Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 17 Dec 2021 @ 7:38am
Re: 'Of course I didn't steal anything, everyone was watching!'
"...and they didn't immediately start blatantly gouging customers(more than usual) is evidence that those rules weren't needed is the equivalent of a known pickpocket claiming that because they didn't obviously steal anything while everyone was watching them there's no need for rules against theft. "
I guess according to them Netflix vs Comcast was just a bad dream then.
And that they hadn't immediately started price gouging customers surely had nothing to do with multiple states immediately implementing net neutrality rules of their own, rendering it hard for ISP's to determine where such gouging would be hard to accomplish.
And that last bit is fairly important, because unless I misremember the very second states started doing that various ISP lobbies started screaming in hysterics on how hard the regulatory field had gotten and wouldn't Mr. FCC Big Shot please please use his dictatorial government regulation power and fix that market for them?
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 17 Dec 2021 @ 5:24am
Re: Re:
Not necessarily. The main problem with China's astroturf brigade is that when it comes to a lot of what China does visibly all they have to do is haul out the observable facts to make China look good. Just according to plan by the PRC Ministry of Truth.
Start talking about Xinjiang? Bring the whataboutism and the gaslighting to bring any accusation down - because after Abu Ghraib you can spin any atrocity into oblivion. And that's not just a gift to chinese spin doctors, as the russian trolls have found.
Hong Kong? Same. Start harping about how the place was extorted at gunpoint by british 18th century druglords and suddenly the case for independence vanishes, as does any debate which centered around the PRC abolishing the last vestiges of democracy there.
The 50-centers don't need to find this article. Which is why "Valios" is missing from the comment field, I guess.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 17 Dec 2021 @ 5:12am
Re: Re: Re:
"Massive benefits... for China only."
Not entirely. The loans are one-sided, certainly; the jobs are half of what they should have been, chinese industries are favored over local ones at every turn and the collateral offered against the loan the country often couldn't afford in the first place severe.
But without those loans those countries wouldn't have had dams, railroads, airports, water treatment plants, or other vital infrastructure. At all.
"It's a massive landgrab scam."
Yes and No. It's an unscrupulous bank going to a beggar with a zero credit rating and telling him he can get a million bucks up front to clean himself up and living expenses...but for the next twenty years he'll be working as a janitor for that bank as an indentured servant.
Without that unscrupulous bank the beggar remains homeless and impoverished.
It's not ethical, nor is it the rosy-tinted deal China insists it is...but it's still a better love story than Twilight.
"Africa can't repay those loans. And those that can would have refused it already."
Plenty of those countries can in fact repay those loans. The standard interest on them is either zero or way lower than the international standard of banking suggests. For most african countries that money is just a gagging bagful of cash in hand they don't ever have to repay fully - but which provides, instantly, the ability to build that dam, railroad, port, hospital, or telecommunications network they otherwise wouldn't have afforded for the next 30 years.
What China gains in collateral is preferred status - monopoly or close to it on purchasing oil, rare metals, rare earth minerals, ores...and of course a loyal vote in the UN assembly. You know, the same the US used to get out of a number of middle-east countries in exchange for similar deals.
Just that China is less heavy-handed and doesn't insist on a military presence or for the country to align their internal politics according to the PRC.
Make no mistake, these loans are a win-win...just that China's side is by far the larger win. What is fearsome about it is that this charity act means that every African nation's political influence internationally is aligned with Chinas interests.
And that what is being built by these loans is the platform for China's "Belt and Road". Meaning that twenty years from now, China owns the global marketplace.
Now if the EU and the US had been willing to invest similarly this would be a race. But they can't. The EU is too conservative and the US president to suggest giving away hundreds of billions of dollars to the "african shithole" will be impeached - or lynched on the white house lawn by #45's fans.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 17 Dec 2021 @ 4:50am
Re: Re: Re:
"It's worse when ypu realize that Singapore has taught them that."
Oh, the PRC didn't really have to learn anything new so much as just dust off old Qing or Ming dynasty statecraft.
Chinese government has, for millennia, been as pragmatic as a knife fight. First, make sure the country works. Then comes ideology. Rather than the old soviet method which tried to run ideology first which never worked.
That makes the job of PRC spin doctors oh so much easier - because they don't have to lie about the prosperity or functionality of the country, just about the authoritarian atrocities committed by it.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 17 Dec 2021 @ 4:43am
Re: Her future is bright!
All she needs is a red hat and an endorsement. I'm sure she can get both from Trump. Blondes involved in adult entertainment is right up his alley after all...or more like that alley he wants to be right up in as it were. Either that or he just likes giving them money.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 17 Dec 2021 @ 4:38am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Just desserts
And a few senior citizens pushing 90+ who were falsely charged by M.M. If nothing else having to defend yourself from torrenting will certainly teach you how it's done.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 17 Dec 2021 @ 2:39am
Re: When the system rewards sleaze you get lots of it
"...it's not too hard to see why they'd come to believe that it's a zero-risk 'business' with no real skill needed beyond being a colossal asshole..."
Well, it's more or less the same way an entitled asshole child grows up to become an entitled asshole adult suddenly shocked at the way the world turns out not to provide the same free pass on deplorable behavior which mommy and daddy did.
The parallell does point to a rather interesting similarity in the way copyright law favors and forgives the most deplorable of shitwits but other laws don't - which must come as a shock if you've spent a great many years operating under a legal paradigm where the burden of proof is reversed and baseless accusations in front of a court is void of any penalties.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 17 Dec 2021 @ 1:59am
Re: Re: Re: Good for Hampton
"Which really is more down to our puritanical mindset really."
One of the more harmful products of religion, I find. The idea that an arbitrary stance of conduct gives the adherent the perception of being allowed to look down on absolutely everyone else is just horrifying.
There's probably some deep psychology in the viewpoint which tells you that harming yourself and others is a Good Thing. Because It Is Written (which, ironically, it's not, because puritanism has no backing in that bible they keep thumping).
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 17 Dec 2021 @ 1:24am
Re:
A case to be made related to the OP is that ^THAT right up there could be considered both very accurate AND exactly what a skilled pro-china shill would say.
Because the leader of the free world is in that bad a state.
If you want to change the world - especially if you want to address the failings of an other nation - then you need to do so from moral high ground and a position where you can reasonably point to your own methods being better.
I at least can't say that's the case. From an EU member state perspective I would fear the US way of life as much as the Chinese one. And I doubt I'm alone in this.
Now consider how this looks like from the perspective of most of Africa which will gain massive benefits from China's "Belt and Road" project while the memory is still fresh of the former US president calling them all a "shithole".
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 17 Dec 2021 @ 1:16am
Re:
"Some of the propaganda works on me to be honest, Xi is talking about "shared prosperity" while the other side is talking about the gig economy."
And that's the problem. Go look at China's "Belt and Road" project. Sure, China will gain massively - but roughly half of Africa will get instantly bootstrapped out of third world status as a result of that project alone.
This leaves social democracies who curb their corporations worst excesses with regulations seeing China sail up presenting a pseudo-feudal autocracy as an unstoppable success story...and then they look at the "leader of the free world" and see a shit-show where democracy has become a joke and the 25% of the citizenry which believes in fascism somehow retains parity with the 75% who very clearly don't.
"The cold war was won because the West offered a better life than the USSR. Can we just try that again? It was socialism that killed communism. Every worker a house, dog, wife, kids and a car."
Well, yeah, but these days if you talk about socialism in the US the half of the country in dire need of more socialism thinks the Kenyan Muslim and his sidekick villain Killary will traffick your daughters, eat your sons, take your guns and turn your frogs all gay. Because chemtrails.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 17 Dec 2021 @ 1:07am
Re: Re: Re:
"In some ways the CCP is actually holding China back."
Yes and no. The "CCP" is more or less just a new iteration of the same old bureaucracy which has held China in an iron grip for thousands of years. Emperors may come and go but the unassuming army of civil servants executing the policy are the ones passing down the real lasting legacy.
In one way this bureaucracy does hold China back. Any entity or phenomenon threatening total control over the culture and population is struck down. Anyone refusing to bend knee to rules and regulations will be knelt by force.
On the other hand that same mechanism is what let China plan for generations to take their current role as the world's indispensible supply chain. Something which would have been impossible to accomplish with a more dynamic power structure as it meant China had to abstain from quick gains and lose every battle of commerce for a long time.
China's government is centered around long-term stability. The common wish on celebrations since ancient times has been to wish the current dynasty a ten thousand year reign.
The concept that a government is trying to make sure the country still exists and thrives ten thousand years down the road is, to westerners, a thoroughly alien mindset. We simply don't get it. Especially so in the US where the focus, from humblest of smallfolk to highest DC elite is Fuck You, Got Mine and Need to make the Big Bucks THIS year.
That mindset, imho, may just be the most harmful mindfuck to emerge from market capitalism - the idea that long-term sustainability is unimportant compared to the margins of next quarter. And we're certainly hurting from that now.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 17 Dec 2021 @ 12:56am
Re: Re: Re:
"May God help America if China ever does turn into a Western style democracy... They will not greet you as liberators. "
Depends on which western-style democracy.
If China were to copy the US as is in that regard we'd be talking about a radical downgrade of living conditions for about 700 million people, a sudden influx of incarcerations to match the US permanent prison population - which would mean jailing another 8 million people or so. The abolition of subsidized education and health care...and the sudden emergence of about 350 million people all convinced of the merits of dictionary-definition fascism as the cure against the baby-eating cult of lizard-worshipping liberal satanists.
And the "democracy" would consist of half the body politic doing their damndest to make sure as many people as possible can't vote.
They'd also have to build internment camps not subject to their own national charters of legislative jurisprudence, like gitmo and Abu Ghraib...oh wait, they already have those.
Here's the thing. The US in the 60's and 70's could stand against the USSR and point out all the misery of their people compared to the freedoms in the US.
Contemporary US can't say the same against contemporary China and that is increasingly a problem as it means the chinese ultra-authoritarian model is gaining a lot of credibility in all the wrong places.
It leaves a dangerous power gap when the non-failed democracies worldwide have to watch the until-now leader among them displaying a total shit-show of failed democracy at home.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 17 Dec 2021 @ 12:35am
Re: Re: Re: Just desserts
"Another, eeew, why would anyone pay to watch this."
I assume none which is why that recording is likely to stick around on the bay being seeded only by the people who have developed real grudges with Malibu over the years.
Still, this has become a trend, hasn't it? ACS: Law, Prenda, now Malibu...almost as if copyright troll outfits were run by grifters so inept and avaricious they are unable to run a business at length without trainwrecking it spectacularly in the most stupid manner possible.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 16 Dec 2021 @ 8:30am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: We need to have a talk with the Firs
"You are a fucking moron with a childish and petty nihilistic tantrum over things not going your way is justice..."
Says the guy who started with the childish temper tantrum.
I'm more read up on the US developments than a great many americans can boast by now and what I'm seeing is a nation collapsing. That nation is one bad recession away from going full Last Days of the Weimar.
Where some triviality like going to a war of aggression under false pretenses, actually breaking the economy or exculpating war crimes over political convenience will hardly shake an incumbent administration but gas prices or living expenses rising by 10% means whatever monster is tossed into the ring by the opposition will win the next election.
Face facts, child. Americans have let the abhorrent asshats grow into a full quarter of their population. Watched without a comment as they whipped themselves into a state of belief where they are the chosen few and the remaining 75% a mixed bag of cannibal cultists on the paycheck of the NWO, infidels, or "race traitors" eager to replace what they see as the "natural" state of the USA.
They want a strongman leading a white, all-christian US and have already shown willing to achieve that goal with force of arms and violence.
History is pretty clear about the possible options when things have come to a point like this; The choice being to declare civil war on them before they do it unto you - or keep trying to apply the rules and trappings if civilization in dealing with the people who long discarded all of those by the roadside.
In that latter option, liberals eventually lose. If the republicans take the house in 2022 Trump wins in 2024 almost no matter what the actual vote says. If they don't manage to take the house in '22 they keep attacking and undermining. And they'll keep right on doing that until at some point they've dismantled the system of government enough for it to completely collapse.
Any good options liberals had to stop this without horrible consequences...those died after liberals and democrats let 9/11 change the US as a whole. When fearful progressives simply sat down and let GWB and his neocons own the show. No one, metaphorically, stood to ask McCarthy if he had any decency that time around.
And by now if someone stands up to ask that it's too damn late - because shame is something all of those have left behind. Just another "baseless attack" by the baby-eating liberals to be used as more fodder to inflame a base by now so addicted to hatred they're no longer interested in anything other than feeding their grievance addiction.
Democracy is failing in the US and it certainly isn't because the fascists started out strong. It's because their opposition stopped trying.
"...You somehow think decades of normalization of fascist rule would improve things?"
No, I'm just thinking that the US is at the point where the normalization of american fascist rule is what it gets. The GOP has made it abundantly clear that they treat rules and debate the same way the early nazis treated them in 1930 - like irrelevant jokes. That there is no bottom line they won't cross.
Democrats and liberals still think this is a war of words. The alt-right, meanwhile, is building militias and recruiting among the armed forces because they think it's just war, period. And are chomping at the bit for the shooting to start. Eventually they'll get their wish. And they'll win, because nine out of ten liberals will either pull a Niemöller or decide it isn't bad enough - yet - to risk their lives for.
Historically the violent savages always eventually win over those so civilized they've forgotten to fight for the liberty they want to keep. Which is ironically what Jeffersson kept warning people about in his day.
I'm thinking that at the rate the US is going, fascist rule or civil war are the two choices left on the table.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 16 Dec 2021 @ 7:25am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"The system working as intended meaning that we have to accept platforms like Facebook as a lesser evil is a massive indictment of free-market capitalism."
That is how it works.
Communism doesn't work because it assumes humans are part of a computer with a central motherboard impartially assigning resources from each according to ability, to each according to need.
Capitalism does work because it leverages as drivers those same human failings which make communism fail. Greed, ambition, narcissism, envy, etc. With the predictable result that the market unfettered consists entirely of Michael Shkreli clones.
Imho the most optimal fiscal policy you can sustainably aim for will be social democracy where you mix enough of column A with enough of column B to make for a society where ambition and skill is rewarded but there's a soft cap and point of diminishing returns regarding how much it pays to claw yourself all the way to the top by any means and some form of idealism remains to guide a framework of ethics in which society and corporations can function.
Though of late a far more concerning issue is the shift on the liberal-authoritarian axis where no matter which part of the fiscal slider a nation stands on, authoritarianism seems to be gaining headway.
"That the BLM and AntFia stickers and flags are often part of such cases… shows the problem is bigger than the headlines make out. "
Indeed. The fact that the FBI investigated it even when Trump was still prez and found those organized acts of violence turned out to be primarily boogaloo boys bullshit and provocations by other right-wing extremist groups only supports the fact; That right-wing extremism remains the largest problem the US faces internally while left-wing violence doesn't even blip on the FBI radar.
Your claim that political activists would perform clearly visible crimes in front of witnesses while proudly showing off the badge of their movement tells me only one thing; That the guys planning to have the "lefties" shoulder the blame are utter morons or rely on every other american being an utter moron.
But I guess there are just that many americans willing to believe this is a both sides issue. That almost every act of violence in this whole mess isn't, in fact, engineered courtesy of 1 in 4 americans today being a pseudo-organized fascist or fascist sympathizer.
This is indeed a bigger problem than headlines make it out to be.
Again, Lostin, scale. Left-wing violence can be handled by ordinary police action because there's so little of it. Right-wing violence falls under biggest internal terror threat.
Those are just the facts, no matter how much a lot of very loud people want BLM and Antifa to turn out to be the Big Bads - they aren't. They aren't even Small Bads.
"Smash and grabs are happening less than two miles from my residency. "
Yeah and none of those are aligned with politics beyond Oh, look, chaos, disorder..and an unguarded storefront.
Or you'd expect the feds to cart off busloads of what amounts to domestic terrorists - yet oddly enough they ones they cart off seem to primarily to have been very well known rightwingers wearing antifa stickers.
"You talk of mute. Yet that is not practiced at White House briefings or political rallies. Or school board meetings."
Did you sleep all over the reign of #45...or, for that matter, any other press briefing? Now admittedly #45 is the only one to have selectively tried to block press from his briefings but every president has held those briefings with rules (which you can find under a quick google for "office of press operations information for journalists").
Public venue doesn't mean it's a free for all. But there are restrictions. Whatever rules are imposed must be demonstrably impartial. No rule should impact an attendees ability to hear the message. If a debate is had at all then that must be open to everyone. If it's an announcement being made then questions for clarification need to be allowed equally.
"Why can a man not confront the publicly elected school board paid by public funds, a branch of government, about his daughter who was raped under a school’s new policy. "
Not aware of this particular case but it seems pretty clear to me; I'd advise differently under european law but under US law it sounds as if the man should have directly filed a suit and gone to the press. Because a school board may indeed be part of government yet I can see no US state where, irrelevant of political alignment of the board, a board primarily consisting of petty empire builders wouldn't try to toss the guy out.
That's not a question of politics. It's a question of face-saving bureaucrats with egg on their face.
"A major security concern. Addresses, birthdays, personal-private relations… all must be open to all of the public because they hey happen to be sandwiched between policy commentary? "
Err...you know, I hope, that all of your examples are already publicly available information?
This isn't restricted to politicians or government employees. Essentially you give up on certain considerations of privacy when you decide to become a public persona. Celebrities have similar issues and, I believe, were the first established precedents of this in law.
"But, turning private communication into public by default because it happens to include government communication is a major concern. "
Yet that is how US law works, and a US president figured heavily in the first precedent made by the US court of appeals on how a private communications channel works when a public persona uses it to establish public communications.
Had Massie's channel been private there'd be no issue. Yet, he used it to address the public and as a platform to bear his political message as part of the US government.
That members of the US government has less rights in reality than private citizens isn't, imho, that bad a concept. If anything I see it as one of very few signs of health in government-citizenry interaction recently.
"Communism is the opposite. It’s where you wind up as capitalism is drawn in and drawn down to one person/group/organisation."
Well, go enough to the right or left and you meet in the same spot - a place where fiscal politics was left behind in favor of autocracy.
The problem remains that we're talking about a circle, not a level slider.
People really ought to stop talking about the right-left divide given how often it's conflated. The simplest model possible would be the Political Compass where the left-right make up one axis and the liberal-authoritarian gradient makes up the other axis.
"In practice it a wat every attempt at communism leads to and that is the ultimate of far right economics."
Yep. Either side, taken to the extreme, leads right back to feudalism.
"That is an absurd contradiction and betrays a deep ignorance of the proper meanings of "ultra," "right," and "libertarian.""
You know that bit about where it's wiser to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt?
On the right-left scale of fiscal politics libertarianism is as far to the right as it gets - it's where all fiscal power is in the hands of the individual. Communism would be the literal opposite, where all fiscal power is held by government.
Your comment perfectly demonstrates my oft-repeated assertion the average american is so uneducated s/he is functionally illiterate.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 16 Dec 2021 @ 3:03am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"...but didn't the USAF eventually rule that, while regrettable, they were in a c9mbat zone and the call was justified?"
See, the problem I have with that is that according to the US army, My Lai was similarly justified. Until, that is, the exact specifics started leaking.
"And it doesn't help that a jerk like Assange is trying to use that event as a means of shaming the US."
Assange may be a jerk but what really shames the US is that the USAF came out with the situation as "justified" after the conversation held by the chopper pilots was exposed.
That's not something you get to exculpate with a "war is bad" assertion. Actual psychopaths enjoying murder is beyond just shameful to suffer within an army.
If for no other reason than that it makes it really hard to point at, say, China and Russia misbehaving when the would-be complainer can't claim moral high ground themselves.
On the post: Dumb Telecom Take Of The Week: Because The Internet Didn't Explode, Killing Net Neutrality Must Not Have Mattered
Re: 'Of course I didn't steal anything, everyone was watching!'
"...and they didn't immediately start blatantly gouging customers(more than usual) is evidence that those rules weren't needed is the equivalent of a known pickpocket claiming that because they didn't obviously steal anything while everyone was watching them there's no need for rules against theft. "
I guess according to them Netflix vs Comcast was just a bad dream then.
And that they hadn't immediately started price gouging customers surely had nothing to do with multiple states immediately implementing net neutrality rules of their own, rendering it hard for ISP's to determine where such gouging would be hard to accomplish.
And that last bit is fairly important, because unless I misremember the very second states started doing that various ISP lobbies started screaming in hysterics on how hard the regulatory field had gotten and wouldn't Mr. FCC Big Shot please please use his dictatorial government regulation power and fix that market for them?
On the post: How China Uses Western Influencers As Pawns In Its Propaganda War
Re: Re:
Not necessarily. The main problem with China's astroturf brigade is that when it comes to a lot of what China does visibly all they have to do is haul out the observable facts to make China look good. Just according to plan by the PRC Ministry of Truth.
Start talking about Xinjiang? Bring the whataboutism and the gaslighting to bring any accusation down - because after Abu Ghraib you can spin any atrocity into oblivion. And that's not just a gift to chinese spin doctors, as the russian trolls have found.
Hong Kong? Same. Start harping about how the place was extorted at gunpoint by british 18th century druglords and suddenly the case for independence vanishes, as does any debate which centered around the PRC abolishing the last vestiges of democracy there.
The 50-centers don't need to find this article. Which is why "Valios" is missing from the comment field, I guess.
On the post: How China Uses Western Influencers As Pawns In Its Propaganda War
Re: Re: Re:
"Massive benefits... for China only."
Not entirely. The loans are one-sided, certainly; the jobs are half of what they should have been, chinese industries are favored over local ones at every turn and the collateral offered against the loan the country often couldn't afford in the first place severe.
But without those loans those countries wouldn't have had dams, railroads, airports, water treatment plants, or other vital infrastructure. At all.
"It's a massive landgrab scam."
Yes and No. It's an unscrupulous bank going to a beggar with a zero credit rating and telling him he can get a million bucks up front to clean himself up and living expenses...but for the next twenty years he'll be working as a janitor for that bank as an indentured servant.
Without that unscrupulous bank the beggar remains homeless and impoverished.
It's not ethical, nor is it the rosy-tinted deal China insists it is...but it's still a better love story than Twilight.
"Africa can't repay those loans. And those that can would have refused it already."
Plenty of those countries can in fact repay those loans. The standard interest on them is either zero or way lower than the international standard of banking suggests. For most african countries that money is just a gagging bagful of cash in hand they don't ever have to repay fully - but which provides, instantly, the ability to build that dam, railroad, port, hospital, or telecommunications network they otherwise wouldn't have afforded for the next 30 years.
What China gains in collateral is preferred status - monopoly or close to it on purchasing oil, rare metals, rare earth minerals, ores...and of course a loyal vote in the UN assembly. You know, the same the US used to get out of a number of middle-east countries in exchange for similar deals.
Just that China is less heavy-handed and doesn't insist on a military presence or for the country to align their internal politics according to the PRC.
Make no mistake, these loans are a win-win...just that China's side is by far the larger win. What is fearsome about it is that this charity act means that every African nation's political influence internationally is aligned with Chinas interests.
And that what is being built by these loans is the platform for China's "Belt and Road". Meaning that twenty years from now, China owns the global marketplace.
Now if the EU and the US had been willing to invest similarly this would be a race. But they can't. The EU is too conservative and the US president to suggest giving away hundreds of billions of dollars to the "african shithole" will be impeached - or lynched on the white house lawn by #45's fans.
As it is, China wins this one on walkover.
On the post: How China Uses Western Influencers As Pawns In Its Propaganda War
Re: Re: Re:
"It's worse when ypu realize that Singapore has taught them that."
Oh, the PRC didn't really have to learn anything new so much as just dust off old Qing or Ming dynasty statecraft.
Chinese government has, for millennia, been as pragmatic as a knife fight. First, make sure the country works. Then comes ideology. Rather than the old soviet method which tried to run ideology first which never worked.
That makes the job of PRC spin doctors oh so much easier - because they don't have to lie about the prosperity or functionality of the country, just about the authoritarian atrocities committed by it.
On the post: Malibu Media Ordered To Pay Wrongfully Accused 'Pirate' Even More Money After Failing To Abide By Court's Decision
Re: Her future is bright!
All she needs is a red hat and an endorsement. I'm sure she can get both from Trump. Blondes involved in adult entertainment is right up his alley after all...or more like that alley he wants to be right up in as it were. Either that or he just likes giving them money.
On the post: Malibu Media Ordered To Pay Wrongfully Accused 'Pirate' Even More Money After Failing To Abide By Court's Decision
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Just desserts
And a few senior citizens pushing 90+ who were falsely charged by M.M. If nothing else having to defend yourself from torrenting will certainly teach you how it's done.
On the post: Malibu Media Ordered To Pay Wrongfully Accused 'Pirate' Even More Money After Failing To Abide By Court's Decision
Re: Sucks to be on the other side of that doesn't it MM?
<insert Monte Python-esque crowd murmurs of "mhm, terrible. Horrible. Utterly deplorable. Why in my time...etc>
On the post: Malibu Media Ordered To Pay Wrongfully Accused 'Pirate' Even More Money After Failing To Abide By Court's Decision
Re: When the system rewards sleaze you get lots of it
"...it's not too hard to see why they'd come to believe that it's a zero-risk 'business' with no real skill needed beyond being a colossal asshole..."
Well, it's more or less the same way an entitled asshole child grows up to become an entitled asshole adult suddenly shocked at the way the world turns out not to provide the same free pass on deplorable behavior which mommy and daddy did.
The parallell does point to a rather interesting similarity in the way copyright law favors and forgives the most deplorable of shitwits but other laws don't - which must come as a shock if you've spent a great many years operating under a legal paradigm where the burden of proof is reversed and baseless accusations in front of a court is void of any penalties.
On the post: How Attacks On Section 230 Could Put Addiction Recovery Efforts At Risk
Re: Re: Re: Good for Hampton
"Which really is more down to our puritanical mindset really."
One of the more harmful products of religion, I find. The idea that an arbitrary stance of conduct gives the adherent the perception of being allowed to look down on absolutely everyone else is just horrifying.
There's probably some deep psychology in the viewpoint which tells you that harming yourself and others is a Good Thing. Because It Is Written (which, ironically, it's not, because puritanism has no backing in that bible they keep thumping).
On the post: How China Uses Western Influencers As Pawns In Its Propaganda War
Re:
A case to be made related to the OP is that ^THAT right up there could be considered both very accurate AND exactly what a skilled pro-china shill would say.
Because the leader of the free world is in that bad a state.
If you want to change the world - especially if you want to address the failings of an other nation - then you need to do so from moral high ground and a position where you can reasonably point to your own methods being better.
I at least can't say that's the case. From an EU member state perspective I would fear the US way of life as much as the Chinese one. And I doubt I'm alone in this.
Now consider how this looks like from the perspective of most of Africa which will gain massive benefits from China's "Belt and Road" project while the memory is still fresh of the former US president calling them all a "shithole".
On the post: How China Uses Western Influencers As Pawns In Its Propaganda War
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"Some of the propaganda works on me to be honest, Xi is talking about "shared prosperity" while the other side is talking about the gig economy."
And that's the problem. Go look at China's "Belt and Road" project. Sure, China will gain massively - but roughly half of Africa will get instantly bootstrapped out of third world status as a result of that project alone.
This leaves social democracies who curb their corporations worst excesses with regulations seeing China sail up presenting a pseudo-feudal autocracy as an unstoppable success story...and then they look at the "leader of the free world" and see a shit-show where democracy has become a joke and the 25% of the citizenry which believes in fascism somehow retains parity with the 75% who very clearly don't.
"The cold war was won because the West offered a better life than the USSR. Can we just try that again? It was socialism that killed communism. Every worker a house, dog, wife, kids and a car."
Well, yeah, but these days if you talk about socialism in the US the half of the country in dire need of more socialism thinks the Kenyan Muslim and his sidekick villain Killary will traffick your daughters, eat your sons, take your guns and turn your frogs all gay. Because chemtrails.
And we can all thank Reagan for that.
On the post: How China Uses Western Influencers As Pawns In Its Propaganda War
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"In some ways the CCP is actually holding China back."
Yes and no. The "CCP" is more or less just a new iteration of the same old bureaucracy which has held China in an iron grip for thousands of years. Emperors may come and go but the unassuming army of civil servants executing the policy are the ones passing down the real lasting legacy.
In one way this bureaucracy does hold China back. Any entity or phenomenon threatening total control over the culture and population is struck down. Anyone refusing to bend knee to rules and regulations will be knelt by force.
On the other hand that same mechanism is what let China plan for generations to take their current role as the world's indispensible supply chain. Something which would have been impossible to accomplish with a more dynamic power structure as it meant China had to abstain from quick gains and lose every battle of commerce for a long time.
China's government is centered around long-term stability. The common wish on celebrations since ancient times has been to wish the current dynasty a ten thousand year reign.
The concept that a government is trying to make sure the country still exists and thrives ten thousand years down the road is, to westerners, a thoroughly alien mindset. We simply don't get it. Especially so in the US where the focus, from humblest of smallfolk to highest DC elite is Fuck You, Got Mine and Need to make the Big Bucks THIS year.
That mindset, imho, may just be the most harmful mindfuck to emerge from market capitalism - the idea that long-term sustainability is unimportant compared to the margins of next quarter. And we're certainly hurting from that now.
On the post: How China Uses Western Influencers As Pawns In Its Propaganda War
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"May God help America if China ever does turn into a Western style democracy... They will not greet you as liberators. "
Depends on which western-style democracy.
If China were to copy the US as is in that regard we'd be talking about a radical downgrade of living conditions for about 700 million people, a sudden influx of incarcerations to match the US permanent prison population - which would mean jailing another 8 million people or so. The abolition of subsidized education and health care...and the sudden emergence of about 350 million people all convinced of the merits of dictionary-definition fascism as the cure against the baby-eating cult of lizard-worshipping liberal satanists.
And the "democracy" would consist of half the body politic doing their damndest to make sure as many people as possible can't vote.
They'd also have to build internment camps not subject to their own national charters of legislative jurisprudence, like gitmo and Abu Ghraib...oh wait, they already have those.
Here's the thing. The US in the 60's and 70's could stand against the USSR and point out all the misery of their people compared to the freedoms in the US.
Contemporary US can't say the same against contemporary China and that is increasingly a problem as it means the chinese ultra-authoritarian model is gaining a lot of credibility in all the wrong places.
It leaves a dangerous power gap when the non-failed democracies worldwide have to watch the until-now leader among them displaying a total shit-show of failed democracy at home.
On the post: Malibu Media Ordered To Pay Wrongfully Accused 'Pirate' Even More Money After Failing To Abide By Court's Decision
Re: Re: Re: Just desserts
"Another, eeew, why would anyone pay to watch this."
I assume none which is why that recording is likely to stick around on the bay being seeded only by the people who have developed real grudges with Malibu over the years.
Still, this has become a trend, hasn't it? ACS: Law, Prenda, now Malibu...almost as if copyright troll outfits were run by grifters so inept and avaricious they are unable to run a business at length without trainwrecking it spectacularly in the most stupid manner possible.
On the post: The Bipartisan Attacks On The Internet Are Easily Understood If You Realize They Just Want To Control Speech Online
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: We need to have a talk with the Firs
"You are a fucking moron with a childish and petty nihilistic tantrum over things not going your way is justice..."
Says the guy who started with the childish temper tantrum.
I'm more read up on the US developments than a great many americans can boast by now and what I'm seeing is a nation collapsing. That nation is one bad recession away from going full Last Days of the Weimar.
Where some triviality like going to a war of aggression under false pretenses, actually breaking the economy or exculpating war crimes over political convenience will hardly shake an incumbent administration but gas prices or living expenses rising by 10% means whatever monster is tossed into the ring by the opposition will win the next election.
Face facts, child. Americans have let the abhorrent asshats grow into a full quarter of their population. Watched without a comment as they whipped themselves into a state of belief where they are the chosen few and the remaining 75% a mixed bag of cannibal cultists on the paycheck of the NWO, infidels, or "race traitors" eager to replace what they see as the "natural" state of the USA.
They want a strongman leading a white, all-christian US and have already shown willing to achieve that goal with force of arms and violence.
History is pretty clear about the possible options when things have come to a point like this; The choice being to declare civil war on them before they do it unto you - or keep trying to apply the rules and trappings if civilization in dealing with the people who long discarded all of those by the roadside.
In that latter option, liberals eventually lose. If the republicans take the house in 2022 Trump wins in 2024 almost no matter what the actual vote says. If they don't manage to take the house in '22 they keep attacking and undermining. And they'll keep right on doing that until at some point they've dismantled the system of government enough for it to completely collapse.
Any good options liberals had to stop this without horrible consequences...those died after liberals and democrats let 9/11 change the US as a whole. When fearful progressives simply sat down and let GWB and his neocons own the show. No one, metaphorically, stood to ask McCarthy if he had any decency that time around.
And by now if someone stands up to ask that it's too damn late - because shame is something all of those have left behind. Just another "baseless attack" by the baby-eating liberals to be used as more fodder to inflame a base by now so addicted to hatred they're no longer interested in anything other than feeding their grievance addiction.
Democracy is failing in the US and it certainly isn't because the fascists started out strong. It's because their opposition stopped trying.
"...You somehow think decades of normalization of fascist rule would improve things?"
No, I'm just thinking that the US is at the point where the normalization of american fascist rule is what it gets. The GOP has made it abundantly clear that they treat rules and debate the same way the early nazis treated them in 1930 - like irrelevant jokes. That there is no bottom line they won't cross.
Democrats and liberals still think this is a war of words. The alt-right, meanwhile, is building militias and recruiting among the armed forces because they think it's just war, period. And are chomping at the bit for the shooting to start. Eventually they'll get their wish. And they'll win, because nine out of ten liberals will either pull a Niemöller or decide it isn't bad enough - yet - to risk their lives for.
Historically the violent savages always eventually win over those so civilized they've forgotten to fight for the liberty they want to keep. Which is ironically what Jeffersson kept warning people about in his day.
I'm thinking that at the rate the US is going, fascist rule or civil war are the two choices left on the table.
On the post: The Bipartisan Attacks On The Internet Are Easily Understood If You Realize They Just Want To Control Speech Online
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"The system working as intended meaning that we have to accept platforms like Facebook as a lesser evil is a massive indictment of free-market capitalism."
That is how it works.
Communism doesn't work because it assumes humans are part of a computer with a central motherboard impartially assigning resources from each according to ability, to each according to need.
Capitalism does work because it leverages as drivers those same human failings which make communism fail. Greed, ambition, narcissism, envy, etc. With the predictable result that the market unfettered consists entirely of Michael Shkreli clones.
Imho the most optimal fiscal policy you can sustainably aim for will be social democracy where you mix enough of column A with enough of column B to make for a society where ambition and skill is rewarded but there's a soft cap and point of diminishing returns regarding how much it pays to claw yourself all the way to the top by any means and some form of idealism remains to guide a framework of ethics in which society and corporations can function.
Though of late a far more concerning issue is the shift on the liberal-authoritarian axis where no matter which part of the fiscal slider a nation stands on, authoritarianism seems to be gaining headway.
On the post: Rep. Thomas Massie Seems To Have Skipped Over The 1st Amendment In His Rush To 'Defend' The 2nd
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"That the BLM and AntFia stickers and flags are often part of such cases… shows the problem is bigger than the headlines make out. "
Indeed. The fact that the FBI investigated it even when Trump was still prez and found those organized acts of violence turned out to be primarily boogaloo boys bullshit and provocations by other right-wing extremist groups only supports the fact; That right-wing extremism remains the largest problem the US faces internally while left-wing violence doesn't even blip on the FBI radar.
Your claim that political activists would perform clearly visible crimes in front of witnesses while proudly showing off the badge of their movement tells me only one thing; That the guys planning to have the "lefties" shoulder the blame are utter morons or rely on every other american being an utter moron.
But I guess there are just that many americans willing to believe this is a both sides issue. That almost every act of violence in this whole mess isn't, in fact, engineered courtesy of 1 in 4 americans today being a pseudo-organized fascist or fascist sympathizer.
This is indeed a bigger problem than headlines make it out to be.
Again, Lostin, scale. Left-wing violence can be handled by ordinary police action because there's so little of it. Right-wing violence falls under biggest internal terror threat.
Those are just the facts, no matter how much a lot of very loud people want BLM and Antifa to turn out to be the Big Bads - they aren't. They aren't even Small Bads.
"Smash and grabs are happening less than two miles from my residency. "
Yeah and none of those are aligned with politics beyond Oh, look, chaos, disorder..and an unguarded storefront.
Or you'd expect the feds to cart off busloads of what amounts to domestic terrorists - yet oddly enough they ones they cart off seem to primarily to have been very well known rightwingers wearing antifa stickers.
"You talk of mute. Yet that is not practiced at White House briefings or political rallies. Or school board meetings."
Did you sleep all over the reign of #45...or, for that matter, any other press briefing? Now admittedly #45 is the only one to have selectively tried to block press from his briefings but every president has held those briefings with rules (which you can find under a quick google for "office of press operations information for journalists").
Public venue doesn't mean it's a free for all. But there are restrictions. Whatever rules are imposed must be demonstrably impartial. No rule should impact an attendees ability to hear the message. If a debate is had at all then that must be open to everyone. If it's an announcement being made then questions for clarification need to be allowed equally.
"Why can a man not confront the publicly elected school board paid by public funds, a branch of government, about his daughter who was raped under a school’s new policy. "
Not aware of this particular case but it seems pretty clear to me; I'd advise differently under european law but under US law it sounds as if the man should have directly filed a suit and gone to the press. Because a school board may indeed be part of government yet I can see no US state where, irrelevant of political alignment of the board, a board primarily consisting of petty empire builders wouldn't try to toss the guy out.
That's not a question of politics. It's a question of face-saving bureaucrats with egg on their face.
"A major security concern. Addresses, birthdays, personal-private relations… all must be open to all of the public because they hey happen to be sandwiched between policy commentary? "
Err...you know, I hope, that all of your examples are already publicly available information?
This isn't restricted to politicians or government employees. Essentially you give up on certain considerations of privacy when you decide to become a public persona. Celebrities have similar issues and, I believe, were the first established precedents of this in law.
"But, turning private communication into public by default because it happens to include government communication is a major concern. "
Yet that is how US law works, and a US president figured heavily in the first precedent made by the US court of appeals on how a private communications channel works when a public persona uses it to establish public communications.
Had Massie's channel been private there'd be no issue. Yet, he used it to address the public and as a platform to bear his political message as part of the US government.
That members of the US government has less rights in reality than private citizens isn't, imho, that bad a concept. If anything I see it as one of very few signs of health in government-citizenry interaction recently.
On the post: Rep. Thomas Massie Seems To Have Skipped Over The 1st Amendment In His Rush To 'Defend' The 2nd
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"Communism is the opposite. It’s where you wind up as capitalism is drawn in and drawn down to one person/group/organisation."
Well, go enough to the right or left and you meet in the same spot - a place where fiscal politics was left behind in favor of autocracy.
The problem remains that we're talking about a circle, not a level slider.
People really ought to stop talking about the right-left divide given how often it's conflated. The simplest model possible would be the Political Compass where the left-right make up one axis and the liberal-authoritarian gradient makes up the other axis.
"In practice it a wat every attempt at communism leads to and that is the ultimate of far right economics."
Yep. Either side, taken to the extreme, leads right back to feudalism.
On the post: Rep. Thomas Massie Seems To Have Skipped Over The 1st Amendment In His Rush To 'Defend' The 2nd
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"That is an absurd contradiction and betrays a deep ignorance of the proper meanings of "ultra," "right," and "libertarian.""
You know that bit about where it's wiser to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt?
On the right-left scale of fiscal politics libertarianism is as far to the right as it gets - it's where all fiscal power is in the hands of the individual.
Communism would be the literal opposite, where all fiscal power is held by government.
Your comment perfectly demonstrates my oft-repeated assertion the average american is so uneducated s/he is functionally illiterate.
TL;DR?
Do you even English, motherfscker?
On the post: UK Court Says US Can Extradite Julian Assange And Prosecute Him For Doing Things Journalists Do
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"...but didn't the USAF eventually rule that, while regrettable, they were in a c9mbat zone and the call was justified?"
See, the problem I have with that is that according to the US army, My Lai was similarly justified. Until, that is, the exact specifics started leaking.
"And it doesn't help that a jerk like Assange is trying to use that event as a means of shaming the US."
Assange may be a jerk but what really shames the US is that the USAF came out with the situation as "justified" after the conversation held by the chopper pilots was exposed.
That's not something you get to exculpate with a "war is bad" assertion. Actual psychopaths enjoying murder is beyond just shameful to suffer within an army.
If for no other reason than that it makes it really hard to point at, say, China and Russia misbehaving when the would-be complainer can't claim moral high ground themselves.
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