Ah, I see you didn't read the links.

Else you would know :

* The post 1990 borders of Ukraine include historically Russian lands populated by Russian people.

* Ukraine's nukes could not be to guard against Russia because Russia had the crypto keys and guidance control over Ukrainian nukes.

* U.S. support for the 2014 coup against Ukraine's government was arguably also a treaty violation. (I don't actually care about this one)

* Government corruption, rising nationalism, and anti-Russian sentiment, are what led to the coup, which kicked off the fighting, which led to Russian intervention, which led to the "land grabs".


(Anti-Russian sentiment was brewing for years before the 2014 coup. You can see it play out in the 2012 language law issue, which was one of the historical turning points leading up to conflict: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine#Proposals_for_repeal_and_revision)


Sidenote, this statement is pure insanity : "We should be at war with Russia today over it's murderous expansions"
War with Russia would last less than an hour, and the only winner would be South America and Africa.
Nuclear powers can never go to war. I mean _never_ never.






Regarding collusion, here :
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/opinion/collusion-meaning-trump-.html

"
President Trump declared on Twitter: “There is NO COLLUSION!”
"
There ya go. A Trump declaration that the campaign was not illegally secretly coordinated (i.e. no collusion). Not backwards at all.

The link also explains the irrelevance of the term regarding legal issues.

-scheherazade

The USSR is gone. No one is trying to guard western industry against communist overthrow anymore. That time is long gone.




Imagine person A pushing person B, and person B pushes back, and the news runs around screaming that B pushed A. That's basically our simplistic news coverage about Ukraine.

Feel free to read about the 2014 coup : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution
I take no issue with Ukrainians giving their old government a swift kick out the door (and for understandable reason - such as corruption). However, with that comes the usual scapegoating of the undesirables. Would it have been better that Russia let groups like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_Sector ravage ethnic Russians just across their border?

Crimea has been Russia from 1779 till ~1990, when it happened to end up under Ukrainian control after the USSR broke up. People living there are also Russian citizens, born either while it was still Russia, or to Russian parents.
Take a look:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Crimea
Then ask yourself, considering the right wing neo nazi anti-ethnic-Russian shitstorm in Ukraine, where would the Crimeans rather be?

Russia isn't a saint. It's acting in self interest. It's also not a villain. Things happen for reasons.

The treaty you refer to is : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances
The link explains how it can be read to fault either the U.S. (for coup involvement) or Russia (for subsequent conflict involvement).

Just to put things in perspective :
Imagine Russia getting involved in a coup in Mexico or Canada. Or imagine Russia placing missile launchers in Cuba. Do you think that we would be as cordial to Russia as Russia has been to us?
So Russia tries to help a candidate who prefers friendly relations, that's hardly the sign of a committed adversary.

I mean, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I shouldn't think and analyze the situation from multiple perspectives with consideration for circumstance and motivation, and instead I should just accept what the news has on 24/7 repeat. /s





Collusion is not a crime because /literally/ it is not a crime. You will not find the word "collusion" mentioned as an offense in any criminal code. It's only on TV because people started using that phrase to assert that the campaign and Russia were acting independently (which is irrelevant, they don't need to coordinate to break the law).


-scheherazde

Syria had a fractured military, where part went with Assad, and part went with the [effectively "Neo Hama"] rebellion (i.e. anti secularist rebellion).
Russia supported Assad.
Militants from the region came to support the rebellion and were given shelter and resources by rebels.
(Which is why moderate Muslims, Christians, atheists, etc, are now hiding on Assad's side of the conflict (or running to Europe))
That place really sucks. If you're a regular person, the options are bad and worse.

Land and buildings don't produce wealth and taxes without people.

-scheherazade

Freedom of religion is independent of civilian armament.
History shows that religious persecution is normal for humanity, and in most cases it's perpetrated by the government. Sometimes to consolidate power (with government tie-ins to the main religion), and sometimes to pander to the grimace of a majority.

Ironically, in this country, freedom of religion only exists due to armed conflict, albeit merely as a side effect of independence from a religiously homogeneous ruling power.



It's true that Catalonians would likely have been shot at if they were armed.
However, likewise, the Spanish government will never grant the Catalans democracy so long as the Catalans are not armed - simply because it doesn't have to.
(*Barring self suicidal/sacrificial behavior on part of the Catalans that eventually [after much suffering] embarrasses the government into compliance - often under risk that 3rd parties will intervene if things continue)

When the government manufactures consent, it will be first in line to claim that people have democratic freedom. When the government fails to manufacture consent, it will crack down with force.

At the end of the day, in government, might makes right. Laws are only words on paper, the government's arms are what make the laws matter.

Likewise, democracy is no more than an idea. The people's force of arms (or threat thereof) is what assert's the people's dominance over the government.



You can say the police/military are stronger and it would never matter, however, the size of an [armed] population is orders of magnitude larger than the size of an army. Factor in the fact that the people need to cooperate with the government in order to support and supply the government's military. No government can withstand armed resistance of the population at large. This is one of the main lessons from The Prince.

Civilian armament is a bulwark against potentially colossal ills (albeit ills that come once every few generations).

Look at NK. The people get TV, radio, cell, from SK. They can look across the river and see massive cities on the Chinese side. They know they have to play along with the charade that their government demands. At the end of the day, without guns, things won't change.

Look at what happened during the Arab Spring. All these unarmed nations turned to external armed groups to fight for them to change their governments. All it accomplished was them becoming serfs to the invited 3rd parties. This is another lesson from The Prince : always take power by your own means, never rely on auxiliaries, because your auxiliaries will become your new rulers.






Below is general pontification. No longer a reply.
------------------------------------------------------------------



Civilian armament does come with periodic tragedies. Those tragedies suck. But they're also much less significant than the risks of disarmament.
(Eg. School shootings, 7-11 robberies, etc -versus- Tamils vs Sri Lankan government, Rohingya vs Burmese government. etc.)

Regarding rifles specifically (all varieties combined), there is no point in arguing magnitudes (Around 400 lives per year - albeit taken in newsworthy large chunks). 'Falling out of bed' kills more people, same is true for 'Slip and fall'. No one fears their bed or a wet floor.

Pistols could go away and not matter much.
They have minimal militia utility, and they represent almost the entirety of firearms used in violent crime. (Albeit used to take lives in a non newsworthy 1 at a time manner)

(In the U.S.) If tragedy was the only way to die (otherwise infinite lifespan), you would live on average 9000 years. Guns, car crashes, drownings, etc. ~All tragedies included. (http://service.prerender.io/http://polstats.com/?_escaped_fragment_=/life#!/life)






A computer learning example I was taught:

Boy walking with his mom&dad down a path.
Lion #1 jumps out, eats his dad.
(Data : Specifically lion #1 eats his father.)
The boy and mom keep walking
Lion #2 jumps out, eats his mother.
(Data : Specifically lion #2 eats his mother)
The boy keeps walking
He comes across Lion #3.

Question : Should he be worried?

If you are going to generalize [the first two] lions and people, then yes, he should be worried.

In reality, lions may be very unlikely to eat people (versus say, a gazelle). But if you generalized from the prior two events, you will think they are dangerous.

(The relevance to computer learning is that : Computers learn racism, too. If you include racial data along with other data in a learning algorithm, that algorithm can and will be able to make decisions based on race. Not because the software cares - but because it can analyze and correlate.)

(Note : This is also why arguing religion is likely futile. If a child is raised being told that everything is as it is because God did it, then that becomes their basis for reality. Telling them that their belief in god is wrong, is like telling the boy in the example that lions are statistically quite safe to people. It challenges what they've learned.)



I mentioned this example, because it illustrates learning and perception. And it segways into my following analogy.



Here's a weird analogy, but it goes like this :

(I'm sure SJW minded people will shit themselves over it, but whatever)

"Gun ownership in today's urban society" is like "Black people in 80's white bred society".

2/3 of the population today has no contact with firearms (mostly urban folk)
They only see them on movies used to shoot people, and on the news used to shoot people.
If you are part of that 2/3, you see guns as murder tools.
If you are part of the remaining 1/3, you see guns like shoes or telephones - absolutely mundane daily items that harm nobody.

In the 80's, if you were in a white bred community, your only understanding of black people would be from movies where they are gangsters and shoot people, and from the nightly news where you heard about some black person who shot people.
If you were part of an 80's white bred community, you saw black people as dangerous likely killers.
If you were part of an 80's black/mixed community, you saw black people as regular people living the same mundane lives as anyone else.

In either case, you can analytically know better. But your gut feelings come from your experience.



Basically, I know guns look bad to 2/3 of the population. That won't change. People's beliefs are what they are.
I also know that the likelihood of being in a shooting is essentially zero.
I also know that history repeats itself, and -just in case- I'd rather live in an armed society than an unarmed society. Even if I don't carry a gun.

-scheherazade

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick at some points, so let me just clear that up first:

"Woah, woah, woah! There's a pretty big difference between saying it's not ok to assault someone and expressing support for them."
-- I referred to the modern nazi who supports them, not you for thinking it is wrong to punch. You are not a nazi supporter because of your stance. A nazi of course supports hitler, etc.

So hopefully this clears up:
"The law has nothing to do with it. It is unethical to assault someone simply for stating their beliefs."
-- My point was that they are stating their support for genocide and harming other people. It's not just a belief, it's a desire to exterminate, alienate and persecute an ethnic group. They aren't shy about their template for society, they fly the swastika flag clearly and sieg heil and whatnot.

"Here we are, 70 years after the biggest armed conflict the world has ever seen.... and yet we still have Nazis."
-- 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. Otherwise you must accept that violence was the most successful solution, and you are equivocating over semantics with this point. In as far as any ideology (which only really latches itself on generic human mindsets like xenophobia, and is therefore inalienable, a form of nazism will occur by some other name in any social group*) may be "defeated", it was defeated.

I accept that you think it is unethical to punch them. I'm not saying i want chaos in the streets where mobs go around tearing suspected nazis to bits; that's why i'm not asking for a law change and why i won't be opening with violence towards nazis. I'm just saying if a nazi happens to get punched, on balance, it's probably ok.

* - just expanding on this. 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; that's why so many diverse ones formed and still do. And as you originally said defeatable, if it isn't defeatable (because it's inalienable) then you're saying your own point is wrong.

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

"Yet it is how they were ultimately defeated."

Really? Here we are, 70 years after the biggest armed conflict the world has ever seen.... and yet we still have Nazis (hell, there's practically one in the white house). So no, they weren't ultimately defeated.

"When you express your support for nazis, you're not just saying you have an alternative viewpoint"

Woah, woah, woah! There's a pretty big difference between saying it's not ok to assault someone and expressing support for them. No-one here supports Nazis, but they do have a right to speak, even if what they have to say is abhorrent.

Of course, they don't have a right to be listened to, and we have the right to tell them to go fuck themselves.

"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. "

The law has nothing to do with it. It is unethical to assault someone simply for stating their beliefs.

I will grant you that if the Nazis ever get into power, an armed resistance would be moral. But there is a world of difference between expressing a thought (no matter how vile) and committing an action.

Well, I had it drycleaned....when are you taking me out?

No, opportunity is not the same as evidence, but is an important part of making a case.

I'm pretty sure there was body camera evidence of him saying he was going to kill the guy during the chase (maybe a different case), but none of the shooting or aftermath from any officer's body camera. This is the uselessness of a camera they control, it should be always on, live streamed to a secured server, not with an on off switch and no backup.

Remember, the only evidence we know of that he's a drug dealer came from the same suspicious search. Once the cop has opportunity to plant evidence, the case is blown because it's reasonable to think they might have, so any conviction is out.

Once he shoots, there's no reason he should have anything else to do with the case (unless he was alone, but that's not the case here). Allowing the shooter to be the investigator is a clear conflict of interest and allows a suspect to investigate himself and tamper with evidence. Normal procedure would be for him to let others take over immediately and surrender his gun pending investigation....so there is no legitimate reason for the killer to be in the car.........

Edit: and how to explain he cop DNA on the gun but not the victim's? It makes no sense unless it's the cop's gun never touched by the victim and placed afterwards, otherwise it would at a minimum have his blood on it and logically his sweat and fingerprints inside and out.

The cops had reason to search, on camera, but not the shooter with his body cam turned off.

A few points.
First, that was more than two points. ;-)
Second, watch again. The first time he pulls the trigger, it's pointed head high into the crowd, but fortunately for everyone, he didn't have a round chambered. True, his second attempt didn't look like it was aimed at people.

Yes, people on both sides of this conflict came armed with pepper sprays, helmets, masks, and clubs. Only one side seemed to have guns, and they used them.

The guy who shot was far from being attacked, he approached gun drawn to have a confrontation, not to avoid one.
Side note, I hope they arrested the fucker with the spray can too. I don't justify unjustifiable actions...ends don't justify means.

So, the antifa should have shown up with guns? Or are you saying the right is SO dangerous you should expect to be shot if you protest Nazis? What is your point?

Clearly, you are a petty cunt, hence the petty comment. If this was a commentary opinion piece excusing the flamethrower, like that other video, I wouldn't expect any upvotes.

I'd have to beg to differ on America having similar Aboriginal/White conflict. IMO the divide between aboriginal/white in Canada is actually much deeper, and with a greater potential for future violence than even black/white relations in the US. The conditions on Canadian native reserves are MUCH worse than in the US. It's severe enough that the first time a Canadian is driving past an America aboriginal reserve they have to ask twice to confirm it really is one. The general state of broken down infrastructure, housing and in general is so bad it's even visibly unavoidable up here in Canada. In the US you can't tell you've gone past anything different unless something culturally relevant is posted up.

It's also made worse by systematic segregation that the reserve system in Canada creates so any seed of racism has lots of fertile ground and lacks any reference to counter balance it.

When a car is stolen is something goes missing on farms near a reserve the immediate default assumption is that someone 'aboriginal' took it. It's only made worse when more often than the statistical distribution should dictate, it actually was someone from a reserve that did it. Recently a car of young aboriginal kids pulled into a farmers yard and one of them was shot and killed. They said they had a flat and were just looking for help. The case is on going, but the courts have heard that the neighbour had already put a call in to police about a theft minutes before the shooting though. Of course, white folks on the internet made such helpful comments as suggesting the farmers mistake was 'leaving any witnesses'. It's also not just white racism against natives though, the racism against settlers(whites) amongst aboriginal populations can be just as ugly and rampant. When Canada decided to have our border crossing guards carry guns, we had to close a border crossing that was in a Mohawk reserve because they wouldn't allow it. The border station there was already riddled with bullet holes before this. If the government DID try and enforce the same law there as the rest of the border, people were going to die.

i think you are onto something there about the reasons for the political extremes gaining traction.

people are far more isolated in today's world,which ironic considering how open everything is.

but now they have the option to:ignore,block or defriend.

creating a nice,warm and comfy bubble in which to reside in and never have to deal with those who may disagree,criticize or challenge anything in their pretty little head.

during the presidential election i had liberals defriend me because i was critical of hillary.

oh they LOVED me when i was telling them that sanders was going be exposed to the "ron paul" treatment.the fact that the primary was obviously rigged made no difference to them.

but when i continued to be critical of their golden child?

misogynist traitor (actual quote).

the trump supporters adored me when i was breaking down the reasons why some people may vote for trump,and that people should not simply dismiss trump out of hand.

my liberal friends despised me for this,thinking that somehow me pointing to the political climate of my country translated to support for trump.

but i was just a cis gender white privileged male who did not deserve and opinion (another actual quote).

and those trump supporters turned on me in an instant when i began pointing out the more disturbing aspects of trump,his history and politics.oh..they didn't like that.

fucking commie fucking libtard.i thought you were on "our" side! (another quote).

all in all...over 400 people,from both sides of the political spectrum,called me some impressive names..and defriended me.

all because what i was posting conflicted or challenged their cult of personality,which they had attached their ideology.

so now they all sit in their little circles and smell each others farts and call them good and righteous.

i think charlottesville,virginia,seattle are just the beginning.....i fear things are going to get much MUCH worse.

I still have my Kali registration. There's a free sampler of Overload game. Try it now! MW was OK. I am currently trying to finish my old Windows games from a decade ago as an unemployed guy! I finished C&C3:KW and Crysis 1 recently. I am currently playing World in Conflict.

Btw, you should use quote in VS comments. At least I would get e-mail notification of new re(plie/sponse)s.

I'm kinda conflicted on this.

Yes, P&G are a massive corporation, and yes, this is a pretty cynical co-opting of the suffering of real people to sell soap.

OTOH, it's a great message. Cut the last 20 seconds off this video and I'd be unequivocally applauding it.

So, they're kinda "damned if they do, damned if they don't".

Ultimately, I come down on the side of "if business is going to cynically exploit injustice to sell shit, they may as well do some good while they're doing it".

Living in Japan, I get to eat octopus pretty frequently and I'm always so conflicted about it. On the one hand, I really admire them as they're such smart creatures. On the other hand, they are damned tasty when prepared right (great takoyaki, for instance).

Still, there is no way I would eat this. I prefer my food 100% dead. I had the same problem at a sushi place once where they took the fish out of the tank and sliced it up right in front of us. The fish slices were still wiggling ever so slightly when the chef handed them to us. I couldn't eat it and my friend wound up eating my share.

Brilliant conflict resolution skills i must say. He talked that aggressive jerk back to reason.

what are you talking about? did we watch the same video? Have you read my previous comments? I feel like there a ton of anti-establishment Americans in here that don't even read what I wrote and get all up-in-arms just because of the subject matter.

I never said the cops were right to arrest, or that she should cooperate with an illegal search or detainment. In fact I said the opposite. But, I am saying her ridiculous, uncalled-for behavior upfront exposed her to a much greater chance of being harassed by inexperienced/incompetent cops.

I have no sympathy for people who instigate to seek out conflict just as in my previous example which does apply.

you say "She clearly told them what she was doing", but no, she does the completely unnatural and suspicious silent treatment from the get-go, when pulled over for a routine-appearing traffic stop.

You start your response with "you are wrong". That is a pretty close-minded statement. Especially when you make so many incorrect assumptions and missed so much of what I've already said? I'm not going to assume you are wrong about this encounter because we don't have all the facts about what caused the stop, but I can say you (and a few others here) are getting what I'm saying wrong.