It would seem from all of these that maybe the Chinese military should consider removing grenades from their arsenal... Or at least put all the rookies through a "throwing NON-explosive objects" course before they move on to grenade training.

@enoch, just for the record, let's be clear about the timeline in this thread. There were a few posts then ching made a post complaining about the video, and making an irrelevant ad hom on Darwin. Some people down voted him for it, and that seems fair to me in that it wasn't a useful or interesting comment. Personally, I didn't, because I know that's what he wanted.

He then got all defensive, and posted more pseudo-philosophical persecution complex bollocks, which I then called him on. It wasn't even a very harsh comment, but then he decided to respond and just kept digging.

Unsurprisingly, other people took umbrage at this.

my problem with @chingalera is not his use of flowery language, but just that he's so bad at it. I can wax eloquent with the best of them and if the situation warrants, I have a positively egregious vocabulary of verbose verbiage in my arsenal of debating devices, argumentative arms and combative communications, but frankly, it's just not needed most of time, and invariably simple language communicates better.

The main issue I have is it's just so pointless. His language is always vague, and I'm increasingly convinced this is deliberate, merely so he can pick and choose how to be offended.

So mission accomplished, another thread derailed, and chingaleras narcissism quotient for the day is filled.

I believe this is his pre-match introduction for the Arsenal game.

Or that the aroma is from a plant/animal/sewer you don't expect it to be from.
But who am I telling this, you know how it is, even uranium or arsenic trioxide are "natural ingredients".

The thing about Arsenal is, they always try and walk it in. Looks bloody nice when it comes off

I thought it was offside when it happened. It always looks strange when a player is in so much space and 95% of the time it's because they're offside.

In football (unlike, I believe, other sports with offside rules) it's the exact moment your team mate passes the ball that matters, which is why the director pauses it then.

Fun fact - this means that the assistant referee (the linesman, at the side with a flag) has to simultaneously look at what players are in offside positions and look at the ball to see when it's passed. If the ball is travelling quite far up the pitch, it's physically impossible for the assistant referee to do this.

Additional fun fact - players and fans are extremely forgiving of this and should this impossible situation result in an error that's to the detriment of their team, they will typically smile wryly and think back to a time when they've been the beneficiary.

The previous paragraph may not be entirely accurate.

Best goal this season. Trick is for Arsenal to sustain this. If they do, they'd be worthy champions.

I think the valid criticism against Putin being the one stating anything is CONTEXT. The charge is that Assad used chemical weapons against his own people. Putin is declaring the need for evidence and all manner of polite international discourse and patience that should be shown. The context is just where did Assad purchase nearly 90% of his military hardware, probably including his chemical weapon arsenal, and without a doubt the missiles and platforms used to deploy it? From none other than Putin, so of course Putin wants the burden of evidence to be set at beyond a shadow of a doubt, and wants it voted on unanimously by the UN security council, which he sits on and has reasonable confidence won't be having a unanimous vote he doesn't favor. I don't recall Putin demanding patience and a UN resolution on how to respond to Chechnya a few years back...

"Democratic utopia" aside, you really think 237 years of US history is making things... better? I'd love to hear you elaborate, because it sounds more and more like we're going the way of fascism.

And no small "l" libertarian believes in corporatism. That's right, here's a fun fact for you: corporations are created by government. Given special limited liability the rest of us are not. Given special government subsidies and welfare and even, at times, given eminent domain privileges.

And I love your "go to" disgusting statist answers of "don't like it then get out of my country" and "you must be a birther." Next you'll call me a racist or tell me to move to Somalia. Waiting for that one.

But the truth is you never addressed my real question here, but I'm guessing that was your point. Distraction and obfuscation tends to be the only weapon in the statist's arsenal. Your move, genius.

(continued conversation from http://videosift.com/video/Democracy-Now-A-Massive-Surveillance-State-Exposed. Feel free to join in.)

@enoch - Specifically, what new power has the government gained here? (this is not a rhetorical question)

I'm with you on torture, warrantless wiretaps, illegal wars, assassinations (in general, thought I think Al Alakwi was justified considering the body count he had racked up), persecution of whistleblowers, persecution of journalists

The current NSA scandal encompasses none of these things. If they want to record your phone calls, they need a warrant. They didn't under Bush - but they do now - and PRISM can't go after your internet data at all.

Even if they did want to grab everyones' information, can you see how difficult it would be to pull off? How many phone calls are made in a day? (millions?) How many warrants would it take to get access to all those calls? How many man hours would it take to record and listen to all those calls? Even if the NSA were full of villainous mustache twirlers, doesn't that seem like a futile task? 99.9999% of the information would be useless.

I believe that the NSA genuinely works to stop terror attacks. I know there has been much bullshit done in the name of the "war on terror", but I believe there is a genuine need for an Agency that deals with National Security. I would imagine most countries have some kind of similar body.

I don't have a problem with information gained through search warrants. My major complaint is that this stuff is not better explained to the public. I know that there is plenty of specific information that needs to be kept secret in order to not blow the cover of agents who are wiretapping suspects, but I think the broad strokes should be put out there. Here's what we are doing. Here's why. Here are the problems we've had. Here are the successes we've had. How are we doing? How can we improve this?

I also think there would be far less need to monitor if drugs were legalized and the war on terror ended.

Anyway, I think this kind of surveillance is going to become status quo, will not be overly problematic and will be completely uncontroversial in a few decades. As far as abuse goes, you don't need any of these high tech contraptions to listen to people's phone calls and track internet usage. These things can be done fairly easily with comparatively primitive tech that can be bought legally at spy stores.

http://www.spy.th.com/audiocat.html

@criticalthud I don't disagree with what you say. My point is that judge approved wiretaps and internet surveillance should be a legal part of the law enforcement/National Security arsenal. How to do it best is beyond me. I think warrants and constitutional protections are decent checks and balances, but I know they are not infallible. As I mentioned to enoch, if someone wants to listen to your calls, be that person a high ranking government agent or your grumpy neighbor, it can be done easily with low tech. Killing these guidelines would do nothing to protect you from a rogue agent or personal vendetta.

If all this leads to a real discussion on the war on terror or the war on drugs, I'd be thrilled. My prediction is that it will just be used as a politicians electoral bludgeoning device until everyone gets sick of hearing about it and it slides off the radar screen.

@enoch - Specifically, what new power has the government gained here?

I'm with you on torture, warrantless wiretaps, illegal wars, assassinations (in general, thought I think Al Alakwi was justified considering the body count he had racked up), persecution of whistleblowers, persecution of journalists

The current NSA scandal encompasses none of these things. If they want to record your phone calls, they need a warrant. They didn't under Bush - but they do now - and PRISM can't go after your internet data at all.

Even if they did want to grab everyones' information, can you see how difficult it would be to pull off? How many phone calls are made in a day? (millions?) How many warrants would it take to get access to all those calls? How many man hours would it take to record and listen to all those calls? Even if the NSA were full of villainous mustache twirlers, doesn't that seem like a futile task? 99.9999% of the information would be useless.

I believe that the NSA genuinely works to stop terror attacks. I know there has been much bullshit done in the name of the "war on terror", but I believe there is a genuine need for an Agency that deals with National Security. I would imagine most countries have some kind of similar body.

I don't have a problem with information gained with search warrants. My major complaint is that this stuff is not better explained to the public. I know that there is plenty of specific information that needs to be kept secret in order to not blow the cover of agents who are wiretapping suspects, but I think the broad strokes should be put out there. Here's what we are doing. Here's why. Here are the problems we've had. Here are the successes we've had. How are we doing? How can we improve this?

I also think there would be far less need to monitor if drugs were legalized and the war on terror ended.

Anyway, I think this kind of surveillance is going to become status quo and will be completely uncontroversial in a few decades. As far as abuse goes, you don't need any of these high tech contraptions to listen to peoples phone calls and track internet usage. These things can be done fairly easily with comparatively primitive tech that can be bought legally at spy stores.

@criticalthud I don't disagree with what you say. My point is that judge approved wiretaps and internet surveillance should be a legal part of law enforcement/National Security arsenal. How to do it best is beyond me. I think warrants and constitutional protections are decent checks and balances, but I know they are not infallible. As I mentioned to enoch, if someone wants to listen to your calls, be that person a high ranking government agent or your grumpy neighbor, it can be done easily with low tech. Killing these guidelines would do nothing to protect you from a rogue agent or personal vendetta.

If all this leads to a real discussion on the war on terror or on the war on drugs, I'd be thrilled. My prediction is that it will just be used as a politicians electoral weapon until everyone gets sick of hearing about it and it slides off the radar screen.

Something that I don't get about Tywin (book or movie version):

He's cold, logical, practical, intelligent, cunning. His relationships with his children mostly make sense given the way he operates.

Cersei advanced his family name by marrying King Robert, which was good. But she makes stupid decisions, takes unnecessary risks, and arrogantly thinks that none of this will catch up with her. Tywin correctly identifies her key weakness being that she thinks she is much more clever than she actually is.

Jamie could be a reasonably useful chess piece in Tywin's arsenal, but by Lannister standards he isn't as cunning and "big picture" intelligent as Tywin is, or even Cersei. I'd say Jamie knows his own limitations in that regard way better than Cersei though. During the Targaryen reign, his position in the Kingsguard would have been potentially useful, but that turns for the worse when he sullies the family name by becoming the "Kingslayer", even if his actions were justified. His Kingsguard position and skillset in general become much less useful during Robert's rule, which further hurts his relationship with Tywin. All still makes sense from a cold, calculating perspective.

Then you get to Tyrion. Tywin has an antagonistic relationship with Tyrion, and seems to refuse to see that Tyrion is the best bet to take over the reins of House Lannister after Tywin himself is gone. I know that it is suggested that Tywin's bias against Tyrion comes from the combination of A) him "killing" his mother in childbirth and B) being born a "freak" dwarf. I have a hard time with that because I see Tywin as being too cold, logical, and pragmatic to let either of those issues cloud his judgement.

So Tyrion "killed" his mother (Tywin's wife). Perhaps that event had a profound effect on Tywin, but considering the way he plays his children as pawns on his chessboard, it seems more in his character for him to have viewed his wife that way also. Especially considering the normal state of noble marriages being primarily chosen to maximize political gain in the setting. Plus, mothers dying during childbirth probably wouldn't be an exceptionally uncommon thing in the setting either.

And Tyrion being a dwarf? So what -- Tywin only cares about what you can do to advance the family name. Tyrion could easily be groomed to take over as family mastermind while keeping Cersei, Jamie, or one of Cersei's children as the public face of the family. Pay no attention to the man, er, dwarf behind the curtain.

I guess I just find Tywin's relationship with Tyrion to be the one thing about his character that feels ... off, at least to me. I feel like Tywin would be more ready to give Tyrion some opportunities to prove himself, and less subjective about judging his performance in those situations.

When I said "just about any" kind of firearm should be legally obtainable, I should clarify that I mean guns. Explosive ordinance, anti-vehicle weapons, fully-auto vehicle mounted machine guns, etc. is where I see the line between reasonable and unreasonable.

My problem with getting into regulating "assault weapons" is that I see it as a very real slippery-slope hazard -- unlike restrictions like waiting periods, registration, legal obligations to keep guns locked in cabinets when not in use, etc. etc.

Here's an example: my gun-nut friends had in their extensive arsenal 2 rifles, an AR-15 and a Ruger Mini-14. The AR-15 is basically equivalent to a military M-16, except the one they had didn't have selectors for 3-shot burst or full-auto (semi-auto only). The Mini-14 was designed around the M-14, which was the military standard-issue rifle until being replaced by the M-16.

Trying to get the government to regulate those firearms seems like a nightmare to me. Is just the AR-15 (M-16) an "assault weapon"? Are they both? I've fired both and I don't think that there is any reasonable way to say that the AR-15 is "over the line" of what a civilian owner should have with the Mini-14 being "ok". The Mini-14 is a fantastic farm/hunter rifle; safe, reliable, and easy to handle -- but in the event of somebody going off the deep end and shooting people up, it is going to be just as deadly/tragic as if they had an M-16.

Basically I think that the right-wing types have a pretty legitimate beef when they say that gun crimes are committed with illegally obtained weapons, and that therefore most heavy restrictions just affect legitimate, responsible gun owners while doing very little to keep guns out of the hands that you really want them out of. I should look for data about gun crime rates comparing legally purchased guns versus black market sources, and gun-related injury and death rates between gun-nut havens like Texas and my neck of the woods in Kansas compared to more liberal urban areas.

Finally, I guess that I should make it clear that I'm OK with restrictions that require you to prove that you are a responsible owner to have any firearm. Waiting periods, background checks, loss of privileges to anyone with a criminal record, having to register and periodically present your firearms to prove that you aren't re-selling them, etc. I consider all that kind of stuff reasonable limitations on our right/privilege to own firearms. But getting into trying to figure out what does or does not classify as an "assault weapon" goes the wrong direction in my opinion.

I'm pretty pro-gun. I grew up in Kansas in a home with a .22 rifle, and had many friends that had a much more extensive arsenal in their homes. One "gun nut" friend had somewhere around 10 high-powered rifles, roughly the same number of shotguns, 3-4 pistols, and even an AR-15 (civilian version of M-16) with extensive clips, flash suppressors, etc. purchased before the "assault weapons ban". That family was very responsible with their guns -- all locked in gun cabinets, fully unloaded, separate from ammo whenever not in use, sons all trained to use them responsibly, etc. I think a family/individual should have the right to do all that stuff. For defense, for hunting, as a farm "tool" (a firearm can be invaluable for protecting livestock, eliminating varmints and pests, etc.), for "home defense" (the least practical/intelligent use of firearms by a civilian IMHO), or even just for entertainment / target shooting -- whatever your reasons I think you should be able to legally purchase just about any kind of firearm.

That being said, the NRA goes completely off the deep end with some of the things it opposes. The Brady Bill, waiting periods, background checks, etc.? I'm fine with those "limitations", and I think that the NRA loses legitimacy putting up a fight against very reasonable measures like those. I understand the threat of slippery-slope issues, but waiting periods and background checks aren't going to bring the whole system down and definitely would do more good than harm.

All that being said, while I somewhat disagree with Jim Carrey's message in the "Cold Dead Hands" video, I liked it and could appreciate it as a good piece of satire expressing his point of view. The Fox News blowhards need to "Lighten up, Francis".

Indeed. It's the difference between allowing the guest (person with information and knowledge beyond that of the novice or aficionado, or layman) the floor in a forum friendly to his cause or of the defining of it.

Fox, MSNBC, (insert corporate news organization here), all have formulas to promote not the free exchange of ideas but the molding of a worldview of her steady patrons using all the wonderful tools in the arsenal of linguistic cybernetics, crowd-psychology, labels and branding....how many can you name??!

The format I gather is the host and co-host, one as devil's advocate with the interviewee free to roam-A well-configured framework for a discussion. No one interrupts on another either, you won't see this on the Telescreens...refreshing.

Also, note the lack of smarmy or smug tone or affectation of the hosts....Is this Canadian??

Alex Jones seems to believe every theory that crosses his desk.

He also should be the poster boy for what's happened to discourse in this country at large. Gone are the days when people try and convince each other, now we only try to get the most attention from the side that already agrees with us. A shouting tirade of uninterrupted drivel, and if you shout loud enough, there seems to be no shortage of people willing to put a microphone in front of you.

Oh, and gun rights as a basis to defend yourself from the military is retarded. The military would lay waste to whatever arsenal you've got held up in your compound in Montana. You wouldn't even get a chance to hear the supersonic missile that blasts you and your preparations to smithereens.

In that type of revolutionary scenario, the only hope would be in a fractured military, and none of that would be very pretty.

The sad thing is , Alex Jones occasionally grazes and actual decent point, like about large multinational corporations being beyond national taxes and laws, but it's lost in so much bullshit, who could care to listen to him.

He would do well to focus on something, instead of trying to fit every bullshit crackpot idea someone tried to sell a book on into a five minute conversation.