Discussion and Debate Community Thread

[Infidel144]

You you mentioned one circumstance.

The article you linked to supplied the circumstances ("Protesters have torn down or vandalized dozens of statues across the US in the past month.").

Are you claiming that every single statue thats been taken down has been done so illegally?

I have not made a claim. I have asked you whether it is illegal for people (in the circumstances you provided vis the article you linked to) to pull down statutes.

Did i advocate for vandalism? Is that what i said? No? Unless you prove my speech violates the Brandenburg test i'm not guilty of inciting lawless action.

I have not said anything about you "inciting lawless action".
What I said is you are advocating for people, in the circumstances you supplied via the linked article article ("Protesters have torn down or vandalized dozens of statues across the US in the past month."), to engage in this activity which refers to you stating this: "So yes people should go out and pull down those statues".

[Vanoi]

The article you linked to supplied the circumstances ("Protesters have torn down or vandalized dozens of statues across the US in the past month.").

Actually you only asked if people going out and pulling down statues is illegal. Don't move the goalposts now. If its legally sanctioned then no its not.

I have not said anything about you "inciting lawless action".
What I said is you are advocating for people, in the circumstances you supplied ("Protesters have torn down or vandalized dozens of statues across the US in the past month."), to engage in this activity which refers to you stating this: "So yes people should go out and pull down those statues".

See above. No moving goalposts.

[Cope]

"Requesting assistance" is a nice euphemism for censorship. Its still the government trying to interfere with people's speech.

I would take you more seriously if you were arguing on principle. As it is, I'm yet to see you show concern about politicians trying to pressure social media companies into censoring "hate speech" or "fake news" (neither of which encourage criminality in and of themselves).

Fortunately the very fact they are asking social media companies to take the posts down tells me they don't have much of a case for arresting people. You'd have better luck arresting people actually participating in the protests that lead to lawless action than someone making a facebook post about statues.

There is a difference between generic comments and specific attempts to organize unlawful activities. I expect the authorities to prosecute the organizers as well as the participants (noting that many organizers will also have participated).

[Vanoi]

I would take you more seriously if you were arguing on principle. As it is, I'm yet to see you show concern about politicians trying to pressure social media companies into censoring "hate speech" or "fake news" (neither of which encourage criminality in and of themselves).

I don't think the government should be interfere in speech concerns mostly. The government advocates for hate speech to be censored but platforms from TWC to Facebook have banned hate speech long before the government was concerned about it. And point has always been its their choice, not the governments. They run businesses at the end of the day. You don't want things like racism and prejudice against other people to be associated with your business or service.

My principles regarding free speech deal with the government and their regulation of it. Nit what private businesses do.

There is a difference between generic comments and specific attempts to organize unlawful activities. I expect the authorities to prosecute the organizers as well as the participants (noting that many organizers will also have participated).

Thats likely.

[Infidel144]

Actually you only asked if people going out and pulling down statues is illegal. Don't move the goalposts now. If its legally sanctioned then no its not.

.The context for this was related to the article you provided which noted things such as "The pedestal where the statue of Confederate general Albert Pike remains empty after it was toppled by protesters" and "Protesters have torn down or vandalized dozens of statues across the US in the past month."
That is the 'goalpost'.

Are you now claiming that the circumstances in which these statues have been pulled down (as provided by your linked article) is legally sanctioned?

See above. No moving goalposts.

The goalposts are the ones you provided in the article you linked, and which I quoted from in response to your assertions. See above.

[Vanoi]

.The context for this was related to the article you provided which noted things such as "The pedestal where the statue of Confederate general Albert Pike remains empty after it was toppled by protesters" and "Protesters have torn down or vandalized dozens of statues across the US in the past month."
That is the 'goalpost'.

Are you now claiming that the circumstances in which these statues have been pulled down (as provided by your linked article) is legally sanctioned?

The goalposts are the ones you provided in the article you linked, and which I quoted from in response to your assertions. See above.

Again thats not what you asked initially. You are trying to frame my words around a set number of circumstances. The whole point of what i said is that you can't prove that what i said is encouraging criminal activity. Nothing about what i said explicitly means i advocated for people to tear down statues in an illegal way and/or to vandalize them. You have to prove thats what i meant.

So. Did i advocate for people to illegally tear down statues and/or vandalize them?

[Infidel144]

Again thats not what you asked initially. You are trying to frame my words around a set number of circumstances. The whole point of what i said is that you can't prove that what i said is encouraging criminal activity. Nothing about what i said explicitly means i advocated for people to tear down statues in an illegal way and/or to vandalize them. You have to prove thats what i meant.

No, I don't. As I noted above, I did not say anything about you "inciting lawless action".

So. Did i advocate for people to illegally tear down statues and/or vandalize them?

I said you are advocating for people, in the circumstances you supplied via the linked article article ("Protesters have torn down or vandalized dozens of statues across the US in the past month."), to engage in this activity which refers to you stating this: "Depends on circumstances. As shown above unless my speech incites imminent lawless action its not illegal under US law. So yes people should go out and pull down those statues."

The circumstance was supplied by the article you linked and which I quoted from "Protesters have torn down or vandalized dozens of statues across the US in the past month."

[alhoon]

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/n...rs/5357157002/

This requires a thread of its own, but I am not about to make one.

Gun-lovers that pretend the guns are for you resist the government:
How do you feel about the government telling you that you may be called to use said guns on people that resist the government? Doesn't that kinda defeats the purpose of being armed?

[Cope]

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/n...rs/5357157002/

This requires a thread of its own, but I am not about to make one.

Gun-lovers that pretend the guns are for you resist the government:
How do you feel about the government telling you that you may be called to use said guns on people that resist the government? Doesn't that kinda defeats the purpose of being armed?

Read the Constitution. The only people "pretending" are those who insist that the 2A has nothing to do with resisting state tyranny.

[Sir Adrian]

Marxism is an anti-semitic ideology

[swabian]

Marxism is an anti-semitic ideology

Marx was a German Jew, though. How do you explain that?

[Sir Adrian]

Here's what he had to say about jews

What is the worldly basis of Judaism? Practical necessity, selfishness. What is the worldly culture of the Jew? Commerce. What is his worldly God? Money. All right! The emancipation from commerce and from money, from the practical real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our age.

In Marx’s Kapital, the model of the hated capitalist exploiter is Shylock, the Jewish moneylender. Karl Marx was quoted with relish by all 20th century anti-semites, and I do mean ALL. Yes, including that guy.

[swabian]

Means? Hey, we are modern, enlightened Europeans now, we are not the vicious, smelly vaginas of old. And i think that's a good thing.

So what do you mean?

[Prodromos]

Spiritually Defending July 4? - Providence

Amid grievance and despair, it’s a challenging season for believers in America and its founding principles. Most of the current protests echo the fads of postmodern academia, insisting that America is a uniquely wicked and oppressive enterprise without redemptive possibility. Much of the commanding heights of culture to some degree feel obliged to pay obeisance to this grim perspective; journalism, big corporations, philanthropies, the social sciences, entertainment moguls and personalities.

Politics merely echoe what culture produces. Politicos of the left are captive to the activists. Politicos of the right only react and condemn; they no longer understand much less try to articulate American principles. So much easier to attack the opposition with sound bites. Toppled or threatened statues are defended, but only as cultural totems. The virtues and history the statues represent are not acknowledged, much less commended.

Until almost recent times it was the Mainline Protestant churches that gave America purpose and direction by organizing its civil life and infusing it with spiritual and moral purpose. But in sync with the emerging counterculture of the 1960s, Mainline elites and institutions adopted the narrative of America as villain. As Mainline Protestantism imploded in membership and influence across the last 55 years, a new demographic called the “religious nones” has emerged. Many of them descend from the Mainline and are largely educated white middle class Anglo whites who carry the WASP persona even if they are post-Protestant and arguably post-Christian. These post-Protestants no longer seek redemption through traditional Christianity and they no longer understand America through the Protestant sense of moral mission. Now they seek validation through affirming social and political themes commonly identified as woke, by which they are societally credentialed as good people.

Part of this post-Protestant credentialing requires rejecting America as the Protestant project that God was using to deliver democracy and political equality to the world. The new woke post-Protestant narrative is that America is oppressive, racist, patriarchal, greedy, militaristic. It and its religious founders must be condemned by constantly evolving ever harsher contemporary standards. To do so is itself believed to be an act of humility and transparency, even though there is mainly judgement on others, rarely on selves.

Post-Protestants, like the old WASP elite, are a relatively small minority but they still inherit their privilege and disproportionate influence from their long ascendant ancestors. Non-WASPs, whether secular, or another faith, or actively Christian, are still intimidated by their power to establish social rules and publicly to shame, as in Puritan New England of old.

Of course, in the wake of Mainline Protestantism’s collapse, there remain vibrant Catholic and Evangelical communities in America. But neither inherits the traditions or societal cachet of the old Protestant establishment, which stewarded America across four centuries.

So who will speak and who will lead? Among the rank and file of Americans, religious and not so religious, there remain large numbers who profess to be unapologetically patriotic. They have in their hearts what often they cannot articulate with words about the moral power and imperative of the American project.

We can pray and hope that among these silent millions there will arise new articulate voices and thinkers who will offer spiritual and moral defense for American principles. God may be raising up such persons even now to deliver us from the present moment. He is more merciful and longsuffering than the sanctimonious judges who stand in the streets, or in their faculty lounges, or in their seminary chapels, denouncing America as irredeemably cursed.

For millennia mankind labored and suffered under systems of caste and hierarchy, where slavery was unquestioned, where children always followed the predestined paths of their parents, where poverty and oppression were the unquestioned norm, where few spoke out of turn, where submission was expected, where bloody conquest and coercion were the main instruments of rule.

America, in contrast, in its best principles has uniquely challenged these old static civilizations with revolutionary affirmations about equality and opportunity for all. Its most privileged beneficiaries sneer at their position, imagining they are prisoners, when actually they in their comfort and power have resources unimagined by a thousand earlier generations. Ingratitude and grievance are intrinsic to fallen human nature. Even the Chosen People in their deliverance murmured.

Yet the promise of July 4 remains. Much of the world, even if unknowingly, still looks to its promises for hope. Even its most ungrateful critics operate under its blessings. What was accomplished in 1776 was providential, achieved and sustained across centuries by the sacrifices and insights of many millions. It is now challenged, but it will endure, and prevail against unthinking and malevolent spirits who offer no alternative hope.

Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

[sumskilz]

Intersectional intifada:

At a pro-Palestinian, pro-Black Lives Matters demonstration in Brooklyn this week, participants called to eliminate the Jewish state as well as the United States, amid chants of “Death to Israel,” “Death to America” and “From Gaza to Minnesota, globalize the Intifada!”...

“We don’t want a fake Palestinian state that they give us while Israel still exists,” activist Nerdeen Kiswani of organizing group Within Our Lifetime said at the rally, in a video compiled by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

“The land that Israel exists on is still stolen. The 1948 lands are still stolen — Jaffa, Haifa, Tel Aviv… was stolen. We don’t want to go just back to our homes in Gaza and the West Bank. We Want all of it.”

Dequi Kioni Sadiki, the wife of former Black Panther Sekou Odinga, said: “The European Jews who occupy, slaughter and continue to force millions of Palestinians onto their killing fields called refugee and concentration camps, are the relatives of the Europeans… who kidnapped, slaughtered and forced millions of Africans and indigenous” into slavery and prison death camps.

Amid chants to free Palestinian and of “Black lives matter,” one activist also led calls of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”

Another activist tied between the need to “abolish the police” to abolishing “the Zionistic state of Israel” and “the United States government,” to cheers from the crowd.

Also speaking at the event was a pro-North Korean activist, who said: “I believe that within our lifetime, Palestine will be yours again and Korea will be one again! The United States of America and all of its puppet governments will be no more!”...

The march, from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol building, was led by a Harvard student, Christian Tabash, who read a poem about Israel’s crimes against Palestinian Muslims, according to the Washington Examiner. The poem referred to Israel as “puppet master of continents,” an age-old conspiracy theory that Jews run the world.

Source

[alhoon]

Read the Constitution. The only people "pretending" are those who insist that the 2A has nothing to do with resisting state tyranny.

Sure. And when the state asks you to bring your guns in order to help the state?
You simply increased the number of guns the state has to turn on you.

[Prodromos]

Intersectional intifada:

Source

It's like a who's who of Soviet active measures.

[Prodromos]

They seem content

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Arnold Schwarzenegger on Twitter: "Happy birthday, America. Thank you for letting me live the American Dream.

[Vanoi]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53300579

So a fire broke out at Iran's underground nuclear in Natanz a couple days ago that Iran is now admitting caused some severe damage. There's speculation that Israel or the US (or both honestly) conducted a cyber attack that caused this fire. Iran said it has already determined the cause of the fire but has yet to announce any findings.

This would be a significant escalation if true and would be the second suspected cyber attack by the US and Israel on Iran.

[Abdülmecid I]

In other news, a fraudulent network of imaginary geopolitical experts has just been exposed. It relied on eloquently written articles, whose authors, despite their impressive credentials, were actually nonexistent. The photos they used as avatars were either stolen from real individuals or artificially generated. Their conclusions always happened to benefit the foreign policy of the United Arab Emirates, as they were rather critical on the main antagonists of Abu Dhabi, namely Iran, Qatar and Turkey. They denounced their activities in Iraq, Lebanon and Libya, called for a harsher stance against the Muslim Brotherhood and praised the reaction of the Gulf monarchies during the Corona virus pandemic. They created fake sites (like Persia Now and Arab Eye) to disseminate their propaganda, but the most worrying part is that the fake pundits were actually hosted by Western, conservative-leaning media, as well.

Some of them, such as the American Thinker, are complete jokes, but the list also included supposedly more trustworthy outlets, from the National Interest to Real Clear Politics. I expected these more moderate and less biased websites to be more critical, in regards to those with whom they collaborate. Back in the good, old days, journalism about the Middle East was allegedy vulnerable to the influence of the Israeli lobbying, but nowadays, in my opinion, the money of the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar poses a real threat to the accuracy of the information we receive. Especially after the eruption of the Syrian Civil War, the Internet is full of either fake or paid analysts, whose observations always tend to favour the goals of their employers.