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Rostere
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Posts posted by Rostere
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ps for rostere, and not thinking you is using "ironic" correct. is hardly ironic that a jewish group, american or otherwise, would be offended by nazi propaganda. is almost the complete opposite o' irony and the very reason we got a First Amendment? is not ironic at all that an offended group would be angered and overzealous. the irony, that you missed, is that your jewish americans (cite please) were apparently successful in much of europe but not in America.
also, no. hate speech laws is not same as defamation and assault. there is no need for hate speech laws where they overlap with common law crimes. use defamation if it is defamation. duh.
I am afraid you missed the point entirely. The irony was that while our hate speech laws was triggered by an international embarrassment and (among others) pressure from American (Jewish) groups, when I 70 years later go to an Internet forum, it is full of Americans who say that hate speech laws are the worst thing ever. If I was in your situation I would perhaps also be against hate speech laws, but I can only conclude that in practice, the law has not been misused the way Guard Dog hints at.
I am not saying that hate speech laws is exactly the same as defamation and assault. I am saying that from my point of view, with the hate speech laws I am used to, I could see that what is covered by them could instead be covered by defamation and /or assault in different countries. When I say "defamation" I am referring to various roughly equivalent crimes across different countries which might not be defined the same way, same with "assault". When you read about US defamation and assault laws on Wikipedia it seems to cover everything that hate speech does here, apart from more implicit threats, which I guess constitutes the actual difference in practice.
again, there is no irony that the group being attacked would be offended. jewish americans. jewish swedes. jewish poles. whatever. here in the US we got the First Amendment which protects, among other things, offensive speech. the same folks (Americans) who woulda complained that hate speech laws is repugnant to the first amendment in your uncited 1947 incidents has not disappeared. the same folks is fighting 'gainst the tyranny o' the majority. that is why First Amendment is different.
For ****'s sake Gromnir. The irony I spoke of was NOT that the group being attacked would be offended. Which I don't consider ironic, which would be very clear from my previous post. The irony was that Americans pushed for our hate speech laws, while you Americans apparently don't want any hate speech laws for yourselves. If at this point you still do not understand what I meant, it can no longer be excused by me not being a native English speaker and not getting my point across, or something similar.
defamation feels samish to you?Yes, absolutely.
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Like I said before, the very presence of the law (however wrong headed it is) does not necessarily mean there will be abuse at some point but once the law is passed the potential is there. It comes down to this: do you trust the people in your government? Do you trust the people who will be in your government years down the road? In my mind the only rational, even sane answer is "no". From that point it is smart to keep your government on a short leash.
But that is also a very good argument for not having any military, or not having any police force. Those are entities which can be vastly more harmful than hate speech laws, and which, depending on the judicial system, might even be easier to misuse, and historically have been much more often misused than hate speech laws.
I think you are subscribing a bit to a very idealistic world-view, where it is wrong to introduce any laws or elements of state governance at all. Because the truth is of course that basically anything can be misused. But there are also a lot of things which can do good, which can also be misused. So what we are really looking for are laws which asymptotically will accumulate more good than harm to society over time. What you really need is a compelling argument why hate speech laws would do more harm than good in the long term, when you state they can be abused you are stating the obvious, looking only at one side of the argument.
Like I pointed out it is not an absolute right. If a man is on the street shouting "Rise up and kill the jews" that is protected. If someone listens to him and does it the criminal liability is on that guy but the man on the street is complicit in a civil action. If the man on the street walks up to a jewish guy and says "I'm going to kill you" that is assault.
But this is only a difference in specificity. I would be inclined to think that if someone addresses a Jew personally and says "We're going to rise up and kill all the Jews" that is a much a crime as the guy who says "We're going to rise up and kill you" or the guy who addresses a public audience with the words "We should rise up and kill all the Jews". I think it is absurd that you can threaten groups of people in ways you cannot threaten single individuals. Then of course it becomes a question of how far you are going to persecute more implicit threats.
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ps for rostere, and not thinking you is using "ironic" correct. is hardly ironic that a jewish group, american or otherwise, would be offended by nazi propaganda. is almost the complete opposite o' irony and the very reason we got a First Amendment? is not ironic at all that an offended group would be angered and overzealous. the irony, that you missed, is that your jewish americans (cite please) were apparently successful in much of europe but not in America.
also, no. hate speech laws is not same as defamation and assault. there is no need for hate speech laws where they overlap with common law crimes. use defamation if it is defamation. duh.
I am afraid you missed the point entirely. The irony was that while our hate speech laws was triggered by an international embarrassment and (among others) pressure from American (Jewish) groups, when I 70 years later go to an Internet forum, it is full of Americans who say that hate speech laws are the worst thing ever. If I was in your situation I would perhaps also be against hate speech laws, but I can only conclude that in practice, the law has not been misused the way Guard Dog hints at.
I am not saying that hate speech laws is exactly the same as defamation and assault. I am saying that from my point of view, with the hate speech laws I am used to, I could see that what is covered by them could instead be covered by defamation and /or assault in different countries. When I say "defamation" I am referring to various roughly equivalent crimes across different countries which might not be defined the same way, same with "assault". When you read about US defamation and assault laws on Wikipedia it seems to cover everything that hate speech does here, apart from more implicit threats, which I guess constitutes the actual difference in practice.
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More articles:
How does Bill Kristol still have a job, even though he keeps making absurd predictions?
Facts to the rescue in the newly-awakened debate about Bush, 9/11, the Iraq War...
If you live in a country where expressing an opinion, no matter how stupid, ill informed, or downright mean spirited lands you in criminal trouble then it's already too late. You ARE in an Orwellian dystopia.I will remind everyone thinks the 1st Amendment allows the government to prosecute hate speech. What is hate speech you may ask? What ever they say it is.
Haven't most civilized (read: European) countries have managed to have laws allowing the same for quite some time without imploding and/or descending into orwellian dystopias?
That's ironic you know, that you are so opposed to hate speech laws. The Swedish hate speech laws was initially pushed by American Jewish groups, after some wacko handing out Nazi propaganda became an international embarrassment in 1948.
Second, hate speech laws (the ones I'm acquainted with) are not that different from laws regarding threats of violence, defamation that I'm sure you have in the US. Basically, they have been used to conveniently prosecute people who make threats of violence and defame groups of people. For an example of what not constitutes hate speech you have the statement "homosexuals are a cancerous tumor on society". What hate speech does encompass however, is for example the use of Nazi symbols in certain ways. It's not illegal with swastikas in games, movies, historical re-enaction et.c., but if you were to publicly hand out leaflets with swastikas, pictures of Hitler and an invitation to join your political party, that would be considered hate speech (but ONLY if this is done in the public sphere, so if I gave you one such invitation in a meeting between friends, it would not be illegal). Maybe you view hate speech laws as a slippery slope, but that's not how things have turned out in reality. So while I understand your criticism, as it turns out, this type of legislation does not end up being used wrongly.
But it is funny that you should bring this up right now. There's a battle going on right now in the US on the right of individuals and organizations to make political boycotts. Now this is a little too Orwellian even for me. If you think this is crazy, it is already the law in France and in the UK. What would Scalia have said? I guess all that's left to do for American politicians is to make up some good argument for why not boycotting Cuba should be illegal, while boycotting Israel should be illegal.
This is really strange logic. The country that's not a threat is exactly the country that's easiest to intimidate. Putin is known to shed bitter tears over the loss of the Soviet Empire.Russian economy might be a wreck, but they managed to modernize their armed forces to be a real threat (and the nukes of course), and their foreign policy is at least partially working as witnessed by Assad's new found success and the fear Russia is inspiring in Eastern Europe.
I think you have misunderstood something about the situation in Eastern Europe here. None of the nations in Eastern Europe is any military threat to Russia, and so there is no need to intimidate anyone.No, this is strange "logic" from your side. If you intimidate someone, you do so to achieve some sort of goal. I'm sure you don't prowl around kindergartens with a knife just because you believe kids are easy to intimidate. Intimidation is not purpose in itself, on the contrary, you want to avoid it as often as you can. When you intimidate someone, you signal that you are their enemy. They are going to do everything in their power to protect themselves from you - in this case, join NATO.
Russia wants to intimidate Eastern European countries as little as possible. I have no idea how you can be such a complete ****ing stupid opinion on this matter, somewhere in the news you read there has been some kind of major malfunction. Secondly, you should listen to what I say here, because I can follow these sort of things first-hand while you only get the few driplets which trickle down to the English-speaking press.
As soon as anything occurs which can be even remotely interpreted as being a Russian provocation or attempt at intimidation, the entire machinery of pro-NATO opinionmakers jump into action and spin things beyond recognition, do their worst milking "threats" for what they are worth, exaggerating any seemingly intimidating statements or actions for maximum effect. They do this because they know it pays off. Whenever they get something intimidating to point their fingers at, support for NATO in opinion polls is going to increase. Meanwhile, the pro-Russian shills to their best on their side, instead trying to claim that nothing Russia ever does can be interpreted as some kind of intimidation, and that they would never, ever go to war with any of their European BFFs.
There is some serious flaw in your reasoning if in fact the interested parts are doing the opposite of what you think they would be doing.
You've got to understand, the people in Eastern European countries are torn between those who say "Russia will invade any day now! We must join NATO!" and those who say "Russia is a good trading partner, and will not make war on us or our allies". European trade with Russia has increased steadily the last 15 years or so, and up until Putin's Ukraine ****-up, the guys who said Russia was reliable were increasingly winning the debate. Now, it's the opposite. Russia basically made a check-mate on themselves with the Ukraine intervention, with regards to Eastern Europe. Even Lukashenko put out feelers towards the EU, which must be considered an extreme reversal of policies.
That would require a miracle, not a foreign policy.If Russian foreign policy was really working, they would have an Eastern Europe with increasingly pro-Russian opinions and Russian trade ties so deep that sanctions would be impossible to put in place.
No. This would just require them to sit back and do nothing while the EU increases trade ties with them and the Eastern European fringe gravitates towards Moscow as the natural center of trade and commerce for that region. Which is exactly what was happening before the war in Ukraine. The sanctions are already very painful for some Eastern European countries, one can only imagine how things would have looked if they were put in place 10 years from now.
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McConnell has already screwed this up. Although the Democrats have been hell bent against election year appointments in the past (let's face it politicians are all hypocrites; for it when it suits, against it when it suits). Obama does have a duty to nominate a justice if he wants to. And of course he wants to. Whomever he picks will be an absolute disaster for liberty and Constitutional protections against the whims of the government. You cannot stop him from doing it. But the Senate can stop any nomination he makes from ever being confirmed. And they should and will but for God's sweet sake shut the f--k about it. If you are going to torpedo the nomination DO IT. But for do it quietly. It can die in committee and never see a full vote. McConnell goes out there and makes a big f-----g deal about it and now it's a media firestorm. If he kept his idiot mouth shut the media would be distracted by the election and this could have been tied this thing up with minimal attention. He can prevent a recess appointment by just not going into recess. The SCOTUS already slapped Obama down once over that.
McConnell is like a poker player shouting out "I got a Flush" before the river card is played.
The mere fact that these sort of things can happen is just a byproduct of the American system, which requires bipartisan cooperation at times like this. When the parties are not willing to cooperate, the system shuts down. This is the system you created, and it works as expected. I fail to see what all the fuss is about. Who is surprised by this situation?
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Russian economy might be a wreck, but they managed to modernize their armed forces to be a real threat (and the nukes of course), and their foreign policy is at least partially working as witnessed by Assad's new found success and the fear Russia is inspiring in Eastern Europe.
I think you have misunderstood something about the situation in Eastern Europe here. None of the nations in Eastern Europe is any military threat to Russia, and so there is no need to intimidate anyone. The more they fear Russia, the more they are going to flock to NATO and allow NATO to place bases, nukes, weapons and whatever in their countries. Scaring people with a Russian military threat is exactly what the pro-NATO folks are doing. These people were losing ground steadily up until the Russian intervention in Ukraine. Then everybody started eyeing NATO membership and they are still on a roll today, and will be until the conflict in Eastern Ukraine is resolved. Ukraine (previously a country with friendly relations to Russia) desperately wants into NATO and the EU and even Belarus started inching closer to the EU. Finland and even Sweden are going to join NATO at the latest in 2020 if things continue like this, it's an unavoidable consequence of public opinion.
If Russian foreign policy was really working, they would have an Eastern Europe with increasingly pro-Russian opinions and Russian trade ties so deep that sanctions would be impossible to put in place. The entire Crimea debacle happened at exactly the right time to prevent this course of events.
Yeah that worked out well to. Really well. That is a great American success story actually. Distrust of the political leadership led me to purchase a commodity at a low price. Common distrust of that same political leadership caused others to do the same which drove the price through the roof. I sold said commodity at the (artificially) high price and then used that to pay off my mortgage and start a business which I later sold for a profit. It is a strange thing that I should dislike Obama so. Through no help from him his very presence in the White House did work out well for me.
Gold is a crap metal anyway, and only worth so much because people collectively believe it has some kind of fiat value. Just like diamonds. If things really would go to hell, people would laugh at you trying to peddle gold. Congratulations for playing the game on the other gold fans, though.
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So, as you might have not missed, Trump's comments about Bush pushing for the Iraq War in spite of there being no evidence for WMDs has stirred up a veritable ****storm of journalists who claim in extremely strong terms that he "lost the debate" (in contradiction to every poll that has been made) and that this is the end for him, after having claimed the same thing repeatedly since last summer with increasing desperation.
Bill Kristol, the neocon infamous for co-founding PNAC and pushing for a US invasion of Iraq from the 1990s, has basically his entire twitter feed full of huffing and puffing over the indignity that Bush would have pushed for the Iraq War without evidence of WMDs, even though we still have seen no actual credible evidence to this day. It's hilarious and I recommend everyone to give it a read.
A summary of some of the best: Trump is now finally "exposed", "Dickerson should ask all the candidates whether would still support Trump if he were nominee.", "Tonight was a disaster for [Donald Trump]", "The other Republican candidates should be asked how they can continue to take the position they'll support Trump if he's the nominee.", "Before last night, when I said I couldn't support Trump if he won the nomination, friends said, "Oh, we can make the best of it." Not now.", "Trump has slandered the 43rd president and his colleagues by claiming they knowingly lied us into war. Are GOP primary voters OK with this?", "Trump has gone beyond being a critic of Iraq war. Now he says Bush purposely lied us into it. Something no responsible Democrat has said.".
But wait. How could Trump get booed all the time if he is the leading candidate, and every public poll showed him winning the debate? Yes, that's right, the audience was not made out of ordinary voters, but donors and party insiders. More here, here, here, here.
On a slightly related note, the moderator got booed for factchecking Cruz.
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OMG, Trump, you can't say that GWB fabricated WMD evidence for the Iraq War. How rude! Boo! Totally not appropriate to say that Bush has some blame for the 9/11 attacks! We must never talk about that. Especially not in front of a Bush, we must be kind to Jeb! But Hillary Clinton was of course 100% responsible for Benghazi, everyone knows that. Quick, everyone get to your computers, write articles about how hard Trump lost the debate and how we should never talk critically about 9/11 or the Iraq War!
Meanwhile, observations from the fact-based world.
He did go a little far by blaming George Bush for 9/11. That tragedy was an inevitable product of interventionist foreign policy that predates Bush. The same would have happened regardless of who was president in 2001.
Well, yes and no. There was ample evidence of the attacks before 9/11 occurred. You can't blame Bush for creating the threat, but you can blame him for not preventing the attacks. Although that does not necessary implicate him personally of course, nor does it necessarily mean that the attacks were not prevented intentionally. But they did happen, and the more you read about it, the more mind-boggling it becomes that they did not arrest the hijackers earlier.
Rubio was also right about Clinton not dealing with Osama earlier. But while that statement is factually true, it is sort of beside the point in this discussion. It does not make Bush less culpable if others could have prevented 9/11 at an earlier stage, when there was no evidence for any bigger plot.
Funny enough, Hussein admitted to having WMDs. The fault for it is on him.
It is like if I rob a store, put my hand in my pocket, pretend it's a gun then the store owner ends up shooting me b/c he thogut I had a gun... Who is to blame? LMAO
Of course,also he used them against the Iranians and the Kurd's
You are both right, of course. Saddam had the nerve gas agents he had retrieved from the US, which were relevant way before the Bush regime. These were also retrieved after the war, but were (or so the story goes) in an deteriorated state. But this discovery was obviously not all over the world the day after. Everybody knew of these, and if US-made nerve gas in an inert state was the only thing they could show to the world, well, better not to announce any findings at all.
At the point of the Iraq War, there was no reason to believe any of the US' false allegations about Iraq's WMD programs. The actual experts were all unanimous on this.
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Meanwhile, observations from the fact-based world.
Interesting.
The show played a clip of Cheney saying, “We know [saddam Hussein] has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”“Was that true or not,” host Chris Matthews asked.
“We were saying–”
“Can you answer that question? Was that true?”
“No, that was not true,” he finally said.
From where I'm standing, that exchange makes remarkably little sense. In what world is admitting that you basically lied to the entire nation a reasonable move? It doesn't make you any less of a liar.
But it would be absurd to claim at this point that Saddam Hussein had built nuclear weapons. How could he not agree to the allegation being false? The current consensus is that there was no evidence for WMDs, and that Cheney and his cohorts were twisting the facts beyond all recognition and willfully using "sources" with zero credibility.
The Bush administration had years of poking around in Iraq, but they couldn't find a single shred of evidence of any WMDs other than the nerve gases provided by the US itself. Compare this to the deluge of allegations before the invasion. We have the fabricated Iraq-Niger uranium deal, admitted liars such as "Curveball" and his mobile biological weapon factories, the aluminium tube story which was twisted and then leaked by Cheney staff to later support their own arguments, and so on and so forth. All leaked and declassified memos documents point towards people talking about the need to convince people that Iraq had WMDs. Clearly if they had any actual evidence in all of this, they would have put forth that evidence. In light of them pushing the WMD line in spite of there being no evidence, well, that is the definition of lying to the public. But clearly nobody is going to continue to lie when faced with undeniable evidence to the contrary. And there is no need to take the blame yourself when you can just say you were handed these allegations by someone else.
Hell, even Colin Powell - whose image holding the vial at the UN has become the the 21st century's strongest image of the public being fed lies - has admitted the intelligence on Iraq was completely wrong, and had he known that at the time, he would not have invaded Iraq. I don't think any person, not even GWB or Cheney, would say that the intelligence was in fact correct. But everybody is also going to blame someone else for coming up with these wild-eyed theories about Iraqi WMDs in the first place. The question is not whether the charges were trumped up, but who knew about it, and on whose request it was done.
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OMG, Trump, you can't say that GWB fabricated WMD evidence for the Iraq War. How rude! Boo! Totally not appropriate to say that Bush has some blame for the 9/11 attacks! We must never talk about that. Especially not in front of a Bush, we must be kind to Jeb! But Hillary Clinton was of course 100% responsible for Benghazi, everyone knows that. Quick, everyone get to your computers, write articles about how hard Trump lost the debate and how we should never talk critically about 9/11 or the Iraq War!
Meanwhile, observations from the fact-based world.
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I'm not asking you that and I'm not trying to catch you ..I just want to know if you like and or respect him?
So let me get my point, in London he was fighting extradition to Sweden. He had hundreds of supporters and people who paid his legal fees...then he decided to skip bail and went to hide out in the Ecuadorian embassy. His argument was Sweden would send him to the USA where he would be tortured and suffer indescribable punishment
But he really did was
- Insult the entire Swedish legal system by suggesting they would pander to any American request. He also also called the Swedish legal system liars as the rape charges were just fabrications
- He insulted the entire USA legal system by telling everyone he would be tortured...can you imagine a reality under the Obama government where such a high profile person would be tortured?
- And he has made NO effort to actually address the rape charges....
But all of these points are irrelevant to the issue at hand. The Swedish justice system could interrogate Assange in London, which is the current praxis. The only interesting point is that an emphasis has been placed on getting him extradited before proceeding with the trial, which has no precedent and is completely unnecessary. Everything points to that certain people in the Swedish justice system have taken unprecedented steps towards getting their hands on him, without getting a conviction. That is the only interesting and relevant issue in this entire story.
He might be guilty of rape, and might not be, he might be an ****, might not be, but that is kind of beside the point.
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Saudi invading and getting their nose bloodied could be shrugged off with some Stern Words about Russia and Assad- nobody cares about dead Colombians and Pakistanis mercenaries, after all, and nobody likes Saudi (well, except Bruce) plus Obama has far more leeway for ignoring them given he's late 2nd term- but Turkey could easily lead to big escalation, there would be no article 5 protection theoretically but any Turkish attack on the airbase at Hmeimem and Russia would have to hit Turkey proper and at that point article 5 and who started it would go out the window and all bets are off.
So long as it stays in Syria I doubt it would escalate whatever happens, but neither Saudi nor Erdogan like being baulked at all, Erdogan in particular may make the above calculation and instead decide that he can safely escalate from behind NATO.
But nobody likes Turkey either. Unless the status quo is about to be overturned in a major way to the detriment of American and EU interests, Erdogan is hanging very loose and shouldn't count on NATO support. For all practical purposes, Turkey has entered the conflict as an aggressor and can't count on any NATO support.
But really, all they are going to do is bomb the Kurds, seriously, I don't believe they are going to attempt to do anything else in Syria.
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Situation in the US right now.
"But my lord, even with success in the initial states, it would take a number beyond reckoning - thousands - to secure the Republican nomination!"
"Tens of thousands."
"But my lord, there is no such voter base!"
"TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP"-
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Rubio is shaping up to be the candidate the neocons put their weight behind this election.
"Last night on Hardball, Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg News said that Chris Christie had been called by party leaders to pull in his horns on Marco Rubio. He’d gone too far against “a rising star,” Christie was told."
Yeah, I bet Chris Christie is not going to endorse Rubio anytime soon.
Yeah, it's best to go back pretending that the emperor has some clothes on.
More about the pro-Rubio circlejerk.
Apparently Christie called Trump for a "long conversation". The fact that we know that happened, but that Christie has not endorsed Trump yet could mean that Christie has decided not to endorse Trump, though.
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Rubio is shaping up to be the candidate the neocons put their weight behind this election.
"Last night on Hardball, Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg News said that Chris Christie had been called by party leaders to pull in his horns on Marco Rubio. He’d gone too far against “a rising star,” Christie was told."Yeah, I bet Chris Christie is not going to endorse Rubio anytime soon.
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He supports Trump if I recall correctly.Which horse did you pick WoD? If you've ever said I don't recall. My horse has checked out already.
It could very well be Trump vs Sanders this election...
Please let it be so!
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Once again proving your total lack of judgment....Megyn Kelly, she is smoking hot by the way...
Sanders at a Stalinist kibbutz: https://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2016/02/06/bernies-adventures-on-a-stalinist-kibbutz/
Yes, there was such a thing.
The large majority of all kibbutzes were socialist (since socialism was sort of inherent to the spirit of the movement) and the one Sanders was at was not very noteworthy politically speaking. Also, it is important to think about what "Stalinist" means in this context, you have got to understand that there were a lot of people in other countries who sympathized with the Soviet Union, unlike in the US where it was always implicitly assumed that the Soviet Union was evil. At the time the existence of Gulags and the extent of repression in the Soviet Union was viewed as a conspiracy theory by many, or otherwise explained away as not being very serious. These people were not more evil than Americans who supported the Vietnam War in spite of the terror bombing of Hanoi, the massacre at My Lai and so on. So these people might have been supporters of the Soviet Union under Stalin without actually supporting Gulag camps et.c..
A lot of Republicans were probably Nixon supporters back in the day. That doesn't mean that they support the subversion of democracy. Similarly, a former Stalinist (if we assume Sanders was actually 100% politically in line with his kibbutz) probably does not support the obviously bad stuff Stalin did, neither then nor now, but their own image of what the SU was like.
Also, there are a lot of frankly, completely bizarre stuff written in the article you linked to.
"But [Noam Chomsky] admired their commitment to a binational state and their efforts to create “Arab-Jewish working-class cooperation” and a “socialist binationalist Palestine.” A binational state would in effect have meant the end of Israel as a Jewish state."
I think everyone can agree that if they has succeeded in creating “Arab-Jewish working-class cooperation” and a “socialist binationalist Palestine.” the world would be better off than it is today.
But this is probably the worst:
"[Nathan Guttman from the Forward] argues that while from today’s perspective Sanders' history on the kibbutz may seem damning, it did not at the time, because all Zionists know that Hashomer Hatzair made worthwhile contributions to the building of Israel, especially in the “pre-state Zionist military force, the Haganah,” as well as its shock troops, the Palmach."
So Sanders visiting a communist kibbutz would have been damning, if not for the fact that said communists enlisted in the Zionist military? Apparently the important issue at hand is not whether Sanders was a Communist or not, but whether he was a Zionist or not. Frankly, that's absurd, but I guess it's US priorities in a nutshell.
Anyways, read some comments from the other side of the political spectrum here.
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Bruce, I'm not saying the invasion of Afghanistan wasn't justified, I'm just saying Gore wouldn't have done it. And he wouldn't. IIRC he spoke out against any military reprisals to 9-11.
But Gore's VP candidate was Joe Lieberman. And if Gore would have died - say, if an aircraft had crashed into the White House while he was there, or if he would have been in the wrong part of the Pentagon or in the WTC during 9/11, or if he would have been killed with anthrax or something, Lieberman would have been president. And he is a neocon just like Bush.
If we just get rid of Gore somehow, I bet the rest would have turned out the same way as under GWB.
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I'm a minority and all the other minority democrats I talk to prefer voting Clinton > Sanders.
Why?
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I thought we had put the radiation exposure from the Van Allen belt to rest already. *sigh*
Explain to me how the International Space station has survived for 15 years (and counting) but the Apollo missions lasting less than 12d and 13 hrs were doomed? Or how the New Horizon spacecraft has managed to survive for nine years after launching in 2006 and take pictures of Pluto? Or any other of the myriad of space probes launched in the last 50 years.
Surely all of those space probes should have been utterly destroyed by now, right?
Edit: And that would mean that the Chinese, Indian, Russian and Japanese lunar probes would be destroyed as well.
I don't want to give any credence to the theory that nothing could survive crossing the Van Allen belts, but
- The ISS is obviously below the Van Allen belts.
- The New Horizon probe has obviously crossed over the Van Allen belts in a shorter time span than nine years (considering where it is located...).
- I think the idea of the conspiracy theory is that passing the Van Allen belts would greatly damage health of the astronauts, not that it would destroy all equipment.
But settling this is really only matter of measuring or estimating the equivalent dose the astronauts would receive. Not a very interesting conspiracy theory.
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But none of the factors involved in going to the moon is especially esoteric. A cover-up based on the premise that they couldn't handle some particular problem would require the collaboration of very many scientists in countries other than the US. Besides, there have been other trips to/around the Moon with biological payload, before and after, both Soviet and American, so unless you believe all of these are hoaxes as well, travelling to the Moon is indeed feasible. So conspiracy theories about the Moon landing really just add more assumptions than the questions they answer.
TBH the most reasonable conspiracy theory (apart from the one that the Moon recordings were somehow destroyed and had to be recreated) would be that both scientists and astronauts wussed out due to the many things that could go wrong, not due to orders from above but on their own initiative (even though a trip to the Moon was largely feasible to do), did an unmanned mission to the Moon and recorded all material here. They might even have fetched some material from the Moon in this way. But in this scenario, they could still just as well have brought astronauts on board, plus they would have needed some pretty sophisticated semi-automatic control system (although considering this was a mission to the Moon, such a system might not have been infeasible to create).
Anyway, the Moon landings doesn't really feel like the type of thing you would go in 100% to fake. If they were fake, I think we would know by now. I don't see the harm in revealing the conspiracy. Things that would be completely covered up and never revealed would rather be more serious things like assassinations on the behalf of countries or political factions.
I didn't know about there being trips with a biological payload done before it.
As for why they would have done it, I would guess that the public was losing confidence because the Soviets were doing everything first. It's interesting that today it's considered more important that a man landed on the moon that the fact that man went in to space at all, it's like the end of the race was who landed on the moon first. As for why they don't reveal it, I mean why would they? They gain nothing by it and only invite people to look closely to every other event that happened.
Well, there were trips around the moon with biological payload before the Moon landing. This was called the Zond program (and of course the earlier Apollo missions, if you don't count that as being the same thing as the actual lunar landing).
There's been revealed lots of crazy stuff from declassified files. For example, medical testing without the consent of the subjects. That strikes me as way more controversial than that the films from the moon landing were fake/reconstructed.
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This makes your argument even less logical.
Situation A: It's working. We just decided not to send it up and make a fake video instead.
Situation B: It's "working" wink wink and none of the multitudes of massively smart engineers and scientists working on it realize it's a dud despite how much access engineers, mathematicians and scientists would need to have to the plans due to the math and physics required. It's not just "some guy who makes the screws", after all.
Situation C: It's "working" wink wink and every single one of those engineers and scientists are in on it, and none of them have ever let the secret slip.
None of them make sense.
Situation D: It's "working" but can't get past the Van Allen belt, though we will tell everyone that it can.
Situation E: It's "working" but we know that micrometeorites will make Swiss cheese out of it.
Situation n: It's ''working" but we can't get past some problem so will stay quiet about it.
I don't know how the moon landing program worked but it wouldn't be a stretch to say that it was compartmentalized, going by previous operations done by the US. Everyone would do their part and know about their part only.
But none of the factors involved in going to the moon is especially esoteric. A cover-up based on the premise that they couldn't handle some particular problem would require the collaboration of very many scientists in countries other than the US. Besides, there have been other trips to/around the Moon with biological payload, before and after, both Soviet and American, so unless you believe all of these are hoaxes as well, travelling to the Moon is indeed feasible. So conspiracy theories about the Moon landing really just add more assumptions than the questions they answer.
TBH the most reasonable conspiracy theory (apart from the one that the Moon recordings were somehow destroyed and had to be recreated) would be that both scientists and astronauts wussed out due to the many things that could go wrong, not due to orders from above but on their own initiative (even though a trip to the Moon was largely feasible to do), did an unmanned mission to the Moon and recorded all material here. They might even have fetched some material from the Moon in this way. But in this scenario, they could still just as well have brought astronauts on board, plus they would have needed some pretty sophisticated semi-automatic control system (although considering this was a mission to the Moon, such a system might not have been infeasible to create).
Anyway, the Moon landings doesn't really feel like the type of thing you would go in 100% to fake. If they were fake, I think we would know by now. I don't see the harm in revealing the conspiracy. Things that would be completely covered up and never revealed would rather be more serious things like assassinations on the behalf of countries or political factions.
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I don't understand why the US media constantly talk about how Hillary Clinton has such an advantage with minority voters. Surely, the policies of Bernie Sanders must be better from the perspective of most black voters, for example?
A quick search reveals that the African-American vote might be swinging towards Sanders quickly.
US Elections 2016
in Way Off-Topic
Posted
To me it is greatly ironic that when we talk about hate speech laws and how they came to be, a large part of that stems from embarrassment in the international press, from which resulted pressure from American groups. But when you actually talk to Americans, it appears as though they all agree that hate speech laws is a bad thing. The irony results from Americans having an opinion opposite from what you might expect.
From Dictionary.com:
So the irony is that Americans actually have the opposite opinion from their previous advice. I would expect that a Jewish American group still has American values. If it is so obvious to you, and so central an American value to you, I would expect that Jewish Americans think the same. Apparently this is not the case according to you, and I don't understand why.
But the article you linked seems to have something different in mind when discussing "hate speech". Hate speech where I live, "hets mot folkgrupp", literally something like "incitement against group of people" is not at all related to the idea of banning offensive things which get people angry, no matter how offensive they are. It is about taking the laws against threats and defamation/slander/libel and also including abstract or indirect threats. Nevertheless, it's pointless to argue about the views of some journalist about some invented notion of hate speech, when I am referring to a concrete, specific, legal notion of hate speech which you will find in Swedish law.