MajKrAzAm

All this is is a modern day politically correct version of Münchausen syndrome. Progressives, generally living in an academic bubble, have no idea what a hate crime looks like. They have little life experience outside of videogames, Internet forums, and film, which is why they are incapable of producing anything remotely original. What they know of "hate crimes" is vague, colored by the "bad old days" of the time before the civil rights era. This informs the whole of their life experience. When the typical progressive thinks of a hate crime, what does he think? If it's not Klan rallies burning crosses or a skinhead curb stomping a minority, it's the authorities chuckling to themselves as another gay bites the dust: "We don't take too fondly of those kind 'round these parts. Best let sleeping dogs lie." It's the same thing with rape culture. In the liberal mind, the police give each other knowing glances. "That s!@£ was asking for it," they think, or "Well, boys will be boys." Meanwhile, the poor victim wants an abortion but her church threatens to shun her if she doesn't have her rapebaby. Of course, none of this lines up with what the real world is like, given that our society is immensely tolerant of homosexuals and minorities. Hate crime statistics regularly show that the South has relatively few hate crimes, but leftists dismiss that as faulty reporting. Why? Well, everyone knows that backwater hicks are all racist, so they're underreporting the statistics. Marx talked about a "false consciousness" amongst the working class, but he thought it had to do with capitalism. Our media have created an internalized narrative that is far more insidious.

I could kill that robot with a rock.

In the UK and across Europe government spending generally accounts for 50% of GDP. In the US it is 40%; 10 years ago it was 34%. Looking at the UK, government spending in Wales accounts for around 72% of the economy. In Northern Ireland it is 77%. When the public sector makes up that much of your GDP then you pretty much don’t have an economy. Instead it is more comparable to a Soviet client state. The NHS is the biggest employer not just in the UK but in Europe. Can you imagine what a nationalized healthcare system for the United States, a nation of 310 million people would look like?

K-12 education in Texas is one of the worst in the nation. And it has been like this for some time. Abandoning outcome-based education would be a positive step for Texas. But of course the blogosphere has picked up on this story and portrayed it as the Texas dumb dumb party opposing critical thinking in itself, and not the BS teaching method that emphasizes ambiguous and subjective values and attitudes over actual objective academic subjects.

Whoa whoa hold up, legitimate? You’re going to have to explain that. Usually an unwanted government loses its legitimacy, hence…you know elections. Unless of course you’re operating under different assumptions on what makes up a legitimate government...

Garrisoning forces in allied nations including South Korea, Japan and Australia allows the US to rotate deployment of personnel allowing for consistent interoperability standards in East Asia. As an example take an exercise like Cobra Gold or just about every NATO exercise. Without these exercises to set interoperability standards, doctrine and then offer a framework to exercise and practice it, the ability of Allied nations to form even marginally effective military coalitions would rapidly atrophy. Just take a look at what a mess Libya turned into even with decades of NATO exercises and bloated budgets. Now imagine how it would have turned out without years of interoperability training standards. In the Western Pacific, we have Australia, South Korea, and Japan as close allies with powerful militaries, as well as smaller powers like Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. We exercise with the major countries regularly, and also do so with the smaller powers. These exercises allow the US to maintain interoperability from a logistics perspective with all three major countries to the same degree as we do with our NATO allies, and we maintain close military to military relationships enabling a discussion of doctrine and force employment. We can play with Japan, Australia, South Korea, Thailand, etc, in an ad hoc manner because they maintain interoperability standards with us. Training exercises and the garrisoning of small forces allow us to develop a base-line for the co-ordination of allied forces. Minus the Australians really, every other country we work with happens only within the confines of whatever exercise we do with them annually (like Cobra Gold for example). In this context you can think of the exercise guidance and such as little mini-NATO doctrines. They stay constant every year and set the baseline for interoperability between the countries. I grew up in Texas but my family is from Mexico. I would love to see more US/Mexican co-operation between the two regarding border issues, especially against the cartels operating in the region. The problem is that corruption within the Mexican military means that a lot of military personnel are outright bought by cartels to protect drug and migrant smugglers. Say what you will about the behavior of American sailors/marines but you're unlikely to see marine expeditionary amphibs dragging along South-East Asian Boat refugees to your country.

I think that is quite unlikely. The USAF is not looking to get away from manned aircraft. That would be like McDonald’s saying that they want to shift their focus away from burgers to salads because the more health conscious 21st century threat environment would prevent them from being able to operate as they were once able to. It is also not how we should be thinking about future air warfare. All branches are increasingly procuring and investing in UAVs. However, drones are much more vulnerable to EW than most people assume. If Iran is able to ground a RQ-170 drone with an off-the-shelf Russian jamming system then imagine what the Chinese could do. Even GPS signals and SATCOM uplinks would come under threat. The idea that we are moving to a drone era is highly exaggerated. Sure, the USN is slowly shifting the focus of its CVWs away from strike roles but this is due to the increasing role of CCGNs and surface launched cruise missiles, and not unmanned assets. I think you’ve misunderstood the USAF’s strategy in this regard. No branch is trying to get away from manned aircraft. Rather the US appears to want an all LO tacair fleet. And this would consequently mean that drones are utilized more in certain roles than manned aircraft, as we are already seeing. This is different to a zero-sum UAV vs. manned aircraft vision. You’re correct in your analysis but some of your assumptions are misguided. It’s a mistake to consider stealth as a single specific tech. The term stealth is actually incorrect. What we’re really aiming for is low-observability which is not a single platform. LO capability evolves against the response, just like you said. In the genesis of air combat LO was considered a visibility issue, but as technology advanced it came to be seen as a speed/altitude issue: below radar/over horizon. The tech we’re dealing with is dynamic. Claiming that new AA innovations makes current LO redundant is thus wrong. These systems have their own weaknesses. Consider that a lot of sensor systems find it difficult to differentiate threats i.e. Compare the effectiveness of subsonic to hypersonic missiles. Hypersonics are fast hot IR targets which can be quickly picked up by radar from a great distance. Whereas the LO of a subsonic reduces the time between detection and target impact thus limiting the range of defensive measures. There is no single cure-all to counter AA. As I said the tech we are dealing with is not static and neither is the response. Take the F-22 as an example. The aircraft was designed to manage LO by having the ability to improve and upgrade things like active and passive sensor capabilities, meaning that the F-22 can continue to exploit AA coverage gaps for the foreseeable future. Plus as low-observability suggests the F-22 doesn’t have to be fully undetectable. It is part of an integrated system that includes additional assets that can be utilized to exploit a target’s coverage grid weakness. The F-22 not just an impressive airframe. The broader selling point part of it and the F-35 is that they are part of joint systems that act in tight coordination with other platforms such as AWACS, control aircraft , other aircraft, to act as effective force multipliers. I am less certain of how other nations conceive of their fighters in terms of their joint network capabilities. Both the Chinese and Russians are approaching their 5th gen planes in a different manner with less emphasis on integrated network capabilities.

It’s called the A-10. In all seriousness, the weight of the armor required to make an aircraft withstand even the weakest shrapnel would weigh down the aircraft so much that the resulting inefficient thrust to weight ratio as well as drag of the aircraft would prevent it from being able to fulfil the majority of air roles, with the exception of ground-attack. A low flying aircraft will be extremely susceptible to even slightly sophisticated anti-air systems. Indeed, take a look at the A-10’s performance in the Gulf War, even with its heavy armor the A-10 was forced into medium altitudes by Iraqi AA. At this altitude the capabilities difference between the F-35 and the A-10 quickly disappear. The future threat environment will continually push aircraft into higher altitudes, and so we must develop systems to operate efficiently at this altitude. Stealth and radar detection become important here as they allow a lighter aircraft to do the job of a heavily armored one. After the Libya debacle we saw hundreds if not thousands of anti-air missiles smuggled out of the country that are most likely now in the hands of AQIM and other outfits. The missiles taken weren’t just old Soviet relics but sophisticated systems like the SA-24. Hell even the SA-7s taken should cause low flying aircraft a lot of trouble. The A-10 and the technology question you ask is a good example of the on-going debates currently in the air-power community. The key question though isn’t about the particular advantages of one specific technology, but instead the doctrinal argument between the AF and Army about strategic vision: Whether war should be conducted as the AF believes by utilizing highly specific tools and operations to target the opposition according to operational objectives e.g. Libya. Or as the Army has viewed war: Pursuing the total collapse of fielded enemy forces. Well, in case you’re wondering both the USN and the USAF are now looking at developing 6th gen fighters.

The F-15SE is still under development and the US does not intend to procure any. It’s pretty much a poor man’s F-35 for international partners that are not signed up to the JSF program. The F-35 won’t replace the E/F only the F/A-18 which will probably be fully phased out by the mid-2020s. The USN intends to use both the F-35 and F-18EF in its CVW. In fact the USN ordered over 40 F/A-18E/Fs last year as a hedge against the JSF program shortcomings. I really don’t fully understand why they need to add the F-35 to the carrier wings. Would 2 squadrons of F-35Cs and 2 squadrons of F-18E/Fs be significantly better than a CVW of 5 12 plane squadrons of Super Hornets + 2 squadrons of EA-18 Growlers? I really doubt it.

Your $25 billion figure is wrong. R&D for the program is over $60 billion with an extra $10 billion funding still needed for R&D. The total cost of the JSF program as of 12/2010 is $326 billion with $256 billion total funding still needed. I think you underestimate just how much of a colossal mess up the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is. The program forced the Marines requirements of STOVL onto the Navy and Air Force desire to replace their legacy fighters, the three F-35 variants have now diverged in costs and parts commonality to the point that in hindsight three separate programs would have probably been better. And on top of this they decided to internationalize the JSF program. The amount of money that has been sunk into the program is disgusting. We have long reached the point where the cost per aircraft is unjustifiable, and that the combat capability of less capable alternatives would exceed the benefits of the huge JSF investments. The difference between the JSF and 4th generation fighters in avionics, range, payload etc is too small to justify the enormous costs that have and will still be sunken into the program. Only the F-35B is potentially necessary since we are long due to replace the AV-8s. Replacing the F-18E/Fs with the F-35C just doesn’t make any sense to me fiscally or qualitatively. Investment into the F-35C has been focused on strike role capabilities, but the strike role of naval aviation has shifted away from fixed wings in the past decade to subs and surface launched cruise missiles. Why not invest in areas where fixed wing naval aviation is required like electronic warfare and fleet defense. And in the interceptor role, I don’t see how the F-35C has a significant advantage relative to the Superbug to vindicate its cost. The F-35C has done irreparable damage to naval aviation. Wait 10 years when debates on the relevance of the CVW in future environments will intensify, and then we’ll see why pouring billions into it was such a stupid idea that lacked strategic foresight. It pisses me off just thinking about the capabilities that could have been introduced without the F-35C black hole. Just imagine if instead we had invested a fraction of the money into the X-47 UCAS.

You raise a few important points when discussing international relations, Tidus. Specifically the issue of what standard should be used in international affairs to judge actions or practices of other countries. From my interpretation of your posts you seem to suggest (correct me if I’m wrong) that each culture should be judged according to its own specific criteria, and doing otherwise would be to impose a foreign (specifically Western) standard upon that country. I disagree with this relativistic approach, which if taken to its ultimate conclusion, denies that any objective criteria can exist. The problem with relativism is that if we reject the notion that any principle or practice can be entirely and objectively justified, then we are left vulnerable to the excesses of human nature. To reject that any objective norms exist is tantamount to saying that there is no standard of reference to which we are able to judge human activity. Many people hold the view that all values and practices are relative to the cultures in which they are practiced, and that what is considered the standard is in the best case nothing but the ideal adopted by one’s own culture, society or even civilization. But if this is true then the principals of say, a cannibalistic society are just as defensible as the principles of a liberal democracy. If you take a relativistic approach then both must be regarded as equal, as no discernible moral differences can be made without imposing one’s values upon that society/culture. If we consider things from an international relations perspective then things become even more problematic. Take the issue of government violence/murder against its own people for example, how then could a foreign country criticize that nation for violating these basic rights of human life. If we take your cultural relativistic non-interference approach then one would be accused of imposing Western standards upon that country. Your approach would allow one to defend gross abuses of rights by totalitarian regimes under the guise of cultural differences. Apologists for genocidal regimes often defend their crimes this way. They use the same argument that you make: that the West judges them by a ‘narrow’ and ‘prejudiced’ standard. If we follow your reasoning we would be hamstrung from making any objective observations between cultures and consequently prevented from calling out gross abuses of human rights by foreign nations. We would be left with the situation where we would apply different standards to different cultures/societies; ‘Cannibalism for the cannibals, and Liberalism for the liberals’. A common argument that is raised which you briefly allude to is that, if judged by its own standards, then the West is hypocritical. This is partly true, but it only really represents the nature of these standards. That these principles are so onerous that even the West has difficulty living up to them. We should not dismiss these standards and principles simply because even the most liberal Western countries sometimes falter in their pursuit of these values, instead we should see these values and standards as ideals for which Western societies strive to achieve, and may sometimes fail. As it is the law of Islam, the final revelation of God, it sets itself apart from other legal systems by its intrinsic divine and immutable nature. Although, the common and civil law both partly owe their development to canonical ideas and law, religious dogma is not central to them as it is to the Sharia. The relationship between Islam and the Sharia is intertwined; the reliance of the Sharia on Islamic precepts means that it is also concerned with all forms of human activity. Classical Islam made no distinction between the church and state, they were not considered to be separate institutions. Hence, it must follow that the relationship between basic rights and Sharia is also axiomatically concerned with Islam. The role of the jurist is to interpret the sources of the law and to develop legal principles in accordance with the primary sources: the Koran and the Hadith. Jurists may disagree and dissent, but they must remain faithful to central Islamic precepts, they may achieve this through ijma (consensus), or qiyas (analogical reasoning). This poses difficulties for various freedoms and rights in Sharia, in that any use or justification for them must conform to Islamic precepts as defined by Sharia. An Islamic jurist would have to do a lot of theological/legal hoop jumping in order to legitimize certain freedoms. And ultimately these freedoms would be secondary to the Koran and Hadith.

The Secondment Amendment’s prefatory clause is a nominative absolute. It is independent of the operative clause and does not qualify the sentence. Whether the Framers envisioned for the operative clause to stand alone or not cannot be inferred from the prefatory clause. Instead the prefatory clause as an absolute phrase is intended to convey some context and information regarding the operative clause. In this regard it is comparable to Art.3 of the Northwest Ordinance. The article encourages schools and education, but we cannot conclude that religion, morality, and knowledge are their only purposes simply because these words are the only ones included in the prefatory clause. You say that if the Framers intended for the operative clause to stand alone, then they wouldn’t have modified it with the prefatory clause. But the operative clause in this case is a command, and nothing in the prefatory modifies it. It would have the same meaning if we were to remove a well-regulated militia… If we read the preamble as a condition on the operative clause: that the right is protected only when it contributes to a militia, or only when a militia is necessary to the security of a free state. Then we would run into greater problems of having to determine whether it is a temporary or permanent right. But this too would seem inconsistent with the text which contains no ‘only when’ or ‘but for’ clause. The Framers may have intended for the right to keep and bear arms as a means towards maintaining a well-regulated militia, and in turn maintaining the security of a free state. But they didn’t simply say “well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of the free state” and leave it at that. The right is broader than your interpretation suggests. It prevents Congress from disarming citizens of their arms even when that bearing does not contribute to a well-regulated militia. The fact that the phrase was commonly used in a particular context does not mean that we should conclude that it is limited to that context. “Keep arms” was simply a common way of referring to possessing arms, for militiamen and everyone else. It was not exclusively martial. “Hath not every Subject power to keep Arms, as well as Servants in his House for defence of his Person?” The Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights reflects this dual usage: it states “That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state;” Granted this does appear after the Second Amendment, but this usage of the word is not an exception. A significant portion of state constitutional provisions that enshrined a right of citizens to bear arms do explicitly state that they bear arms of themselves and the state. The need to add, “for the common defence” or “for their common defence” in the Massachusetts and Tennessee Constitutions also shows that “bear arms” alone was insufficient to establish a collective or military meaning. The phrase only bears the idiomatic martial meaning of bear arms when it is followed by the preposition “against”, as in the quotes you provide: “bear arms against their country.” “bear Arms against the Rebels in this Province.”

Haha. I also base all my legal and political positions on youtube videos. Oh Gad. ACTA won’t restrict freedom of the internet. It doesn’t concern individual use of the internet. It doesn’t event change the law. It merely harmonizes international enforcement of IP rights in court. Your country already enforces IP rights in court, unless of course you live somewhere like Somalia. Here’s the English text, although I’m guessing you’ll probably need some other language.

The point is that the distinction you mentioned in you previous post between shooting to kill and being prepared to kill, will never matter in legal proceedings. Whether you had no intention of killing someone will be beside the point, discharging a firearm will automatically infer that you reasonably could kill someone. It will matter if you shoot to kill in a legal manner, that’s part of my point. The use of deadly force can only be authorized if you have some authority or solid legal ground to kill a person. This is why the distinction is of no practical value. I do not know if I will kill the target, the only thing that I can control is determining whether I am justified in using deadly force. This is why you don’t fire warning shots. Discharging a firearm will always count as use of deadly force regardless of where you shoot. This is why the whole ‘prepared to kill’ idea is pointless. It really should go without saying. If your warning shot kills someone a mile away then, if you get lucky, you will be tried for reckless manslaughter. But as soon as you draw a gun on another and you kill them, then your distinction will not matter. Both the individual with the ‘shoot to kill’ attitude, and the one with the ‘prepared to kill’ mind-set could potentially be charged with felony murder. What I’m trying to get at is once you use deadly force then intent can be inferred. All that ‘prepared to kill’/ Jeff Cooper color code readiness stuff is legally nonsense. The only thing that matters is whether you have some legal right to justify the use of deadly force.

I understand the distinction that you are attempting to draw, between accepting the possibility that shooting an assailant to merely stop them could likely kill them, compared to actively shooting to kill. But this really is a distinction without a difference. In practice shooting to stop versus kill is meaningless. It’s simply a psychological difference in the shooter’s state of the mind. Any discharge of a firearm is an act of deadly force. Whether a shooter in a self-defense situation is prepared for the possibility that he may kill someone, or in fact actively intends to do so, will make no difference with the underlying fact that he is committing an act of deadly force. Any reasonable person would consider that discharging a firearm would give rise to the possibility of severe harm or death. The distinction that you try to make becomes worthless when you consider the judicious use of deadly force. If you wrongfully kill someone who you mistakenly consider to be a threat, then it will not matter if your state of mind towards discharging your firearm and subsequently killing that individual was one of ‘preparedness’ versus ‘shoot to kill’. The inherent deadly force nature of discharging your gun will make the difference meaningless. Deciding to use deadly force removes the possibility of you being able to determine whether you will wound or kill that individual. ‘Objective’ becomes moot. HeyYou is right, stopping someone becomes synonymous with killing them. The average number of rounds until you incapacitate someone is 2. This is regardless of whether you kill them or stop them. Shot placement, front sight focus, how much you jerk the trigger, target weight etc. all become marginal. There are just too many factors to determine how a target will respond after being shot to make your distinction have any practical value.

"Let us not forget that this great nation was founded by a bunch of men wearing wigs." -RuPaul

Yes, that does seem likely. Spielberg used various anecdotes from Holocaust survivors to include in his film, and the murder of someone's father or neighbour at the foot of their doorstep for something trivial is something one can easily see a Holocaust survivor mentioning. I grew up hearing such stories from family members, and one consistent factor I can pick up is the triviality of the motivation behind Nazi lynching's. Your second paragraph raises an interesting point to discuss/debate. Assuming that the man had aided the resistance, would his death have been justified, legal or even moral? Or as some legal jurists/philosophers have asked 'Was the Holocaust legal?' Just throwing this out so we can escape the pedantry of one movie scene.

The scene gives the impression that the German soldiers were actively searching for the man, they call out his name twice "Gold, Chaim" whilst letting other people through to the plaza. Once Gold responds in the affirmative the soldier with the paper turns to the others and says shoot him, they then throw him on the floor and lynch him. The man only protests after they physically grab him. It does not seem likely that his protest causes them to kill him, but rather something that occurred before the eviction. My guess is that he was profiled as someone who could potentially disrupt the eviction plans or he was associated with the resistance.

It wouldn’t. Legalizing marijuana would barely harm them. The Mexican cartels are the main traffickers of cocaine in the world today. But even if cocaine were legalized today it would only harm the cartels in the short term. Sure, it would hurt their cash flow but it would be nowhere near analogous to what happened in the US after Prohibition. What people fail to realize is how well organised and established these groups are. It is more appropriate to think of the cartels as a ‘shadow government’ engaged in a criminal insurgency rather than as a simple criminal outfit. Legalization would likely lead to the transformation of the Zetas into a FARC style revolutionary anti-government group. They have the money, manpower, influence and logistics to challenge and even supplant government authority. Except why would they want to? Running the government would be a step down from their current position of making money, and not giving a damn about anything else. Government policy has zero impact on the cartels. The US does not scare them. Nothing short of popular revolt would have any meaningful impact on the Cartels.

That man is also speaking Polish, he is mumbling but from what I can make out he says "What's going on? What have I done? Don't Kill me". I'm guessing that he is a resistance fighter or perhaps has aided them.

He is speaking Polish. In the previous frame the man's son attempts to run away, and just as the German soldiers try to shoot the child the father places himself in front of the soldiers crying "that's my son". That's why they then lynch him on the spot.

India because, although it is still a developing country, has a long tradition of dialectic discourse and debate. Unlike most countries that unenthusiastically identify themselves as ‘multicultural’ or ‘free’, India can actually claim these ideals. It is a truly multi-ethnic and pluralist culture, with a democratic and secular government. It is one of the few places abroad where I can feel at home. Alternatively, I would live somewhere in the Mediterranean. I find Greece to be very appealing, mostly for its classical legacy but also for its food and varied Mediterranean, alpine and Aegean climate.

Admittedly, profanity would do nothing to further degrade the OP’s postings. OP, Get the gently caress outta here.

The nuances of the curriculum that American schoolchildren are taught is largely unknown to most American citizens, let alone pollsters in Western Europe or the Middle East. Why is it then that I have to read about studies of what the rest of the globe thinks about Americans? How is the average Somali supposed to answer this question? Not to mention how one collects samples in say the Congo or Namibia. It is because polls are so expensive to conduct that they lean towards asking broad, blunt questions loaded with assumptions – designed to produce a result – what pollsters euphemistically call a ‘fixed choice’. Polling was originally designed to influence public opinion and to frustrate organized labor movements. It was employed by the European right for these very reasons. It is not simply out of coincidence that pollster rhymes with huckster. The obsessive self-pitying nature that Americans have towards world opinion polls has allowed for the type of poll that now asks Americans what they think the rest of the world thinks of them. Can anything be more absurd? There was a point when large swathes of Pakistanis believed that Jews were tipped off about the World Trade Center attack, and yet still turned up to work on time – presumably to loiter around before the detonators went off – and then bailed out. Now, let me remind you that the last time the world said that they like the United States was in the days after September the 11th, just after the country had been violated by the scum of the earth. Now I don’t exactly know how masochistic public opinion has become but this is too high a price to pay for being popular – even for the non sequitur of being thought of as smart or cultured by illiterate mobs in the third world or liberals in the West. Well, the question of George Bush’s intelligence got to the point where even stupid people could make jokes about him

Either Gore Vidal or Christopher Hitchens once wrote that the United States has an insular and isolationist culture, combined with a global and interventionist posture. For the past century the US has been seen as the ‘reluctant superpower’, that it would rather be left alone than be dragged into ‘entangling alliances’ and forced to intervene in the disputes of the Old World. Historically, Americans have been seen as civil and honest, summarising the best of the Puritan work ethic, however, associated with this there has been a notion of provincialism and philistinism. There is no national tradition of dialectic discourse. I’m not quite sure why but I believe that the civility of Americans has fostered a culture of consensus, in which dissent is seen as suspect and adversarial debate is limited to a narrow set of talking points. Argument in America is generally very poorly conducted. In Congress there is barely any debate, people just give speeches in turn and make no attempt at engaging one another. On television it’s the reverse with pundits slugging it out with one another in shouting matches. Even top tier college debate teams behave as though familiarity with the mechanics of logic is not obligatory and instead resort to smug posturing. Only in the courtroom do you find nuanced debate where evidence is presented and rebutted. How about starting with accessible prose?