Yet it is how they were ultimately defeated.

I don't mind swimming against the stream on this one; i think it's fine to punch nazis.

When you express your support for nazis, you're not just saying you have an alternative viewpoint. You are saying that you support the ideals of the old nazi party, you support Hitler & his goals, you want to see people exterminated in a genocidal system and you celebrate that such a system existed. You are actively pursuing a course of action that, if successful, will result in the deaths of millions of people. Your goal is to kill people.

I don't think there's any comparison to the same kind of treatment of the Phelps family. They celebrate death, misery and hate, but they never killed millions of Jews and other 'undesirables.' They are unconscionable bastards, but that's it. Your end goal in supporting them is not violence & genocide.

I can justify breaking the law to punch a nazi in the same way i can justify breaking the law to protest a fascist government. Laws aren't divine or sacrosanct, and they certainly aren't constant. Our oligarchs meddle with them on a daily basis. The right thing to do may not always be the legal thing to do, and you should not rely on your government to decide right and wrong for you (that's what nazi germany thrived on - 'i was only obeying orders'). The "law" argument will never convince me.

But i might be convinced for other reasons.

Wait....@bobknight33, why are you posting fake news? I get it, CNN is a reputable source if they are saying something that might support a right wing narrative or excuse some Trump action, but only then, right?

The important question they ignored was, what are the outcomes of this meddling beyond election results. I would say that it has backfired as often as it 'worked', and often when it works, it still backfires, because the candidate we shove through turns out to be horrible for us or the other country in the long run. Is not this the kind of meddling Bin Laden said was a large part of the reason for his attacks?

I do agree, we've been guilty of this repeatedly. That doesn't mean we should ignore it when it's done to us, or that we have no right to complain and investigate, and take action against it. It means maybe we should think twice before doing it again, and feel ashamed for being so outrageously vulnerable to it ourselves.

Remember Scott Ritter? Arms inspector, made the rounds with Seymour Hersh about a decade ago with "Target Iran", when the Bush administration was in a very bellicose posture vis-a-vis Iran.

Interesting guy, often amongst the first to call out attempts to fabricate a casus belli on Middle Eastern nations.

He had a go at the NSA document supposedly leaked by Leigh Winner. Check it out: Leaked NSA Report Short on Facts, Proves Little in ‘Russiagate’ Case

"In many ways, the rush to blame Russia for attempting to undermine American democracy by meddling in our election system has become a self-fulfilling prophesy. The damage done to the credibility of our democratic institutions as a result of the politicized congressional proceedings has been incalculable, and by all accounts the worst is yet to come.

The Russians barely had to lift a finger—the wounds derived from this political maelstrom have all been self-inflicted. The fact that the mainstream media have been unable to accurately report on the issue only underscores the depths to which institutions and agencies will fall to deride and destroy that which they detest and abhor, namely President Trump."

Reuters headline: Exclusive: Trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed contacts with Russians: sources

... and then the content:
"The people who described the contacts to Reuters said they had seen no evidence of wrongdoing or collusion between the campaign and Russia in the communications reviewed so far."

"Those discussions focused on mending U.S.-Russian economic relations strained by sanctions imposed on Moscow, cooperating in fighting Islamic State in Syria and containing a more assertive China, the sources said."

Then there's the cover of Time.

I have no idea if the media's quest to defenestrate Trump will be successful, putting avowed theocrat Mike Pence on the throne, but this I believe: it will destroy the last bit of credibility the media had left. All the hyperventilation without ever putting up anything conclusive is suicide in slow-motion.

For eight months now, they've been running the hacking story, which went from hacking to influencing to meddling. Not once have they produced evidence, neither the media nor the intelligence agencies, yet they keep on insisting it's the real deal.

You forget, the claim that Russia worked with Trump's campaign came long before Nov. 7.
Glad to hear you've realized Russia did interfere, to help Trump. Now you just need to realize they talked about it...which is clear if you just note how many of his top advisors, including his son in law, had repeated contact during the campaign...contact there was no legitimate reason to have.

Yes, the left wanted Comey gone for being political...in January (or before) not now when he's ramping up the investigation into the person who removed him. Once an investigation into Trump started, it became 100% inappropriate to fire him until it concludes.

Um....hating one candidate more means you favor the other. What?

I do agree, it's pretty hypocritical of us to complain when we meddle around the world in elections, but that doesn't make it acceptable, it just means we should maybe consider stopping now that we see the disastrous issues that come from being led by a foreign agent first hand.

Russia involvement in the USA election and Russians and Trump working together to win the election are two different things.

Russia was involvement with the election. Putin despised Clinton.

The Clinton election was to be a landslide in the eyes of the Democratic party and its biased media. They held this believe up until 9pm ish election night when everything started to fall apart.
They were dead wrong, shocked to the core and befuddled. Weeping and gnashing of teeth began and a Scapegoat was needed.

A quick blame of why Hillary did not win had be be made.


Russian in bed with Trump was a convenient story invented to hide the truth that Hillary ran a bad election campaign.

The firing of Comey was a shock. But the left also wanted him gone. Careful what you wish for.

This is just a continuation of the Anti Trump story line that was the media have pushed from day 1.

Russia did not favor Trump they just hated Clinton more.

USA meddles in other countries elections also.Obama meddled in the Israeli elections. It happens.

His liberal audience cheers fervently at the Comey firing. -- Guess they did not get the new memo that if trump did the firing then Comey firing is a bad thing.



Funny to see liberal spin of this-- Leftest wanted Comey fired for his meddling in the election 1 week before the vote, costing Hillary the election. But today, politically this is a shit storm from the left.. because Trump fired him. Bitch an moan leftest. how funny.

Zero Russia involvement presented and Trump is not under investigation.

Leftest witch hunt.

No INTENTION to expand, not a guarantee, just a statement of their alleged intentions at that time (90).
Are the words of diplomats to hold no weight, no, but they certainly aren't the same as a treaty either. The nation, and NATO, are not beholding to a statement by one diplomat not included in the final draft of the treaty being discussed, certainly not for 26 years without addressing it.
If NATO's expansion to the east was such an issue, it should have been taken up in 97 when those nations were added to NATO, not now 20 years later because NATO actually seems ready to defend them.

I do think Russia's involvement had a part in electing Trump, but they are FAR from the only player in that tragedy. The only one's to blame are the American voters....like me.

Yes, it is amazingly hypocritical and self unaware for Americans to complain that another country tried to meddle in our election. We have installed our choices in so many other countries by meddling in theirs, it's insane that we would really mention it. I must admit, I had not looked at it that way, but you're correct. We hardly have a leg to stand on in that argument.

Is there a signed treaty? No. But the US SoS (James A. Baker III) and the German Foreign Minister (Hans-Dietrich Genscher) are on the record in 1990

Genscher is on video tape stating very clearly: "Wir waren uns einig, dass nicht die Absicht besteht das NATO-Verteidigungsgebiet auszudehnen nach Osten. Das gilt übrigens nicht nur im Bezug auf die DDR, die wir da nicht einverlaiben wollen, sondern das gilt ganz generell."

In English: we are in agreement that there is no intention of expanding the NATO security zone eastwards. This applies not only to the GDR, which we do not intend to incorporate, but in general."

Or how about Baker's words, Feb. 9, 1990, St. Catherine's Hall at the Kremlin:
"If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the East."

And the minutes show Gorbachev as having said:
"Certainly any extension of the zone of NATO is unacceptable."

To which Baker replied:
"I agree."

Again, no treaties, nothing. But some people, myself included, make the argument that unequivocal statements of a nation's highest-ranking diplomat are to be taken seriously, unless overruled by explicit, written agreements.

And from what we've heard from Gorbachev over the years, he took them for their words.

Admittedly, having been replaced by Yelzin who received massive "help" from the US might have made Gorbachev a little grumpy.

What remains at the end is this: NATO was created as a defensive alliance against the Soviets and wasn't dissolved when the Soviet Union collapsed. The highest-ranking diplomats of the primary players at that time (US, FRG) are on the record with promises that NATO wouldn't expand eastwards after the German reunification. Now NATO is closer to Russia's border than ever and the Ukraine had a democratically elected government (they were thugs, but elected) overthrown by forces that had massive support from the US. As a result, fascist militias wearing SS insignia are roaming free in Novorossiya, with government support.

If I were Russia, I'd be pissed.

But I'm in Germany, so now I have a strongman in charge of Russia, a thug who has journalists and opposition in general killed, on the one side, and the Americans who installed a Nazi-sympathising regime in Ukraine on the other.

What's not to like about it.

So when the US establishment then goes on a full-blown bender to position Russia as a scapegoat for now having to live with President Trump, they are playing with fire just to distract from their fucked-up domestic policies.

And we're not even touching on the hypocrisy of the US being outraged when some foreign nation meddles in their internal affairs. Of course Russia tries to influence US politics in their favor. Guess what, so does the UK, France, Germany, NZ, China, Japan, even bloody Luxembourg for all I know. Just like the US exerts influence on German politics (ie German Marshall Fund, Atlantikbrücke, etc), and on politics of every other nation of significance.

CRISPR-Cas9
Bring me a gene
Encoding for a specific protein
Make a few snips at this coded locus
You work so well inside a streptococcus
Cas9
I'm so alone
Without your scissors in my chromosome
Cut me up and do it clean
CRISPR-Cas9 bring me a gene

CRISPR-Cas9
Keep me a gene
A viral sequence you've already seen
Chopped into bits and stored as genomic
With clustered repeats
That are palindromic
Cas9
Bind with this code
Use it to target infections of old
Immunized like a vaccine
CRISPR-Cas9 keep me a gene

CRISPR-Cas9
Cut me a gene
With a precision that I've never seen
Unzip a strand and interrogate it
Seek out your sequence until you locate it
Cas9
Lock into place
And do your job as endonuclease
Chop just like a guillotine
CRISPR-Cas9 cut me a gene

Snip snap!
CRISPR-Cas9
CRISPR-Cas9

CRISPR-Cas9
Bring me a gene
By commandeering my repair routine
A strand to match your severed location
For some homologous recombination
Cas9
Cheap and precise
Rewriting genomes from microbes to mice
And soon the humble human being
CRISPR-Cas9 bring me a gene

CRISPR-Cas9
Give us a gene
Give us a miracle like that one Nazarene
‘Cause giving the lame their legs and the blind their sight is
In view for dystrophy and retinitis
But CRISPR-Cas9
What if you fall
Outside our power and inside us all
That really could incite a scene

When this terrible wonderful power unsettling
Opens the door to unethically meddle
Is ev’ry congenital malady bettered
Sufficient to warrant genetics unfettered
To modify man in the manner of Gattaca
Raise up a mammoth or make a rattata
Dramatical medical means to eradicate aging
Or cancer or make a fanatic
A mass epidemic a weapon nefarious
Single mosquito to wipe out malaria
Send in a viral infection to ferry a
Cure to the cells of an HIV carrier
Freed of disease as we're free to uncover
What nature and accident failed to discover
And free to be other than
All that we ever have been

CRISPR-Cas9
CRISPR-Cas9

Oh CRISPR-Cas9
Bring us a gene
You wondrous ribonucleoprotein
You have the power to vanquish or save us
Who would have thought that the microbe that gave us
Cas9
S. pyogenes
The source of strep and flesh-eating disease
Housed this marvellous machine
Full of uses great and obscene
CRISPR-Cas9 bring us
Please don't sting us
Cas9 bring us a gene

With adenine
And thiamine
Incite a scene
Cas9 bring us a gene!

The western world had no right to go intervening in Syria's internal affairs in the first place. Guns and mercenaries were flooding in what was Assad supposed to do about it? What about those chemical weapons, notice we don't use that as a reason for our meddling anymore? It's because we now know that it was actually rebels on our side who used them and they were supplied by a Saudi prince. We constantly try to imply is was Assad but in fact we knew it was our side almost from day one. Whats the real reason for all this mess? Well it's oil of course. Qatar wanted to build oil pipelines in Syria and Assad wanted to do a deal with the Iranians and Russians instead, so we decided to give him and his people the international equivalent of a punishment beating. The cold war is over? Pull the other one.

Sanders wrote an essay on the sexual dynamics between men and women 40 years ago, it's nowhere near the same as trying to legally meddle in people's private bedroom activities.
I also recall no mention of pedophilia in that video you linked to, I would be interested in hearing where you got the idea that he was pro pedophile.

@Jinx

I am a bit confused. Earlier you used the word "conned" to describe the game, now you say it's not a hoax.

Aside from that, you certainly have voiced legitimate concerns. I'm also sick and tired of the usual pre-order business model. I decided that after playing the utter mess that was the Halo: Master Chief Collection for Xbox that I would never pre-order a game again. It's one thing to buy a game on day one, but yeah, in the usual sense, pre-orders need to die.

Thing is though...this is a kickstarter, thus the rules are different, by it's very nature, you HAVE to sell promises and pre-orders, or at the very least, contribution promises/swag/perks/etc. It's an alternative to going to a publisher and begging them for money to make the game and risk having the publisher exert creative control over the game/product/etc and whatever other compromises a publisher might force a developer to make. How many games have been utter shite because the publisher meddled and forced a game out before it was ready. Too many.

With kickstarters, it's the other way around. Backers demand that a game not be released before it's ready, but now the hype train has to start chugging along WAY earlier than a publisher-backed game in order to generate interest, because now the publishers are the backers and this is happening long before a game even gets to an alpha stage.

There is a risk with any kickstarter. If it was anyone other than Chris Roberts, I doubt I would have backed it. I backed the Shadowrun games mainly because it was being run by the guy who created the game originally and that turned out to be successful...twice. I'll be going for the hat-trick with the Battletech game they're working on now. Chris Roberts and Jordan Weisman both have solid reputations and have demonstrated they can make solid games. If it was Derek Smart or someone relatively unknown, I doubt I would have backed.

I find it interesting how the detractors are coming from various levels. Some of the detractors seem to be against kickstarters in general. Some seem to be against SC specifically and I think others are simply against it just because they want to see something ambitious crash and burn....and then there's Derek Smart who seems to have a personal, unhinged, vendetta against Chris Roberts.

Regardless of how successful SC will or won't be. SC is still a niche game by the very fact that it's a space sim. Even if it is a complete and total success, it's going to be a very complex game with a crazy amount of information to absorb and it will be difficult to be good at it. It is not for the casual gamer. So it will never reach mass appeal or become a widely recognized franchise like, say, Halo or Call of Duty. I think that is part of the appeal. A couple decades ago, publishers as a whole gave space sims the middle finger, but now thanks to crowdfunding, space sims are making a comeback.

Roberts has clearly tapped into something or people wouldn't be giving him money. He originally only asked for 2 million dollars, so even he didn't think it was going to be this big. (Europe is going absolutely bonkers for Space Citizen, they're way more into SC than we are in America)

For vaporware...it's amazingly....existant

It's funny to watch Star Citizen truther trolls claim it doesn't exist when there are hundreds of thousands of people who have played it and the numerous livestreams out there on youtube.

An earlier version is on my computer that I can play right now.

But yeah, keep pretending that it's some grand conspiracy perpetrated by the mustache-twirling Chris Roberts....who would have gotten away with it too..if it weren't for that meddling Derek Smart.

I got my invite to the PTU earlier this week. Sadly, I'm not going to bother with it because 1. my video card is shitty and can barely load the game in it's current state and 2, they're constantly patching it and the patches are huge and I just don't want the hassle.

I'm curious what the next excuse will be when the game is released? @Jinx, @rancor can you enlighten me? Generally the just switch some other trivial gripe instead of admitting they were wrong.

No faith is required @OverLord. The game exists and is playable albeit still in pre-pre-pre-pre alpha. The only difference is that you never hear about regular games until they've had years of development already done. With Star Citizen, we've known about the development right from the very beginning, we've seen the game grow from the basic hangar module that was first released to what it is now...warts and all.

If it were a hoax, it's the most inefficient hoax of all time. Let's waste lots of money hiring A-list actors for the single player campaign that, were it a hoax, we could just run off with the money. And tell me..what is the supposed end game for this hoax? Is Chris and Sandi going to skip town with a suitcase full of money cackling maniacally as they twirl their mustaches? Any damsels tied to the train tracks I should know about that need rescuing?

Do not meddle with the primal forces of nature.