So really it's more "You either allow ALMOST every type of speech (with some very narrow exceptions) or you give up ALMOST every type of speech (with some very narrow exceptions)".

Excellent, we have agreed that freedom of speech (like everything in the grown-up world) is not absolute.

Now we're just arguing over WHAT the exceptions should be.

Personally, I have no problem with adding things like inciting violence against minorities (aka hate speech) to that list.

It's very important to distinguish between criticism of ideologies and attacking members of said ideology.

Saying "I think the westboro baptist church is a disgusting organisation" is not the same as saying "you should punch WBC members in the face".

I'm not upvoting this.
Facebook is not a news source. If you're dumb enough to think otherwise, you shouldn't be allowed to go online in the first place. You're not intellectually competent enough to navigate the web.
What has this world become where we can't even differentiate between news organisations and random companies anymore?
It really pisses me off that this has to be said in the first place. Is it really that bad that we allow ourselves to be spoon-fed our favourite beliefs without any scepticism anymore?

Ah-ha, yep, sure.

Because, recently speaking, media organisations have a great history of not exaggerating situations, making things up, or just plain old getting it wrong.

@radx

I don't see money being taken out of politics. Especially not with a Republican legislative / executive before the next election. In fact I've honestly become cynical about campaign finance reform having any serious effect no matter how well designed.

You can limit campaigns and their committees all you want, but if the money's there it will find it's way in through sponsored media and astro turfed 'grass roots' organisations that will claim some kind of legal disassociation with the candidate. Or the law will just be ignored like the supposed separation between campaigns and super PACs now.

Not that I like this, but I feel the lesson here as far as winning elections is concerned is, for a successful party the campaign never ends. Obama was blamed for every economic and foreign policy event over the past 8 years with little meaningful rebuke despite GOP obstructionism being a huge factor. He came very close to losing to Romney.

After Republicans claimed the legislative branch and so many state level positions that message should have been easy to refute citing an unwillingness to compromise for results (Simpson-Bowles debt plan should have been exhibit A). I would not at all be surprised if even now with almost complete government dominance, they are able to blame the Democrats for years to come by claiming to be fixing existing policy mistakes.

If Democrats don't deliver an effective message, they'll be looking at a second Trump term, with every failing over the previous 4 years blamed on them.

So you are appalled at what ISIS are doing, but you still see the US army as the worst people in the world? This is why I'm agreeing with that quotation.

As much as US collateral damage could be lessened, they are hardly the worst people in the world. Especially as individuals - when a soldier goes home at the end of their tour, they're just regular a regular person. You cannot say the same thing for a member of a terrorist organisation where the practices listed above are considered not only normal, but law.

There is a really big difference between accidental, or even negligently causing civilian deaths vs. a doctrine to kill civilians (especially when they are your own civilians) - that's another thing entirely no?

Like I said in my previous comment, the bombing is not even anywhere near as indiscriminate as the left media would make it seem.

Sometimes I feel like I live on a different planet to other people. People keep telling me 'that's what men do' but I'm a man and that's not what I've ever done. But I'm not going to bang on and on about Trump, it's all been said before.

Because I'm so used to the kind of trash Trump comes out with, what shocked me from this video is that Oliver would suggest Clinton is the end point of a century old quest for female equality. She is from a powerful, rich family with connections and funding from some of the shadiest, rapacious industries/organisations in the world. Her victory wouldn't be a triumph for women, it would be a triumph for money and the elite ruling classes.

A triumph for women would be a rise to status based on merit and hard work, battling oppression every step of the way to change opinions and break new ground for anyone who follows. The success of Hillary's career mirrored Bill's and as his power and wealth increased so did her's.

What does this say? Work hard and you can overcome the prejudices of a male dominated society? No - it says if you're from the right family and know the right people, you can be president. Called Bush or Clinton? You're in with a shot. Hillary winning doesn't change the game, it doesn't pioneer a new path for females.

It is bullshit and it riles me because it's a manipulation of virtue. Hey everyone, vote for our FIRST FEMALE PRESIDENT, what an amazing and equal country we are, you're sexist if you don't want it! This has been a centuries long struggle but finally a strong enough woman has achieved what no other woman could do, it's time to recognise her strength of character! FUCK OFF. There have been millions of women more qualified and appropriate than her who never got even a sniff of a chance because they didn't anchor themselves to the right man, they weren't born into a particular family and spent childhood holidays with the sons and daughters of fossil fuel barons, investment companies, etc. The system is biased and wrong and Hillary winning only confirms that.

Most organisations claiming to be non-partisan are using that term in a very Orwellian sense anyway.

Yap, Judicial Watch strike me as a bunch of blowhards, yet I still applaud their effort in trying to bring to light some of the illegalities HRC has been engaged it.

Your arguments are the same kind used by black lung / coal miner or cancer / smoking skeptics. Sure, it seems like when we control for every other factor in longitudinal studies that these factors are strong predictors. But you can't guarantee that all coal miner will get black lung or a smoker will get cancer. So it must be some other lifestyle factor.

Same with climate change. Your right wing blogs / websites argue that just because you can't create a model with perfect certainty, the inexorable trend isn't obvious. No thanks, I'd rather go with a 97% scientific consensus that has convinced most scientific organisations, large multinational companies (without a countervailing interest) and national governments from America to China.

If you're so certain that the science is wrong, why not publish a countervailing journal article? Oh wait, no, you almost certainly don't have training in the field or actual understanding of the science, and are just copy pasting fancy phrases like "decadal scale oscillations" because it makes you sound more credible.

Didn't Palestine vote in a terrorist organisation to govern them? How is that anyone's fault but their own?

Makes sense though, PETA would be the last organisation to do it on an actual animal just for demonstration.

Democracy IS the main check and balance.

Unlimited democracy is a theoretical construct.
Democracy is always "limited". There is always some "merit" bar for voting. There is always a limited agenda of what one can vote for (and get it too). One can experiment with the constraints and see what results one gets. Some experiments can be frightening, but as long as the basic principle remains (that you can attempt to repair the damage next time you vote), thats fine.

Levels of democracy (limits by "merit" and agenda or candidate availability) vary to an incredible extent among countries which on the surface look similar or even within one country.

Noocracy on the other hand proposes to find geniuses and let them loose. I am against that. Same with philosophers (that one is really funny), and technocrats (and their robots and AI).

Perfect government - humans dont need perfect day care centres. Humans need motivation to live. AI or aliens ruling us would be very depressing.

In specialised fields meritocratic peer reviewed groups work reasonably well if they are constantly renewed, and political parties can be like that for periods of time. But meritocratic peer review breaks down with political power, populism, bribery, backstabbing, nepotism and the rest of politics. Parties usually seem well organised when they are in opposition. When in government, things (people) start falling apart.

Granted there are countries where governments are democratically elected yet stable for decades and appear to be working as a meritocratic peer reviewed system. They are just lucky I guess.

Maybe if the noo tried harder they could achieve that?

Meanwhile in Canada, Black Lives Matter staged a sit-in interrupting the Pride parade.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/pride-parade-toronto-1.3662823

They included a list of demands for the Pride Parade organisers. The demands included that the parade will no longer have police floats.

IMHO, the western world is losing it's mind. We are reaching so far with 'protecting' minorities from intolerance that our movements themselves have become intolerant.

When the push goes so far as to declare that dissenting opinions are in and of themselves oppression, then we necessarily lose fundamental freedoms. It becomes inevitable that each special interest group will declare rights for themselves that are incompatible with each other. For example, something like BLM interrupting a Pride event.

This sincerely worries me as freedom of religion as an idea already addressed this. Why is an entire generation seemingly ignoring such an important historical lesson? We have granted each and every religious system the right and freedom to believe and teach what they wish, necessarily including the belief they are 'right' and any or every other religion is 'wrong'. So long as live and let live is the resulting action and everybody respects the others rights to practice their beliefs as well, everything is good. When you go out and declare that disagreement with your beliefs should be punishable, you are in the wrong. It doesn't matter if it's your religious belief, safe space, or social cause, if you class disagreement as fundamentally wrong you are part of the problem.

Well that's a stupid thing to believe isn't it?

Do you think a fair sample of members of the KKK will be identically as moral as an equivalent sample of, to pick an organisation entirely at random, Helem?

Do you think some ideas are better than others?

Very enjoyable watch - I find it very hard to believe at least parts of this weren't staged though, unless he's back behind bars already. I'm sure he's a very formidable person with an interesting past, but in this day and age you can't get away with threatening someone outside a car dealership with 2 thugs and putting it on the TV. He'd be convicted for organised crime - even if the individual was too scared to report it, it was filmed and broadcast.

It's not that i'm saying this stuff can't happen, but i'm sure it can't happen for real on camera.

1. If not for taste, then you must be doing it because you've been mislead (like I was) to think it's a nutritional requirement. There is zero nutritional reason to eat animals for the majority of people on this planet. Perhaps habit is involved, but nothing that can't be broken if you want to. 99.9% of vegans were not vegan.


2. There is no gene in the human body which specifically makes you eat meat or drink milk. The chemical reaction that makes you crave certain foods is influenced by the foods you eat. In a hypothetical survival situation, eat all of the animals you need to, but we don't live in that situation.


3. I'm a middle-class person just like the majority of the westerners. I wasn't vegan for the first 30 years or so of my life. If I can do it, I know anyone can, they simply must want to. There is no financial, professional, geographical reason for everyone apart from those living in extreme conditions in western society to not become vegan. The reason why I say western society is because not only is western society the biggest cause of this (poor countries are already plant based, using very few animal products comparatively), but because westerners have the opportunity to do it easily.
The only difficult part is finding out correct information, because animal industry groups love to create clouds of doubt by funding misleading research and advertising. But the information is now out there on the internet.


4. It's a nice thought, but until those ideal conditions are reality, we must look at what action we can take now.


5. You don't need to grow your own food, farmers do that for you, and there will be plenty of land free'd up since 70% of all farm land is currently used to feed livestock.


6. There is protein (including the 9 essential amino acids) in almost every edible plant - vegetable, grain, rice, potato, nut and fruit. That simply eating enough to not be hungry means you eat enough protein. You don't need to eat the 3 gluten sources to meet your daily protein requirements. Even if everyone apart from those with celiac disease became vegan, the impact to the planet would be immense, because it's not a common thing. (I'm guessing you must get annoyed with the current trend of hipsters avoiding gluten, when they don't have celiacs or have not had an intestinal biopsy to confirm it).

7. I think it's fair to say that there is very little risk, when the alternative is eating a well documented carcinogen (meat, especially processed meat, see the World Health Organisation). Surely not giving yourself cancer is a good reason to avoid meat?

8. We can philosophize about minute details of sentience, or something like abortion, but really that is say like we shouldn't drive cars because we don't fully understand the laws of physics. We know enough about physics to improve our way life. It's the same about veganism, we know farm animals are mistreated, we know they feel pain and misery, and they have a will to live, so lets fix that first, and then we can philosophize about sentience.


9. It's not about the people that don't have a choice, it's about the people that do, and the majority of people do have a choice, that is the point.


10. Again there is protein in everything you eat - how do you think a chicken or cow get's it's protein? From plants!