
You have to prove that a crime was committed by the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt.
A high percentage of these cases are one persons word against another, no witnesses, no or equivocal physical evidence, usually alcohol involved.
Taking someone’s life and freedom is extremely serious. With little evidence other than words, what is a court to do?
Please. As if innocent people don’t go to jail and guilty people set free all the time. This idea that we can only know someone’s guilt via a court, that we can only achieve justice via a court is ridiculous.
The authors of the Constitution said “the accused shall be presumed innocent until a judge or jury delivers a guilty verdict.” BTW, the accused — whether is it an elected lawmaker, a movie producer, or the school janitor — should be either acquitted or convicted in a court of law, not in the court of public opinion. Any other way is called vigilante justice or kangaroo court.
What a splendid idea! Quote slaveholders who didn’t believe women should have the right to vote. Now you’ve totally convinced me.
Do you know of any other legal way? Would you really like the US turn the justice system totally upside down, and allow the law enforcement community to declare someone guilty, and then shoot the “convicted felon”? I surely don’t want that, and no decent honest prosecutor wants that. If that is really what you want, then I suggest moving to Iran, and make sure you go out of your way to be accused of a crime.
Guilt in a criminal sense can only be determined through the court system, and one that is neutral, not racist/classist/homophobic/etc., and one giving the accused access to competent representation.
You seem to think innocent people are imprisoned and guilty people are set free all the time, so what’s a few more? NO.
["Several raw milk producers in CA have been fined multiple times for unsafe products: listeria, salmonella, other stuff. If you want to drink raw milk — fine. But don’t claim it’s better than pasteurized."]
No. It is better. You’re wrong. But of course you have to have a good farmer. You can’t drink raw milk without going to see the farm, the barn, the conditions on the farm and the vet records.
[What if someone—with the power to make it happen—came and said to you: “Vote for me, and I’ll make sure the Republicans never win another election. Vote for me, and there will be a firm boot placed on the neck of the Religious Right, on Wall Street, on the NRA—these groups will be crushed, and you will hear the proverbial lamentations of their women. Of course, after you vote for me, there won’t be any further elections—at least none that have any affect—but it won’t matter, because Our Side will have a permanent victory. We’ll be able to implement our wise and just policies, without any further interference from the other side. Society will flourish, and a new era of prosperity will be born! Racism and homophobia will be ended! The environment will be protected! The economy will serve everyone, not just the wealthy!”
Who, here, would take that bargain? A promised permanent progressive victory, at the cost of authoritarian government, one that need no longer consider the wishes of the voters—even if they no longer desire progressivism?
What of a promised, permanent progressive victory achieved by kneecapping the right wing—a maximum voting age, or legal disenfranchisement of conservative voters (by various means), or other ways of relegating our opposition to second-class citizenship? Would you take that bargain?
What if the persuader whispers in your ear that there MIGHT be some bloodshed, as ensuring the progressive victory requires (ahem) altering the country’s demographics, as there are still many voters of the wrong kind voting?]
Though, there is one authoritarian regime that none of us can object to: the laws and facts of nature. Such as what happens when you jump off a high place, or dump CO2 into the atmosphere until it gains net heat.
We can fix that problem voluntarily, or nature’s going to fix it for us, by running us close to extinction. Failure to fix it is flirting with a Holocaust that will be hundreds of times Hitler.
In the end, we have no choice about that.
For which reason, I would support authoritarian measures to deal with it now. Because the word “authoritarian” is meaningless when it’s about the laws and facts of nature.
["While I get this, you are advocating doxxing and that’s not cool. The rest of it, however..."]
Oh, doxxing is so cool — it’s the only way to really stop @h0les like this who ‘haven’t broken any laws yet, ma’am’ — and that’s exactly the response they’ll get in far too many US PD/SOs.
What’s it doing on Instagram? Did Heather Lind bring it up with his caretakers first?
moviemeister76: So sexual assault victims need permission from their perpetrators before they speak about what happened?
That is not what I said at all. Stop engaging in the Republican strategy of deliberate misstatement. The reason to go public is when a private confrontation is ineffective. We cannot make starting with a public accusations (not just sexual ones) the norm just because easy outlets like Instagram exist. Soon people with a vendetta or simple maliciousness for whatever reason will start making false public accusations. If that has ever happened to you, you would know that a denial is useless. It is very difficult, and most of the time impossible, to prove a negative. People just start gossiping and you, though even if innocent, pay the price. Even if you win (as an acquaintance of mine did, even receiving a 6-figure settlement), you will probably have to move to another community. This is why our system says that people are innocent until PROVEN guilty.
If Heather Lind had gone privately to the caretaker (as it appears that Bush is no longer able to directly speak for himself) and received an apology, would she or should she go public? What would be the motivation to do so? Keeping quiet out of fear or because of hush money is one polar wrong. Blaring an accusation from the housetops is another polar wrong.
moviemeister76: You know what? Don’t you EVER tell me how I should deal with accusing the man who raped me. EVER. Victims have the fucking right to handle it however we fucking see fit. All you are doing is showing that you’re more concerned about being accused of sexual assault than the women who are sexually assaulted.
You know nothing about me. You don’t even know if I am a man or a woman. I was careful to point out that I am not limiting my remarks to sexual assault, but negative public accusations of all kinds. However, I am so glad no one has ever falsely publicly accused you of anything, that you have had the luxury of supposing that all negative accusations of any nature are prima facie true.
Cmae: More passive aggressive mansplaining.
Question: Is it still mansplaining if a woman wrote it? More likely you are attempting ad hominem—trying to discredit the person rather than engage the argument itself.
Cmae: Passive aggressive female misogny works too.
And yet there is no misogyny, male or female, in my comment. All I have said is there should be a “regular order” to making accusations of any kind. Otherwise, people will start making accusations of all sorts, and I have been careful to say, those accusations do not necessarily have to be sexual in nature to do real harm. You are also very close to the next step, presumption of guilt, rather than presumption of innocence. One reason police shoot unarmed black people more often than white people is the problem of presumption of guilt. I am arguing for consistency of approach.
I agree that too often society winks at sexual misconduct. Even on Dkos, many of the ads objectify women and all we hear are excuses about how Kos does not control the ads. Running headlong toward the polar opposite of presumptive guilt would be counterproductive. This is a true slippery slope. Note the comments. A number of people are ready to speculate all sorts of things about Bush.
moviemeister76: Dear God. Why is it whenever someone wants to defend something they wrote that was misogynistic or racist as hell, they always give us a multi-paragraph screed?
So instead of a refutation, you offer a restatement of your original assertion without anything to back it up except “misogynist” is the ad hominem du jour.
I am one of those votes for authoritarianism. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as is often said — and the window of opportunity for humanity to save our industrialized mechanized existence is closing due to narrow minds, and global warming. I’ve not been shy to air these views in the past, and while they are not popular, I believe they’re necessary in order to save Western Civilization itself. If that means we need to curtail the election rights for some, and even expunge some detrimental elements from the gene pool, then that’s what we should do. The survival of billions can be ensured by extinguishing a few million. I call that a bargain.
I think I can help you resolved your mixed feelings about Scottish Independence. A legally-binding referendum was held in 2014 and it was failed. The side that lost wants a do-over, but the people of Scotland pretty obviously don’t. The “movement” now is little more than a mechanism by which some pretty unscrupulous politicians hope to hold onto their seats. Although independence supporters are in the minority, they are unified around one party. The Scots who are opposed to independence — the “Unionists” — split their vote among three parties. So it is a tactic that works, and will be perpetuated, and government in Scotland will suffer as a result, because this hopeless dead-end issue can continue to consume all the political oxygen.
The only reason the referendum failed was because the anti side blatantly lied again and again. Max devo was a massive farce that was never intended to be anything but propaganda. You're spreading propaganda and lies.
OMG. Pull the other one. Alex Salmond said that oil would pay for almost everything, and that all the rest would be covered by the UK volunteering a currency union, something that the whole of the UK was deadset against. The entire independence platform was an astonishing collection of untruths that got more and more ridiculous as the campaign wore on. Scotland would be a smoking ruin today had the voters not perceived just what a gasbag that odious man was.
Funny how you conflate outright lies with less than stellar policy. You don't even deny that it was outright lies, you just lack any respect for the Scots.
Oil would pay for almost everything was an outright lie.
That the UK would volunteer to pay for everything else via a currency union was an outright lie.
I have immense respect for the Scots — they demonstrated their good sense in 2014 by rejecting Salmond’s nationalist bullshit, and then they did it again in the last GE when they booted him and that lying toad Angus Robertson out of their seats.
I prove my respect for the Scots for calling for their decision on the question of independence to be considered to be the final word on this matter for a generation, just like the SNP said it would before the votes were cast.
How about you?
Yeah, supporting the racist liars in London is such respect for the Scots. Just like you "respect" the catalonians by pretending a referendum taken under a fascist government was somehow legitimate. But hey, as long as no one gets their independence what do you care?
I assume “racist liars” in London is some kind of whinge about Brexit. Which has absolutely nothing to do with the Scottish independence referendum.
Scots don’t “get their independence” because they don’t want it. You should accept that decision.
Bwahahahahahahaha. What yeah, what could Brexit have to do with the lie about Scotland being forced to leave the EU if they voted to leave Britain. I don’t understand how those two things could ever be connected! It’s so confusing and difficult!!!!
And you’re still silent on your love of referendums taken under threat of fascism as the only other alternative. But hey, what do you care about reality, you’ve got an ideology to push.
["$10/g would cost me $150 a fill-up. With going to school and dialysis, I need to fill up a minimum of every 2 weeks. So $300/mo or more on SSDI — or how about a giant fuck me for being disabled poor right?"]
Point being that at $10 you wouldn’t BE filling up — you’d carpool, use public transit, bike, walk, or buy an electric vehicle. All of which would become cheaply and readily available with the economy of scale. And neighborhoods would quickly become walkable, as stores moved to their customers as opposed to expecting their customers to drive to the mall.
But I think that you missed the main thrust of the article and my response — that these taxes would be rebated to the poor.
["Rebated once a year — big whoop. And I’m not biking let alone walking 6 miles after dialysis. And I am in NW Montana — bus service does not run in my area. And for some people, the dialysis clinic is nearly 60 miles away."]
Public transit will be vastly improved if sufficient demand is created. But like so many, I see you feel your convenience is more important than the survival of the human race.
["My convenience is for my fucking survival. So I suppose it’s ok for the disabled poor to die if they live in the wrong areas, for the greater good of course. Fuck that."]
Only in your mind does using public transit, carpooling, or switching to an electric vehicle equate with dying. Around here they provide non-emergency transportation for medical needs, you can get a scooter that gets a couple hundred miles to the gallon dirt cheap, and people electrify their bicycles. But I guess you’d die without a gas guzzling single passenger vehicle, and can’t afford to pay five bucks for the gas for a twelve mile round trip for your $90,000 a year dialysis.
["Oh how I would love to be able to afford a electric vehicle on SSDI of 1k a month. Or ride a scooter in 20 deg snow covered roads. But hey — denigrate the disabled poor some more. Bet you think chained CPI is great too because we just need to adapt better. Have a good evening, you are not worth responding to anymore."]
The 2013 poison gas attack was not by Assad, which is why Obama quietly let the matter die. Results from testing by the lab used by the international community for these matters showed that not only wasn’t the gas from Assad’s stockpile, but that it was from one of a specific few of the various insurgent groups trying to overthrow Syria’s government — in short, a false flag.
It will be interesting, some future day when this event is actually investigated, to find out what really happened.
Or “Marching Through Georgia” to Southerners who survived the Civil War. It doesn’t have that connection to most modern Southerners, though.
Marching Through Georgia damn sure has that connotation to me, and whenever I hear “battle hymn of the republic” I am thoroughly revolted.
It’s as though the North didn’t quite believe they had actually won, and needed to go on putting down the South. Well, here we are 123 years later, and what has changed?
Nothing.
There’s nobody north of the Mason-Dixon line with the peace chiefs’ wisdom, or Reverend Hart’s moxie.
And rubbing Southerners’ noses in our “heritage” of slavery and cruelty while ignoring the discriminatory behavior going on TODAY in the former “Union” states and expansions thereof — don’t tell me it isn’t happening, and not just to young black men but to Native American women, black women, and Latinx people as well as Hawaiian and Alaskan natives — does nothing to reduce the residual resentment.
[My hope is that folks on the left will stop with blanket demonization of the law enforcement work force as terrorists and murderers. It will back fire. It will help get Trump elected. It will inflame the situation — just as it did when they were called pigs.
I also would like to point out that we are supposed to be the good folks — held to a higher standard.]
The police need to stop killing us. Who cares about their feelings when the create dead bodies & create more people to hate them?
I forgot, only blue lives matter.
[You know, every time a right winger goes off on a shooting spree, we place a lot of blame on those on the right who engage in hateful rhetoric, saying they have “blood on their hands.”
Which makes me wonder, does this killing cause you to reconsider your “Evil white people/evil cops/evil pigs/fu*ck the police” schtick around here?]
Nope. The former slave patrols, the current police keep creating dead black people. Many white people think that's ok. It's evil & a lot of white people are ok with killing us. Why do people think it was ok to kill Tamir Rice? He wasn't a human being to them. He was.
I don't have a national voice. I'm one little person crying out.
We’ve been mistreated & worse for 400 years. We ask nicely & nothing happens. If we cause too much trouble we get exterminated. Now it's one at a time lynchings done as state sponsored terrorism.
Everyone wants to go home at night, but the police who kill us don't care. They get paid vacations, keep their jobs, get kill a negro bonuses, don't get prosecuted or convicted. What do their victims get? Some blood money & trolled.
RWMSM continues the narrative of scary non-compliant blacks who deserve our deaths. They have an outsized voice & are winning the killing black people is a heroic thing, another 400 yo piece of propaganda. 21st century policing looks like slave patrols to me.
I am sad for families who's loved ones don't come home. Why does that sympathy for dead cops exclude my people?
You don't care. To you the police are right & their victims are undeserving of compassion & due process.
Im tapped out, tired. I have no more empathy & sympathy left.
The police & black people would do better if they would stop killing us. Why don't the police say they’re sorry for killing us? Nope, they commence on a program of slander & lies to justify their victims death. Not a way to make friends with their victims.
Why is police murder legal? It's a trick question, becuase they have permission & their victims have NO due process. How can the state prosecute itself? It does a terrible job becuase the state is on the police’s side.
I can manage to not call the police evil for a couple of days, but their culture is the big problem.
I don't know any black radio person who does the same inflammatory crap that the evil RW does. The majority will shut them down. People don't like our advocates, but we’re not the majority & being nice respectable citizens still doesn't help keep us alive or safe. Someone has to be on OUR side.
Who's on our side? BLM is effective becuase the RW hate them. The problem is that someone does not want us to stand up for ourselves & our rights.
I want the police to stop killing us.
No individual is required to sacrifice due process simply for being a man, and that because many men are guilty of sexual assault. There is no collective price to pay.
In a perfect world I’d absolutely agree. I WANT to agree. Yet, I feel “due process” is as impacted by “If sense were common everyone would have it.” as “Affirmative Consent”. “Due Process” simply isn’t consistent from state to state, county to county, town to town, judge to judge, sheriff to sheriff. Would our friend Arpaio have applied the same “due process” as a sheriff in California? To a white man accused of raping a brown skinned woman? To a brown skinned man accused of raping a white woman?
I just don’t believe “due process”, as we want it to exist, exists in this country. Therefore — we can’t make it the defining goal of protection — for anything, by anyone involving gender, race, or class that’s not upper class.
I have no idea what all of that means, but simply disregarding due process makes even less sense.
“Due process” is a myth as long as it is allowed to be interpreted independently within jurisdictions. A brown person rarely, if ever, gets the same “due process” in the south as a white person. Basically, “due process” means whatever the folks in a position of power in any given jurisdiction want it to mean, so saying we should trust it to be the yardstick by which a mans culpability in a sexual assault case is measured is useless.
Due process is not a myth, and casting it aside because it may applied unevenly makes no sense.
And it is not a yardstick to judge culpability, it is the process of getting there.
Due process IS a myth and there is no BETTER reason to cast it aside and come up with a replacement than the fact it IS, not may be, applied unevenly.
Hmm. Just when we were getting ready to celebrate another step in the transition to non-carbon energy.
OK, so: a few things to know about that coal shipping terminal:
Nonviolent direct action is justified, as collective self-defense, in light of the true existential threat of climate change.
A five-pound sack of sugar dropped off a freeway overpass so it lands in the loading-hopper of a concrete truck, will cause its load of concrete to fail to harden after it’s poured.
A phone call to the media the day after the concrete is poured (find a pay phone and use it), will cause building inspectors to come looking for the failed concrete in the structure.
A few people around with cameras will make the presence of the building inspectors public news.
["Sabotage is not civil disobedience. Doing something that could cause a building to fail is an act of criminal sabotage. I will have no part of any such suggestion or discussion."]
If you knew the first thing about construction, then you would know (or have figured out) that when concrete fails to set, as soon as the forms are removed it slushes down into a puddle. That’s not going to cause a building to fail, so it’s not sabotage.
Get this: climate change = billions of casualties.
That’s hundreds of times the Holocaust.
Figure out the implications of that.
["I’ve work with concrete , not all concrete goes into removable forms . Some is poured atop other concrete and then has more concrete poured atop it . Bad concrete can be like a void inside a larger mass of good concrete . Something that looks fine from the outside can have a serious problem inside . If that flaw is not found and repaired —"]
Erm— the USA is supporting ISIS. That’s pretty much common knowledge all over the Middle East. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs a history lesson on how the CIA operates.
The “OK, we have to talk about YOUR racist fetish for the term ‘Armenian Genocide’“ talk
Or “yes, it’s completely racist to equate Turks (because Muslim) to Hitler”
We are at the time each year where western nations find an outlet for their islamophobia in the outcry for the Armenians that were killed in Turkiye.
Note, the Turks did kill Armenians.
However, the slant on ‘Armenian Genocide’ as pitched by western, Christian nations, ad nauseum fails each year during this ritual outcry to mention other things:
The killing of the Armenians by the Turks did not occur in a vacuum. It occurred after the Ottoman Empire had collapsed and was occupied by Greek and Russian supplied Armenian forces. Christian nations from the east and west of Anatolia were rushing in to capture the land that had been at the center of the Ottoman empire. Istanbul was coveted so much by these nations that when the Ottomans tried to enter WW1 on the side of France, they were rejected. Great Britain and Russia had already begun their plans to seize the entirety of the Ottoman territory.
In occupied Anatolia, indigenous Turks were shot, imprisoned, tortured, killed, had their property seized. To the west, Greeks tried to expand and to the east, Russia tried to expand their control.
This environment of occupation and brutality on a daily basis served the sole purpose of facilitating the seizure of Anatolia, just as the Arabian peninsula had been carved up (and we all know how fucking well that turned out). This is the state of Anatolia, prior to the killing of the Armenians.
Every year when western, christian nations bemoan the killing of the Armenians - strikingly few of them bother to include this in their framing.
But, calling the killing of Armenians to be an inspiration to Hitler is beyond the hypocritical pale. Hitler didn’t need to find the slaughter of Christians to inspire him. He had Genocidal Christians in his own recent history for that:
King Leopold of Belgium, who killed 10 million people in the Congo. The repercussions of which, led to the Rwandan genocide (a genocide that white Christian nations willingly discuss because everyone was black and whites are painted as rescuers from a less savage land...but not the people who manufactured the animosity in the first place...which Belgium is).
The genocide of the Herero and Namaqua people by the Germans - including concentration camps and medical experimentation.
If you want to go old school and still relevant - The Crusades and the slaughter of the indigenous people in the Americas and the Atlantic slave trade - all blessed by the Pope and conducted by Christian nations.
So, to recap: yes, the Turks killed Armenians and yes, the trope about persecuted Christians that omits the role that Christian nations played in their own oppression of the Turks (as well as all the other genocides performed by Christian nations) is racist. And if you doubt that, then ask yourself why these same western Christian nations are so not interested in naming our own genocidal actions with anything approaching the obsession with this one that, in the end paints Muslims as butchers?
And fucking Hitler was not an import - that motherfucker was home-grown white supremacy.