You are conflating two things that I have claimed. One: the US has executed people for torture, including for many of the same practices that the CIA has been using. Two: some of the CIA's practices constitute rape. The first claim is true: both German and Japanese personnel were executed after WW2 for practices like waterboarding, stress positioning, extended submersion in cold water, beating, etc. The second claim, that the excessively forceful rectal exams and the truly abominable "rectal feeding" practices constitute rape could be a point of contention, but your characterization of what I've said is simply reducing my claim to the absurd.
The report cites at least two instances of "rectal exams conducted with 'excessive force'," in addition with the use of "rectal feeding" or "rectal rehydration" as a means of exerting "total control over the detainee." One can quibble over whether such practices constitute rape, but legally speaking when something is forcibly inserted into someone's anus without their consent, that can reasonably be considered rape.
Some of the techniques that have been revealed in this report include rape, beating, immersion in freezing water for long periods, forced holding of stress positions (including forcing people with broken legs and feet to stand for hours), extreme sleep deprivation. Victims of the CIA torture regime were often innocent, and some died. The US government in the past has had a legal remedy for the perpetrators of these torture methods: the death penalty.
It's true that spying is not inherently bad, but the NSA's foreign spying activities have also strayed into "bad" territory just as their domestic spying has (for example, spying on allies for economic advantage is probably fair to call "bad").
Well, they based their state on what they divined from the Quran, right? That certainly doesn't make them Buddhist. Regarding the "state" part, State of Palestine is also considered to be a state by many countries. Legitimacy is merely about how many people you can convince. It's not a thing you can measure with a multimeter or something.
That doesn't mean we're obligated to help them gain legitimacy by volunteering to use the name they want us to. Their goal is to be seen as a legitimate state representing all Muslims. They aren't and they don't. Also, "daesh" pisses them off, which should give all decent folk a twinge of slightly immature pleasure.
Do a google search for her account without being logged in. You'll get to her twitter page, and it will look exactly like it did in that screenshot. If she (or someone else) saw an incoming stream of creepy/threatening tweets at her, logged out to avoid having their information on screen, hit f5 to refresh and display the most recent messages, then took a screenshot, they would end up with...exactly that screenshot. That is a much simpler explanation than that weird ranty jpeg presents as a smoking gun.
You compared the "analysis" on this jpeg to Loose Change, and I think that's pretty apt. The fact that people are so quick to latch onto this incredibly specious reasoning is really telling. Like, who the fuck cares if the person screenshotting it isn't signed in? You know what happens if I google "Anita Sarkeesian twitter"? I get her damn twitter page, exactly as it looks in that jpeg. You know what happens if I have that page up and hit F5 right after someone tweets something? I get that new tweet on my screen. This is not rocket-science level reasoning, it's plain, simple, and obvious. MS painting "look! it says this post is from 12 seconds ago!!!" on a screenshotand calling it a smoking gun isn't rock solid evidence, it's pants-shittingly stupid.
Lack of guns has *correlated* with fewer murders. However, murder rates have fallen across the developed world over the same period, with or without guns.
"Congress shall have the power . . . to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
I just noticed something. Now, people online very frequently argue that since the constitution grants Congress the right to deal out copyrights for "a limited time," the spirit of the document has been broken by the various extensions that have passed in recent years. I agree with that, but sometimes it's easier to fight bad laws when they are contradictory to the word of the constitution.
This brings me to what I just noticed, which I've never seen pointed out before: Congress shall have the right to grant TO AUTHORS AND INVENTORS the exclusive right to et cetera. Not "to authors and inventors and their respective heirs." Just to the authors and inventors themselves. Likely, this argument has been made before, especially given the volume of attention this subject gets on Slashdot, but has anyone ever argued this Congress? Or to the Supreme Court?
"When the Riders of Rohan rode into the horde, which orcs/etc. were real? were the horsemen real? Now that I think about it - were the elephants real? It wasn't readily discernable. They all looked damned real to me."
I'm not exactly an expert, and I don't know for sure, but it looked to me like the Riders of Rohan were real (at least some of them), and the orcs were CG. I say this because of the way the orcs bounced off the charging horses: it didn't look like the horses were really reacting to them as if they'd collided with a body, so I assume that the horses were real. As for the elephants, they're definitely CG. No elephants that big are still extant on earth. They may very well have modelled them after an extinct species that really existed (which would be pretty cool), but they're easily twice as big as an African elephant.
I watched the American version first, and it scared the piss out of me. I watched the Japanese version, and thought it was pretty good, but not NEARLY as scary (barring the final scene, which I thought was much better in the original Japanese version). My then-girlfriend watched them both with me, and agreed.
Fast forward to a couple months ago: I watched the American version again. It scared the piss out of me again. I just don't think Ringu could do that; the American version's timing and pacing is simply much better, in my opinion. The Japanese version reveals too much too early, whereas in the American version, you are led to believe things that come around to bite you in the ass in the end.
Please. Humans cannot NOT communicate. You may well consider "l33tsp34k" to be a degenerate and worthless means of communication, but the fact is that it is essentially just as capable of conveying the meanings of a word as any other form of writing. Is it a stupid fad? Definitely. Is it a danger to literacy and a signal that OMGOMG the sky is falling on our great society? Absolutely not. Think of it this way: even if leetspeak were adopted as the official means of conveying the English language, would it be any harder for children to read the old Latin alphabet than it is for them to read the leetspeak now?
Children and adolescents have always developed innovative means of communicating with one another, and adults have always thought that these innovations were going to be the death of their language. This will continue until the end of our species, barring a massive change in the psychological makeup of humanity.
Read his(their) post again- he mentioned that English speakers have been using "they" to refer to single subjects ambiguously for seven centuries.
When pretty much everyone makes the same "mistake," in the same way, for 700 years, that pretty much makes it not a mistake.
Technically speaking, flamethrowers are unregulated. http://www.auctionarms.com/search/displayitem.cfm? itemnum=5210611
However, I doubt flamethrowers would be terribly useful in the type of warfare that would be required of any rebels fighting the US government.
"It makes us no better than Khomeni sentencing Rushdie to death for printing a book."
Interesting, if largely unrelated, note: Khomeini's grandson recently said in an interview that the Iranian government had no right to sentence Rushdie, or anyone else, to death for apostasy. According to him, the Qur'an specifically says that the only person who CAN proclaim a death sentence in such a case would be an "infallible imam," which is understood to not exist (since all men are fallible).
Though in all fairness I've never actually played it, doesn't BF 1942 just give the Russians American weapons? I know on the back of the box, there's a prominent picture of Russian holding a BAR. That's not what I call 'due respect' or 'realism':p
There are quite a few WWII FPSs out there, true, but most of them are pretty Quakey and unrealistic, and none that I know of have treated the Eastern Front with due respect.
You may joke, but there are definite differences in shades of black. Just pick a couple black t-shirts out of your dresser/hamper/floor (you DO have a wardrobe composed entirely of black t-shirts, right?)...Lay them next to each other. They're all black, but I'd wager you have all different shades of black...light black, green black, purple black, etc, etc, ad infinitum.
In WWII, the British developed a little gun specifically for commandos called the Delisle Carbine...it's basically a Lee-Enfield rifle mated with a Colt 1911 which has a silencer built in as an integral part. It was rechambered from the Enfield's.303 to the Colt's.45 ACP so that it would be subsonic, and commandos could use it as a sniper rifle (despite the fact that it was essentially a large pistol).
In order to convince people over there that we're not evil, it will take a LONG time. Maybe multiple generations. But if we set up schools to teach them a version of history that doesn't include "The Zionist States of America is the Great Satan!" then we WILL make a difference. Right now the only educational opportunities for a lot of people in the Middle East are religious schools run by fundamentalists. However, there are a few organizations trying to make a difference in this regard, like the Central Asia Institute http://www.ikat.org/ . Our government isn't likely to support this, though, since it doesn't get nearly as many votes as blowing shit up.
Which is exactly why we should be sending all kinds of aid to poor urban areas in Muslim countries. Who do you think builds schools and clinics for poor people in Saudi Arabia and Egypt? Hint: his name rhymes with "Bosama Fin Maden." In order to stop people from wanting to kill us, we need to start doing things that will help in the long term, and may not be too useful in the short term.
Not that this is terribly relevent to the discussion at hand.
Slashdot Mirror
You are conflating two things that I have claimed. One: the US has executed people for torture, including for many of the same practices that the CIA has been using. Two: some of the CIA's practices constitute rape. The first claim is true: both German and Japanese personnel were executed after WW2 for practices like waterboarding, stress positioning, extended submersion in cold water, beating, etc. The second claim, that the excessively forceful rectal exams and the truly abominable "rectal feeding" practices constitute rape could be a point of contention, but your characterization of what I've said is simply reducing my claim to the absurd.
The report cites at least two instances of "rectal exams conducted with 'excessive force'," in addition with the use of "rectal feeding" or "rectal rehydration" as a means of exerting "total control over the detainee." One can quibble over whether such practices constitute rape, but legally speaking when something is forcibly inserted into someone's anus without their consent, that can reasonably be considered rape.
Some of the techniques that have been revealed in this report include rape, beating, immersion in freezing water for long periods, forced holding of stress positions (including forcing people with broken legs and feet to stand for hours), extreme sleep deprivation. Victims of the CIA torture regime were often innocent, and some died. The US government in the past has had a legal remedy for the perpetrators of these torture methods: the death penalty.
It's true that spying is not inherently bad, but the NSA's foreign spying activities have also strayed into "bad" territory just as their domestic spying has (for example, spying on allies for economic advantage is probably fair to call "bad").
Well, they based their state on what they divined from the Quran, right? That certainly doesn't make them Buddhist. Regarding the "state" part, State of Palestine is also considered to be a state by many countries. Legitimacy is merely about how many people you can convince. It's not a thing you can measure with a multimeter or something.
That doesn't mean we're obligated to help them gain legitimacy by volunteering to use the name they want us to. Their goal is to be seen as a legitimate state representing all Muslims. They aren't and they don't. Also, "daesh" pisses them off, which should give all decent folk a twinge of slightly immature pleasure.
Do a google search for her account without being logged in. You'll get to her twitter page, and it will look exactly like it did in that screenshot. If she (or someone else) saw an incoming stream of creepy/threatening tweets at her, logged out to avoid having their information on screen, hit f5 to refresh and display the most recent messages, then took a screenshot, they would end up with...exactly that screenshot. That is a much simpler explanation than that weird ranty jpeg presents as a smoking gun.
You compared the "analysis" on this jpeg to Loose Change, and I think that's pretty apt. The fact that people are so quick to latch onto this incredibly specious reasoning is really telling. Like, who the fuck cares if the person screenshotting it isn't signed in? You know what happens if I google "Anita Sarkeesian twitter"? I get her damn twitter page, exactly as it looks in that jpeg. You know what happens if I have that page up and hit F5 right after someone tweets something? I get that new tweet on my screen. This is not rocket-science level reasoning, it's plain, simple, and obvious. MS painting "look! it says this post is from 12 seconds ago!!!" on a screenshotand calling it a smoking gun isn't rock solid evidence, it's pants-shittingly stupid.
Lack of guns has *correlated* with fewer murders. However, murder rates have fallen across the developed world over the same period, with or without guns.
http://imdb.com/name/nm0000416/ Terry Gilliam, born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Where is that, West Midlands?
King James. Duh. *ducks*
True, but they can still only see the jazz section of the CD collection.
"Congress shall have the power . . . to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." I just noticed something. Now, people online very frequently argue that since the constitution grants Congress the right to deal out copyrights for "a limited time," the spirit of the document has been broken by the various extensions that have passed in recent years. I agree with that, but sometimes it's easier to fight bad laws when they are contradictory to the word of the constitution. This brings me to what I just noticed, which I've never seen pointed out before: Congress shall have the right to grant TO AUTHORS AND INVENTORS the exclusive right to et cetera. Not "to authors and inventors and their respective heirs." Just to the authors and inventors themselves. Likely, this argument has been made before, especially given the volume of attention this subject gets on Slashdot, but has anyone ever argued this Congress? Or to the Supreme Court?
"When the Riders of Rohan rode into the horde, which orcs/etc. were real? were the horsemen real? Now that I think about it - were the elephants real? It wasn't readily discernable. They all looked damned real to me." I'm not exactly an expert, and I don't know for sure, but it looked to me like the Riders of Rohan were real (at least some of them), and the orcs were CG. I say this because of the way the orcs bounced off the charging horses: it didn't look like the horses were really reacting to them as if they'd collided with a body, so I assume that the horses were real. As for the elephants, they're definitely CG. No elephants that big are still extant on earth. They may very well have modelled them after an extinct species that really existed (which would be pretty cool), but they're easily twice as big as an African elephant.
I watched the American version first, and it scared the piss out of me. I watched the Japanese version, and thought it was pretty good, but not NEARLY as scary (barring the final scene, which I thought was much better in the original Japanese version). My then-girlfriend watched them both with me, and agreed. Fast forward to a couple months ago: I watched the American version again. It scared the piss out of me again. I just don't think Ringu could do that; the American version's timing and pacing is simply much better, in my opinion. The Japanese version reveals too much too early, whereas in the American version, you are led to believe things that come around to bite you in the ass in the end.
Please. Humans cannot NOT communicate. You may well consider "l33tsp34k" to be a degenerate and worthless means of communication, but the fact is that it is essentially just as capable of conveying the meanings of a word as any other form of writing. Is it a stupid fad? Definitely. Is it a danger to literacy and a signal that OMGOMG the sky is falling on our great society? Absolutely not. Think of it this way: even if leetspeak were adopted as the official means of conveying the English language, would it be any harder for children to read the old Latin alphabet than it is for them to read the leetspeak now? Children and adolescents have always developed innovative means of communicating with one another, and adults have always thought that these innovations were going to be the death of their language. This will continue until the end of our species, barring a massive change in the psychological makeup of humanity.
Read his(their) post again- he mentioned that English speakers have been using "they" to refer to single subjects ambiguously for seven centuries. When pretty much everyone makes the same "mistake," in the same way, for 700 years, that pretty much makes it not a mistake.
Technically speaking, flamethrowers are unregulated. http://www.auctionarms.com/search/displayitem.cfm? itemnum=5210611
However, I doubt flamethrowers would be terribly useful in the type of warfare that would be required of any rebels fighting the US government.
"It makes us no better than Khomeni sentencing Rushdie to death for printing a book." Interesting, if largely unrelated, note: Khomeini's grandson recently said in an interview that the Iranian government had no right to sentence Rushdie, or anyone else, to death for apostasy. According to him, the Qur'an specifically says that the only person who CAN proclaim a death sentence in such a case would be an "infallible imam," which is understood to not exist (since all men are fallible).
Though in all fairness I've never actually played it, doesn't BF 1942 just give the Russians American weapons? I know on the back of the box, there's a prominent picture of Russian holding a BAR. That's not what I call 'due respect' or 'realism' :p
There are quite a few WWII FPSs out there, true, but most of them are pretty Quakey and unrealistic, and none that I know of have treated the Eastern Front with due respect.
You may joke, but there are definite differences in shades of black. Just pick a couple black t-shirts out of your dresser/hamper/floor (you DO have a wardrobe composed entirely of black t-shirts, right?)...Lay them next to each other. They're all black, but I'd wager you have all different shades of black...light black, green black, purple black, etc, etc, ad infinitum.
In WWII, the British developed a little gun specifically for commandos called the Delisle Carbine...it's basically a Lee-Enfield rifle mated with a Colt 1911 which has a silencer built in as an integral part. It was rechambered from the Enfield's .303 to the Colt's .45 ACP so that it would be subsonic, and commandos could use it as a sniper rifle (despite the fact that it was essentially a large pistol).
In order to convince people over there that we're not evil, it will take a LONG time. Maybe multiple generations. But if we set up schools to teach them a version of history that doesn't include "The Zionist States of America is the Great Satan!" then we WILL make a difference. Right now the only educational opportunities for a lot of people in the Middle East are religious schools run by fundamentalists. However, there are a few organizations trying to make a difference in this regard, like the Central Asia Institute http://www.ikat.org/ . Our government isn't likely to support this, though, since it doesn't get nearly as many votes as blowing shit up.
OK, so it's not hackproof. Maybe they could just say it's 'hack-retardant.'
Which is exactly why we should be sending all kinds of aid to poor urban areas in Muslim countries. Who do you think builds schools and clinics for poor people in Saudi Arabia and Egypt? Hint: his name rhymes with "Bosama Fin Maden." In order to stop people from wanting to kill us, we need to start doing things that will help in the long term, and may not be too useful in the short term. Not that this is terribly relevent to the discussion at hand.