Death sentence, maybe, maybe not, but so dangerous that they didn't go, and the rest, yes. He's the polygamist leader that had sex with all the group's children....in prison now, but in charge of his own fiefdom for decades with next to no interference.
Edit: sorry, that's Warren Jeffs
That makes no sense. You don't prove the need for the military by having it sit idle while you're attacked.

I actually do think we should have done far more, if not gone to war with Pakistan when it was clear the military and government were harboring Osama (and others, and supplying terrorists, etc.) and claiming to be our allies....but, they've got nukes, so it won't happen....well, wouldn't happen, today all bets are off, so who knows.

@newtboy,

No, it's about law. Warren Jeffries people did all that, on a smaller scale. They weren't their own country, even though they got away with it for decades. Law.

Forgive my lack of familiarity with him, but your telling me he (on a smaller scale than Texas), stopped paying taxes, and instead collecting them. Started up his own legal and justice system. He created his own borders within which the police would not dare set foot because it would be a death sentence for them. And after he'd done all this the US military itself failed to remove him as well?

Or are you meaning not just scale, but severity and all the other rather meaningful extremes of sovereignty that the Taliban and Al Qaida achieved? It's the same then in the sense that me punching you is violent just me killing ten people is violent, but in another sense they are nothing alike...

No, but they couldn't indiscriminately bomb Houston and any large gatherings either....not even if Spencer might be there. The first American civilian they kill will start a war...a real, legitimate war.

Your not embracing the analogy. Spencer's terrorists are still killing American civilians every week, outside of Texas borders. The American military is just corrupt enough that as long as its democrats/republicans dying,(whomever we choose to not be in power) they let it slide because it shows the need for the military to 'protect' the country.

You need to take a harder look at Pakistani politics to see just how powerful Al Qaida and the Taliban's control over the tribal areas has been.

More over, all of the above definitions of state within a state violence and jihad doesn't require war as the response to acts of war. To invade Afghanistan to prevent another 9/11 is dubious at best. Even the Kissinger's of the world wouldn't count the value of that trade off, losing a couple thousand Americans to an attack each decade or so is 'acceptable' loses.
Call it the price of freedom and carry on. The real trick was that if the Taliban and Al Qaida were so tight with Pakistan's military and intelligence services, how concerned should America be that the Pakistani proxies in their tribal regions and Afghanistan are so keen to target Americans. That lead directly to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal being a big enough concern with that pairing that maybe it was time to tell Pakistan they had to end their little dance with terrorists hitting Americans and they had better make a choice who they are going to side with in the Jihad that was already being waged for 2 decades.

@newtboy,

Then, you (We) are suggesting legitimizing their claim to be autonomous states by accepting that classification to be able to declare war against them.

I addressed exactly that in my longer follow up to Enoch. I am asking you to open your eyes and look at the reality on the ground. It's not about legitimizing claims to statehood for convenience or opportunity or semantics or whatever. It is that an area of land larger than many European countries was running under their laws. Was paying them taxes. Was under their justice system. Was under their rule in every single manner. At that point you need to recognize the reality and call a spade a spade and start acting in accordance with reality and not just the borders drawn up on somebody's map somewhere.

You want an analogy in America, than have the whole state of Texas under the control of Richard Spencer and his likes. The American police don't go there, because they fear for their lives. Even the American military has stopped pushing in because their losses were too much. Instead the American military is using back chanels to mostly direct their violent terrorist attacks towards the Mexicans. If Mexico gets tired of Texans coming in and killing them, do they have no further recourse than to ask pretty, pretty please to the US to extradite Spencer and crack down on extremists? That is the reality in Tribal Pakistan with the Taliban calling all the shots.

@enoch,

neo-conservatives
I've said in a couple other threads if I was American I'd have(very sadly mind you) voted for Hillary. Not sure, but that should really lay the neo-con thing to bed right there. Doesn't mean I won't agree with them if they notice the sky looks rather blue...

the MCA of 2006 and the NDAA of 2012
I don't base or form my morality around American law, so when and how it's deemed lawful or not for an American president to order something doesn't change my opinion one inch on whether the act is good or bad. Sure, it deducts a lot of points when a President breaks laws so that factors in, but if it's legal for a president to shoot babies we're all still gonna call it immoral anyways, right?

you find that it is the region,the actual soil that a person is on that makes the difference between legal prosecution..and assassination.
Between act of war, or peace time legal prosecution with proper due process.

this is EXACTLY what happened with afghanistan in regards to osama bin laden.
and BOTH times,the US state department could not provide conclusive evidence that either bin laden,or awlaki had actually perpetrated a terrorist act.

Sorry, but regarding Bin Laden that's a lie. The US state department held a trial and convicted Bin Laden already back in the 90s. The Taliban refused to extradite him then, and demanded they be shown evidence. They were shown the evidence and declared that they saw nothing unIslamic in his actions. Clinton spent his entire presidency back and forth with them, even getting a unanimous order from the UN security council demanding Bin Laden's extradition.

Smugly claiming that the US refused to provide any evidence to the Taliban because they were being bullies is ignoring reality. after spending several years getting jerked around by the Taliban claiming each new act of war launched from their territory wasn't their fault nor bin Laden's fault left a less patient president after 9/11...

now,is hannity guilty of incitement?
should he be held accountable for those shot dead?
by YOUR logic,yes..yes he should.
Can't say I'm very familiar with Hannity because I avoid Fox news at all costs.
Did he praise the killings afterwards and declare the shooter a hero like Anwar?
Did he council before hand in his books that killing those people was moral or just or religiously blessed like Anwar did?
Did he personally meet with and council/mentor the shooter before hand at some point as well, like Anwar did?

I have to ask just so we really are comparing apples to apples and all. If the answers are yes(and from Fox I suppose I can't completely rule that out just out of hand), then yeah, he's as guilty as Anwar.

now what if hannity had taken off to find refuge in yemen?
do we send a drone?

If he goes to Yemen we just laugh at our good fortune that he decided to kill himself for us.

To your point, if he finds a similar independent state to continue promoting and coordinating attacks as part of an effective terrorist unit killing new civilians every week then yes, bombs away.

Now if either he or Anwar remained in the US you arrest them and follow all due process. Oh, and to again shake the neo-con cloud you don't get to torture them by calling it enhanced interrogation, it's still a war crime and you should lock yourself up in a cell next door.

My whole thing is that setting up a state within a state and waging war shouldn't just be a get out of jail free card under international law. Either the 'host' state is responsible for the actions or it is not. If responsible, then like in Afghanistan it initiated the war by launching the first attacks. If not responsible, then it's declared the state within a state to be sovereign, and other states should be able to launch a war against the parasitic state, as has been happening with Obama's drones in tribal Pakistan.

Then, you (We) are suggesting legitimizing their claim to be autonomous states by accepting that classification to be able to declare war against them. Horrible idea, and against international law.

I call bullshit. That's like saying if an American commits a crime outside of America, or inside it against a foreigner, America just declared war on that country. Absolute bullshit. if Pakistan's government didn't direct the attack, they aren't declaring war. You don't hold a nation accountable for the actions of a few criminals within their borders unless they are backed by that nation. Because they can't stop the monster(s) we made (neither can we) absolutely in no way means they yield their sovereignty...that's asinine. EDIT: your theory would mean the Bundies would be their own country now, sovereign and at war with America, because we were unable to stop them from taking over public land (repeatedly), and didn't prosecute any of them.

Bullshit again. Because they aren't a state, they shouldn't be treated as one, no matter what bullshit they claim. Duh. Maybe they claim to be one, but they don't run away from that claim, it just isn't given credence by accepting it. They mostly are illegal aliens in the countries they now live in.

Afghanistan had good reason to refuse Bush....and you might recall were fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaida already for control of their own country.

Afghanistan was not hosting the terrorists, they 'invaded' or morphed out of non government controlled militias (Al-Qaida started as a retirement unit for the 'freedom fighters' we trained to fight Russia) . The Afghan government has excellent reasons to never invite a super power to cross their borders ever again.....and empires have good reason to avoid doing so. Afghanistan did not start or declare war with us, some invaders and criminals squatting in caves there did.

Exactly, the terrorist organizations aren't the fault or beneficiary of the government's in the countries where they hide or invade, they are the fault of those that support them, oddly missing from the travel ban and our assassination plans. See how that might piss off Afghansans and Pakistani?

Trying split up addressing your points and enoch's here, forgive me if things bleed over between a bit.

Large terrorist networks like Al Qaida were and still are using your definitions against your country. They operated with impunity and effectively as their own autonomous state within the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The question is whether acts of war launched from that region then are classed as an act of the Afghan or Pakistani state. If they are, then Afghanistan and Pakistan are to be held to account as states launching the act of war. If they are not, then they have for intents and purposes yielded the sovereignty of that territory to a new independent state waging it's own independent war.

The jihadists are trying to hard to live in an international loophole where they are operating with the autonomy of a state right up until another nation state wants to wage war back against them and then suddenly they are just citizens of the larger state they are technically within the borders of.

When the Bush admin pushed back hard, the Afghanistan government refused(more on this in my reply to Enoch) while the Pakistani government extremely begrudgingly agreed to at least pretend they weren't friendly with them in back channels anymore. Thus act of war met with war in Afghanistan, and yes, I would insist a war that Afghanistan initiated and NOT GW.

As for Saudi Arabia, they are more responsible for Jihadi ideology and funding than any other state, and yes the west largely has ignored it so long as they sold their oil and then used the money to buy back top of the line American made military hardware. I have to say I think it's a bit shortsighted to have made Saudi Arabia number 3 on the global military budget charts... You won't find my hypocritically trying to defend them, they are the ones sending most of the money into Pakistan's mountains to build the madrasa's that don't seem to teach anything after how to fire and assemble your AK.

Pretty much interview scripted by Putin personally.

Why the drama about US - russian relations if the russians supposedly are not dangerous and Putin is not evil.

Building a case to sell Poland and the Baltic countries to Putin. Worked like a charm with Hitler and Czechoslovakia before WWII. Poland these days does not even have a border with Russia proper, only with what used to be Koenigsberg. Poland is part of NATO and if Abby and her friend the professor want to give that up then it is them who are pushing us all closer to a war (cold or not).

Ukraine has already exploded. Putin has already taken 1/3 of the country breaking bilateral treaties. Cant get much worse, hard to imagine how the US can get involved, Trump notwithstanding.

Syria - its basically over, except for the humanitarian and human rights catastrophe. Putins ally won - a slightly pyrrhic victory perhaps, but for the meantime Assad stays. Did they level cities or liberate them? Hard to tell the difference. Probably both. That said US involvement in the middle east is a grave shitstorm.

This awesome "analysis" somehow misses the biggest current problem of NATO - Turkey - possibly because Putin does not have a good handle on Turkey yet so its off-limits. Also Pakistan/India and North Korea does not get a mention for the same reason - no chance to push Putins agenda.

NATO might have reassured Gorby it had no intention to spread. It is important to understand that Warsaw pact countries generally accepted Russians as saviours from German occupation, by the 1970s this had changed firmly to perceiving Russians as occupants, political persecutors and economic idiots.

After the economic collapse of the USSR (supposedly somehow caused by Ronald Reagan :-) all these countries needed reassurance that the Russians were not coming back. The only possible reassurance was joining NATO. If that meant breaking a promise made to an ex-representative of a no longer existing country, that is fine by me. If NATO had promised not to spread to Mother Theresa I would be more concerned.

The problem with the Ukraine is that we (EU) made an offer that put them in danger (from Putin) and we could not back that up with real economic or military assistance. Dumb move. But also Ukrainian politics is an incredible mess and simply too many ethnic russians live there giving Putin a strong nationalist base.

I agree, hard to get past "nuke-yoo-lar".

But also, I think more information is necessary to justify their claims about results of a hypothetical India vs Pakistan nuclear war with 100 warheads dropped "in anger" so to speak.

Google search suggests that there have been more than 2000 nuclear tests, 520 atmospheric, from 1945 to today. Would the increased particulate dust and debris from being fired on generally populated areas really be enough to make 100 of those warheads have a drastically greater effect than the 520 atmospheric tests that have already happened?

Seems possible, but I dunno. Expanding on that further would be interesting.

I'm basically done with defending WikiLeaks as well, after the shit they pulled with the leaks of Turkish data. Completely irresponsible, that one.

However, WikiLeaks doesn't need credibility -- the data does. And the data they published vis-á-vis Clinton/Podesta/DNC is, as of now, solid. There was one fake document, but that was shown to have been injected by someone other than WL.

"Strong bias" -- oh, I do have a strong bias. Plural, as in biases, actually. For instance, I'm disinclined to take anything the US intelligence agencies say at face value, given how they manufactured more than one casus belli. I don't put much weight into (un-)official statements in general, but especially since all the misinformation they spread about issues like the coup in Honduras or the actions of Nazi militias in Ukraine.

In this particular case, however, my argument is much simpler: Occam's razor seems much more likely than malicious intent. Propaganda outlets on both sides are run by people. Maybe the propaganda outlet Sputnik intentionally twisted the content of email, or maybe they just fucked up, like people are wont to do. Maybe someone intentionally fed Trump this bad info, maybe his people are just as incompetent as he is.

There are too many parts in this that include people who have more than once proven themselves to be utterly incompetent, or in complete ignorance of even the concept of truth. I don't think Trump gives a shit about truth or facts, he strikes me as the typical blowhard who spouts whatever shit comes to mind, and spins stories on the fly like a 4-year-old when caught red-handing.

No need for a conspiracy there, with all this incompetence, naiveté and plain disregard for facts.

So when they keep on pushing the Russian angle in this, it just seems like a desperate attempt to conjure up the old unifying enemy. Why worry about Russian propaganda when there's plenty on FOX and MSNBC/CNN? Why worry about Russian hackers when you accept the unbelievably insecure method of eletronic votes, partly without paper trails, and completely controlled by private companies?

It's just very strange to an outsider like me to see them focus on perceived external influences when the internals are a complete clusterfuck. And this presidential election is the biggest clusterfuck I've seen in 30 years, which doesn't mean much, admittedly.

That said, we can't just be looking at it from the outside with binoculars, not when people are back to full-blown Cold War rhetoric. When the ruling class in the US and/or the ruling class in Russia start their pissing contests and other forms of grandstanding, it's usually brown people who pay the price, like they have been in Syria for the last couple of years. And Libya. And Yemen. And Somalia. And Afghanistan, And Iraq. And Pakistan.

Personally, all the rhetoric about "standing up to Russian aggression" and similar nonsense makes me keenly aware that the bridge just outside my hometown was constructed with a shaft to place explosives in, to slow down advancing Soviet troops... so yes, I would very much like to bitch-slap all these warmongerers on both sides, but particularly the ones in the US since they are currently the ones racking up the highest death toll.

Edit: I should have made it clearer. Yes, WL is absolutely biased against Clinton and they do seem to act in support of Trump. Assange in particular. Which bums me out to no end, since I actually met the guy in person when they presented WL at the 26C3.

it was the closest he came to acknowledging that "bringing democracy" is a euphemism for "bomb them to the stone age"

if people want to insist on profiling terrorists, they should try and be as accurate as possible- being muslim is a terrible filter. where they are from is a much better indicator, especially if they're from a war zone (take your pick- just in pakistan hundreds of innocent children have been killed just by drones over a 5 year period).

i'm pretty sure lightning is still more of a threat than terrorism. in fact i just looked it up: 1 in 7 million for lightning over 9 years, 1 in 3.5 million americans killed by terrorism in 30 years vs 1 in 1.15 thousand iraqi civilians killed in 5 years.

i wonder what these terrorists guys are all butt hurt about? oh right, we declared war on them and have been actively bombing them for over a decade, so easy to forget!

That guy is ONLY saved if a HUGE volcano goes off or a good-sized meteorite hits us...

Or, you know, nuclear war.

I fI was Bill Nye I would amend these bets with atmospheric readings of ash @ so many parts per million (at the point it really is WAY too high!). Or also amending it for debris consistent with a large meteorite hit (a few different choices in the ring to measure to see if it's a meteorite too); so if "x" per milllion is too high in the atmosphere, again the year is bunck (the decade may become bunck all depending the levels of both events).

But, the worst, nuclear fallout from what "may be" WWIII or a smaller "civil conflict", like Pakistan and India could top the meters pretty high with worldwide fallout if they drop a good ten or so (again this is based off the material used to create the bomb and once more it's parts per million in the atmosphere combined with, how much?)...

No matter what Bill Nye is right, and even if these type of "small-term" events slow it down momentarily, after the planet helps to clean to out of the atmosphere we have a big issue on hand because some of that stuff WILL stay and then Bill Nye can show you how in two years (and as we know, it could be much longer), or the time it truly takes to clean it out leaves us with an atmosphere that is now even worse...

AIM FOR THE PARTIAL WIN BOYS AND GIRLS!!! I know you all want zombies (radioactive, Japanese spiritual based demons and shinigami here to try to kill us all until every boy and girl 15 years old or so become shounen trope mystical power holders made to save our world from the oncoming onslaught of Donald Trump and Putin phantasms and demons, truly horrific--college students may apply; grownups may gain insight into how to pull off the most powerful abilities that they must teach to the "chosen ones" to use it to defeat either Putin or The Trump (spiritual fighter, capable of killing people even with his TERRIBLE "slams", fighting power: 0, defense: every fanboy on Earth!)--or how to use "super tactics with the "main-group" who'll have stories written about them in their local High Scool Paper every week: in the American, Japanese, Russian, and European branches (needed for Putin, since he writes great stories explaining how each of us suck ass and even though we try it is ALWAYS Putin, riding in on a Velociraptor with a railgun that's able to drive those evil bastards out, especially when he gets off the horse and makes the wrestling techniques and signature move, crossing his arms in an "X" and slamming down over the side of his genitals (causing all watching to be confused and easily dismembered in twenty minutes... The glory of dawn continues in the next 4-6 hours before dawn...

SO... What exactly do you guys believe you should vote for? I say Vote Bill Nye and Vote often. Did you know that in both those "metaverses" Bill Nye becomes akin to Dr. Strange. Great because he protects ALL of us from this world with an extremely powerful spell--as he IS the only person here that knows just what in the hell is happening.

All hail the kid's scientist, through Sarah Palin on the "happiness tour bus" to Putin. He LOVES her. Especially listening to her talk. Ceaseless entertainment...!


I decided to list this as "sarcasm", BUT there is SO MUCH that isn't. Sometimes you have to hide the truth in reality...err...not reality...

As psychologist Nicolai Sennels explains, "Mohammed, the prime example for Muslims, married Aisha when she was six and had intercourse with her when she was nine. Besides, according to the Quran (4:24), Muslims are allowed to have sex with female slaves[.]" In addition, "uncovered women are in many Muslim cultures seen as a kind of prostitute, and if a man is aroused by such a female, then – partly due to the corrupted logic of responsibility within Muslim psychology – the female is blamed for being raped (and will therefore often face execution)."

Andrew C. McCarthy, in his book entitled The Grand Jihad, described rape by Muslim immigrants as the "unspoken epidemic of Western Europe." Six years later, it continues to expand and sweep across the continent. Ingrid Carlqvist documents how Sweden is now the rape capital of the West, and when "Michael Hess, a local politician from [the] Sweden Democrat Party, tried to warn his nation that 'it is deeply rooted in Islam's culture to rape and brutalize women who refuse to comply with Islamic teachings' he was charged with 'denigration of ethnic groups'" – a crime in Sweden.

According to Islamic clerics, a woman who fails to wear a headscarf is asking to be raped. Consequently, in the eyes of Muslim men, Western women are seen as "promiscuous, loose, and willing," and since no one in the Islamic community refutes this, they engage in the violence and abuse of power that rape represents. In Australia, Lebanese gangs threaten policemen's wives and girlfriends with rape. In 2006, the mufti of Australia, Sheikh Taj al-Din al Hilali, maintained that "women who do not veil themselves, and allow themselves to be 'uncovered meat,' are at fault if they are raped."

In Rotherham, England, some 1,400 British children as young as 11 were plied with drugs before being passed around and sexually abused by Muslims. As shocking as this was, it is the fifth sex abuse ring led by Muslims

In Nigeria, Boko Haram seized 300 schoolgirls in order to sell them on the open market.

In Pakistan, the police do nothing as Hindu and Christian children as young as 7 years old are gang-raped and sold as prostitutes or slaves to wealthy Muslim families. From 2011 through 2014, approximately 550 Egyptian Coptic Christian girls were abducted and sexually abused by Muslim men.

I could go on and on, but the point is that in Islam, a women is considered to be a subservient and second class person. Men are supreme and women who do not dress appropriately (per Islamic standards) risk things happening to them. This is nothing new, it is part of their culture. Exposing them to women not raised in that culture is going to lead to incidents.

Now, please note that I do not think that we should not accept refugees. But I do think that we should make sure that women are aware of the situation and we should absolutely be enforcing the law in regards to the people breaking it, refugees or not.

OK, but the question, even if they are just harnessing the atom for peaceful means, still stands---What about Al Ghazali's prohibition against math?
Personally and culturally?

Obviously, they've rationalized it (again, let's assume every single intended use is peaceful. Unlike, for example, Pakistan's)---

I'm a bit curious what that looks like inside a person's brain.

Since you brought up unusual punishments, let's take stoning people for adultery (which exists in both the Koran and the Bible). When was the last time someone was stoned to death by a group in the U.S., U.K., Australia, or even Malaysia for adultery? Hundreds of millions of Muslims and Christians around the world seem perfectly fine ignoring that part of their holy texts. Just because something that we find distasteful today is written in the holy text doesn't automatically make the religion evil nor does it suddenly force the practioners to behave like savages.

You need to look at the specifics. Take a look at the countries where stoning actually does still occasionally happen and who actually carries it out: Iran, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan. Invariably when it does occur it happens in rural areas where there are people who still actually live like it is the middle ages, with extreme poverty and little education to speak of (other than religious). Sure, the book gave them the idea but it wasn't the only factor in play and to ignore these other factors or the fact that honor killings are in fact common across a wide number of cultures with varying religious backgrounds (even the Romans did it) is what would be truly intellectually dishonest.

As for extremists--they exist in all religions including Christianity. It wasn't a mob of Muslims who attacked Charlie Hedbo--it was two deranged individuals. And while some Muslims might have applauded the attack others denounced it, such as the hunderds of thousands of Chechen protestors who who were upset with the cartoons but didn't think violence was the right response (see article here).

Again, it's a complex issue that can't be boiled down to "Islam = Good/Bad." Islam as practiced by ISIS or Boko Haram? Yeah, there's some dark shit going on there. Islam as practiced by average citizens in Kuala Lumpur or Boston? Not so much.

But again, moderate statements based on reason and facts are not what sell books, generate online clicks, or fill lecture halls to capacity.

Sorry to jump the thread here; not sure if dubious is the word either, but pretty amateur and more fear mongering with no supporting data.

First, the suggestion that no more reactors should be built because people use them to aid in production of nuclear weapons. Well kids, that ship has already sailed: In June 2014, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported that nine nations (United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) possessed approx. 16,300 nuclear weapons in total. So someone builds one or 10 more? Yeah, that will matter. Someone needs to read up on the concept of deterrence.

When talking about waste: "Germany has literally tons of the stuff just laying around" - well, that's just horseshit.

Regarding accidents and number of deaths due to nuclear reactors: "devastating disasters every 30 years" - devastating? Come on, people died, but compared to other sources of energy, according to the WHO, it is by far the safest. Consider:

Energy Source Mortality Rates; Deaths/yr/TWh

Coal - world average, 161
Coal - China, 278
Coal - USA, 15
Oil - 36
Natural Gas - 4
Biofuel/Biomass - 12
Peat - 12
Solar/rooftop - 0.44-0.83
Wind - 0.15
Hydro - world, 0.10
Hydro - world*, 1.4
Nuclear - 0.04

* Includes the 170,000 deaths from the failure of the Banquao Reservoir Dam in China in 1975

So, if not dubious, certainly cheap and pedantic.