There are major differences and they are the reason why this is not going to happen.
Germany and Japan were the aggressors and their citizenry knew and accepted it. Subsequently their defeat came to be seen by most of their populace as in some ways justified. This is certainly not the case with the current wars, particularly Iraq which was started based on blatant lies, and with Muslims (Arabs in particular) who have a very long history of being victims of various Western aggressors, culminating in establishment of the state Israel without any consent of the locals and with massive US backing. Add to it constant US meddling in affairs of all nations in the region, complete with CIA backed coups etc.
All of the major participants in WWII were on similar technological, industrial and societal level. This resulted in the aid offered by the US to be of acceptable kind to their populace. Also the Marshall plan was accomplished mostly by hiring locals in direct contrast to the activities in Iraq and Afghanistan where most of the "aid" is making its way into pockets of pan-national corporations who bring in foreign workers/mercenaries and what not to accomplish the woefully mismanaged, corrupt and totally ineffective "reconstruction" (the amount of clean water and electricity available to an average citizen actually deteriorated in Iraq as compared with the Saddam regime). The only projects that are a "success" in Iraq are those directly serving the US military and other Imperial institutions in establishment of permanent presence (such as permanent bases for the 50,000 permanent occupation troops and the massive multi-thousand-people "embassies" in fortified zones). This is of course not lost on the locals.
There is a long history of religious hatred between the locals and the supposed "liberators".
Due to all the copious lies and duplicity of the supposed "liberators" there is serious doubt amongst the locals as to the true intent of the invasions.
The various religious wackos who fulfill the role of "insurgents" come from a background culturally far closer to the locals than the invaders, they speak the local languages, respect local customs etc.
Many other similar reasons.
So no, the locals are not going to simply roll over and play dead for the US mercenaries and the US "interests" will find continuous, low grade resistance into an indefinite future, thus making the project of turning the locals into obedient pets far less profitable then originally envisioned. This is however not a major concern as the war was already wildly more profitable then even the greediest executives ever imagined in 2001 with original estimates merely of a few billion dollars ballooning into trillions (with much more to come).
You seem to think that the UN has moral authority over wars, and that a war might somehow be acceptable if the Security Council were to authorize one.
No, you stupid troll, the UN is the only body that even comes close to any sort of authority on pre-emptive wars. If Saddam had attacked the US, or any NATO member, the situation would be entirely different. But you pretended to attempt an intervention to supposedly prevent an imminent nuclear attack on the US by Saddam. That is why you needed the Security Council and that is why the US tired to get it, failing miserably.
You seem to have forgotten that nearly half the countries on the planet are a part of the coalition, likely including the one you currently live in.
The coalition was for the Afganistan war, not Iraq. Keep lying, it is sure to improve your credibility.
It was a war, with periods of truce, that Saddam Hussein started when he invaded Kuwait.
Bullshit. The original UN resolution that authorized the first Gulf War did not extend to the second one. That is why Powell did his tap-dance before the Security Council.
I wish I didn't have to say this, but it's a fucking WAR
I will not even bother mentioning stuff like war crimes etc for it would be clearly lost on the apologists like you.
But this goes even beyond that. War you say? Fucking war YOU started, unilaterally, you mean. Without even bothering to officially declare it. And don't even try to pretend that the UN authorized it for some of us do not have the memory span of a goldfish and were actually watching the proceedings at the UN and witnessed the clear failure to obtain the approval of the Security Council, Powell's pathetic dog-and-pony show notwithstanding.
So in accordance with this "logic", if I decide to rob you and so I proceed to your house wherein I blow away your kids and wife and then torture you for the location of your safe, but I am careful to call the whole thing "war on Internet users who call themselves sumdumass", this makes it all right then, no? After all "shit happens in war"!
Oh you mean it is different because instead of me, just one guy, it is the Holy And Divine US Government Douchebags of Manifest Destiny who claim to be in a "war", backed up by the Infallible Gas Bags of Punditry on The Idiot Boxes of Infotainment! And so if your Holy Centurions do it, its righteous and just, but anyone else doing it is a clear sign of Satanic Villainy and Dastardly, Insurgent Defiance of The Rightful Rules of the Universe and they should get "what's coming to them". Intestines of children hanging on tree branches near blown up playgrounds and dismembered wedding parties in ruins of their homes. US Empire has its costs and others must pay them. Got it.
Fuck I hate US jingoist, imperialist fucks who think USA can do no wrong and the shit of US mercenaries smells like roses. All of these people in these videos would be alive and well if you hadn't invaded Iraq on made up pretenses and lies, you stupid fucks. YOU and your countrymen bear all the responsibility for their deaths. And yes, it was murder.
That is correct, as far as I know, there has not been a nuclear weapon manufactured that did not need a traditional fission-based nuclear explosion as at least an initial stage. All other methods to initiate fusion are so far impractical to be deployed as weapon systems due the mass and size of the equipment required and amounts of electrical power needed.
I will make an exception in my long standing policy of ignoring ACs and answer this particularly malicious bit of stupidity. The GP claimed that a fissionable material weapon with a "sub-critical" mass is possible, I pointed out that no such thing as a "sub-critical mass" is workable and that all fission weapons must in some way achieve critical mass to function. In fact a "critical mass" is a very pre-requisite of a sustainable chain reaction. That is its definition.
So there is no magical "understanding" of the parent post that is required here as he is plainly in the wrong.
The only troll here is you, who, lacking even basic reading comprehension, decides to butt in with insults over what you do not understand.
Both of these sites have a distinct flavour of crackpottery, mixed with a generous dose of lunacy and tipped with wholesome nuttiness.
I think the RCMP will end up with a rather embarrassing situation of having dragged a certifiable conspiracy nut before the courts wherein he will quickly drown them in spittle and general ranting incoherence, which then will prompt more reasonable citizenry to start asking pointed questions as to why the RCMP feels threatened by an individual whose case would best be dealt with by the medical profession and if maybe there is something to his ranting...
All that is true, but we were talking about governments and the "14 year old" kid was just a wise-crack.
Constructing an explosive-lens type of device is also reasonably well documented these days, while back then required pretty much discovering the process by trial and error.
So it all essentially comes down to resources, which even impoverished mid-sized nations posses these days. That is how North Korea could manage, for example.
Any 14 year-old could probably make an atomic bomb with a critical mass of uranium or plutonium. Such a bomb would be huge and require lots of shielding to be safe to handle - like attaching to
an aircraft or loading into a shipping container.
Err, a bare-sphere (no neutron energy manipulation or reflective shielding) critical mass of a plutonium-239 core is only 10kg and with the density of plutonium that translates to a sphere smaller than an orange (9.9cm to be exact).
The reason the original plutonium weapons were so huge is because of low purity of the fissionable materials available, massive over engineering resulting from poor understanding of materials and nuclear processes etc
On the other hand, what is required to detonate a subcritical mass is a little bit tricky.
No such thing exists. All nuclear explosions are accomplished by achieving criticality in some fission material. The critical mass however varies with shape and external factors such as shielding materials capable of changing energies of neutrons or reflecting them back onto their source, temperature of the material, its degree of compression etc.
Not only that, but people do not seem to realize that these phones have the wrong 3G frequencies for some of the main US (AT&T) and Canadian (Rogers) carriers. You can make calls on them but forget about any high-speed data. And some other models like the EVO are not even GSM phones and thus cannot be bought "unlocked".
Major US and Canadian GSM carriers use the 850/1900 MHz bands for 2G/3G while in Europe 900/2100 is the dominant standard. And for some reason the phone makers decided that the "quad" band feature which covers all combinations need only apply to 2G capabilities and not to 3G and so most of these data-heavy phones cannot be used properly in both places.
The United flight that crashed in Pennsylvania can't really be counted as a success because the plane still crashed and everyone on board was killed.
Only because the second piece of the scheme that made 9/11 style attack pointless on 9/12 and onwards was not in place: reinforced cockpit doors.
Should the idiots with box-cutters try this again, not only would they face enraged passengers but would be doing so while not in control of the plane.
So GP is quite right, repetition of the exact 9/11 attack scheme was pretty much impossible right after the method became known and the whole neo-fascist exercise of the "fatherland se... " I mean "homeland security" is a result of various greedy authoritarians taking advantage of the panicked sheeple to shear them of their money and any vestiges of personal liberties not yet consumed by their "protectors".
Use the https version and quit shitting your pants over it.
Until of course some MBA decides to bestow a full-screen fade-in flowery background on it without warning and without any possibility to even opt-out, never you mind opt-in, causing merry havoc with thousands of users who had Google as a home page, like they did with the main site...
Since then Google home pages are actually blocked at many corporate web filters along with places like Facebook. Yay for the simplicity, reliability and speed which got Google to where it is today. But then again every good thing must come to an end some day at the hands of MBAs with vacuous heads and no understanding of implications of their actions beyond "Woah, sweeet! My cool ideas, like, sooo rock! Who would ever want not to be blessed by them?!! My VP daddy will be soooo proud!".
And a colour changing logo affects your work day in what way?
It fucks up anyone working over an RDP, ICA, VNC and similar remote desktop protocols over slow links like, say, satellite connections. That means a lot of people in corporations using Thin-client terminals and the like. For, you know, "serious" work.
"Consumers" on home PCs who are easily amused by shiny moving objects and pieces of wiggling string are very pleased though.
A bit hypocritical of you, since you're essentially concluding that the US is behind these accusations when you have not one whit of evidence to support that assertion.
Err, no. The US has long since abandoned any pretense of "rule of law" with its indefinite detention and secret rendition schemes, "military tribunals" where evidence extracted under threats of rape and during torture sessions is admissible, assassinations via a drone of anyone (including US citizens) whom the US fingers as a "terrorist" or an "insurgent" or whatever bogey-man is fashionable at the moment, etc and so on.
The possibility of a CIA-run sexual malfeasance smear-campaign against Assange is quite laughably tame by comparison to the things the US is already known to have done with 100% certainty.
Well, your wacky theory seems to be that real rape never happens and there is just some PC bullshit exploited by girls that get drunk and sleep with guys they don't like in the morning. While that happens it's pretty rare that it will make it past seasoned cops and Judges and it even pisses off the feminists.
No, my "wacky" theory is that the number of "rapes" (and other claims of sexual molestation of varying degree) supposedly committed but which do not go to trial is scientifically unquantifiable, just like the number of supposed sex crimes against children that do not end up in court, supposed links of all "sex crimes" to pornographic imagery are wholly unsubstantiated and all of these (and other similar) areas are a fertile ground for power-hungry propagandists with vicious agendas. Therefore it is a duty of responsible citizenry to be skeptical and to demand scientifically sound justifications for any actions supposedly taken to combat these crimes (and in some cases even plain explanation as to why certain actions are even categorized as "crimes").
The various "feminists" and "social studies" types are simply a partisan faction in this fray who seeks gains in power and wealth (or simply satisfaction of personal vendettas) by means of alteration of laws in their favour. The onus is therefore on them to provide undeniable proof of the necessity of such alterations rather than on the skeptics like myself. Hysterical screeches about "frightening numbers" of supposed hidden victims being made out members of their camp are not it.
The truly amusing thing that shows your hypocracy is that I'm apparently not supposed to mention anything that might make you feel bad such as murder victims that have obvious signs of being raped - you are the one infected by excessive "political correctness" here.
Again, for the hundredth time, "obvious signs" aren't. It is a well known scientific fact that medical science alone is unable to conclusively prove rape because indications of intercourse and bruising or other marks of violence can be a) related to rough consensual sex, b) made by two separate people within a sufficiently short span of time where the sex was consensual and preceded the violence, c) the scientific evidence of sexual violence is itself unreliable and increasingly so with time passing from the time of crime, d) other factors.
That is why you cannot just count nearly every female body in the morgue that has some signs of sexual activity as a sex victim, which is what your line of reasoning (and that of "feminists" and others) amounts to. That is because the number of rapes and sexual assaults amongst violently deceased people is simply scientifically unquantifiable.
No, asking for the figures is a transparent delaying tactic and trick to make me jump in a fucking childish little troll game. I give you figures and you say "irrelevant - not in my backyard or last years figures or what about a specific age range" or similar utter fucking bullshit. It must rub off from lazy politics onto people like you that are grown up and should know better.
Your second point of discarding actual experience as irrelevant really shows how detached from reality you are on this issue - or far more likely that you are playing a childish little game of stirring me and the earlier posters up. Thanks for telling me how I think and stupid I am too - it really shows a lack of maturity to do so which you have slipped into with the stupid little game you are playing.
So what you are saying is that serious people never bother making sure that claims are verified, they instead depend exclusively on unsubstantiated garbage, as long as its proponents hyperventilate and shriek sufficiently! Only non-serious, childish, "lazy" people ask for actual data and should be shunned for it since it is clearly all a conspiracy to fuck up the "serious" politics of all these oh-so-serious people, running around oh-so-seriously with their hair on fire! Doesn't the obstructionist low-life know that anecdotal "experience" is all that is needed in a "serious" political conversation!
You don't need me to find those numbers - check your local court list and you'll see how many cases there are where there is a lot of evidence and the suspect has been found.
Ah the fire of Righteous Religious Fervor! You've past even the standard canard of a typical crack-pot who demands that the onus of proof is on the opponents of whatever wacky theories he presents, now it is up to them to find data supporting your claims! And why wont they, those "lazy" bastards!
Being asked for actual numbers as opposed to unquantifiable adjectives is not a request for "dumbing down". Exact opposite in fact.
As to the rest, now we are finally getting to the bottom of what you were saying: you were simply emotionally impacted by some local (and completely unreliable - as the patients and hospital staff and even police are by definition one-sided actors in accusations of "rape" and the media would just love to report the "shocking" news) statistics and decided to extrapolate from them a whole universal world-view on the subject, without a grain of skepticism in it. But then again, you are not the first person to do so and people who come up with all that "PC weirdness" in fact counted on you, and on as many others as possible, to do just that.
I'm not saying unreported, I'm saying far more than the average man in the street is aware of
Then it should be easy to simply state a number, no? Using terms like "far more than the average man is aware of" is not only utterly meaningless (how do you know what the "average man" thinks the number is?) but it reeks of attempts to create a misleading impression, which I keep pointing out repeatedly.
Depite heavyhanded attempts at social control a lot of rapes still happen.
And I keep pointing out that the "heavy handed attempts at social control" only use rape as an excuse, their promoters are quite aware that they are useless as means to reducing rape - which unsurprisingly the draconian measures fail to deliver, but they do not give rat's ass about this because their true agenda is quite different.
Also "a lot" is again a term that is useful mainly to propagandists and demagogues. What is "a lot"? 1 per 10000 citizens per year, 1 per 1000, 1 per 50? Is "a lot" of rapes more than "a lot" of car thefts? Assaults? Armed robberies? What?
That is why any serious discussion involves actual data, not "far more"s and "a lot"s and "frightening numbers".
Oh right the old "communism works, it's just never been implemented right" argument.
If you keep burning so many strawmen your ass will catch on fire.
At no point did I claim that "communism works". No political or economic system so far invented "works". They are all fucked up to one degree or another and prone to being corrupted, just in different ways. In practice their core differences are just a choice of who fucks whom.
Of course none of the socialist governments in history, none of them, have ever even approached socialism. None of these ever had anything to do with socialism... And of course it's totally
racist of me to assume that different socialists have anything to do with eachother.
You just keep blabbering to yourself. All I did was to point out that a lot of tyrants called themselves this or the other and most did not bother following any of the tenets of whatsoever ideology they pretended to be champions of. Subsequently "socialists" like Hitler turned out to be aristocrat-loving social climbers, "communists" like Stalin turned out to be state-capitalists, Pan-Arab nationalists like Saddam turned out just to be power-mad thieves, etc and so on.
Also "socialist" itself has so many definitions that it can make one's head spin. Therefore the main reason Hitler is considered a "right wing" dictator (as opposed to Stalin who is tagged "left wing") is because of his choices of alliances. The Bolsheviks purged all aristocracy and business elites out of Russia and so Stalin followed the "workers/army" path to power - that was his only option. Hitler on the other hand jettisoned his "working class" allies early on in favour of the big business wealth and aristocracy. Hence the difference.
Even if one believes that drivel, the catch is, of course, given that this socialism has never been implemented and all historical attempts to do so "devolved" into genocide, what exactly would stop the next attempt from doing... exactly the same ?
Nothing. That is why I am not a proponent of socialism or any other "-ism". Including "capitalism".
And the grand total of US "comitted" genocides according to you are... hiroshima. That's a pretty sad deathcount for a genocide you know. I mean South-Sudanese muslims killed more Jews than that in their desert. Of course.
Right. The "but, but, but... the other guy is just as bad!"... err... "argument".
That is actually the main beef people have with the US, that it grand-stands and postures as a "land of the free", "defender of the oppressed" and "exporter of democratic principles" etc and so on... and then proceeds to sell the "do as I say but don't do as I do" timeless canard. Add to it a copious amount of greed and arrogance, mix in some shameless foreign adventurism and subsequently it is a little surprise that The United States of Hypocrisy are such a lightning rod for hate. Incidentally utter supremacist, greedy hypocrisy is also a chief reason why Israel ("the only democracy in the Middle East! Ha ha!") is so popular a destination for home-made high explosives.
And are you seriously going to pretend that the US had, like those muslims, no reason to attack hiroshima, except for "they're ugly little nips".
There are always official "reasons" for every action actually based on "they're ugly little nips". At the time of the Hiroshima bombings the US population was encouraged by its government (via a mass media campaign) to think of the Japanese ("japs") as swarming masses of faceless vermin. Cartoons depicting Japanese in a way similar to those appearing in Nazi publications depicting Jews were commonplace. Following the war, the US occupation authorities confiscated all photographs of victims
We have the PC bullshit the AC was complaining about, which I said was the fantasy view of it - the idea of "Enthusiastic Consent" which is an attempt to set rules without loopholes for any amoral people that will just ignore it anyway. To everyone else that has grasped the idea of "do unto others" it just looks silly and excessive.
The problem however is that the power-hungry, deranged, psychotic proponents of the "PC bullshit" have essentially won as far as most Western Democracies are concerned. The "Enthusiastic Consent" bit is just but one example of their pervasive activities and that's why the AC gave it. They've managed to pervert the public discourse and as a result of that the judicial system to their ends. Not only that, they are not satisfied with their victory and keep pushing for further erosion of any sort of protections for the accused, which in case of "sex crimes" are nearly exclusively male. Worse yet, this is only but one front in a wider war where assorted "feminists" and "social studies" types, aided by opportunist politicians and religious wackos, are attempting to remake sex into a weapon of terror against men. You can see the results of this on Slashdot every time these douchebags pop up with yet another "think of the children" hysteria which invariably aims to implement yet another bit of (generally androphobic) sex-fixated tyranny.
Now the reality is rapes still happen and PC wierdness is not going to stop it.
Of course. But that is not the point of the "PC weirdness", the point is power, control and ultimately domination. It is just a weapon, means to an end. Amongst many kinds of sociopaths who seek power some use money and greed of others, some use xenophobia, some religion and some use gender and sex. It is that last category which is the source of the "PC weirdness". The "feminist" movements of yore, which actually had some basis in reality, have long since morphed into just another means to power.
Another point (which I'll state more clearly this time) is that rapes happen far more often than the average guy in the street knows. Any policeman, medical general practictioner, emergency/casualty ward staff, pathologist or just about any lawyer that deals with criminal cases could tell you that.
The problem with this statement is the "far more" phrase. It is the same phrasing as the Glorious Protectors Of The Children (all fall on your knees before their Righteous Might with your Civil Liberties ready for plucking) use. We've learned from them that "vastly greater", "frightening" numbers of children are molested than reported, all without any sort of scientific backing, to the point that some have claimed (pulling the numbers out of their Glorious and Righteous Anuses) that 1 in every 4 men is a child molester and the only recourse (naturally) is to give the Glorious Crusaders and their pet politicians all the power in the world to pursue these "crimes" without any sort of skepticism as to the innocence of whomever they finger. And sure enough, a mere accusation of having seen "child pornography" is now sufficient to utterly destroy anyone (a number of the accused simply respond with suicide).
And then you come here using exactly the same sort of demagoguery. Maybe it was unintentional, but you did it.
The sane way to phrase it is that "some rapes" (numbers unknown) are going unreported and some reported ones (statistics for these should be available) do not end up in court (not to be conflated with being "not prosecuted" - which you also did - because some are bogus, again, numbers unknown). You have no basis whatsoever to use terms such as "frightening numbers" or "very large" etc. as these are tools of propaganda. No justification at all.
OK now, what problem do you have with what I've said in this post?
Right, it just so happens that your "reality" is oh so strangely similar to the very "PC weirdness" you claim not to subscribe to. Purely coincidental, I am sure.
Also, unless you are in your 60s, it is I who could call you "kid".
You're the revisionist here. Google "molotov ribbentrop" and read up on a bit of history preceding it.
Bullshit. The pact had to do with invasion of Poland in 1939 and mutual "non aggression" and was a ploy by Hitler to keep the Soviet Union away until he was ready to attack. It was signed in 1939 mere weeks before attack on Poland.
You do know that nazi translates to socialist, right ? Why wouldn't they have been allies ?*
Because, you revisionist idiot, the "Socialist" in NSDAP had as much to do with "communist" in the Soviet system as the "People's Republic" in the name had to do with democracy in North Korea or Saddam's Iraq. Stalin and Hitler were both authoritarian ass-hats who hated each other but Hitler was keen on big business, aristocracy and wealth while Stalin was using "communism" as his shtick for power and control. Subsequently the first people persecuted during the rise of Nazis to power in Germany were... communists and amongst Hitler's most admiring supporters were names such as multi-millionaires like Krupp and Ford (Hitler even passed special laws just for his best super-rich buddies). The last remnants of any kind of "socialism" in the NSDAP were gotten rid of in the "night of the long knives" where the brown-shirt worker "rabble" of the SA was dealt with via bullets to their heads. And that was in 1934.
But hey, what's a bit of lying when it's to demonize the US ?
Speaking of lies, the words "US" are nowhere present in my comment to which you are replying. Projection much?
I know of course, that you're intention is to demonize the right, even knowing full well that all genocides of the 20th century were committed by people who self-identified as "socialists",
Yes, particularly the Emperor Hirohito (that well known socialist rabble rouser) and the US "lefties" who dropped some nukes in his backyard and burned a few hundred thousand people alive. Then there were of course those "socialists" who killed 3 million people in Vietnam via copious use of the B52s, napalm and M16s...
In short, you are complete idiot and any discussion with you is not likely to lead anywhere.
the Soviets helped train and establish the Wehrmacht in the 30s
Now this must be some completely new, never before reached, level of bold faced, smirking, arrogant historical revisionism. Hitler and Stalin were bitter enemies and Wehrmacht needed no Soviet help whatsoever establishing itself in the 1930, having been simply a conglomeration of long-standing, existing German institutions of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe (air force). In fact the Soviet volunteers, with Stalin's blessing, actively fought Wehrmacht in Spain when Hitler assisted Franco.
The only "cooperation" between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany occurred during the attack on Poland in 1939, who at the time was the enemy of both, having attacked Soviet Union repeatedly trying to re-conquer Lithuania - seems that all sides involved had rather arrogant delusions of grandeur.
So the rest of your comment can be safely dismissed as is likely equally as reliable as that statement about Soviets helping to "train" and "establish" Wehrmacht.
Slashdot Mirror
There are major differences and they are the reason why this is not going to happen.
So no, the locals are not going to simply roll over and play dead for the US mercenaries and the US "interests" will find continuous, low grade resistance into an indefinite future, thus making the project of turning the locals into obedient pets far less profitable then originally envisioned. This is however not a major concern as the war was already wildly more profitable then even the greediest executives ever imagined in 2001 with original estimates merely of a few billion dollars ballooning into trillions (with much more to come).
No, you stupid troll, the UN is the only body that even comes close to any sort of authority on pre-emptive wars. If Saddam had attacked the US, or any NATO member, the situation would be entirely different. But you pretended to attempt an intervention to supposedly prevent an imminent nuclear attack on the US by Saddam. That is why you needed the Security Council and that is why the US tired to get it, failing miserably.
The coalition was for the Afganistan war, not Iraq. Keep lying, it is sure to improve your credibility.
Bullshit. The original UN resolution that authorized the first Gulf War did not extend to the second one. That is why Powell did his tap-dance before the Security Council.
I will not even bother mentioning stuff like war crimes etc for it would be clearly lost on the apologists like you.
But this goes even beyond that. War you say? Fucking war YOU started, unilaterally, you mean. Without even bothering to officially declare it. And don't even try to pretend that the UN authorized it for some of us do not have the memory span of a goldfish and were actually watching the proceedings at the UN and witnessed the clear failure to obtain the approval of the Security Council, Powell's pathetic dog-and-pony show notwithstanding.
So in accordance with this "logic", if I decide to rob you and so I proceed to your house wherein I blow away your kids and wife and then torture you for the location of your safe, but I am careful to call the whole thing "war on Internet users who call themselves sumdumass", this makes it all right then, no? After all "shit happens in war"!
Oh you mean it is different because instead of me, just one guy, it is the Holy And Divine US Government Douchebags of Manifest Destiny who claim to be in a "war", backed up by the Infallible Gas Bags of Punditry on The Idiot Boxes of Infotainment! And so if your Holy Centurions do it, its righteous and just, but anyone else doing it is a clear sign of Satanic Villainy and Dastardly, Insurgent Defiance of The Rightful Rules of the Universe and they should get "what's coming to them". Intestines of children hanging on tree branches near blown up playgrounds and dismembered wedding parties in ruins of their homes. US Empire has its costs and others must pay them. Got it.
Fuck I hate US jingoist, imperialist fucks who think USA can do no wrong and the shit of US mercenaries smells like roses. All of these people in these videos would be alive and well if you hadn't invaded Iraq on made up pretenses and lies, you stupid fucks. YOU and your countrymen bear all the responsibility for their deaths. And yes, it was murder.
That is correct, as far as I know, there has not been a nuclear weapon manufactured that did not need a traditional fission-based nuclear explosion as at least an initial stage. All other methods to initiate fusion are so far impractical to be deployed as weapon systems due the mass and size of the equipment required and amounts of electrical power needed.
I will make an exception in my long standing policy of ignoring ACs and answer this particularly malicious bit of stupidity. The GP claimed that a fissionable material weapon with a "sub-critical" mass is possible, I pointed out that no such thing as a "sub-critical mass" is workable and that all fission weapons must in some way achieve critical mass to function. In fact a "critical mass" is a very pre-requisite of a sustainable chain reaction. That is its definition.
So there is no magical "understanding" of the parent post that is required here as he is plainly in the wrong.
The only troll here is you, who, lacking even basic reading comprehension, decides to butt in with insults over what you do not understand.
Both of these sites have a distinct flavour of crackpottery, mixed with a generous dose of lunacy and tipped with wholesome nuttiness.
I think the RCMP will end up with a rather embarrassing situation of having dragged a certifiable conspiracy nut before the courts wherein he will quickly drown them in spittle and general ranting incoherence, which then will prompt more reasonable citizenry to start asking pointed questions as to why the RCMP feels threatened by an individual whose case would best be dealt with by the medical profession and if maybe there is something to his ranting...
All that is true, but we were talking about governments and the "14 year old" kid was just a wise-crack.
Constructing an explosive-lens type of device is also reasonably well documented these days, while back then required pretty much discovering the process by trial and error.
So it all essentially comes down to resources, which even impoverished mid-sized nations posses these days. That is how North Korea could manage, for example.
Err, a bare-sphere (no neutron energy manipulation or reflective shielding) critical mass of a plutonium-239 core is only 10kg and with the density of plutonium that translates to a sphere smaller than an orange (9.9cm to be exact).
The reason the original plutonium weapons were so huge is because of low purity of the fissionable materials available, massive over engineering resulting from poor understanding of materials and nuclear processes etc
No such thing exists. All nuclear explosions are accomplished by achieving criticality in some fission material. The critical mass however varies with shape and external factors such as shielding materials capable of changing energies of neutrons or reflecting them back onto their source, temperature of the material, its degree of compression etc.
Not only that, but people do not seem to realize that these phones have the wrong 3G frequencies for some of the main US (AT&T) and Canadian (Rogers) carriers. You can make calls on them but forget about any high-speed data. And some other models like the EVO are not even GSM phones and thus cannot be bought "unlocked".
Major US and Canadian GSM carriers use the 850/1900 MHz bands for 2G/3G while in Europe 900/2100 is the dominant standard. And for some reason the phone makers decided that the "quad" band feature which covers all combinations need only apply to 2G capabilities and not to 3G and so most of these data-heavy phones cannot be used properly in both places.
Only because the second piece of the scheme that made 9/11 style attack pointless on 9/12 and onwards was not in place: reinforced cockpit doors.
Should the idiots with box-cutters try this again, not only would they face enraged passengers but would be doing so while not in control of the plane.
So GP is quite right, repetition of the exact 9/11 attack scheme was pretty much impossible right after the method became known and the whole neo-fascist exercise of the "fatherland se... " I mean "homeland security" is a result of various greedy authoritarians taking advantage of the panicked sheeple to shear them of their money and any vestiges of personal liberties not yet consumed by their "protectors".
Until of course some MBA decides to bestow a full-screen fade-in flowery background on it without warning and without any possibility to even opt-out, never you mind opt-in, causing merry havoc with thousands of users who had Google as a home page, like they did with the main site...
Since then Google home pages are actually blocked at many corporate web filters along with places like Facebook. Yay for the simplicity, reliability and speed which got Google to where it is today. But then again every good thing must come to an end some day at the hands of MBAs with vacuous heads and no understanding of implications of their actions beyond "Woah, sweeet! My cool ideas, like, sooo rock! Who would ever want not to be blessed by them?!! My VP daddy will be soooo proud!".
It fucks up anyone working over an RDP, ICA, VNC and similar remote desktop protocols over slow links like, say, satellite connections. That means a lot of people in corporations using Thin-client terminals and the like. For, you know, "serious" work.
"Consumers" on home PCs who are easily amused by shiny moving objects and pieces of wiggling string are very pleased though.
Err, no. The US has long since abandoned any pretense of "rule of law" with its indefinite detention and secret rendition schemes, "military tribunals" where evidence extracted under threats of rape and during torture sessions is admissible, assassinations via a drone of anyone (including US citizens) whom the US fingers as a "terrorist" or an "insurgent" or whatever bogey-man is fashionable at the moment, etc and so on.
The possibility of a CIA-run sexual malfeasance smear-campaign against Assange is quite laughably tame by comparison to the things the US is already known to have done with 100% certainty.
Unfortunately this very idea was the core modus operandi of the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union both.
It was also supposed to be the differentiating factor between them and the so-called "principled democracies", USA chief amongst them.
So much for all the propaganda and bullshit, eh?
No, my "wacky" theory is that the number of "rapes" (and other claims of sexual molestation of varying degree) supposedly committed but which do not go to trial is scientifically unquantifiable, just like the number of supposed sex crimes against children that do not end up in court, supposed links of all "sex crimes" to pornographic imagery are wholly unsubstantiated and all of these (and other similar) areas are a fertile ground for power-hungry propagandists with vicious agendas. Therefore it is a duty of responsible citizenry to be skeptical and to demand scientifically sound justifications for any actions supposedly taken to combat these crimes (and in some cases even plain explanation as to why certain actions are even categorized as "crimes").
The various "feminists" and "social studies" types are simply a partisan faction in this fray who seeks gains in power and wealth (or simply satisfaction of personal vendettas) by means of alteration of laws in their favour. The onus is therefore on them to provide undeniable proof of the necessity of such alterations rather than on the skeptics like myself. Hysterical screeches about "frightening numbers" of supposed hidden victims being made out members of their camp are not it.
Again, for the hundredth time, "obvious signs" aren't. It is a well known scientific fact that medical science alone is unable to conclusively prove rape because indications of intercourse and bruising or other marks of violence can be a) related to rough consensual sex, b) made by two separate people within a sufficiently short span of time where the sex was consensual and preceded the violence, c) the scientific evidence of sexual violence is itself unreliable and increasingly so with time passing from the time of crime, d) other factors.
That is why you cannot just count nearly every female body in the morgue that has some signs of sexual activity as a sex victim, which is what your line of reasoning (and that of "feminists" and others) amounts to. That is because the number of rapes and sexual assaults amongst violently deceased people is simply scientifically unquantifiable.
So what you are saying is that serious people never bother making sure that claims are verified, they instead depend exclusively on unsubstantiated garbage, as long as its proponents hyperventilate and shriek sufficiently! Only non-serious, childish, "lazy" people ask for actual data and should be shunned for it since it is clearly all a conspiracy to fuck up the "serious" politics of all these oh-so-serious people, running around oh-so-seriously with their hair on fire! Doesn't the obstructionist low-life know that anecdotal "experience" is all that is needed in a "serious" political conversation!
Ah the fire of Righteous Religious Fervor! You've past even the standard canard of a typical crack-pot who demands that the onus of proof is on the opponents of whatever wacky theories he presents, now it is up to them to find data supporting your claims! And why wont they, those "lazy" bastards!
Being asked for actual numbers as opposed to unquantifiable adjectives is not a request for "dumbing down". Exact opposite in fact.
As to the rest, now we are finally getting to the bottom of what you were saying: you were simply emotionally impacted by some local (and completely unreliable - as the patients and hospital staff and even police are by definition one-sided actors in accusations of "rape" and the media would just love to report the "shocking" news) statistics and decided to extrapolate from them a whole universal world-view on the subject, without a grain of skepticism in it. But then again, you are not the first person to do so and people who come up with all that "PC weirdness" in fact counted on you, and on as many others as possible, to do just that.
Then it should be easy to simply state a number, no? Using terms like "far more than the average man is aware of" is not only utterly meaningless (how do you know what the "average man" thinks the number is?) but it reeks of attempts to create a misleading impression, which I keep pointing out repeatedly.
And I keep pointing out that the "heavy handed attempts at social control" only use rape as an excuse, their promoters are quite aware that they are useless as means to reducing rape - which unsurprisingly the draconian measures fail to deliver, but they do not give rat's ass about this because their true agenda is quite different.
Also "a lot" is again a term that is useful mainly to propagandists and demagogues. What is "a lot"? 1 per 10000 citizens per year, 1 per 1000, 1 per 50? Is "a lot" of rapes more than "a lot" of car thefts? Assaults? Armed robberies? What?
That is why any serious discussion involves actual data, not "far more"s and "a lot"s and "frightening numbers".
If you keep burning so many strawmen your ass will catch on fire.
At no point did I claim that "communism works". No political or economic system so far invented "works". They are all fucked up to one degree or another and prone to being corrupted, just in different ways. In practice their core differences are just a choice of who fucks whom.
You just keep blabbering to yourself. All I did was to point out that a lot of tyrants called themselves this or the other and most did not bother following any of the tenets of whatsoever ideology they pretended to be champions of. Subsequently "socialists" like Hitler turned out to be aristocrat-loving social climbers, "communists" like Stalin turned out to be state-capitalists, Pan-Arab nationalists like Saddam turned out just to be power-mad thieves, etc and so on.
Also "socialist" itself has so many definitions that it can make one's head spin. Therefore the main reason Hitler is considered a "right wing" dictator (as opposed to Stalin who is tagged "left wing") is because of his choices of alliances. The Bolsheviks purged all aristocracy and business elites out of Russia and so Stalin followed the "workers/army" path to power - that was his only option. Hitler on the other hand jettisoned his "working class" allies early on in favour of the big business wealth and aristocracy. Hence the difference.
Nothing. That is why I am not a proponent of socialism or any other "-ism". Including "capitalism".
Right. The "but, but, but ... the other guy is just as bad!" ... err ... "argument".
That is actually the main beef people have with the US, that it grand-stands and postures as a "land of the free", "defender of the oppressed" and "exporter of democratic principles" etc and so on ... and then proceeds to sell the "do as I say but don't do as I do" timeless canard. Add to it a copious amount of greed and arrogance, mix in some shameless foreign adventurism and subsequently it is a little surprise that The United States of Hypocrisy are such a lightning rod for hate. Incidentally utter supremacist, greedy hypocrisy is also a chief reason why Israel ("the only democracy in the Middle East! Ha ha!") is so popular a destination for home-made high explosives.
There are always official "reasons" for every action actually based on "they're ugly little nips". At the time of the Hiroshima bombings the US population was encouraged by its government (via a mass media campaign) to think of the Japanese ("japs") as swarming masses of faceless vermin. Cartoons depicting Japanese in a way similar to those appearing in Nazi publications depicting Jews were commonplace. Following the war, the US occupation authorities confiscated all photographs of victims
The problem however is that the power-hungry, deranged, psychotic proponents of the "PC bullshit" have essentially won as far as most Western Democracies are concerned. The "Enthusiastic Consent" bit is just but one example of their pervasive activities and that's why the AC gave it. They've managed to pervert the public discourse and as a result of that the judicial system to their ends. Not only that, they are not satisfied with their victory and keep pushing for further erosion of any sort of protections for the accused, which in case of "sex crimes" are nearly exclusively male. Worse yet, this is only but one front in a wider war where assorted "feminists" and "social studies" types, aided by opportunist politicians and religious wackos, are attempting to remake sex into a weapon of terror against men. You can see the results of this on Slashdot every time these douchebags pop up with yet another "think of the children" hysteria which invariably aims to implement yet another bit of (generally androphobic) sex-fixated tyranny.
Of course. But that is not the point of the "PC weirdness", the point is power, control and ultimately domination. It is just a weapon, means to an end. Amongst many kinds of sociopaths who seek power some use money and greed of others, some use xenophobia, some religion and some use gender and sex. It is that last category which is the source of the "PC weirdness". The "feminist" movements of yore, which actually had some basis in reality, have long since morphed into just another means to power.
The problem with this statement is the "far more" phrase. It is the same phrasing as the Glorious Protectors Of The Children (all fall on your knees before their Righteous Might with your Civil Liberties ready for plucking) use. We've learned from them that "vastly greater", "frightening" numbers of children are molested than reported, all without any sort of scientific backing, to the point that some have claimed (pulling the numbers out of their Glorious and Righteous Anuses) that 1 in every 4 men is a child molester and the only recourse (naturally) is to give the Glorious Crusaders and their pet politicians all the power in the world to pursue these "crimes" without any sort of skepticism as to the innocence of whomever they finger. And sure enough, a mere accusation of having seen "child pornography" is now sufficient to utterly destroy anyone (a number of the accused simply respond with suicide).
And then you come here using exactly the same sort of demagoguery. Maybe it was unintentional, but you did it.
The sane way to phrase it is that "some rapes" (numbers unknown) are going unreported and some reported ones (statistics for these should be available) do not end up in court (not to be conflated with being "not prosecuted" - which you also did - because some are bogus, again, numbers unknown). You have no basis whatsoever to use terms such as "frightening numbers" or "very large" etc. as these are tools of propaganda. No justification at all.
See above. You've used (again, I am willing to
Right, it just so happens that your "reality" is oh so strangely similar to the very "PC weirdness" you claim not to subscribe to. Purely coincidental, I am sure.
Also, unless you are in your 60s, it is I who could call you "kid".
[citation needed]
Bullshit. The pact had to do with invasion of Poland in 1939 and mutual "non aggression" and was a ploy by Hitler to keep the Soviet Union away until he was ready to attack. It was signed in 1939 mere weeks before attack on Poland.
Because, you revisionist idiot, the "Socialist" in NSDAP had as much to do with "communist" in the Soviet system as the "People's Republic" in the name had to do with democracy in North Korea or Saddam's Iraq. Stalin and Hitler were both authoritarian ass-hats who hated each other but Hitler was keen on big business, aristocracy and wealth while Stalin was using "communism" as his shtick for power and control. Subsequently the first people persecuted during the rise of Nazis to power in Germany were ... communists and amongst Hitler's most admiring supporters were names such as multi-millionaires like Krupp and Ford (Hitler even passed special laws just for his best super-rich buddies). The last remnants of any kind of "socialism" in the NSDAP were gotten rid of in the "night of the long knives" where the brown-shirt worker "rabble" of the SA was dealt with via bullets to their heads. And that was in 1934.
Speaking of lies, the words "US" are nowhere present in my comment to which you are replying. Projection much?
Yes, particularly the Emperor Hirohito (that well known socialist rabble rouser) and the US "lefties" who dropped some nukes in his backyard and burned a few hundred thousand people alive. Then there were of course those "socialists" who killed 3 million people in Vietnam via copious use of the B52s, napalm and M16s...
In short, you are complete idiot and any discussion with you is not likely to lead anywhere.
Now this must be some completely new, never before reached, level of bold faced, smirking, arrogant historical revisionism. Hitler and Stalin were bitter enemies and Wehrmacht needed no Soviet help whatsoever establishing itself in the 1930, having been simply a conglomeration of long-standing, existing German institutions of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe (air force). In fact the Soviet volunteers, with Stalin's blessing, actively fought Wehrmacht in Spain when Hitler assisted Franco.
The only "cooperation" between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany occurred during the attack on Poland in 1939, who at the time was the enemy of both, having attacked Soviet Union repeatedly trying to re-conquer Lithuania - seems that all sides involved had rather arrogant delusions of grandeur.
So the rest of your comment can be safely dismissed as is likely equally as reliable as that statement about Soviets helping to "train" and "establish" Wehrmacht.