"I referred to the modern nazi who supports them"

Fair enough.

"It's not just a belief, it's a desire to exterminate, alienate and persecute an ethnic group. "
Agreed. That desire should not be considered an acceptable point of view. But there's a big gap between saying expressing a desire and carrying out an action.

"This implies that you think being 'nicer to Hitler' (i.e. not solved it with violence) would have gotten rid of them yet you contradict this later on."
No, I don't believe that. Hitler was in power, he had an army and he was already committing genocide. At that point, violence is your only recourse to stop the atrocities.

But yes, ultimately, if someone had been able to take Hitler aside BEFORE all the horrors of WW2 and been able to convince him to lay off the genocide, wouldn't that have been a better solution?

There are absolutely times when violence is the best course of action, but it ALWAYS represents a failure to resolve differences.

"I'm just saying if a nazi happens to get punched, on balance, it's probably ok."

I'm certainly not going to shed any tears over it and being completely honest, part of me relishes it. But intellectually, I know it's a) not a sustainable solution and b) it's a juvenile response.

"It's a bit like trying to 'defeat' religion. If you stamped out any sign of all religions in the world, all the imagery and documents and let's say memories too. Before long, religions would form because the human brain is drawn to those ideologies"

Completely agree. Put enough humans together and they form tribes and ascribe bad things to "the others". What saves us is the ability to learn from past mistakes as a civilisation, and even then we're REALLY slow learners.

But we have made progress.
Going from right to left, I would bet that even most Nazis think women should be able to vote; the vast majority of conservatives view racism as abhorrent (at least, consciously) and "Middle America" has mostly come around to gay rights.

"Defeated" might be the wrong word here. I want Nazism to become as laughable a philosophy as flat earthers. Espousing it should be met with the same response as someone who claims thunder is the gods playing football.

" TL;DR sorry for the wall of text, ignore me"

Don't apologise... it's an interesting discussion.

The way some people have written about "destroying" North Korea, it would make you think that we haven't been talking about a weapon of mass destruction which would indiscriminately incinerate women, children, pets, and leave swathes of radioactive land uninhabitable which would then leak mutation/radioactivity into the rest of the world's ecosystem.

Western civilisation has surely succumbed to some kind of mental sickness, turning us all into mindless clones repeating "the greater good" when we get promised large, colourful explosions. When war after war ends in disaster and further misery, we continue to talk about "bringing an end to suffering" everywhere in the world as though it's both a duty, and something we haven't catastrophically screwed up time after time. Worse is the underlying pride in that perceived duty; "We're gonna make their lives better whether they want it or not! OORAHH!"

The moralising about whether or not they deserve it is an exercise in narcissistic god complexes, covered with a veneer of regret, "oh no, we should have gone to war years ago, now it's too late, should we? shouldn't we?" Like it's great fun to discuss whether or not people should burn and rot to death over the course of weeks, from the comfort of your breakfast table back in good ole metropolis.

And if you decide to bomb? Ah well, it had to be done. Yes, it's a terrible burden, the kind of pain that people burning to death will never understand or thank us for. But we'll continue, because we're the hero they need not the one they want.

Trump's handling of the NK situation is a perfect marriage of the worst elements of the usual neoliberal approach (pro- profit & power orientated) and the thuggish exaggerated threat approach favoured by teenagers in playgrounds.

Our own countries are in an absolute SHIT state. With our indifference towards global warming, the developed nations are the most dangerous threat to life on Earth for *every* country. Why do we still have the arrogance to go around discussing how to improve countries that we've never even fucking been to?

Wait, this asshole gave $110B worth of arms to a country who's flag has a sword on it and the words "Allah is the only god" are written next to the sword?

Good bye westernized civilisation. You were the only hope for humanity.

In terms of the UK, your average house price was under £10 000 in the 70s. If wages had increased at the same rate as house prices have increased, which is not an unreasonable request, especially if you're mocking them for not having the money, then the average wage would be £87 000. Alternatively, if house prices had increased at the same rate as wages have, the average house would be worth around £60 000. It's no good talking about people buying iPhones when that disparity exists - if anything, the iPhones help distract them from their poverty.

It's been rigged for 40 years now, bob. Who do you think a landlord/renter economy benefits more - the young or the old? You are blind to the reality of life for people just starting out.

Sooner or later, civilisation is going to have to change to account for this. You can call me a lefty all you like, but the numbers don't lie - this isn't sustainable, the cost of living does not match full time pay for a huge number of people, including necessary and skilled jobs like nurses and teachers (in the UK).

It's no longer about aspiration, or working harder at school. Average people are struggling and that should be a concern to you if you care about society at all. In fact, if you're a die-hard, card carrying, flag waving capitalist it should worry you. Landlords aren't wealth creators.

Your point is moot though. At any given period of time, everything man does is a product of the civilisation that surrounds him. Nobody lives in a vacuum.

"What has that got to do with this video."
The water supply grid was one of the important "grids" you forgot. It may be trivial in a water rich region of the world, but, for example, living off of the water grid in the middle of Australia is hard work.

" That doesn't mean that he's living some kind of noble 'off the grid life style'".
I'm pretty sure you're the only one who has mentioned this. I think the point of the video is that he's doing something out of the ordinary that he really enjoys. I wouldn't mind living a step up from what he does (access by road). It would be very satisfying.

Do you have an opinion on living like that? Would you do it?

"I don't live on the water supply grid."
Cool! Is it by choice? Do you use the newer poly tanks? What's the annual rainfall you need to stay water positive each year? Do you use filters or a pump? Have you drilled for underground water (we call it "bore water" here in Aus). What region of the world are you in?

You forgot they're off of the water supply "grid" (try living off of rainwater - it's not so easy in some places), the daily food supply "grid" (most people would be screwed without this alone), the emergency services "grid" (for some medical conditions he is buggered, nobody is coming any time soon), the consumable resource supply "grid" (i.e. something breaks, buy a new one the same day).

There's probably more I have missed. How many of these things do you live without on a daily basis?

They have abandoned large segments of "civilisation". There isn't some special line in the sand the you choose that makes them living off of the grid or not.

Shit, 99% of us here don't have to hunt for our own dinner. That alone is a huge difference.

You obviously know that jihadists like Anwar operate outside of the regions in the world that recognise any law but their own. You have what are essentially stateless powers launching acts of war on the civilised nations of the world. I understand that you refuse to acknowledge that justifies treating them as combatants in a war. I just don't think you have valid grounds to be smug about that obviously being the more moral course. Jihadists like those Anwar was counselling and guiding kill Muslim children like his grand daughter every day. The bonus is they do it on purpose and proudly claim it afterwards as a warning to others who won't convert to their true religion. There is a pretty strong argument to be made that the death of leaders like him lowers the overall body count.

But it's real easy to observe that war is bad and just stop thinking about it.

@enoch
I did my best :-) I honestly feel threatened by this attitude of feeding the bear crumbs and pretending he is a friend. Also cant help liking Abby, so very disappointed.

@newtboy
For russia Assad is a (replaceable) puppet, bolstering Assad is just using that puppet for their own needs. ISIS is a threat because it directly supports terrorist groups within Russia. Sending in their air force and that coal powered smoking joke of an aircraft carrier was a military excercise with minimal losses and huge political and home security gains. Expensive though.

One cant just send in a task force to take out a dictator simply because one believes it would be the right thing to do. Countries generally have a limitless supply of local mafioso would-be dictators or religious leaders which the local population prefers to foreign rule. Religion and politics are just a thin veil for local tribal wars. In spite of Syria being a fairly civilised country before the current events I doubt there was ever a "democratic" alternative to Assad. Sometimes you just get lucky and the dictator decides he wants democracy (South Korea, Chile, Gorbatchev inadvertently).

F**k the whole middle east actually IMHO, twice. The Kurds never get any love from anyone and they´ve survived in the middle of this crazy shitstorm for millenia. Yet they will never have a country of their own. Even "Palestinians" created only in the last few decades appear to be closer to that goal. Not fair at all.

I would downvote this video just to shut up this guy. What shortsighted stupidity.

That guy from Kansas who is on a field trip to Estonia is there to demonstrate NATO commitment. No "massive numbers", no "offensive threat to Putin".

This guy speaks of the "border" with russia like its some desert wasteland where NATO and russian troops can move in and out at will. These are civilised countries with hundreds of millions of people living in them, currently in a defensive partnership with the USofA. I wonder what the "good deal" will be that the clown gets to sell out.

Poland doesnt even border the main part of Russia, only the Kaliningrad exclave.

Also dont forget that all these other countries also contribute troops to NATO. The only thing that the clown has right is that they should be contributing more.

Sounds like an exercising in rearranging the furniture on the Titanic to me.

In a world where discrimination and separatism is qualitatively and quantitatively on the rise, people in charge must be ecstatic that they can appease people without having to do anything meaningful that might piss off the extremists on the right, or "shareholders". And people are so used to being told that change is only possible through incremental adjustments that they'll eat it up like candy and think this is progress.

"People people people, if you're going to call someone a filthy tranny and throw fast food at xem on public transport, at least use the proper pronoun when you verbally abuse xem."

When there's a hole in the boat and you're taking on water, the least of your concerns should be about what language you use to describe the in-rushing water or shape of the hole, nor arguing over the colour of the material you use to repair it.

I'm sure some people will see this as a victory. Until next time they apply for a job and not get hired due to transphobia. And the manager of the company, with a gleam in their eye, begins the rejection letter with 'Dear bun/bunself', then sniggers to themselves and says "fucking trannies."

What I'm trying to say was summed nicely in a tweet i saw the other day:
ALTRIGHT/NEO NAZI: your all going to the gas chambers!!!
NEOLIBERAL: you're*

If this is the extent of what activism is able to achieve, i should say that the establishment/elite have won by pacifying and declawing the protesters. It's no longer about breaking the shackles of oppression. We can't go around breaking shackles everywhere - think of the effect on the economy? And what about people getting hit by shrapnel? No, instead the LGBTQ community will be given multi coloured chains, the black community will be given slightly longer chains, and we'll pad the shackles with silk so that everyone is much more comfortable. Don't complain about the concept of being chained, instead complain that your chain is not as nice as the next guy's chain.

It's as though the great struggle of protest and civil disobedience has been taken over by the liberal intelligentsia, and the worst kind of discrimination faced by a 20 year old middle-class university student with rainbow coloured dreadlocks and a nose piercing is the letter they receive about their student loan that begins "dear sir/madam". So they go out and march about it and think they've made progress when they get their own pronoun. In their life, in their experiences, they are treated equally in other respects, so they think they ARE fighting inequality.

But for the working class male or female transsexual who gets filthy looks and a seat isolated by themselves on public transport, to travel to their entry level job where they've been skipped over for promotion for not looking the part, or getting the right level of respect from the trans-phobic staff, getting snide whispered comments from customers about the size of their hands, getting abuse yelled at them as they travel to have a night out at the ONLY trans-friendly bar within a 20 mile radius....... I get the feeling that receiving a letter with the correct pronoun isn't exactly going to change their fucking lives.

To remove a weed, you go for the roots. Some wanker calling you him/her when you prefer bun/bunself is not the root of this problem. The problem is that they are trans-phobic, not the language - which is just the tool they use to discriminate against you. To change the language and think that you've won is a bit like redefining room temperature and claiming you've warmed everybody by a few degrees.

If you march for equal rights, fair pay, fair treatment then people are going to see that and join your protest because they also want those things. Those things will solve the problems faced by the trans community, feminists, masculinists, minorities alike! And through common goals and by supporting each other en masse for simple, unified goals like EQUALITY, progress will be made, change will happen. It is a concept called solidarity and seems to be going out of fashion, but our grandparents knew.

The objective for the establishment is to drive a wedge between groups of people so that their demands are more manageable, and they can be turned on each other. Feminists, masculinists, LGBT, everyone... can't you see how better off you'd be marching together for common values that lie at the core of what every human wants?

Wall of text, sorry... and I know it looks like i'm being insensitive. So congratulations, genuinely, for getting someone to use your preferred pronoun if that makes you feel better. But whilst people have been fighting tooth and nail to get their own pronoun (in civilised settings only), we've suffered huge leaps backwards in freedom and tolerance behind their backs whilst they were bent over intently concentrating on the finer detail of what their ideal equality looks like.

One of the great intellectual catastrophes of the modern world, and probably the harbinger of the ultimate doom of our civilisation, is the collapse in the distinction between 'compare to' and 'equate with'. We can reasonably compare almost anything to almost anything else, and how unfortunate that we can expect immediately to be confronted by some aggrieved outrage-peddler who imagines they have a right to find the comparison insulting.

It is a literal fact that any group of two or more people, or living things, or indeed most objects of any kind, will possess some internal differences. As a matter of certain truth, not subject to doubt, muslims share with rats and serial killers the trait that they evince diversity of behaviour and belief. This demonstrates the total banality of the 'but they're all different' argument. It's not for their differences that these groups are disliked.

That's probably enough of a lesson for one day, and certainly @oritteropo ought to know better. I don't want to take the trouble to argue deranged claims like 'there are muslims who don't believe in god', or tiresome diversions on how christians and other jews can be just as bad, or to debate the relative merits of various religiously mandated dress codes; but you are right about one thing @SDGundamX: I would much prefer that islamic violence and oppression were a harmless and overblown bogey, but ethics is not a children's game - these are real people, with real victims, and too many of both.

This guy was lucky he didn't get one in the back of hs head when he was down - by US standars this qualifies as civilised..

We're morally superior to them because we do it in an abattoir and have a modern drainage system. God we're so civilised.

If only right wingers gave half as much of a shit about innocent kids getting bombed/killed/raped in Aleppo and elsewhere as they do about animal sacrifice when it's done by a Muslim.

I look forward to seeing the same commitment to comments about seal cubs being beaten to death by blood thirsty Americans, Canadians, Swedes, Fins, Russians, Norweigans. Or when whales and dolphins are slaughtered in open water in Japan. Bulls tortured in Spain.

Is it not infuriating to other liberals that we've reached the point where the only opposition to the most backward and repressive popular ideology in the world today has to come from right-wing nationalists?

It should be perfectly clear that if you want to call yourself a liberal then you're obliged to oppose islam and resist the spread of islam into the civilised west.

I don't want to support people like this, but the mainstream left's complete betrayal of liberal values leaves those of us who still hold to those values with few allies.

The whole lot of them acting like a bunch of fucking kids, not a single one deserves any praise for how they acted. But I don't know how anyone can criticise the two idiots screaming at each other, waving their arms around and go on to credit the idiot screaming fat fuck making the entire thing worse. Ready for a fight? She was my hope to be the sensible one in this testosterone filled dick measuring contest. She's a social justice advocate, you'd think she might not body shame someone. This is bread and butter for her rivals, they'll use this against her for years - hypocrite!

Spitting, swearing, screaming, gatecrashing, name calling, physical intimidation.... they have all damaged their own reputations.

This is why people don't give a flying shit about politics anymore - they all act like children. This isn't how civilised people behave.

It also makes independent news sources look like sensationalist, fringe bullshit. TYT should be ashamed, this is exactly what the establishment wants - discredit the independent news, ween the proles back on to the mainstream propaganda. It's not just their reputation they're fucking with. You all gave them exactly what they wanted!