[Submitter's note: commenter is an anarcho-communist.]
Russia industrialized in a tenth of the time that it took other nations. Authoritarianism can have good results, it’s the balance at the end of the day between lives and “progress” that’s the issue.
That industrialization also killed people by the millions.
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.
[Posted on August 1, 2017, after the primaries and presidential election. Commenter was banned for this post.]
Oh absolutely. I don't have a candidate yet, but absolutely the bark must be stripped off Sanders and his staff fed into the woodchipper. The candidate who does that will get traction pretty quickly.
All he had to do was maintain the speed limit and pass me in the left lane. He came close to getting himself wrapped around a concrete light pole.
Lucky break he’s still alive. That kind of stuff is ridiculous. Did you know that car insurance premiums are twice as high for 16-26 year-old males than females? I came to learn this with my 3 sons. The money I’ve / we’ve paid is obscene. Your example is probably one of the reasons.
Yes, for which reason I did not have car insurance until that was not a factor.
Yes, seriously. I will not be subjected to what under any other circumstance would be unlawful discrimination.
Imagine insurers charging black drivers twice as much as white drivers. We should not tolerate any of that sort of thing.
As for “oh but something could have happened!”, yeah something can always “happen” but happenstance is not a stance and I take responsibility for my own actions.
I used to work making ads at a small cable company. Every time the saleswoman would promise a customer I'd have an ad done in 24 hours where they'd jump ahead of everyone, the computer would have a fried audio or video card. That was the only time the parts would fail and I had no way of knowing ahead of time that she had done it.
Interesting. So apparently you’re also subconsciously remote-viewing what the saleswoman and/or clients were doing.
Very often these things work in combination like that. BTW, lifelong precog here. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re nuts. Eventually the physics that makes this stuff work, will be figured out. My guess is that it’s QM computation in the brain interacting with an entangled particle flux that’s just part of the ambient background everywhere.
[Bolding added.]
[Ex-Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr to get apology and pay]
Khadr, who was the youngest prisoner ever detained at the naval base in Cuba, became a cause celebre for Guantanamo Bay opponents and his case received international attention.
He was convicted of five crimes, including throwing a grenade that killed Army Sgt Christopher Speer in 2002. He was shot and captured during the fire fight in Afghanistan.
This is great news. Omar Khadr is a progressive freedom fighter and those who attack him are xenophobic bigots.
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.
We’ve always been on the ISIS and Al Qada side of the conflict in Syria, because our primary goal has always been regime change.
["Idiot Republican Congressman Suggests We Back ISIS"]
I don’t know what makes him more stupid: That he says we should back ISIS, or that he doesn’t we already are backing ISIS by unconditionally giving guns and training to anyone in Syria who was anti-Assad, and by giving money and guns to Saudi Arabia, where many of the powerful aristocrats there turn around and fund ISIS on our behalf.
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.
Terrorism in the UK is a result of England’s white racist policies and racist people. The UK must give more power to Muslims to govern themselves as they see fit, and not according to the wishes of whites. Maybe it’s time for a two-state solution in England. A Muslim majority in England is inevitable anyhow. All the white bigotry in the world can’t stop it. This goes for the rest of Europe and the U.S. as well.
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.
[Bolding added.]
I worry more about white racists than I do about radical Muslim terrorists. Each act of so-called Islamic “terrorism” is an act of self-defense. White racists still don’t get it.
[Bolding added.]
So are you willing to start WWIII over Estonia or not?
I am. Certainly. Estonia is a NATO member. If Russia invades, she must be destroyed. Unconditional surrender or total annihilation.
I imagine you're in an extreme minority.
You imagine being the American president who has to explain a nuclear strike over Estonia.
Something tells me that "well we made a commitment" ain't gonna cut it.
Anyhow who is publicly against it should be locked up of course. If the world is at war then we won't have time for discussions with pacifists and the far left.
A treaty either means something or it means nothing. If it means nothing and military aggression against allies is perfectly okay once again, then we will have war. Once again.
NATO is a deterrent to war. It works. Just as FDR and Churchill envisioned it would.
What the fuck? “Anyhow who is publicly against it should be locked up”?
In other words, you advocated criminalizing political speech. That’s totalitarian thinking.
Just because something is the law, even the supreme law of the land, doesn’t mean it’s criminal to oppose it.
Yeah but I want to trample that part I don't like.
See how that works?
Hate speech laws can’t be used against progressives because nothing we say is hate speech.
I just assume all frat bros are guilty of sexual assault. That's just the kind of people that typically join organizations like that.
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.
Hmmm. I have this memory of a red line drawn in the sand by our last President. It had something to do with Assad using gas on his own people and how that would cross that line. I vaguely remember our last President in essence shrugging his shoulders when in fact Assad gassed his own citizens and crossed that red line. Or is this just a faulty memory?
The US realised those gas attacks were false flag attacks by rebels, designed to lure the US into bombing Assad. That's why we didn't bomb Assad for supposedly crossing a red-line. We realized he didn't cross the line.
That’s not true. You’re actually telling a lie here and repeating both Iranian and Russian propaganda fed to people by RT and Press TV.
I had no idea US Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh, who reported everything I wrote above, was a liar repeating Russian and Iranian propaganda from RT and Press TV when he wrote his story debunking the so-called Assad gas attack and the conclusions of US and UK intelligence that Assad's government was not responsible.
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.
A large segment of white middle-aged Americans has suffered a startling rise in its death rate since 1999, according to a review of statistics published Monday that shows a sharp reversal in decades of progress toward longer lives.
The mortality rate for white men and women ages 45-54 with less than a college education increased markedly between 1999 and 2013, most likely because of problems with legal and illegal drugs, alcohol and suicide, the researchers concluded. Before then, death rates for that group dropped steadily, and at a faster pace.
An increase in the mortality rate for any large demographic group in an advanced nation has been virtually unheard of in recent decades, with the exception of Russian men after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Well, if a bunch of white men die off, I wouldn’t mind.
["Kansas Republicans and Democrats Give Trump the Bipartisan Finger, Finally Accept Medicaid Expansion"]
Does this mean that lives in Kansas will be saved for having medical care available through the Obamacare Medicaid expansion?
Now, normally, I would like to think that LIVES SAVED is a good thing. But here, we are talking about KANSAS lives saved. Which likely means, saving the lives of Trump supporters.
And that’s my dilemma. Why should I be willing to spend my tax dollars savings the lives of Trump supporters?
This guy really needs to be doxxed.
Doxxing is bad when they do it. Why is it good when we do it?
Because their intent is stochastic terrorism, ours is only to damage his reputation so that he becomes poor.
No. There is no difference. What you are suggesting is terrorism by another method. And it legitimized their use of it against you.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Doxxing is wrong, no matter who does it.
Sorry, but I do see a difference. They dox us for having an opinion they don’t agree with, or stating our opinion publicly, with the intent of actually attacking us or our families or property. We dox them for doing something illegal or at least hateful, with the intent of legal prosecution, or at least damage to reputation that makes employment more difficult.
As an example, let’s consider the woman who duck taped her dog’s muzzle. Should she have been outed? How about the guy who showed up at the OCT rally to oppose the open carrying of weapons, only to have them follow him back to his car and use his license plate number and connections to corrupt LE to publish his name and home address on every gun nut site in the US? Should he have been outed?
Neither should have been outed.
False equivalency. Your logic equates criminals with political prisoners.
There is no justification to publicize the name of a private person unless they commit a crime, and in that case only with those people locally (the muzzled dog lady’s story, if a crime, should have been a local matter and no more). So far the only crime this person has committed is being a childish drunk asshole.
A team of Democratic voters can be built without deliberately taunting and alienating other voters. If the Democratic Party engages in bullying behavior, then the party just becomes what it says it abhors. It is always tricky to avoid becoming like the opposition, but it is better to strive for that and stay true to your values rather giving into the opposition’s. I am not talking about going high when they go low, either. I am talking about punching up rather than downward. One of the things that always attracted me to the Democratic Party was that it was supposed to be the party of the little guy whereas the Republicans were constantly abusing the little guy. If Democrats end up being the party that abuses the little guy because Trump, then we’ve lost our way, imo.
The bullied cannot become the bully. We are the victims, not them. We are fighting back.
[Mod note: this is referring to an incident where someone triggered an epileptic seizure in someone, on purpose, using a strobe gif. As such, it is not fundie, but is being left up for posterity's sake]
The mean-spirited tweet is analogous to a package in which a bomb is concealed.
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?
If you're in a public place and ICE comes calling, pull the fire alarm.
Seriously. If you’re in a school, church, community center, hospital, or wherever, do it. It will create chaos as the building is evacuated. It will disrupt the operation as the volume of the alarm will interfere with communication by ICE agents. It will force a response by the fire department and local law enforcement.
Yes, it’s illegal. Civil disobedience is illegal by definition.
Spread this far and wide on social media, especially if you and or your friends/family/colleagues work in such institutions.
So tell me, the next time someone doesn’t leave a building because they assume that it’s a false alarm, again, only it turns out to be a real fire this time, are you going to take any responsibility for giving people such fucking stupid advice, or do their losses get chalked up as acceptable collateral damage?
When surgery in a hospital is disrupted because of a needless evacuation and the patient dies as a result, do you feel any guilt or are they just unavoidable casualties?
From a firefighter and fire chief, one of those people who have to deal with assholes pulling fucking stupid stunts like that, perhaps you should contemplate how many lives you are willing to risk for your “civil disobedience”. And if you don’t perhaps reconsider the wisdom of such an action, then you can go fuck yourself.
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’m giving some thought to evicting my tenant in the apartment over the second garage, she voted for Trump, I’d have to tell her it was so I could give a good apartment to someone who needs it. It’s really so I can use it as a place to develop stereo systems.
“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.
That’s the one negative of the secret ballot. People vote for things they never would if everyone knew their vote. That is why I like caucuses so much. There is something to be said for the open voting of Athenian democracy.
Actually, the secret vote is extremely helpful to women, who are often under the control of a man.
Caucuses are even more awful, since that means that you have to hang out with pushy people that are trying to get you to vote their way, regardless of how you feel.
I would never go to a caucus, because I can’t take noisy crowds in rooms where you can’t leave for hours. Your idea is that I shouldn’t be allowed to vote?
We messed up. Royally. And from now on, all of us white people are guilty until proven innocent, and rightfully so.
I don't trust my fellow white people at all now, and I share their privilege.
Those without that privilege? They have the right and duty to steer clear of us until we’ve proven ourselves as allies, and even then, the suspicion can never fully go away.
Just wait until you get called a Nazi and punched by some clown who disagrees with something you said. What will your defense be then? “Oh, but he was wrong about me being a Nazi, I’m not and only I get to decide who is and isn’t a Nazi and who should be punched.”
Some people are too simple minded to actually examine the larger consequences of their personal stance on the acceptability of responding to speech with physical violence. Hint: you and people who think like you aren’t going to be the only ones doing the zero warning sucker punching. Is that really what you want?
That’s a bit like saying we shouldn’t send guilty people to prison, because that might be used against the innocent.
Do you fail to comprehend the difference between justice and vigilantism? Justice is an open process where the accused gets a defense. Vigilantism not just Nazi-punching, it’s also what George Zimmerman did to Trayvon Martin.
Exactly what defense do you expect Spencer to offer? “When I advocated for the mass extermination of blacks and Jews, I didn’t intend to do it myself”?
Come back to me when you understand the difference between personal ethics and government law.
That way when the thugs and brownshirts come around to beat up some lefties they think are anti-American commies and just as deserving of a beat down as this scum, we can say with honesty “We’ve always been against violent responses to free speech.”
You can put that right on your tombstone.
Fuck Don Siegleman. Rare when a rich white guy gets fucked by the system. So if he has to be the token, tough. Join the fuckin club Don.
You ask us in red states to start fixing our own problems of being ruled by Rethugs. Now, when a progressive who was successful in one got railroaded by the Rethugs, it's just fuck 'em?
The Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth has an article which claims that American intelligence officials told their Israeli counterparts in recent meetings that they should be cautious about sharing their closest held secrets with the Trump administration for fear it might be shared with Russia and by Russia with Iran.
In my opinion, (one which is commonly circulating through many Jewish communities here in the US) is that this was done by the administration to sabotage Trump’s relationship with Israel, going forward. Yeah, I know, very cynical. But as someone who was enraged by the recent UN vote, and our role in it, I currently have a deep hatred for those actions. I look forward to reinstating our extremely close relationship with Israel, in the very near future.
Two of the most despicable and loathed far-right lunatic leaders in an “extremely close relationship.” What could go wrong?
I wonder how long it’ll take for the cop apologists to show up and tell us this proves the shooting was justified.
Not long. They like police murder.
Hey, I was totally appalled by the cases where there was clear police wrong-doing, like the Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, and Walter Scott cases, but I think it is a serious mistake to always assume that the police are guilty.
Just like it is a mistake to always assume that the police are innocent.
I doubt that anyone here likes “police murder”.
Yeah, says you. Many people, here like police murder because they kill black people. Many don’t care about killing us, as long as we vote Dem.
Liar, white people love dead black bodies as long as someone else does the killing. Can't trust many white people in America.
Accusation alone should not be enough to ruin anyone. Accusation alone should not be allowed to destroy someone, or take someone's job, or college/university opportunity,or even Olympic prospects.
That is your opinion. You do not have the power to impose it on other people.
So you advocate guilty until proven innocent... That's one hell of a fundamental shift for our society. How would you like to be accused of something by someone tomorrow and have to prove you're innocent, instead of having them prove you are guilty? How would you like to be punished up front as a guilty party based on accusation alone? Guilty until proven innocent - That is your opinion. I hope and pray you never have the power to impose it on other people.
I advocate the right of people to make their own decisions without having to submit them for other people's approval. In cases of sexual assault or harassment in a work or educational setting there is usually a need to take some immediate action to balance the rights of both parties. It may be necessary to take steps to keep them from coming into contact with each other. Such steps are likely to impose some burden and disruption on one of the parties. If I were and administrator, I would be inclined to lean toward placing that burden on the accused party.
It is not a fundamental shift in our society. Outside of the criminal courts there has never been a broad acceptance of innocent until proven guilty in actual public practice,
Because as we well know, the court of public opinion can and has been both wrong and cruel. The dismissals from jobs, character assassinations of those outside the "norm", even lynchings are all examples of things that had full support of the court of public opinion.
Courts of law can also be wrong.
Courts of law have carefully designed processes to ensure fairness. Thoroughly trained lawyers and judges. Painstaking procedures for collecting and presenting the relevant evidence. Methods for selecting an impartial jury. An appeals process.
Your average Joe Blow has none of those. All he has is an opinion--which may be ill-informed, biased, etc. And if even the courts, with their sophisticated legal processes, are prone to mistakes, how much more so is Joe Blow?
People said Joe Blow should not be judge, jury, and executioner during the Hollywood blacklists. Nor during the Salem witch hunts. But apparently when it comes to rape, Joe Blow is so expert that he can be trusted to a) know when the legal system has fallen short and b) mete out appropriate extralegal punishment.
[Observer343: One or two days ago, 3 blades on 3 wind turbines (2 damaged turbines pictured) in Huron County, Michigan snapped off and are (as the local radio host puts it) hanging by a thread. I don’t know why or how this happened. A few days ago, the the turbine blades seemed just fine.]
What to do about this:
1) Investigate for sabotage. Shooting at a blade could weaken it and make it susceptible to losing part of it in overspeed winds, with the resulting eccentric load causing loss of the nacelle. That is a highly likely scenario.
2) Cut off all electric power to the area that is suspected of harboring the saboteurs until someone turns them in. Yah that’s harsh, but too fucking bad, because sabotage of wind, solar, and nuclear generating capacity is absolutely intolerable given the circumstances around climate change.
[Observer343: 1. I kinda doubt someone actually shot the blades. I haven’t heard any gunshots lately, and I would be able to easily here them around here.
2. Dude. O_O That’s extremism.]
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.
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.
[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.
["Violence and more death is certainly NOT the answer"]
There appears to be no answer. Protesting isn’t making it stop, shouting isn’t making it stop. No amount of attempting to bring attention to the issue is making it -better-. People of color are still being gunned down for little to no reason at all.
I honestly question why violence isn’t the answer. Certainly, targeting any and every cop is going to do nothing but hurt the situation, but growing more willing as a populace to step in and physically put a stop to it seems like it -could- be a viable option. Cops acting with impunity isn’t working, but ‘onlookers’ becoming aggressive when the dirty ones start bashing people’s faces or when they execute someone in the streets could send the correct message.
[Mangum was arraigned earlier today on charges of recklessly infecting another person with HIV. He's in a world of trouble, to say the least. In Missouri, knowingly exposing someone to HIV without the other's consent can carry up to 15 years in prison, and infecting someone can send you to prison for life. I hope they throw the library at this guy. There's really no such thing as too heavy-handed a sentence for something this outrageous.]
Really?
Do you know much about the laws criminalizing nondisclosure of one's serostatus? They usually don't require that a victim be infected before criminal liability attaches. And with many of them, the fact that you have an undetectable viral load (and are therefore highly unlikely to infect anyone) and that you used a condom are no defense. So you can be on meds with a fully suppressed viral load and use a condom and not infect your "victim," and still go to jail. Not to mention that the laws single out HIV for special punishment.
Laws like these are one of the reasons many people who may have been exposed to HIV don't get tested. They're a public health disaster. No one should be cheering a prosecution under such draconian legislation.
And by the way, people who are HIV-negative bear a little responsibility in this too. No one should simply take a person's word that he's uninfected. A large percentage of people with HIV are unaware of their infection (in part because laws like this are a powerful disincentive to testing). This is particularly true among us gay men, and unless he's been living under a rock since the 1980s, every gay man has heard the message that you have to treat every sex partner as positive.
[...]
FFS, these are gay men we're talking about. Something like 20% of us are positive. If you decide to have unprotected sex with someone whose serostatus you have not verified through testing, then you are simply assuming the risk of infection. Clearly, Magnum's "victims" weren't all that concerned about it.
[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.
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.
Traditional Chinese Medicine is certainly no pseudoscience. It is approved by the World Health Organization and used by 1/3 of the world’s population. Scholarly treatises both present and for many centuries past plus continuing excellent research results published in many medical journals in both mainland and Taiwan back this up. The elegance and sophistication of it’s herbal medicine in unparrelled in the world today.
Since this is supposed to be a liberal and progressive web, I am surprised at some of the judgemental and inaccuracte comments above. As a longtime practioner (also long time Democrat) of this esteemed medical art I take umbrage at this. Many of my patients and myself had run the gamet of western medicine to no avail before finding relief and healing in this ancient yet modern medicine. We are living testaments to the power of nature based healing modalities.
Rhino horn (pinyin is "xi jiao”) is not used for “boners”. A tiny amount can save a life when the body temperature is so high the blood literally erupts from the body. The deadly new North American disease of Hanta Virus is a good example. Now days water buffalo horn is substituted albeit in much larger amounts. Among the uses of Bear bile (pinyin is "xiong dan”) is to alleviate acute febrile disease severe symptoms such as convulsions, delirium, and conjunctiva. It can also be used topically for red hot skin lesions and alleviating pain and swelling. For the most part Cattle gallstones and bile are presently substituted and recommended due to the endangered status and poor treatment of many bear species. More detailed information and research results on these two and hundreds more natural Chinese medicines can be found in the text and reference book “Chinese Herbal Medine Materia Medica” by Dan Bensky & Andrew Gamble.
Animal farming for a medicinal product in what may well be considered despicable conditions is also used done for western pharmaceutical grade estrogen. Mares have been and may still be harnessed and kept in stressfull positions to harvest female urine which is processed to form oral estrogen for human consumption. In my previous profession as a rancher I personally visited one of these farms. Tis no way to treat a horse, one of human’s best animal friends.
The diary writer may not be expressing his/her thoughts in a technical form, but please do not dismiss the information or this great medicine as anti science. Please do not believe and repeat the misinformation and inaccuracies concerning TCM herbal medicine.
[An Arkansas judge resigned Monday after officials discovered thousands of pictures of naked male defendants on his computer, officials said.
A state commission discovered the photos after fielding complaints about Cross County District Judge Joseph Boeckmann's behavior. In a May 5 letter sent to Boeckmann's lawyer, the commission stated that they were "in the process of recovering as many as 4,500 photos," reports NBC News.
Boeckmann would provide with defendants his number and "have them serve what he described as 'community service' at his home." Some of them would get reduced sentences or leniency. He was also often retaliatory when they would not comply.]
I hope the judge will be prosecuted for petty theft or minor embezzlement. Because thats effectively what he seems to have done, according to that report.
If you drop the fake moral outrage about nudity, that is.
what would you suggest instead? If I was the judge I'd have sentenced him to a locked psych ward and permanent guinea pig status for testing new drugs that are intended to cure criminal psychopathy.
[That sounds like advocating torture.]
hardly. Whatever pills we try on psychopaths, would already have passed the safety phase of testing with animal models, so it's only a question of efficacy.
Bottom line is, they've already thrown their lives away, and we would be well justified in executing them, or preferably confining them to prison for life.
The potential of finding a medical treatment would allow for determinate sentencing, which is more humane than life sentences.
Better yet, a treatment that works could be applied as soon as the psychopathy/sociopathy is detected, which for most of them is when they're still juveniles. Successful treatment will prevent further crimes, so what you end up with are law-abiding citizens on pills, rather than dangerous predators who have to be kept in cages.
[That's one way to describe it. "Only a question of efficacy" is one way to describe using prisoners as guinea pigs for medical tests. It's an "efficacy" with a pretty ugly history.]
the land you're sitting on right now... has a pretty ugly history too, as in genocide to take it by force from those who had lived there for the previous 12,000 years. Ever give that some thought?
So what are you going to do about that? Wrack yourself with guilt until you drop dead? Tear down your house and live in a tent? No, obviously. One can recognize the injustices and atrocities without becoming paralyzed.
The "ugly history" meme is frankly a straw man.
Psychopathy and sociopathy (and narcissism) are pandemic in our culture. Meanwhile the media freaks out about autism. The need for viable treatments for psychopathy and sociopathy is as urgent as their latest poster children, whether the scumbag at the center of the present thrash, or scumbags like Karl Rove and the Wall Street fraudsters.
So how are you going to develop a treatment if you can't test it on people who have the diagnosis?
If I am a Navy Seal I am 100% immune from prosecution. Ya wanna know why? Because if I were a Navy Seal - then I would be one of the best people on the planet. Statistically, you'd stand a better chance of being a wealthy Hollywood movie star than you would being a Navy Seal. Call me patriotic; call me insane; call me when you don't honor a Navy Seal with an almost godlike status. Those folks represent all that is right with humans and the world.
["As members of the US Navy, any Seal member is as responsible to obeying UCMJ as well as Geneva Conventions. Your post shows your complete and utter ignorance."]
I'm a progressive, but also a pessimist and a misanthrope. My support for progressive policies is motivated by a firm belief that most people are crazy, evil, or just plain stupid and cannot be left to their own devices without ultimately screwing themselves and/or others. I don't see any contradiction between being a progressive and a control freak because "freedom" to me means freedom for them, not us ... since we have well-developed internal restraints, so while reducing external restraints wouldn't change our behaviors, it would change the behaviors of the people that we are logically most interested in controlling.
The irony is that while mental illness is regarded as grounds for leniency, I could argue that diminished faculties means they're more likely to require strong external controls and simple, powerful associations between undesirable behaviors and negative consequences. If only we really could "throw away" all the clinical psychopaths (as defined by patterns of behavior and/or measurable physical differences in brain structure): throw every banker, MBA, and Republican politician in jail.