U.S. Politics: It's Torture

[Happy Ent]

13 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The quote function is terrible.

Exactly! Just interacting with this thread, I thought several times “This would be something that Trump ought to fix, instead of the other nonsense.”

[LongRider]

6 minutes ago, sToNED_CAT said:

2. I just find it funny that clock was not that advanced during Cuban crisis, Vietnam, Reagan era (when there were some REAL nuclear scares), Israeli Arab wars, annexation of Crimea, Bush presidency, but advances just now, few days after Trump inauguration. Yeah, right.

More talking out of your ass? 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock

Scroll down and take a look, the clock started at 7, has been as high as 17 an is now at 2 1/2.  Check out the facts sometime before writing such ridiculousness.

11 minutes ago, sToNED_CAT said:

1. There's a difference between genuine protesters and protesters paid to incite violence. Again, if Trumpists were truly violent movement they would be the ones disrupting leftist rallies, rioting in streets, breaking heads etc. THAT's what true Nazis did.

You made the claim they were 'sent' and now you are saying they were paid, so you gotta prove that claim.  I'm waiting, dum de dum dum, dum de dum.  Oh, just the 'facts' you pulled outa your butt?  Sorry, they don't count.  

 

 

[Hereward]

5 minutes ago, sToNED_CAT said:

They said the clock is now closest to the midnight since 50ties! That means we are now closer to the extinction of whole mankind, than we were during whole fucking Cold War! Are you people serious?

Ah, I apologise, I read your post as " was not advanced".

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Exactly! Just interacting with this thread, I thought several times “This would be something that Trump ought to fix, instead of the other nonsense.”

I wouldn't trust Trump to fix coffee.

[polishgenius]

8 minutes ago, sToNED_CAT said:

They said the clock is now closest to the midnight since 50ties! That means we are now closer to the extinction of whole mankind, than we were during whole fucking Cold War! Are you people serious?

Since 2007, climate change has been a criterion for judging how close the clock is to midnight, so essentially it's not actually the same clock as it was during the cold war.

[Ran]

27 minutes ago, sToNED_CAT said:

Despite right wing prominence in american politics, right wing political violence is almost non existent. That seizure of federal building in Oregon is the only example I can think off right now. Whole violent "direct action" concept is owned almost exclusively by Left right now and has been since 60ties.

1995, Oklahoma, McVeigh and Nichols killed 168 people in a federal building. Right-wing anti-government extremists.

Before your time, maybe? Then Colorado Springs, 2015, Planned Parenthood shooting, 3 dead. Dylann Roof killed 9 people in a Charleston church, same year. 2009, right-wing Scott Roeder murdered Dr. George Tiller in Kansas. 2014, 2 police officers and a civilian were killed in Las Vegas by right wing extremists. A pair of white supremacists killed 4 people in three states in 2012. 2012, Wade Michael Page killed 6 people in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.

And there's more.

Maybe leftist extremists like to punch Nazis who call for the ethnic cleansing of the United States, but right-wing extremists like to shoot foreigners, federal employees, doctors, and people who aren't white.

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Please, enough with this punching Nazis in the face discussion. It's such a waste of time.

If you want to talk about real Nazi things, here's this:

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-weekly-crime-list-aliens-2017-1

This is identical to what they did in Nazi Germany.

 

 

Also, has anyone else seen the ad for Sessions, calling him a civil rights hero?

 

 

[Werthead]

Quote

 

They said the clock is now closest to the midnight since 50ties! That means we are now closer to the extinction of whole mankind, than we were during whole fucking Cold War! Are you people serious?

 

We are clearly much closer to the danger of an extinction event since we came within a hair's breadth of nuclear war (by accident) in 1983, if not the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. On the former occasions they did not change the clock because in the case of 1983 we didn't know about it until a long time after, and in 1962 presumably because they didn't have time (and actually changing the clock itself may have been seen as an unhelpful contribution).

However, there is also the argument that in 1962 we had two leaders who were both rational actors, both were able to restrain their hawks and they had a clear line of open communication with their opposite number, acted cooly to deescalate the situation and made full use of independent mediators and the United Nations, which had their respect. Also, and this was not known until later, the Americans didn't force the Russians to back down but instead swapped the removal of the nukes in Cuba for American ones in Turkey. It was still a highly dangerous situation, but also one with more paths to a peaceful resolution than the general public was aware of at the time.

Right now we have a clearly irrational actor in the White House who has created major diplomatic crises with and between (so far) China, Taiwan, and Mexico before he even took office and has threatened military action against North Korea and China, as well as tearing up a peace deal with Iran. He also has no truck or respect for the United Nations, multilateral negotiations or compromise. Saying nice things about Russia does not reverse the fact that he could blunder into a confrontation with Russia very easily over Iran, North Korea or Eastern Europe, with the resulting risk of a nuclear confrontation.

We also have many more countries with nuclear weapons than they had in the 1950s or 1960s (Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea), along with the development of non-state-actor organisations who will have far less compunction on using a nuclear weapon (if they can acquire one) because there is no obvious methodology for retaliating.

 

 

 

[LongRider]

4 minutes ago, sToNED_CAT said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/10/19/two-democratic-operatives-lose-jobs-after-james-okeefe-sting/?utm_term=.b8f94da9dae3

Where is your evidence that the people punched in the face at Trump's rallys were paid operatives?  A carefully edited James O'Keefe video  talking to operatives is not the iron clad proof you need.

[Einheri]

Both the far right and far left have committed atrocities, including acts of terrorism. Horseshoe model, people.

[Rippounet]

30 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Would you concede that the Marxist/Leninist strain of Socialism has a tendency toward authoritarianism when implemented?

Of course. I admitted as much in one our previous exchanges, and I have come to believe the fact is crucial to underline.
But with the exception of the specific Marxist/Leninist ideology, socialism has saved, and is still saving, millions of lives (it saved mine, in many ways). It's not even a question of opinion, it's a question of being willing to look at all the facts available and judging them objectively. I guess it also requires understanding what is really socialism. Generally people living in social democracies do ; obivously not everyone.

[LongRider]

9 minutes ago, Ran said:

1995, Oklahoma, McVeigh and Nichols killed 168 people in a federal building. Right-wing anti-government extremists.

Before your time, maybe? Then Colorado Springs, 2015, Planned Parenthood shooting, 3 dead. Dylann Roof killed 9 people in a Charleston church, same year. 2009, right-wing Scott Roeder murdered Dr. George Tiller in Kansas. 2014, 2 police officers and a civilian were killed in Las Vegas by right wing extremists. A pair of white supremacists killed 4 people in three states in 2012. 2012, Wade Michael Page killed 6 people in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.

And there's more.

Maybe leftist extremists like to punch Nazis who call for the ethnic cleansing of the United States, but right-wing extremists like to shoot foreigners, federal employees, doctors, and people who aren't white.

 

 

Thank you for posting this.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

35 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

A Swede writing that socialism is responsible for the deaths of people? How quaint.

clearing quote.
 

[sToNED_CAT]

9 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Since 2007, climate change has been a criterion for judging how close the clock is to midnight, so essentially it's not actually the same clock as it was during the cold war.

Well, in that case it is pretty stupid to include something occurring so slowly in calculation of exact time on doomsday clock. Not to mention that right now the actions of China and India have far more impact on climate change, than Trump's election.

13 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

You made the claim they were 'sent' and now you are saying they were paid, so you gotta prove that claim.  I'm waiting, dum de dum dum, dum de dum.  Oh, just the 'facts' you pulled outa your butt?  Sorry, they don't count.  

article

[LongRider]

12 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Since 2007, climate change has been a criterion for judging how close the clock is to midnight, so essentially it's not actually the same clock as it was during the cold war.

Trump's conspiracy theories about climate change may be contributing to the clocks reset.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 minute ago, Rippounet said:

Of course. I admitted as much in one our previous exchanges, and I have come to believe the fact is crucial to underline.
But with the exception of the specific Marxist/Leninist ideology, socialism has saved, and is still saving, millions of lives. It's not even a question of opinion, it's a question of being willing to look at all the facts available and judge them objectively. I guess it also requires understanding what is really socialism. Generally people living in social democracies do ; obivously not everyone.

I absolutely concede this point.   It is simply that most of the time in the US when people talk about "socialism" or "communism" they are thinking of the Marxist/Leninist model. That's what is taught.  
 

I absolutely concede and understand that there is much more to socialist ideology and ideas than the Marxist/Leninist school.

[sToNED_CAT]

7 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

Where is your evidence that the people punched in the face at Trump's rallys were paid operatives?  A carefully edited James O'Keefe video  talking to operatives is not the iron clad proof you need.

What do you want? Honest admission of wrongdoing from these guys? Even the fact that those guys were stupid enough to talk about such tactics to undercover operative is a miracle. The video is edited and O'Keefe is partisan, true,  but the guy clearly said they do these things (sending people to cause conflict to opponent rallies). Were all these people Democratic operatives? Maybe yes, maybe not. But the probability is pretty high.

And those 2 guys were fired/resigned. So there must have been at least something true in these videos.

[Werthead]

10 minutes ago, Einheri said:

Both the far right and far left have committed atrocities, including acts of terrorism. Horseshoe model, people.

The right/left paradigm is a circle, not a line. Go far enough left and you get Stalin. Go far enough right and you get Hitler. And those guys have a massive mutual respect, at least before June 1941 (and even Stalin was heard to lament afterwards that Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany could have still achieved "great things" together if Hitler hadn't invaded).

Quote

 

Well, in that case it is pretty stupid to include something occurring so slowly in calculation of exact time on doomsday clock. Not to mention that right now the actions of China and India have far more impact on climate change, than Trump's election.

 

Climate change itself is occurring relatively slowly, but the window of time we have to take action to prevent the worst impacts are now quite miniscule (and has already closed for "no impact", we are now purely in mitigation mode). Bangladesh, Tuvalu and the Maldives, along with many other low-lying nations, are facing an existential threat on a timescale of decades, so they are definitely in doomsday mode.

[LongRider]

2 minutes ago, sToNED_CAT said:

What do you want? Honest admission of wrongdoing from these guys? Even the fact that those guys were so stupid as to talk about such tactics to undercover operative is a miracle.

If you want to make an honest discussion about the violence at Trump rallies,  both siderism and conspiracy theories about they were paid! don't cut it.  Since that won't happen from you, I'm out.

[Rippounet]

5 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The right/left paradigm is a circle, not a line. Go far enough left and you get Stalin. Go far enough right and you get Hitler.

I would argue that by today's definitions/paradigms, Stalin is no leftist.