More of a police action at this point I thought, but yeah, we didn't "win" yet, no mission accomplished, and now bounties on their heads. That said, we are in control of most areas aren't we? So the guerrilla fighters aren't winning either, they're losing territory but holding out.

None of my guns are sniper capable, my best bet at accomplishing anything would be my shotgun, and I doubt I could pump it fast enough to shoot twice, old and broken as I am, so I would be out quick too. Not what I would call a successful resistance.

I think if the military is part of a government takeover/crackdown, we don't have the slightest chance. The best we could do is identify ourselves as dissidents in need of quick execution.

But that's just like, my opinion, man. :-)

True, but the argument itself suggests the rogue government would have a military we need to protect ourselves from with said rifles.

The public might have access to nearly equivalent rifles, but not the funds to buy those in great numbers. How many people do you know with a .50 caliber and the skills to use it?
Then there's all the weaponry you can't have. Grenades. Mortars. Armored armed vehicles. Drones. Navy guns. Missiles. I R scanning and other optical tech. Training. There's a lot more to the military than rifles.

With high tech warfare, guerrilla tactics should be far less effective than Vietnam, and Americans don't seem up to suicide bombing as a main tactic. It could sting them, but I don't think it could last like Red Dawn.

Once again, I'm pro gun, I have guns, I just think it's ludicrous to think they could fight the military. I'd be lucky to get a second shot off.

To be fair, that assumes that elements of the military or guard do not also join the rebellion. Additionally, guerrilla forces can at least make it too costly for a military to continue, e.g. Vietnam and Afghanistan.

As long as the public has access to rifles that are at least close to the level the basic infantryman has, there is a chance (albeit a small one) that the people could resist a government that turned it's back on the Constitution.

Hm, so the minigun in Predator wasn't *quite* so ridiculous. Since we can grant Jesse Ventura an extra 50-75% strength since he was a fictional action hero, and since in action movies the weight and quantity of ammunition a character may carry (even if its's for miles and miles through a dense jungle) only matters if it is directly relevant to the plot, I think I now consider "Painless" a perfectly reasonable gun for fighting aliens and South American guerrillas.

The last couple of decades I've really begun to see the military as corporate welfare. We have a force capable of crushing, literally crushing any non nuclear power nation 20 times over. We can never use that force against a significant nuclear power nation like Russia or China lest we risk WWW3, the war that will REALLY end all wars (by humanity at least). Our tech is also pretty much useless against a guerrilla force because they can melt across borders and into the local population.

Our outdated technology still would destroy any of the nations other than Russia or China. We have shit mothballed and decaying that would do so. We have a fucking stockpile of main battle tanks that we will never use, but we keep building them and storing them because, apparently, if you let the people go who know how to make them you can never replace that knowledge.

All the while, we let people get mired in school debt, credit debt, and increase our national debt because we need to crush some unknown force. We spend a fraction of what we should be spending on space exploration and colonization. I could go on, but why bother.

If you have any doubt, just look at the F35. By the time it is all said and done, we will have close to half a trillion sunk into that fucking debacle and it STILL isn't functioning capably. Russia and China haven't got anything close to it and we don't need it against anyone else. You could take that money and give close to 2 grand to every single man, woman, and child in the country. Instead we basically are lining Lockheed Martin's pockets.

what a fantastic discussion.
i would just like to add a few points:
1.religious texts are inert.they are neutral.
WE give them meaning.
so if you are a violent person,your religion will be violent.
if you are a peaceful and loving person,your religion will be peaceful and loving.
2.religion,along with nationalism,are the two greatest devices used by the state/tyrant/despot/king to instigate a populace to war/violence.
3.as @Barbar noted.islam is in serious need of reformation,much like the christian church experienced centuries ago.see:the end of the dark ages.
4.one of my problems with maher,harris and to a lesser extent dawkins,is that they view this strictly as a religious problem and ignore the cultural and social implications of the wests interventionism in the middle east.this is a dynamic and complicated situation,which goes back decades and to simply say that this is a problem with islam is just intellectually lazy.

there is a reason why these communities strap bombs to their chest.there is a reason why they behead people on youtube.there is a reason why salafism and wahabism are becoming more entrenched and communities are becoming more radicalized.

islam is NOT the reason.
islam is the justification.

the reason why liberals lose absofuckingalways,is because they not only feel they are,as @gorillaman pointed out,"good" but that they are somehow "better" than the rest of us.

sam harris is a supreme offender in this regard.that somehow the secular west has "better" or "good" intentions when we interfere with the middle east.that when a US drone strike wipes out a wedding party of 80 people is somehow less barbaric than the beheading of charlie hedbo.

yet BOTH are barbaric.

and BOTH utilize a device that justifies their actions.
one uses national security and/or some altruistic feelgood propaganda and the other uses islam.

yet only one is being occupied,oppressed,bombed and murdered.

this is basic.
there really is no controversy.
this is in our own history.
what is the only response when faced with an overwhelming and deadly military force,when your force is substantially weaker?
guerrilla warfare.

so the tactic of suicide bomber becomes more understandable when put in this context.
it is an act of desperation in the face of overwhelming military might to instill fear and terror upon those who wish to dominate and oppress.

and islam is the device used to justify these acts of terror.
just as nationalism and patriotism are used to justify OUR acts of terror.

thats my 2c anyways.
carry on peoples.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/25/french-anti-uber-protest-turns-to-guerrilla-warfare-as-cabbies-burn-cars-attack-uber-drivers/

Seems like the French cabbies still remember what worked in the past: the threat and application of violence. Unions in general should remember how they gained ground against the establishment in the first place: raw power.

Might as well bring back the Wobblies. Bats, crowbars and 2x4s for everyone!

@Lawdeedaw

There's so much factually wrong here, I don't know where to begin. Let's start with this:

"That rape and mutilation has been going on for centuries but was significant in the Second Sino-Japanese War, a distinct war in and of itself."

Japan was in a state of almost complete isolation from the rest of the world between the years of 1633 and 1853. Even after the period of isolation ended, Japan was too busy for decades industrializing to be rampaging through China, as you suggest.

Japan DID eventually get involved in Chinese politics and in fact went to war with them in the First Sino-Japanese War... in 1894. There are no reports of atrocities committed by the Japanese military during this conflict. In fact, quite the opposite, Japan would release Chinese prisoners of war once they promised not to take up arms against Japan again.

The subjugation of Taiwan (which was ceded to Japan at the end of the first Sino-Japanese War but resisted Japanese rule) is a different story. However, accounts of what exactly happened are sketchy and most of the information we have is anecdotal. What can be gleaned from these anecdotes is that the Formasians put up a fierce guerrilla resistance campaign and that the Japanese tortured and killed anyone suspected of aiding the resistance. Still, it doesn't appear to have been on the same scale as the massacres which occurred during the Rape of Nanking.

As you mentioned, some of the most awful abuses were done during the Second Sino-Japanese War between 1937 and 1945 (the Rape of nanking occurred during this war). The abuse ended Japan's defeat in WWII.

What you can see here by doing the math, is that Japan's military abuses in China lasted a grand total of 50 years--from the subjugation of Formosa (Taiwan) to the end of World War 2--not "centuries."

Next, let's talk about misrepresentation. You seem to be implying that Japanese textbooks don't say that Japan is the aggressor in WW2 (or previous conflicts). As I pointed out in my last post, that is flat-out wrong. There is ONE textbook that was approved for use that whitewashes the history but that book has been ignored an not used by the vast majority of schools in Japan.

If you want to criticize Japanese textbooks, you could criticize them on the grounds that though they mention the terrible things that Japanese forces did, they don't go into a whole lot of detail. See this article for more information.

As far as Abe goes, what exactly has he said that is so terrible? Yes, he hangs out with revisionists. Yes, he has expressed his opinion that Japan should stop apologizing for WWII and start looking to the future instead of the past. Yes, he has said that the issue of "comfort women" should be re-examined in light of claims that some of evidence of their existence was fabricated. But these are not really radical statements by any means. And many people and newspapers do strongly and openly disagree with his statements, so this idea that Japanese people don't challenge him is completely wrong as well.

Yasukuni is a total clusterfuck of a situation. It is a shrine to ALL of Japan's war dead. This includes war criminals, but it also includes regular soldiers just doing their duty. In terms of Shinto beliefs, all of their souls now reside there. Basically, if you want to pay your respects to someone who died in military service in Japan, you have to go there to "see them."

Abe is a total dumbass (and the press let him know it) for going there because he knows already how China and Korea will perceive it, but on the other hand his going there does not mean in any way that he reveres the war criminals who are interred there. I have no idea what his personal views are but publically he has stated that he and his wife go there to remind themselves about the terrible toll war had on Japan the last time Japan engaged in it.

Finally, as for the link you provided, it was to a year-old opinion piece that lacks context. Abe made that statement at a time when it was revealed that some of the evidence of the existence of comfort women in Japan had been faked. It was later decided that the apology would not be changed. In fact, The Japan Times is reporting that it is likely that Abe will mention that "comfort women" had their human rights violated by Japan in his upcoming address on the end of WWII, so the comparison of him to Ahmadinejad is a bit far-fetched.

(Reuters) - About 30 Syrian government fighters were killed when rebels set off a bomb in a tunnel beneath a checkpoint in a northwestern province, activists said on Tuesday.

Videos and images posted by opposition supporters online showed a massive plume of smoke and earth shooting into the air near a small town as men shouted "Allahu akbar" (God is greatest).

Rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad regularly carry out guerrilla attacks against his forces, but the size of the blast, which occurred on Monday, was unusual.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said the blast took place outside the town of Ma'arat al-Nu'man in the northwestern Idlib province.

At least two officers were among those killed when insurgents from the Islamic Front and the Shields of the Revolution Council set off tons of explosives in a tunnel running from the road to the checkpoint, the group said.

Goofball multi-instrumentalist chicks have been the guerrilla my dreams...

Over the long term, the comparative levels of scarcity that would result from a complete hand gun and assault rifle ban would make it difficult for these weapons to play such a common role in violence amongst minorities.

But of course we can't ever ban these weapons because we need to have the option of starting a guerrilla war against the US government in suburban Cleveland - because that's the only way to get rid of tyranny!

Round up is fucking poison and deleterious to all soil, all food crops, humans, puupy dogs, gophers, and kitty-cats. I and I commend Percy Schmeiser on some guerrilla ball-sack-action against the assholes that are, Babylon Monsanto.

Patent infringer MY ASS Monsanto, he's a fucking hero.

C-Engines' right, a war wouldn't do anything unless you're talking about the systematic elimination of individuals behind an empire that's designed to instill a lasting, generational fear in those who would continue the push for ultimate power and control. The only changes that will come will be more total control unless a dialog manifests with meaning and purpose directed at the control mechanism's infrastructure by a majority of regular peeps unsullied by the indoctro-education of so-called knowledge of the the way the world works.

Until people stop trying to work within the framework of rules and engagement that has been created by the same perpetrators of our enslavement, the majority of our sentient, big-brained species may as well get used to the idea that the few freedoms you imagine yourselves to have now are illusion and your children will not enjoy one one-hundredth of that same illusion in 30 years.

Guerrilla-tactics with a broadband and well-coordinated take-down is the only way to end the paradigm that has been in place for thousands of years. That or some unifying world-wide catastrophic necessity for the survival of the species....like a frikkin' meteor storm some other worldwide natural disaster or some influence from without.

The nature of the game of experts and critiques schooled or otherwise in the realm of art, is that even if these are 'replicas' or forgeries that some smugly fart-sniffer will STILL spend bank on the gamble-I hope that's Banksy is disguise, say what you will about the artist, the guys' a genius guerrilla marketing enigma-