Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 3 Jan 2022 @ 2:37am
Re: Re: Re: Well, it doesn't exactly come as a surprise.
"Most people in Hong Kong don't have the option of just leaving. Those that might, would effectively be leaving hostages behind. "
They had. The UK and other countries - like Taiwan - were fairly open about receiving HK immigrants back when the sino-british treaty was first signed.
That's why I blame the parents. They had some 20 years of advance warning and it was guaranteed that either their children or their grandchildren would be living under the full PRC autocracy.
The current generation? Mostly have the choice of being irrelevant martyrs of a long-dead cause or bend their necks to Emperor Xi.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 3 Jan 2022 @ 2:31am
Re: Re: Re: Well, it doesn't exactly come as a surprise.
"By that logic shouldn't all democrats of child rearing age be leaving the USA?"
If the GOP takes the house in 2022 and the landslide democrat victory in 2024 somehow ends up with Trump back in power?
Depends. The difference between the 25% of the US citizenry who are A-OK with fascists and fanatical puritans in power and the 75% who are most definitely not is that the saner people outnumber the deranged ones. If push comes to shove it boils down to how many die or are suppressed before even the libs get ornery and go for their guns.
For 7,4 million HK citizens to try to resist 1,4 billion, however, isn't the same equation. If the hostile part of the nation you find yourself part of can vanish you without anything you do making a difference your choice is to leave while the going's good or drop to your knees and kowtow nine times to his most August Bearsonage Emperor Xi.
What happens in Hong Kong right now is comparable to a single household area in Washington D.C. declaring their secession from the United States - by firing at the passing beat cop. There is no chance it ends well for them.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 3 Jan 2022 @ 2:22am
Re: Re: Well, it doesn't exactly come as a surprise.
"I am not sure that "brave" and "courageous" are appropriate terms to describe people who remain in Hong Kong and openly protest the Chinese policies."
They are, though. Their future is guaranteed to be miserable, any hope they ever had of a career, shot. At best.
And there's no hope of the PRC switching stance here, given that to most Chinese people Life Is Good and thus a revolution isn't on the table. This isn't the Qing dynasty or the USSR where most people lived in misery that we're talking about.
"Your other word, "irrelevant," is much more appropriate, and hints at some other more correctly descriptive adjectives."
Like "foolish", for instance.
As I said earlier, though I don't exculpate the PRC for being ultra-authoritarian asshats led by a thin-skinned Pooh Bear lookalike whose social policies are all based around the chinese concept of face - lése majéste, writ large...the most inexcusable culprits in this mess are the parents of the current generation of HK citizens who saw fit to stay in HK while it was still possible to leave, knowing their children would end up at the business end of the PRC's knife.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 3 Jan 2022 @ 2:13am
Re: One reason why upload filters are bad
"Considering how much this has happened with YouTube's contentID, to mandate it by legal fiat is just cruel."
As has been stated so often around the copyright cult, the cruelty is, by now, the point.
Because I note that as usual actual pirates remain unaffected. The victims of this particular push will primarily be the independent content creators.
The intended target gets hit, in other words, because like any industry bereft the actual market need of its services will always go after the mechanism threatening their future business...
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 30 Dec 2021 @ 6:29am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"I believe the virus was in ngineered, one way or another. Soy sauce soldiers? Maybe."
I don't. Maybe because I've a background in bio and actually followed the hullaballoo about SARS.
When every epidemiologist has been screaming about the hot spots the next new brand of plague will come out of for about 50 years Sars-CoV version 2.0 was about as surprising as a meteorologist telling you that after rain comes sunshine.
We knew the next big virus had one of three plausible origins;
1) Airborne Ebola out of Africa.
2) Some variant of Dengue to emerge from what remains of the Amazon.
3) New strain of facultative zoonosis like SARS out of China...oh, look, we got a winner!
The thing about engineering a plague is sci-fi. Bad sci-fi at that, featuring moustache-twirling incompetent villains without a plan beyond "Be Evil!".
No government, ever will actively try to push something like that. Because plagues mutate. Once your doomsday virus is out of the lab it will be immune to your current treatment in less than a decade. Meaning the politicians responsible will be in the endangered group. And there's fsck all you can do about that.
"Bats? Very unlikely, if you know tha cooking habits of Wuhan and local chefs."
That's not how a zoonosis spreads. Once you've got a pathogen leaping species all it takes is one single flea or mosquito for it to spread explosively to humans. It's why when you ask a biologist what the deadliest animal on earth is, we all point to those flying little syringes giving wings to all the worst pandemics.
"But who DIDNT jump for joy, and laugh, as Melinda Gates divorced him?"
Aside from Gates's last little spiteful attempt to advocate the corona vaccine locked away under patent he's more or less spent as an active force of evil. His contributions to charity may be a fraction of what he ought to have paid in taxes, but I'll take it. I'm far more concerned with Murdoch who is still very much actively invested in trying to save his ailing news media industry by lobbying for legislation which actively harms many of the concepts around which the internet was built...like the idea of a functional search engine.
Or perhaps most critical, currently, all the interests still vested in fossils doing their damnedest to ensure any infrastructure bill focused on green energy fails in order to guarantee the next few quarters keep showing growth.
"...like Eva Braun".
Not sure what Hitler's old mistress has to do with the price of these eggs? If we're digging up the dirt on old Hitler nee Shicklgruber we ought to be looking at Geli Raubal.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 30 Dec 2021 @ 5:48am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"...it’s the first time that you ever engaged with evidence, though your analysis of such indicates “variable” scholarship.
But I do appreciate your engagement. "
This would be ROGS, then.
And the reason I don't "engage with evidence" on assertions of implausible conspiracies is because it isn't up to me to disprove the existence of Russel's Teapot.
Normal human nature is, lamentably, all that is required for millennialist beliefs to prosper in whatever framework is considered convenient at the time. It's so fundamental a mechanism of humanity you can predict its emergence from any situation sharing the proper characteristics
You will never find any single faction or individual with a "plan" behind what conspiracy theorists desperately try to see as a pattern - because just like salmon migrating upstream or fish schooling there's no coordinating entity. Just a thousand grifters all very predictably moving to secure their own immediate interests.
Gates isn't sitting in a murky room plotting his part of the wealthy capturing every US regulatory body - he's just employed tax and lobbying specialists experts in the currently best way to abuse the system. And every other wealthy person, from the Koch brothers to Murdoch is doing the exact same thing. Not because they collude but because thousands of skilled lobbyists and lawyers by now have the formula on how to exploit the current system of laws down pat.
Haugens was one of dozens of opportunists competing to harness a base of already radical wingnuts with a bias - and became the winning contender to represent that particular loud group which had already long decided Who Was To Blame For <insert real or made-up grievance here>.
"Like Trump and Rosenstein, or Stone, the advisors do in fact matter."
Let's dive into that, shall we? One of those we have an untold amount of information on, for most of his life. Trump. Who has, for 40 years or more, been very clearly never listening to advisors. If anything it's been made pretty damn clear that it's the other way around. Trump doesn't hire advisors. He hires YES men. And cthulhu have mercy on any of Dear Leader's retinue if they try to "advise" him on any topic.
Similarly Hitler had no "advisors" who actually advised him. He made decisions, others executed them according to his will or vanished. Same as Mussolini, Capone, Jobs, Gates...at most they'll rely on accountants or systems experts how to best carry out what they've already planned, but they'll never allow an advisor to formulate or alter policy.
"About the East India and it’s Queen, I will study up— because you obviously have not fully answered the question, because the Queen at that time had advisors..."
Because no further reason is required. Mercantile interests found massive opportunity for business and approached the ruling body with the promise of massive tax returns and prosperity for the realm. This cooperation between the body politic and wealthy merchants is as tired a play first described in detail in ancient roman senate records. It hasn't really changed since.
Conspiracy theorists keep insisting on ever more convoluted ways to ascribe perceived patterns in human history to singular prime movers or shadowy cabals when the truth has been staring us in the face for thousands of years. That humanity is no more organized than a school of bloody fish. Homo Sapiens Sapiens will, in large populations, act as predictably as a swarm of insects. With no more forethought nor planning than a termite mound or hornet's nest.
Before you get to cohesive decisions you really need to move it down to a tribal stage where a single individual makes a difference. But on the national or world stage? It becomes nothing more than the sad autonomous response of the educated and wealthy individually consolidating their power the same way, the less wealthy and educated trying to figure out why the system they live in seems maliciously bent on plundering them, and the uneducated horde or know-nots keep falling - hook, line and sinker - for some millenialist trope designed to push all the right buttons in their heads.
Looking at every real conspiracy ever attempted they all have the same pattern. They get blown wide open well within a scant few years. Not just because there are always curious people trying to find out why the government hands a billion dollar tax break to some electronics company but because three people still can't keep a secret unless two of them are dead.
After all, there's always lots of money to be made in a book promising revelations.
There'll always be a Deep Throat or Ridenhour or Snowden or Drake. The more explosive the material the more likely the leak will occur sooner.
Ironically the best explanation for, for instance, the East India company and the imperialist efforts of the british empire in its day can be summarized by a fictional East India representative walking down a staircase getting shot to shit while mumbling "It's just Good Business". Short-sighted greed always ending in the total collapse of the business of absolutely everyone involved.
The only mystery remaining in contemporary politics is Qui Bono? Trump getting to power, for instance, isn't hard to figure out once you find his campaign war chest filled with a bank loan guaranteed by the russian state bank. Nor his actions as president in conspicuously letting large parts of the ME fall into Putin's lap.
Biden in his days in congress carrying water for the banking industry against his party's policy needs only a quick look at his campaign funding to figure out.
Manchin orating in injured tones of why he felt compelled to vote against the infrastructure bill isn't mysterious at all when you look at who funds his seat.
And any director or chief of any alphabet soup agency of the US has similar clearly obvious motives for their actions. Beyond the tribal arena you find no ideology or plan beyond Money.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 30 Dec 2021 @ 2:59am
Re: Re:
"If there’s an infrastructure disaster in Georgia that has a chance of repeating again, are you gonna tell the large number of voters (including the black activists that worked their asses off to get people out to vote in ways that help tilt Georgia in favor of Biden) that they can either leave or deserve to suffer?"
Deserve? No.
But at some point a battle will be considered lost and the time comes to redraw the battle lines to a field where you can win.
Because this much is fact; If the current GOP takes over Georgia anyone a liberal will indeed suffer. If not by the weather then by the hands of some crowd drunk on success and the idea of spilling some "libtard" blood.
The idea that "it can't happen here" is long dead. It is happening there.
"Suffer like the black and latino and LGBTQ+ voters in Democratic strongholds in Texas?"
Being a stronghold in the middle of enemy territory will mean hardships. If the only two reasonable options you can provide are "Fight a losing battle" or "Get the hell out, while you still can!"...well, one of those suggestions is well-intentioned.
Being a liberal in the Deep South has always meant hardships, as I understand. But these days...I'm thinking being a liberal in the deep south is increasingly becoming like being a little too jewish in the Germany of 1930. Or like being a bosnian in serb territory in 1992.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 30 Dec 2021 @ 2:11am
Well, it doesn't exactly come as a surprise.
"She is a gay, pro-democracy advocate who has regularly participated in protests and marches, all with a large following thanks to her musical and acting careers. In other words, she is absolutely a sensible target for a Chinese government intent on playing thought police over the city. "
This sort of points to a certain misunderstanding at the heart of the HK citizenry; That staying will somehow result in Beijing loosening its grip.
That's not going to happen. If China were somehow left with the only way to properly leash HK being to put every last HK resident in a 're-education' camp somewhere and replace the citizenry with mainland Chinese immigrants - they will absolutely do that. Nothing short of world war 3 is going to get China to soften that stance.
Democracy was dead in HK when the sino-british treaty was signed in 1984 and it isn't coming back. That battle is irretrievably lost.
Denise Ho is brave to have stayed in HK during this time - because she must have known that there was no future which ended with her not getting picked up by the PRC IntSec people.
This, I think, may be the most infuriating part of this. The HK civil rights activists are incredibly courageous...and in the end, irrelevant. A brief bump in PRC incarceration and reeducation numbers. And their parents choosing to stay in the 90's when the treaty was signed are to blame for these kids today facing a choice between bending knee to a totalitarian regime or living in an internment camp.
Nothing will exculpate the aggressive dictatorship stripping a people of their rights. But it's a sorry excuse of parenting to raise children knowing that dictatorship just invaded.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 30 Dec 2021 @ 1:21am
Re: Re:
"She's not asking as a citizen; she's asking as a US senator. And, as Masnick points out, if a senator asked these same questions of a TV network, people would go nuts, for good reason."
It wasn't too many decades ago that a letter from a US senator might be published by any private entity and cordially, in public, responded to with a heartfelt request that said senator could stick said letter in their pipe and smoke it.
But that was in a different time, long before GWB decided to publicly start tearing down the protections hitherto held as unviolable by the US citizenry and both in that administration and the administration before the current one members of a certain party in congress began routinely questioning the "rights" of people who dissented with Dear Leader.
Yes, Klobuchar isn't doing anything in this letter Senators haven't, through all of american history, done. It's just that today it's pretty tonedeaf to send such correspondence in the wake of trumpist white house officials openly questioning the legality of vocal dissent.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 30 Dec 2021 @ 1:12am
Re: Re:
There is a persistent problem in that when it comes to censuring China over bad behavior the most loud and strident cries don't come from verifiable atrocities perpetrated in Xinjiang and Tibet...but from the conspiracy theorists who try to pin Chinese human sacrifice or Covid being biowarfare perpetrated by the Yellow Peril alongside their favorite Chemtrails and Gay Frog theories.
This makes it significantly harder to make the factual complaints stick.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 30 Dec 2021 @ 1:01am
Re: Re: In New York City it is real
Hacker: The statistics are irrefutable...
Sir Humphrey: Statistics? You can prove anything with statistics.
Hacker: Even the truth.
Sir Humphrey: Yes... No!
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 30 Dec 2021 @ 12:57am
Re:
"It's incorrect to claim that all social media platforms require "some level of moderation"."
No, it really isn't. Every social media platform without a filter will eventually attract the very worst people - upon which time either filters will be introduced or everyone but the very worst people will leave. This is as true in any social setting both in real life and online.
"For the longest time, reddit, as just one example, was almost entirely free of moderation. And by "longest time" I describe a period that last years and not weeks or months."
It really never was. Reddit has always been quite heavily moderated. A very few short-lived sub-reddits haven't been...which is why they were short-lived.
Anyone claiming otherwise doesn't grok at which time the narwhal bacons.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 30 Dec 2021 @ 12:43am
Re: Third world problem?
"I'm wondering how big a wok the PRC will be preparing for the meal of crow the US seems to be preparing for itself."
They prepared that meal long ago. Note how Biden has had strong words in a few speeches and not much else, whenever the topic of Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong comes up? I'll tell you why the first reason more isn't happening:
It's because every time a US ambassador tries to bring human rights to the debate his chinese opposite says "I agree, we should discuss human rights! Publicly!" - and hauls out a few fat folders with the names "Abu Ghraib", "Guantanamo", and "US incarceration statistics" on them. Then the US ambassador falls conspicuously silent and mumbles that perhaps it isn't time to take this to a world forum.
Then the chinese ambassador smiles politely and says "Fine. As you wish. Let's discuss trade instead, hmm?".
It's just difficult to discuss issues of morals and ethics when your own closet is filled to the rafters with pictures of people imprisoned and tortured without trial. You need moral high ground to hold that debate. And the US has spent the last twenty years digging itself into a pit in that regard, from which it won't emerge in this generation.
With none of the three superpowers - US, China and Russia - giving a tinker's damn about civil rights it ends up on the EU to carry that burden - and we're full up trying to deal with our own human rights violator headaches - Turkey and Hungary. And China especially will be all too pleased to serve whatever uppity gwailo to try to lecture them on human rights some well woked crow.
And the same holds true here: How the heck could you trust a nation to abide by standards of respecting property if their own law enforcement agencies are comparable to outfits running protection rackets?
Ever since GWB the US hasn't had any credibility in the international forum - which is a shame because it used to be the world leader and for a brief period post-WW2 served as the world conscience.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 29 Dec 2021 @ 5:37am
Re:
"Koby is an intentionally obtuse right-wing troll who definitely understands Section 230 and the First Amendment (even when he acts like he doesn’t), but he isn’t stupid."
I beg to differ. Anyone who isn't a complete moron would have realized long ago that the only thing repeating alt-right talking points gets him on this web site is a dozen people pointing out his fallacies on every thread he deigns to visit with that bullshit.
I.e. the only thing he accomplishes here is to keep raising general awareness that the alt-right is full of shit and that nazis, klansmen and bigots self-identify as "conservatives" these days.
So yeah, he's stupid. Not only is he not convincing anyone, he actively harms the cause he's working for by his clumsy propaganda backfiring.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 29 Dec 2021 @ 5:02am
Re: Refreshing Honesty
"...but they operate to outlaw conservative speech on the platforms..."
If you insist on calling racism, bigotry, medical misinformation and such conservative speech then I'm afraid I have to tell you, once again, that the response will not be sympathy but "About damn time!".
You people had your shot, Koby at telling the neo-nazis, confederate holdovers and proud chauvinists to get the fsck out of dodge. You had any amount of chances to step away.
But no. You guys have insisted on embracing every last vestige of old southern-style racism while clinging to your right to use the N-word in discourse on other people's property with a white-knuckled grip.
And that just means that today you've managed to turn "conservative values" in US politics into confused nationalist fascism. Something which if not outlawed should at least be run out of town and barred entry by every business owner in america.
There is no room in civilized society for you and your kind, Koby. So do us all the immense favor and GET LOST!
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 29 Dec 2021 @ 3:18am
Re: Re: 'Here's some scapegoats now please don't look closer'
"It's a cancer in the entirety of the police forces. In the whole world."
Not so much.
This is yet again one of those Only In America issues - because that type of policing is only ever found at scale in the US...and in a select few war-riven third-world hellholes and juntas. Within the G20 US "law enforcement" stands out as being bloody remarkable in the regard of how rotten it is.
In most of the EU the police operates by Peelian Principles. Consent-based policing. I am not afraid of Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, German, French or Spanish police, all of which I have at some time spoken to, if only for directions.
But I would make a wide loop around a US police officer if I was carrying anything of value, in fear of being robbed through "civil forfeiture". And otherwise treat them like I would someone visibly armed and in gang colors.
On the post: Chinese Govt. Arrests More Pro-Democracy Icons In Hong Kong, Including Music Stars
Re: Re: Re: Well, it doesn't exactly come as a surprise.
"Most people in Hong Kong don't have the option of just leaving. Those that might, would effectively be leaving hostages behind. "
They had. The UK and other countries - like Taiwan - were fairly open about receiving HK immigrants back when the sino-british treaty was first signed.
That's why I blame the parents. They had some 20 years of advance warning and it was guaranteed that either their children or their grandchildren would be living under the full PRC autocracy.
The current generation? Mostly have the choice of being irrelevant martyrs of a long-dead cause or bend their necks to Emperor Xi.
On the post: Chinese Govt. Arrests More Pro-Democracy Icons In Hong Kong, Including Music Stars
Re: Re: Re: Well, it doesn't exactly come as a surprise.
"By that logic shouldn't all democrats of child rearing age be leaving the USA?"
If the GOP takes the house in 2022 and the landslide democrat victory in 2024 somehow ends up with Trump back in power?
Depends. The difference between the 25% of the US citizenry who are A-OK with fascists and fanatical puritans in power and the 75% who are most definitely not is that the saner people outnumber the deranged ones. If push comes to shove it boils down to how many die or are suppressed before even the libs get ornery and go for their guns.
For 7,4 million HK citizens to try to resist 1,4 billion, however, isn't the same equation. If the hostile part of the nation you find yourself part of can vanish you without anything you do making a difference your choice is to leave while the going's good or drop to your knees and kowtow nine times to his most August Bearsonage Emperor Xi.
What happens in Hong Kong right now is comparable to a single household area in Washington D.C. declaring their secession from the United States - by firing at the passing beat cop. There is no chance it ends well for them.
On the post: Chinese Govt. Arrests More Pro-Democracy Icons In Hong Kong, Including Music Stars
Re: Re: Well, it doesn't exactly come as a surprise.
"I am not sure that "brave" and "courageous" are appropriate terms to describe people who remain in Hong Kong and openly protest the Chinese policies."
They are, though. Their future is guaranteed to be miserable, any hope they ever had of a career, shot. At best.
And there's no hope of the PRC switching stance here, given that to most Chinese people Life Is Good and thus a revolution isn't on the table. This isn't the Qing dynasty or the USSR where most people lived in misery that we're talking about.
"Your other word, "irrelevant," is much more appropriate, and hints at some other more correctly descriptive adjectives."
Like "foolish", for instance.
As I said earlier, though I don't exculpate the PRC for being ultra-authoritarian asshats led by a thin-skinned Pooh Bear lookalike whose social policies are all based around the chinese concept of face - lése majéste, writ large...the most inexcusable culprits in this mess are the parents of the current generation of HK citizens who saw fit to stay in HK while it was still possible to leave, knowing their children would end up at the business end of the PRC's knife.
On the post: The Copyright Industry Wants Everything Filtered As It Is Uploaded; Here's Why That Will Be A Disaster
Re: One reason why upload filters are bad
"Considering how much this has happened with YouTube's contentID, to mandate it by legal fiat is just cruel."
As has been stated so often around the copyright cult, the cruelty is, by now, the point.
Because I note that as usual actual pirates remain unaffected. The victims of this particular push will primarily be the independent content creators.
The intended target gets hit, in other words, because like any industry bereft the actual market need of its services will always go after the mechanism threatening their future business...
On the post: State Department Report Repeats Talking Points From Group Who Wants To Ban All Porn
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"I believe the virus was in ngineered, one way or another. Soy sauce soldiers? Maybe."
I don't. Maybe because I've a background in bio and actually followed the hullaballoo about SARS.
When every epidemiologist has been screaming about the hot spots the next new brand of plague will come out of for about 50 years Sars-CoV version 2.0 was about as surprising as a meteorologist telling you that after rain comes sunshine.
We knew the next big virus had one of three plausible origins;
1) Airborne Ebola out of Africa.
2) Some variant of Dengue to emerge from what remains of the Amazon.
3) New strain of facultative zoonosis like SARS out of China...oh, look, we got a winner!
The thing about engineering a plague is sci-fi. Bad sci-fi at that, featuring moustache-twirling incompetent villains without a plan beyond "Be Evil!".
No government, ever will actively try to push something like that. Because plagues mutate. Once your doomsday virus is out of the lab it will be immune to your current treatment in less than a decade. Meaning the politicians responsible will be in the endangered group. And there's fsck all you can do about that.
"Bats? Very unlikely, if you know tha cooking habits of Wuhan and local chefs."
That's not how a zoonosis spreads. Once you've got a pathogen leaping species all it takes is one single flea or mosquito for it to spread explosively to humans. It's why when you ask a biologist what the deadliest animal on earth is, we all point to those flying little syringes giving wings to all the worst pandemics.
"But who DIDNT jump for joy, and laugh, as Melinda Gates divorced him?"
Aside from Gates's last little spiteful attempt to advocate the corona vaccine locked away under patent he's more or less spent as an active force of evil. His contributions to charity may be a fraction of what he ought to have paid in taxes, but I'll take it. I'm far more concerned with Murdoch who is still very much actively invested in trying to save his ailing news media industry by lobbying for legislation which actively harms many of the concepts around which the internet was built...like the idea of a functional search engine.
Or perhaps most critical, currently, all the interests still vested in fossils doing their damnedest to ensure any infrastructure bill focused on green energy fails in order to guarantee the next few quarters keep showing growth.
"...like Eva Braun".
Not sure what Hitler's old mistress has to do with the price of these eggs? If we're digging up the dirt on old Hitler nee Shicklgruber we ought to be looking at Geli Raubal.
On the post: State Department Report Repeats Talking Points From Group Who Wants To Ban All Porn
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"...it’s the first time that you ever engaged with evidence, though your analysis of such indicates “variable” scholarship.
But I do appreciate your engagement. "
This would be ROGS, then.
And the reason I don't "engage with evidence" on assertions of implausible conspiracies is because it isn't up to me to disprove the existence of Russel's Teapot.
Normal human nature is, lamentably, all that is required for millennialist beliefs to prosper in whatever framework is considered convenient at the time. It's so fundamental a mechanism of humanity you can predict its emergence from any situation sharing the proper characteristics
You will never find any single faction or individual with a "plan" behind what conspiracy theorists desperately try to see as a pattern - because just like salmon migrating upstream or fish schooling there's no coordinating entity. Just a thousand grifters all very predictably moving to secure their own immediate interests.
Gates isn't sitting in a murky room plotting his part of the wealthy capturing every US regulatory body - he's just employed tax and lobbying specialists experts in the currently best way to abuse the system. And every other wealthy person, from the Koch brothers to Murdoch is doing the exact same thing. Not because they collude but because thousands of skilled lobbyists and lawyers by now have the formula on how to exploit the current system of laws down pat.
Haugens was one of dozens of opportunists competing to harness a base of already radical wingnuts with a bias - and became the winning contender to represent that particular loud group which had already long decided Who Was To Blame For <insert real or made-up grievance here>.
"Like Trump and Rosenstein, or Stone, the advisors do in fact matter."
Let's dive into that, shall we? One of those we have an untold amount of information on, for most of his life. Trump. Who has, for 40 years or more, been very clearly never listening to advisors. If anything it's been made pretty damn clear that it's the other way around. Trump doesn't hire advisors. He hires YES men. And cthulhu have mercy on any of Dear Leader's retinue if they try to "advise" him on any topic.
Similarly Hitler had no "advisors" who actually advised him. He made decisions, others executed them according to his will or vanished. Same as Mussolini, Capone, Jobs, Gates...at most they'll rely on accountants or systems experts how to best carry out what they've already planned, but they'll never allow an advisor to formulate or alter policy.
"About the East India and it’s Queen, I will study up— because you obviously have not fully answered the question, because the Queen at that time had advisors..."
Because no further reason is required. Mercantile interests found massive opportunity for business and approached the ruling body with the promise of massive tax returns and prosperity for the realm. This cooperation between the body politic and wealthy merchants is as tired a play first described in detail in ancient roman senate records. It hasn't really changed since.
Conspiracy theorists keep insisting on ever more convoluted ways to ascribe perceived patterns in human history to singular prime movers or shadowy cabals when the truth has been staring us in the face for thousands of years. That humanity is no more organized than a school of bloody fish. Homo Sapiens Sapiens will, in large populations, act as predictably as a swarm of insects. With no more forethought nor planning than a termite mound or hornet's nest.
Before you get to cohesive decisions you really need to move it down to a tribal stage where a single individual makes a difference. But on the national or world stage? It becomes nothing more than the sad autonomous response of the educated and wealthy individually consolidating their power the same way, the less wealthy and educated trying to figure out why the system they live in seems maliciously bent on plundering them, and the uneducated horde or know-nots keep falling - hook, line and sinker - for some millenialist trope designed to push all the right buttons in their heads.
Looking at every real conspiracy ever attempted they all have the same pattern. They get blown wide open well within a scant few years. Not just because there are always curious people trying to find out why the government hands a billion dollar tax break to some electronics company but because three people still can't keep a secret unless two of them are dead.
After all, there's always lots of money to be made in a book promising revelations.
There'll always be a Deep Throat or Ridenhour or Snowden or Drake. The more explosive the material the more likely the leak will occur sooner.
Ironically the best explanation for, for instance, the East India company and the imperialist efforts of the british empire in its day can be summarized by a fictional East India representative walking down a staircase getting shot to shit while mumbling "It's just Good Business". Short-sighted greed always ending in the total collapse of the business of absolutely everyone involved.
The only mystery remaining in contemporary politics is Qui Bono? Trump getting to power, for instance, isn't hard to figure out once you find his campaign war chest filled with a bank loan guaranteed by the russian state bank. Nor his actions as president in conspicuously letting large parts of the ME fall into Putin's lap.
Biden in his days in congress carrying water for the banking industry against his party's policy needs only a quick look at his campaign funding to figure out.
Manchin orating in injured tones of why he felt compelled to vote against the infrastructure bill isn't mysterious at all when you look at who funds his seat.
And any director or chief of any alphabet soup agency of the US has similar clearly obvious motives for their actions. Beyond the tribal arena you find no ideology or plan beyond Money.
On the post: Confused Judge Grants Project Veritas' Prior Restraint Against The NY Times
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Other Side
I was about to give him the credit of a healthy gerbil.
But then I recalled Koby's comment history and had to drop the bar considerably...
On the post: Hey The North Face! When You Said Sending Us A Bogus Trademark Threat Was A Mistake, We Believed You; So Why Did You Do It Again?
Re: And most important
"Why doesn't the law impose ANY penalties on those making baseless claims?"
Because the DMCA in practice reverses Burden Of Proof.
I.e. plenty of burden laid at the feet of the accused to prove innocence but none on the accuser to prove guilt.
On the post: Texas Regulators Learned Nothing From February's Carnage, Prepare To Repeat The Cycle
Re: Re:
"If there’s an infrastructure disaster in Georgia that has a chance of repeating again, are you gonna tell the large number of voters (including the black activists that worked their asses off to get people out to vote in ways that help tilt Georgia in favor of Biden) that they can either leave or deserve to suffer?"
Deserve? No.
But at some point a battle will be considered lost and the time comes to redraw the battle lines to a field where you can win.
Because this much is fact; If the current GOP takes over Georgia anyone a liberal will indeed suffer. If not by the weather then by the hands of some crowd drunk on success and the idea of spilling some "libtard" blood.
The idea that "it can't happen here" is long dead. It is happening there.
"Suffer like the black and latino and LGBTQ+ voters in Democratic strongholds in Texas?"
Being a stronghold in the middle of enemy territory will mean hardships. If the only two reasonable options you can provide are "Fight a losing battle" or "Get the hell out, while you still can!"...well, one of those suggestions is well-intentioned.
Being a liberal in the Deep South has always meant hardships, as I understand. But these days...I'm thinking being a liberal in the deep south is increasingly becoming like being a little too jewish in the Germany of 1930. Or like being a bosnian in serb territory in 1992.
On the post: Texas Regulators Learned Nothing From February's Carnage, Prepare To Repeat The Cycle
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Just being snowed in means that having a food stock on hand is a good idea."
Not arguing that. Just pointing out that Cynebald thinking that Texans not planning for extended blackouts are fools is sheer victim blaming.
Because in a sensible and sane jurisdiction there will be legal consequences for the power company which leaves proper maintenance by the roadside.
On the post: Chinese Govt. Arrests More Pro-Democracy Icons In Hong Kong, Including Music Stars
Well, it doesn't exactly come as a surprise.
"She is a gay, pro-democracy advocate who has regularly participated in protests and marches, all with a large following thanks to her musical and acting careers. In other words, she is absolutely a sensible target for a Chinese government intent on playing thought police over the city. "
This sort of points to a certain misunderstanding at the heart of the HK citizenry; That staying will somehow result in Beijing loosening its grip.
That's not going to happen. If China were somehow left with the only way to properly leash HK being to put every last HK resident in a 're-education' camp somewhere and replace the citizenry with mainland Chinese immigrants - they will absolutely do that. Nothing short of world war 3 is going to get China to soften that stance.
Democracy was dead in HK when the sino-british treaty was signed in 1984 and it isn't coming back. That battle is irretrievably lost.
Denise Ho is brave to have stayed in HK during this time - because she must have known that there was no future which ended with her not getting picked up by the PRC IntSec people.
This, I think, may be the most infuriating part of this. The HK civil rights activists are incredibly courageous...and in the end, irrelevant. A brief bump in PRC incarceration and reeducation numbers. And their parents choosing to stay in the 90's when the treaty was signed are to blame for these kids today facing a choice between bending knee to a totalitarian regime or living in an internment camp.
Nothing will exculpate the aggressive dictatorship stripping a people of their rights. But it's a sorry excuse of parenting to raise children knowing that dictatorship just invaded.
On the post: Klobuchar's Silly Letter To Facebook Raises 1st Amendment Issues And Only Gives Ammo To Misinfo Peddlers That Facebook Is A State Actor
Re: Re:
"She's not asking as a citizen; she's asking as a US senator. And, as Masnick points out, if a senator asked these same questions of a TV network, people would go nuts, for good reason."
It wasn't too many decades ago that a letter from a US senator might be published by any private entity and cordially, in public, responded to with a heartfelt request that said senator could stick said letter in their pipe and smoke it.
But that was in a different time, long before GWB decided to publicly start tearing down the protections hitherto held as unviolable by the US citizenry and both in that administration and the administration before the current one members of a certain party in congress began routinely questioning the "rights" of people who dissented with Dear Leader.
Yes, Klobuchar isn't doing anything in this letter Senators haven't, through all of american history, done. It's just that today it's pretty tonedeaf to send such correspondence in the wake of trumpist white house officials openly questioning the legality of vocal dissent.
On the post: Chinese Gov't Inflicts Its Selective Amnesia On Hong Kong, Forcing The Removal Of Tiananmen Square Massacre Monuments
Re: Re:
There is a persistent problem in that when it comes to censuring China over bad behavior the most loud and strident cries don't come from verifiable atrocities perpetrated in Xinjiang and Tibet...but from the conspiracy theorists who try to pin Chinese human sacrifice or Covid being biowarfare perpetrated by the Yellow Peril alongside their favorite Chemtrails and Gay Frog theories.
This makes it significantly harder to make the factual complaints stick.
On the post: Retailers Are Blaming The Internet For A Retail Theft Surge That Might Not Be Happening; Media Is Helping Them Out
Re:
"That sounds an awful lot like the cops are running a protection racket."
At this point the only thing missing is the enforcement being done by someone named "Vinnie the knife" or "Kneecap Tom".
On the post: Retailers Are Blaming The Internet For A Retail Theft Surge That Might Not Be Happening; Media Is Helping Them Out
Re: Re: In New York City it is real
On the post: Weeks After Blasting Twitter For 'Strangling Free Expression' GETTR Bans The Term 'Groyper' In Effort To Stop White Nationalist Spam
Re:
"It's incorrect to claim that all social media platforms require "some level of moderation"."
No, it really isn't. Every social media platform without a filter will eventually attract the very worst people - upon which time either filters will be introduced or everyone but the very worst people will leave. This is as true in any social setting both in real life and online.
"For the longest time, reddit, as just one example, was almost entirely free of moderation. And by "longest time" I describe a period that last years and not weeks or months."
It really never was. Reddit has always been quite heavily moderated. A very few short-lived sub-reddits haven't been...which is why they were short-lived.
Anyone claiming otherwise doesn't grok at which time the narwhal bacons.
On the post: Dallas PD Brags About Stealing Money From A Woman At An Airport, Is Now Facing Scrutiny From Its Oversight Board
Re: Third world problem?
"I'm wondering how big a wok the PRC will be preparing for the meal of crow the US seems to be preparing for itself."
They prepared that meal long ago. Note how Biden has had strong words in a few speeches and not much else, whenever the topic of Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong comes up? I'll tell you why the first reason more isn't happening:
It's because every time a US ambassador tries to bring human rights to the debate his chinese opposite says "I agree, we should discuss human rights! Publicly!" - and hauls out a few fat folders with the names "Abu Ghraib", "Guantanamo", and "US incarceration statistics" on them. Then the US ambassador falls conspicuously silent and mumbles that perhaps it isn't time to take this to a world forum.
Then the chinese ambassador smiles politely and says "Fine. As you wish. Let's discuss trade instead, hmm?".
It's just difficult to discuss issues of morals and ethics when your own closet is filled to the rafters with pictures of people imprisoned and tortured without trial. You need moral high ground to hold that debate. And the US has spent the last twenty years digging itself into a pit in that regard, from which it won't emerge in this generation.
With none of the three superpowers - US, China and Russia - giving a tinker's damn about civil rights it ends up on the EU to carry that burden - and we're full up trying to deal with our own human rights violator headaches - Turkey and Hungary. And China especially will be all too pleased to serve whatever uppity gwailo to try to lecture them on human rights some well woked crow.
And the same holds true here: How the heck could you trust a nation to abide by standards of respecting property if their own law enforcement agencies are comparable to outfits running protection rackets?
Ever since GWB the US hasn't had any credibility in the international forum - which is a shame because it used to be the world leader and for a brief period post-WW2 served as the world conscience.
On the post: Weeks After Blasting Twitter For 'Strangling Free Expression' GETTR Bans The Term 'Groyper' In Effort To Stop White Nationalist Spam
Re:
"Koby is an intentionally obtuse right-wing troll who definitely understands Section 230 and the First Amendment (even when he acts like he doesn’t), but he isn’t stupid."
I beg to differ. Anyone who isn't a complete moron would have realized long ago that the only thing repeating alt-right talking points gets him on this web site is a dozen people pointing out his fallacies on every thread he deigns to visit with that bullshit.
I.e. the only thing he accomplishes here is to keep raising general awareness that the alt-right is full of shit and that nazis, klansmen and bigots self-identify as "conservatives" these days.
So yeah, he's stupid. Not only is he not convincing anyone, he actively harms the cause he's working for by his clumsy propaganda backfiring.
On the post: Weeks After Blasting Twitter For 'Strangling Free Expression' GETTR Bans The Term 'Groyper' In Effort To Stop White Nationalist Spam
Re: Refreshing Honesty
"...but they operate to outlaw conservative speech on the platforms..."
If you insist on calling racism, bigotry, medical misinformation and such conservative speech then I'm afraid I have to tell you, once again, that the response will not be sympathy but "About damn time!".
You people had your shot, Koby at telling the neo-nazis, confederate holdovers and proud chauvinists to get the fsck out of dodge. You had any amount of chances to step away.
But no. You guys have insisted on embracing every last vestige of old southern-style racism while clinging to your right to use the N-word in discourse on other people's property with a white-knuckled grip.
And that just means that today you've managed to turn "conservative values" in US politics into confused nationalist fascism. Something which if not outlawed should at least be run out of town and barred entry by every business owner in america.
There is no room in civilized society for you and your kind, Koby. So do us all the immense favor and GET LOST!
On the post: California Police Officers' Bigoted Text Messages Have Just Undone Dozens Of Felony Cases
Re: Re: 'Here's some scapegoats now please don't look closer'
"It's a cancer in the entirety of the police forces. In the whole world."
Not so much.
This is yet again one of those Only In America issues - because that type of policing is only ever found at scale in the US...and in a select few war-riven third-world hellholes and juntas. Within the G20 US "law enforcement" stands out as being bloody remarkable in the regard of how rotten it is.
In most of the EU the police operates by Peelian Principles. Consent-based policing. I am not afraid of Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, German, French or Spanish police, all of which I have at some time spoken to, if only for directions.
But I would make a wide loop around a US police officer if I was carrying anything of value, in fear of being robbed through "civil forfeiture". And otherwise treat them like I would someone visibly armed and in gang colors.
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