[Dark Age Iron Savior]

greenwald certainly comes across as informed and intelligent, but he also comes across as a real-life concern troll

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

concern troll is actually fairly recent, and it's almost always brought up in the context of politics.

I don't think Greenwald actually is a concern troll, and I don't think the things he advocates in general are poor ideas, but every time I see his name, it's pretty much in the context of "why what Obama is doing is terrible and an affront to those who voted for him". That seems to be a bit of niche he's carved out, and like most people who find themselves writing/reporting a certain kind of story over and over, there's a pretty strong temptation to bend the facts closer to the established narrative than a set of fresh eyes might feel is appropriate.

(narrative-fitting is far more rampant and damaging on the major news networks and such, of course)

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

just sticking this here, not commenting one way or the other:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=21321563&postcount=76

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ai0hoXoCzgCw&pos=8

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

the kind of crusade I can actually approve of.

in lighter news:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/25/AR2010052504396.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

watching #israel on twitter. Just #israel, nothing else related to the whole flotilla thing

it's a fucking car wreck of insanity, like turning over a rock and seeing an endless swarm of insects stream out from underneath it

yes, I know, internet.

But geez. The usefulness of the internet outweighs the damage it can do to communication, but only just.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

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I've seen different nuanced takes on that, so I'm not too sure whether it really screws the Miranda rights deal up (even more than however you may feel about it now) or whether it's more a loophole closing thing.

I'd feel better if knew why it was a 5-4 vote...

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

I know Myanmar is a pretty terrible place to be, and there's no way this would be good news, but what does it mean on an international scale?
Nuclear weapons are generally meant to be a deterrent/threat to other countries, but I don't know enough about the region to guess why they would want them other than....well, to have nuclear weapons.

(versus North Korean and Iran, who have multiple reasons for wanting nukes on tap)



in slightly more positive news, it appears several memory cards of high-resolution footage taken by people on the Gaza flotilla were kept hidden and "smuggled" out of Israel.
Unfortunately the only reports so far seem to be in foreign languages and the details are sketchy.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

http://www.youtube.com/results?uploaded=d&search_query=Iara+gaza&search_sort=video_date_uploaded

I hope this story hasn't fizzled out so much that we won't get actual professional analysis of the whole video...

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwsMJmvS0AY

full hour of flotilla raid footage Iara Lee smuggled out of Israel

I am not averse to the idea of you guys spreading it around/posting it on your relevant social networks

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

yo, I was reading a topic on {bad forum} and it was about Wikileaks in general but some potential upcoming leak in particular, one that was described at one point as "history-making stuff". The general belief is that this is video/documentation related to the 2009 Afghanistan airstrike which killed (roughly) 100 civilians, many of them believed to be children.

Of course, the reaction among the jaded (and, you know, conservative) members of {bad forum} is that this is not history-making stuff (I won't get into specific reactions, because, well, it's a bad forum). Innocents die during war, etc etc.

Now, I can see the argument that the tragedy itself is not anything out of the ordinary for large-scale armed conflict, especially one conducted the way America has conducted it's "War on Terror".

But would I be wrong in believing that the leaking of the documentation itself of an incident of this size would be relatively history-making? It's certainly a bit higher on the scale than the previous Wikileaks video we discussed here. I know there have been bigger leaks about internal policy reports and such, but would this not be the most significant release of this kind of media due to the sheer bodycount?

Basically I'm asking for some historical perspective from you guys - perspective I'm not likely to get in the current conversational climate in the media or elsewhere.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

I get the basics of how this thing works, I just don't really follow how it can come up with a concept like this "data gap".

I suppose it could be picking up on increasing fears/debate about internet censorship, net neutrality, stuff like that. But....ah, nevermind.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

As someone who is cheering on Wikileaks, that site is kind of crappy at showing why it's necessary and should be encouraged.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

I'm saying that the viewpoint is being poorly argued, not that it has no merit.

Forget it...

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

Are there any scholars of Ron Paul's madness here? Who could perhaps tell me why he was the only member of the House of Representatives to vote against a resolution honoring Liu Xiaobo?

I realize he's an isolationist, but does he show this kind of objection to every bill that even remotely relates to foreign policy?

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

Ron Paul's heart might be in the "right place", but his untempered idealism basically means he's blind to the fact that his ideal America would be in total anarchy within two weeks.

just a reminder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Ron_Paul

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

it's about a bit more than abortion, dude. Let's revisit:

Paul wrote:

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

amazing url watch: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/nick-clegg/8369519/Nick-Clegg-I-cry-to-music-and-even-my-sons-ask-why-everyone-hates-me.html

Mr Clegg has been a focus of public anger since his party’s U-turn over student tuition fees, with protesters creating effigies of him, and dog excrement posted through his letterbox.

Asked by Mrs Khan whether he found this upsetting, he said: "Well look, I'm a human being, I'm not a punch bag – I've of course got feelings."

Discussing the effect on his family, he went on: "What I am doing in my work impacts on them emotionally, because my nine-year-old is starting to sense things and I'm having to explain things.

“Like he asks, 'Why are the students angry with you, Papa?'"

To get over his “misery” at failing to get the balance between his work and family life right, which he told Mrs Khan left him unable to do his job properly, he said that he went home at night to read novels. He added that he “cries regularly to music”.

-

After the interview, Mr Clegg invited Mrs Khan to dinner at his country retreat of Chevening, but turned up two hours late leaving his guest to be looked after by Miriam, his “vibrant, pretty wife, with her big bawdy laugh.”

She and their children were described as “delightfully normal” in “stark contrast” with the Deputy Prime Minister, who appeared: “corpse-like with exhaustion”.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

checking in with the 21sters:

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/07/136053462/is-the-end-nigh-well-know-soon-enough

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

whoa

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

even though I'm attempting to be jaded to political buffoonery, Newt Gingrich's series of mistakes over the past week has produced this amazing quote:

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

A bit old news, but refreshed in memory due to a recent development...

Last year, Swedish manga expert/translator Simon Lundström was found guilty of possessing child pornography by Swedish courts. The evidence was 51 pictures found on his hard drives, after they were taken by police as part of a custody battle (not many details on this). None of these 51 images depicted actual children - they were all drawings, and Lundström said they were part of his continuing research into Japanese manga (he apparently even forgot he had downloaded them).

http://www.stilnocturnal.com/index.php/2010/07/court-says-manga-translators-research-is-child-pornography/

In January this year, after an appeal to a higher court, he was once again found guilty but had the punishment lowered to a fine of 5,600 SEK (632 euros, reduced from an earlier fine of €2650). It's hard to find one central English article about this, but one I came across offered some useful details and translations:

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

I'd have faith in Ron Paul for his positions on things like drug legalization, drastically reducing military spending/intervention and stuff like that, but even if we overlook the questions there are about social conservative positions he might hold (which are hard to nail down):

1. He thinks the US shouldn't be involved in foreign affairs at all, which is frankly moronic
2. He wants to do away with all the regulation/regulatory agencies he can

to underline a point, the way that traditional/successful Republican/Democrat politics bow and bend over to corporate interests is absolutely disgusting, but as far as Ron Paul is concerned, it should be up to the free market whether company CEOs can simply buy the police off while they come in and rape your families. And, you know, there will obviously be a brief period of this but the market will definitely regulate itself so that they'll start using condoms and lubricant.

Some might point out that some of his most sweeping, drastic, and simply insane ideas would never get past the rest of the government. My question is this, then: which of his good ideas will?


anyway, I rather enjoyed reading this article on how psychopaths are diagnosed:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/21/jon-ronson-how-to-spot-a-psychopath

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

so are you for universal healthcare?

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

I saw that and was thinking about posting it (being a 2012 = end of the world enthusiast as I am), but the same place I saw it had people pointing out that such rumors have surfaced time and again throughout the past years. It was also opined that it would be hard to get the US to back this play - even retroactively - and I have to agree with that. We're a pretty dumb nation that is very easily distracted from what is going on "over there", and God only fucking knows what games the people in power are playing at any given time, but I'm sure a lot of people still would see an attack like that by Israel being the same as someone asking you to hold their hand while they set themselves on fire. I don't think it's being too optimistic to believe that sanity will prevail, at least in this particular matter.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

a huge document, apparently written by Anders (the man who surrendered who is currently believed to be the only attacker in the bomb/shooting spree), was apparently sent off to a lot of people who he thought might share his interests. It seems to be equal parts rambling manifesto and intimate diary, and the usual highlights are about to catch media attention

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

some of the document (well, the excerpts other people are posting, I'm not going in there) is actually kind of fascinating. The whole plan and how he developed it (and what it was meant to achieve) is in there, along with all his reservations and attempts to psyche himself up. There's a bunch of right-wing writing and propaganda from other sources thrown in, as well as this whole idea he has for a new Knights Templar group and how it would work (people aren't sure yet whether certain things he wrote about fellow participants in such a group are evidence of collaborators or just wishful thinking). He's extreme right-wing and proclaims himself Christian, but Christianity isn't really part of his craziness (well, explicitly) - rather, it's how he was raised and he sees it as one of the most powerful tools to resist multiculturalism and insure stability in Europe (and he's down on the biggest churches for their attempts to promote inter-faith tolerance). There's ideas about making WMDs, seizing nuclear power plants, all kinds of crap.

Two things I saw pointed out that especially caught my attention:

1. Although he is a crazy racist and mostly down on Muslims, he was apparently worried about how the Roma ("gypsies") are being treated and especially how they might accidentally suffer if the revived right-wing had to resort to outright genocide of the undesirable types. So he basically wanted to make an Israel for them:

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

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unexpected but completely natural death by auto-prune, oddly enough.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8705212/Facebook-riot-inciters-among-those-to-get-toughest-jail-terms-yet.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/16/facebook-riot-calls-men-jailed

from the guardian:

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

to be undeservedly fair, establishing/maintaining strong economic relations with Libya is one of the few "civilized" ways that other countries have of keeping the above atrocities/abuses of power in check. It doesn't work very well/often, of course, but the horse-blindered thought counts.

Also, you gotta admit, there's something invigorating and perhaps even refreshing about horrible inhumane violence being passionately enacted by mob rule after years of it trickling down via eccentric government corruption.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

sawtooth #sawtooth #sawtooth2016

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something like that, yeah. thanks.
guess they didn't want to do the paperwork to make him as much of a US citizen as he saw himself.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

exactly what I was arguing.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]