Using violence, torture, and the backing of the Russian military, and after numerous failed coup and assassination attempts he took and held tenuous control. Torture hardly played a huge roll or he would have been successful the first time, or the second. He retained and increased that power in the 70-80's by spending his huge amounts of oil money on the people, mostly not by torturing them (except for Kurds).

The "others in the room" we're his forces, not random people who murdered for him out of relief. He didn't hand weapons to an adversarial group he was convincing to follow his lead by having them kill those who wouldn't. I mean...WHAT?

You use fear mongering as proof torture works? Um... ok.

Since what I've been discussing is torture working to get sensitive, useful information, not the long term terrorism and brutal oppression of a population, I'll just move on.
Yes, despots can ride nations into the ground by making the populations powerless and fearful until those populations revolt. Yes, an iron hand and willingness to make your population stone aged can allow you to hold on a long time. Yes, torture can be part of that, but only one small unnecessary part, a strong military willing to murder unarmed civilians is what it takes, torture or not.

Wow, now you think the U.S. military taking out Saddam proves torture works because ...force and violence?

Strength vs weakness is what worked, not torture or terrorism, that's why he failed, brought down by a coalition of locals and Americans with his military deserting him in droves when he needed them most.

Torture is not a functional interrogation technique nor a means to foster loyalty, only fear. Fear only works until someone adds hope to the equation.

W/Junior was responsible for >500,000 Iraqi civilian deaths. That's not talked about much.

We called it "drum and bugle corps" when I did it (Santa Clara Vanguard, DCI '98). Basically a military-discipline civilian marching band competition tour across the US.

And then we can largely agree. Can we agree even further though that listing only one combatants crimes can become misleading?

America dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Prior to that they fire bombed virtually every other Japanese city, killing 100 thousand in Tokyo alone.

The fighting on the ground on the islands reads like one long list of horrific war crimes against dehumanized Japanese victims again and again...

I know the illustration shouldn't be necessary, but presenting a single sided selection of choice facts can be extremely misleading, and the video here, like many on Israel today, does exactly the same thing.

It's pretty but what does it say? So - weapons exports: sold to military, sold to civilian, transferred for use in conflict by US military, transferred for us in conflict by other countries? What is included - is a fighter jet a weapon? is a tank a weapon? My point: I don't know whether to be astounded or just "meh". It's data without scale or comparison (e.g. 1/3 of all firearms sold in the USA are produced internationally). Hmmm...

Wait.....WHAT?!?
Have you finally realized/admitted Trump is just a Putin lackey and anti-American tool!?
What was it? His suggesting we recognize Russian Crimea/Ukraine in violation of numerous treaties and international laws, and against our own self interests?
His praise of a power hungry dictator who recently helped gas civilians?
Was it his publicly taking an expert professional liars self serving word (Putin) over his (our) entire intelligence communities solid evidence about election meddling, meddling he now both claims didn't happen and blames on Obama's inaction, all while his administration does far less to stop future attacks that he actively encourages with his acceptance and dismissals?

Holy shit! Something got through the bubble. Mark this date for posterity.

Let's call them what they are.

Concentration camps.

The first stages of Ethnic Cleansing.

I'd like to point to the following article via Slate.com

"As one of the few journalists permitted to tour the government’s new internment camp, about 40 miles from the southern border, the New York Times correspondent tried to be scrupulously fair. Forcing civilians to live behind barbed wire and armed guards was surely inhumane, and there was little shelter from the blazing summer heat. But on the other hand, the barracks were “clean as a whistle.” Detainees lazed in the grass, played chess, and swam in a makeshift pool. There were even workshops for arts and crafts, where good work could earn an “extra allotment of bread.” True, there had been some clashes in the camp’s first days—and officials, the reporter noted, had not allowed him to visit the disciplinary cells. But all in all, the correspondent noted in his July 1933 article, life at Dachau, the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany, had “settled into the organized routine of any penal institution.” "

Yes... he did it. If there were any doubts left, this should remove them. Trump officially put the United States on the same path as Nazi Germany.

What are you going to do about it?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

-Niemöller

It's not even as much that BLM disrupted the Pride parade, but that one of their demands was to ban the police from participating in the parade in the future. That's actively destroying years and years of hard fought progress to bring people together, and I can't fail to call that a bad thing. Again, I hope the US chapters are different in that much, and in many states there is also much more justified outrage against the police, which is very much unlike up here in Canada.

Canada's BLM held sit in protests demanding to meet with the chief of police and then repeatedly abandoned the meetings before they were supposed to happen. They then went on to condemn the police chief for having zero interest in protecting black civilians in Toronto. FYI, the chief of police of Toronto at the time was a black man.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/mark-saunders-police-black-lives-matter-1.3587533

A BLM toronto co-founder railed at how our Prime Minister, who makes Barack Obama look like very right -leaning, is a white supremacist terrorist. Rhetoric that just means absolutely nothing and looks like little more than gross false victimhood.

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/nzd4px/black-lives-matter-toronto-called-justin-trudeau-a-white-supremacist-terrorist

And then for good measure another co-founder squeezed in a quarter million dollar 'overtime' payment on their last week with the University of Toronto's Student Union. When the Student Union sued to get that money back as their was no documentation justifying paying out that kind of money all of a sudden the Student Union were racists. Eventually the case was settled with an undiclosed amount returned.

https://thevarsity.ca/2017/07/31/the-breakdown-the-utsus-lawsuit-against-former-executive-director-sandy-hudson/


BLM Toronto has done enough harm I am pretty comfortable saying I oppose them. The goal of making race relations better is of course good. Correcting injustices is of course good. I just don't see that coming from a group taking the actions I've seen, IMO they are actively making things worse, not better.

Again, that is specific to up here in Canada, I can't imagine that the US chapters can be as bad without it having been all over the media where I couldn't miss it. That said, up here I would likely have altogether missed everything but the parade as well save for having personally witnessed a just disgusting racist attack on someone at a an event. That led me to discover the attacker was tied in with BLM Toronto and suddenly seeing that as perhaps not an entirely isolated event .

I would argue your military dictatorships are, in truth, just REALLY well equipped police forces, not actual militaries. Police have always had an us vs them attitude towards "civilians". The military has always felt it was a protector.

That's why I'd trust a soldier before the "law".

On the chance your 'jokingly' isn't obvious, MLK, Ghandi and Mandela's causes ALL had support from those willing to use violence, aka better weapons would help.

Malcolm X would be the next most prominent figure beside MLK. Indian independence wasn't won with peaceful hunger strikes alone, and again lots of violence in South Africa.

Ghandi even bridged the gap to working alongside the effective army fighting for India's independence:
" I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.
But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment, forgiveness adorns a soldier."

Speaking more to the point of America today, pretty much no civil war has been fought exclusively with civilians on one side, and the government, police, army and all other branches of the state united on the other. The reason being that if that kind of unity within the government against the civilian population exists, you ALREADY have tyranny.

In America, the example would be if a president or a particular political party decided to try for tyrannical over reach, would the American public be better equipped to resist that with or without guns? In civil war, guns give power to the majority of public opinion that would need to be there otherwise. In a nation with an unarmed public, whatever the majority of soldiers side with is likely gonna win. With an armed populace, the civilian opinion matters more.

I think it's an overall modest observation, and one that really doesn't in anyway make it obvious that the modest benefit is worth the costs. That is another matter, but you can't factually claim that there isn't a meaningful difference between an armed and unarmed population when facing civil war.

As @jimnms alluded to re Afghanistan, civilians may not be able to 'win', but well armed civilians can certainly make it hard, bordering on meaningless for their opponent to win either.

No, automatic weapons don't guarantee liberty from tyranny. On the flip side, try opposing a tyrannical government without them.

Afghanistan has a pretty damn good track record of fighting off larger military invaders while being equipped with lower tech firepower.

It almost sounds like you are arguing for allowing civilians to have access to equivalent military weaponry so we can stand a chance if our government goes rogue.

That makes the argument entirely without merit once you admit they are useless against governments, who have armies, tanks, aircraft, armed drones, missiles, and far more.

Modern warfare is just not winnable by civilians....particularly here in America. The only possible way to win is convince the military to not fight you, and using guns against them makes that impossible.

@eric3579 -- I agree that that is a sticking point. I have trouble buying it because there are already limitations on the "right to bear arms".

The 2nd amendment:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.


Certainly, one could argue that licensing / registration of firearms would count as infringing on the right to keep and bear arms. However, "arms" is rather unspecific. Merriam Webster defines it as "a means (such as a weapon) of offense or defense; especially : firearm".

The government has already decided that limiting the access to some "arms" is fine, and doesn't infringe on the constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms. For example, in many states it is "legal" to own a fully automatic, military use machine gun. BUT:
1) It had to be manufactured before 1986
2) Said machine gun has to be registered in a national database
3) The buyer has to pass a background check

So there's 3 things already infringing on your constitutional right to bear a specific kind of "arm". A firearm -- not a missile, grenade, or bomb or something "obviously" ridiculous. And actually, even "destructive devices" like grenades are technically not illegal to own, but they require registration, licenses, etc. that the ATF can grant or refuse at their discretion. And their discretion generally leads them to NOT allow civilians to exercise their right to bear that particular sort of "arm".

If those limitations / exceptions aren't an unconstitutional infringement on the right to bear arms, certainly reasonable expansion of the same sort of limitations might also be OK.

I empathize with pro-gun people's fear of "slippery slope" escalating restrictions; the potential to swing too far in the other direction. But at some point you gotta see the writing on the wall. To me, it seems like it would be better for NRA-types to be reasonable and proactive so that they can be part of the conversation about where and how the lines are drawn. In other words, accepting some reasonable "common sense" limitations (like firearm licensing inspired by driver's licensing) seems like a good way to keep any adjustments / de-facto exceptions to the 2nd amendment reasonable (like the laws about machine guns). Otherwise, you're going all-in. With a not particularly good hand. And that's when you can lose everything (ie., 2nd amendment removal rather than limited in sane ways that let responsible people still keep firearms).

In a way Scahill is like a less educated\refined version of Noam Chomsky. He does good investigative work, and dedicates enormous energy into exposing and spotlighting the bad things that America does. That has a place, but without a similarly harsh and critical light being cast on America's targets/enemies it becomes propaganda.

Jeremy says he wouldn't work with Charles Manson to oppose trump, fair enough. What about kind of working with Stalin to defeat Hitler? Say, at least agreeing not to attack Stalin while you both deal with Hitler?

The world is incredibly complicated and the singular and lone focus on American mistakes paints a deceptive picture. Pointing out the problems with America's war in Iraq, like torture and Quantanamo and declaring these as so immoral we needn't even look at Saddam's past is propaganda. Saddam waged two campaigns of genocide against his own people. When America saw the abuses at Abu Ghraib, they shut it down and attempted to punish those responsible. When Saddam's brother used chemical weapons to exterminate Kurdish civilians Saddam commended him for it. Guantanamo is bad, but it doesn't mean we should fail to acknowledge the concentration camps that Saddam operated during his genocide of the Kurds. It doesn't mean it's unfair to observe that conditions in Saddam's prisons across the country were far more cruel during his entire reign.

There's a nuanced place here that Scahill and Chomsky and pundits like them just fail to acknowledge and encourages inaction at times were the lesser evil may well be for America to do something, even if aborting Gadafi's genocide doesn't make Libya a paradise after.