The USSR had a military too, and people there had ranks just like any other military. That's just how militaries work.
disposed of all the military ranks, and replaced them with descriptive job roles - i.e. squad leader, platoon leader, battalion commanders etc. A person would fill the role, and have no rank that is separate of the role - if they were moved to another role, then they would be known only by that new role. Sleeve insignia also corresponded to the role rather than rank.
Furthermore, in early Soviet army, many of those positions (esp. the immediate commanders - the equivalent of segeants and lieutenants) were elected, and soldiers could and did vote their commanders out if they perceived them as unsuitable for command (e.g. giving suicidal orders and such).
The return to a more formal rank system only happened later under Stalin, when, arguably, communism was effectively abandoned ideologically, with only some trappings remaining.
And, of course, USSR never called itself communist to begin with. They had a communist party in charge, which supposedly had the goal of building communism - eventually, at some point in the future. They did not believe the existing [presumably temporarily] arrangements that they had at the time to be communist, but merely socialist. Hence why it was called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Some Soviet sci-fi actually played on this - a popular way to quickly indicate to the reader that a future setting has the communism goal fully achieved was to rename the country into Union of Soviet Communist Republics, as e.g. Strugatsky did.
Because there's a very limited number of these golden tickets, and unless you're born into a politician claim, it's about as likely as winning a lottery (except you only have to buy a ticket to win a lottery, whereas getting elected generally requires doing a lot of sleazy things).
Perhaps they do, but the point remains: most of them are getting paid for, at best, doing nothing, and at worst, engaging in blatantly harmful activity.
Not at all. They do basically nothing useful, yet collect a paycheck bigger than most people in this country - and this without even getting into the whole selling your vote business. Meanwhile, we're funding said paychecks with our taxes. So, who are the idiots?
First of all, the Nazis actually managed to pull that trick before.They convinced enough people to vote for them to get into parliament, then leveraged politicians who underestimated Hitler, defects in the German constitution and apathy to take power.
I would argue that it wasn't something that could be prevented by muzzling them (if anything, I suspect it would have made them even more popular). Generally speaking, if your society is so close to the brink that it can be pushed over by an election, it's already well and truly fucked. The real fix is to not get there in the first place. In a healthy society, a Nazi-like party would gather some protest votes and such, but would never be in a position to define policy.
For instance, in a first past the post system (like the U.S.) third parties have virtually no chance to gain any influence at all. That means that many political viewpoints are ignored, and power remains with the entrenched parties, which are not required to act in a democratic manner (superdelegates).
This is not entirely true. In the American system, FPTP merely pushed a large chunk of political squabbles inside the parties, with primaries instead of general elections. And extremists can still gain political power that way - just look at Tea Party. For all the ridicule heaped on them, they did sweep quite a few states, enough for a strong faction of their own in the parliament. Again, this is an indication of an ill society, and not something that you can resolve by legislation - at best, you can sweep symptoms under the rug for a while.
If you really think that no form of speech is worth restricting, go look at how ISIS is recruiting people. That's pure speech.
I'm fine with restricting speech that directly leads to a crime. This is basically the "imminent lawless action" standard that is currently in force in US. The key part here is "imminent", and the onus is on the prosecution to prove such. It gives you the ability to prosecute people who actually manage to incite someone to a crime (because in that case the commitment of the crime is prima facie evidence of imminence), and it also gives some wiggle room for cases that are very borderline, but it's hard to abuse because it's so strict.
In case of ISIS speech, it boils down to this. People should be allowed to advocate for it, praise the virtues of the Caliphate, argue in favor of Sharia (including the promotion of death penalty and torture killing for apostasy and adultery) etc. That's all free speech. When it becomes a specific call to action that is illegal (e.g. an invitation to join ISIS), and that call is not just a random diatribe but is actually directed towards an audience that is likely to heed it, then that becomes fair game. And, of course, giving specific directions on where to go and whom to talk to in order to join, or providing specific instructions on how to wire money, is fair game.
But the Wiki entry on that doesn't say what you assert either.
The wiki entry does actually say exactly what I said: that in German constitution, there are certain provisions that are deemed immutable, and that one of them pertains to a "democratic nature" of society, which is interpreted to mean that no political party isn't allowed to organize on a platform that would promote changing that nature. It's actually a feature of the political system that is distinctive enough that it has its own unique name, "militant democracy".
US has almost annexed Mexico back in the 18th century, actually (ironically, the main reason why this wasn't popular was racism and anti-Catholic sentiment).
I can't help but think that if they did, it would have turned out much better for the Mexicans.
It's not really baffling when you realize that the main attraction of Trump is that he's saying what the Republican base has been thinking but hiding for several decades now. He represents the ultimate, final closure of the dog whistle politics.
WWII demonstrated that with Nazi Germany producing vastly superior tanks but because of their complexity, they were swarmed by cheaper, mass produced tanks.
Panther was superior to T-34, but I wouldn't call it "vastly superior"; and it is arguable whether it was superior to IS-2. But the most common German tank was PzKpfw IV, which was by no means superior to either of those. And Panthers weren't actually all that expensive, either. Tigers were (and they were also slow, and had a bunch of other issues), but there were never many of them.
Germans were out-produced by Soviets when it came to tanks simply because Soviets had more industrial capacity they could tap, once they managed to stall the German advance and buy themselves time to tap it.
Regardless of which role CIA played in the Ukrainian events, the presence of Russian ground troops in Donbass does amount to an invasion of Ukraine (and said presence has been repeatedly confirmed informally by the rebels themselves - I've personally spoken to two people who have participated in the Debaltsevo operation on the rebel side who have said that it was only made possible by Russian troops and esp. armor).
Part of it, yes. I'm deeply suspicious of any constitution that declares parts of itself as off-limits. For example, in the new (post-US-invasion) constitution of Afghanistan, the part of the constitution that declares Islamic law to be the supreme law of the land is something that cannot be amended in any way.
In any case, you have to admit that a provision that explicitly sets something as not subject to any sort of vote is certainly anti-democratic. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing can be argued differently in any given case.
They're offering their service on the Internet, and that's their prerogative. If Germany finds Internet to be too free and unrestricted to their liking, they can build their own national network that is tightly regulated, and firewall all gateways to the outside world (like DPRK and, to a lesser extent, China).
In the US you are free to promote pedophelia as long as you do not deny its past flaws. This way a pedophile has a harder time to prepare future crimes.
In US, you can promote pedophilia to your heart's content. See NAMBLA for an example.
Of course there is protection of free speech in Germany. And that freedom ends exactly where freedom of others starts. What is prohibited is public speech that aims at depriving minorities (religious, ethnical, etc.) from constitutional rights, or calls for criminal acts. If can't personally find this to infringe on my freedom.
Can you explain which ones of those goals have required id Software to strip all swastikas out of Wolfenstein in order to be able to publish it in Germany? Were they trying to deprive some minorities of their rights? Which ones were it?
Example if you said all members of NOTWHITE race need to be rounded up and taken to "work camps" where they belong and you were known to have a fleet of vans then you could be arrested for HATESPEECH in my area.
No, you couldn't. And if you were, that'd be overturned pretty quickly.
Unless, that is, the area where you live is actually full of white supremacists who have specific and detailed plans for carrying out such things, and have made preparations to that effect.
If I, as a US citizen, want to deny the holocaust on Facebook, FB then has two choices - Remove the offending comment entirely, or at least block it from viewers in Germany. Either of those infringe on my right to express whatever brand of bigotry I may subscribe to despite living in an entirely different country that doesn't feel the need to outlaw critical thinking.
How does them hiding that comment from users in Germany infringes on your right to express yourself?
it's effectively an extra penalty for the motivation behind a hate crime, which is often supported by evidence of hateful speech.
Note the important distinction here. The extra penalty is for motivation, not for speech. Speech itself is not illegal.
In a similar vein, firearms are generally not illegal in USA, but committing a crime with a firearm will often trigger additional laws that increase the sentence.
Slashdot Mirror
The USSR had a military too, and people there had ranks just like any other military. That's just how militaries work.
disposed of all the military ranks, and replaced them with descriptive job roles - i.e. squad leader, platoon leader, battalion commanders etc. A person would fill the role, and have no rank that is separate of the role - if they were moved to another role, then they would be known only by that new role. Sleeve insignia also corresponded to the role rather than rank.
Furthermore, in early Soviet army, many of those positions (esp. the immediate commanders - the equivalent of segeants and lieutenants) were elected, and soldiers could and did vote their commanders out if they perceived them as unsuitable for command (e.g. giving suicidal orders and such).
The return to a more formal rank system only happened later under Stalin, when, arguably, communism was effectively abandoned ideologically, with only some trappings remaining.
And, of course, USSR never called itself communist to begin with. They had a communist party in charge, which supposedly had the goal of building communism - eventually, at some point in the future. They did not believe the existing [presumably temporarily] arrangements that they had at the time to be communist, but merely socialist. Hence why it was called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Some Soviet sci-fi actually played on this - a popular way to quickly indicate to the reader that a future setting has the communism goal fully achieved was to rename the country into Union of Soviet Communist Republics, as e.g. Strugatsky did.
Nothing. But it's got a lot to do with "gross national happiness". The beatings will continue until morale improves, indeed.
Tethering is data.
Because there's a very limited number of these golden tickets, and unless you're born into a politician claim, it's about as likely as winning a lottery (except you only have to buy a ticket to win a lottery, whereas getting elected generally requires doing a lot of sleazy things).
Perhaps they do, but the point remains: most of them are getting paid for, at best, doing nothing, and at worst, engaging in blatantly harmful activity.
Exactly. In the news. Not in peer reviewed scientific papers.
You know what else was in the news? UFOs. Bigfoot. Lassie.
Not at all. They do basically nothing useful, yet collect a paycheck bigger than most people in this country - and this without even getting into the whole selling your vote business. Meanwhile, we're funding said paychecks with our taxes. So, who are the idiots?
When you're making a left turn, the car opposite you ends up being on the right of your trajectory, so the rule still holds.
The problem being that DD-WRT and the like have been pretty much letting anyone use anything
The question that you should be asking at this point is: how many real-world issues has it created?
First of all, the Nazis actually managed to pull that trick before.They convinced enough people to vote for them to get into parliament, then leveraged politicians who underestimated Hitler, defects in the German constitution and apathy to take power.
I would argue that it wasn't something that could be prevented by muzzling them (if anything, I suspect it would have made them even more popular). Generally speaking, if your society is so close to the brink that it can be pushed over by an election, it's already well and truly fucked. The real fix is to not get there in the first place. In a healthy society, a Nazi-like party would gather some protest votes and such, but would never be in a position to define policy.
For instance, in a first past the post system (like the U.S.) third parties have virtually no chance to gain any influence at all. That means that many political viewpoints are ignored, and power remains with the entrenched parties, which are not required to act in a democratic manner (superdelegates).
This is not entirely true. In the American system, FPTP merely pushed a large chunk of political squabbles inside the parties, with primaries instead of general elections. And extremists can still gain political power that way - just look at Tea Party. For all the ridicule heaped on them, they did sweep quite a few states, enough for a strong faction of their own in the parliament. Again, this is an indication of an ill society, and not something that you can resolve by legislation - at best, you can sweep symptoms under the rug for a while.
If you really think that no form of speech is worth restricting, go look at how ISIS is recruiting people. That's pure speech.
I'm fine with restricting speech that directly leads to a crime. This is basically the "imminent lawless action" standard that is currently in force in US. The key part here is "imminent", and the onus is on the prosecution to prove such. It gives you the ability to prosecute people who actually manage to incite someone to a crime (because in that case the commitment of the crime is prima facie evidence of imminence), and it also gives some wiggle room for cases that are very borderline, but it's hard to abuse because it's so strict.
In case of ISIS speech, it boils down to this. People should be allowed to advocate for it, praise the virtues of the Caliphate, argue in favor of Sharia (including the promotion of death penalty and torture killing for apostasy and adultery) etc. That's all free speech. When it becomes a specific call to action that is illegal (e.g. an invitation to join ISIS), and that call is not just a random diatribe but is actually directed towards an audience that is likely to heed it, then that becomes fair game. And, of course, giving specific directions on where to go and whom to talk to in order to join, or providing specific instructions on how to wire money, is fair game.
A quick glance of the Wikipedia page on it disagrees with you, not that Afghanistan is related to Germany.
Instead of doing a quick glance, you can try reading the thing - it's linked from that very Wikipedia page, in fact.
"The religion of the state of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is the sacred religion of Islam"
"In Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam."
[on political parties] "The program and charter of the party are not contrary to the principles of sacred religion of Islam"
"The provisions of adherence to the fundamentals of the sacred religion of Islam and the regime of the Islamic Republic cannot be amended."
And this is how these work out in practice.
But the Wiki entry on that doesn't say what you assert either.
The wiki entry does actually say exactly what I said: that in German constitution, there are certain provisions that are deemed immutable, and that one of them pertains to a "democratic nature" of society, which is interpreted to mean that no political party isn't allowed to organize on a platform that would promote changing that nature. It's actually a feature of the political system that is distinctive enough that it has its own unique name, "militant democracy".
US has almost annexed Mexico back in the 18th century, actually (ironically, the main reason why this wasn't popular was racism and anti-Catholic sentiment).
I can't help but think that if they did, it would have turned out much better for the Mexicans.
It's not really baffling when you realize that the main attraction of Trump is that he's saying what the Republican base has been thinking but hiding for several decades now. He represents the ultimate, final closure of the dog whistle politics.
WWII demonstrated that with Nazi Germany producing vastly superior tanks but because of their complexity, they were swarmed by cheaper, mass produced tanks.
Panther was superior to T-34, but I wouldn't call it "vastly superior"; and it is arguable whether it was superior to IS-2. But the most common German tank was PzKpfw IV, which was by no means superior to either of those. And Panthers weren't actually all that expensive, either. Tigers were (and they were also slow, and had a bunch of other issues), but there were never many of them.
Germans were out-produced by Soviets when it came to tanks simply because Soviets had more industrial capacity they could tap, once they managed to stall the German advance and buy themselves time to tap it.
Regardless of which role CIA played in the Ukrainian events, the presence of Russian ground troops in Donbass does amount to an invasion of Ukraine (and said presence has been repeatedly confirmed informally by the rebels themselves - I've personally spoken to two people who have participated in the Debaltsevo operation on the rebel side who have said that it was only made possible by Russian troops and esp. armor).
Do you know how we know when to stop reading?
When you start using the word "junta" to describe a democratically elected government.
Though the more astute readers might have already noticed something is amiss when reading about Crimea being a part of Russia in 1991.
A-10 is the modern incarnation of IL-2, which was nicknamed "flying tank" by the forces that used it.
Part of it, yes. I'm deeply suspicious of any constitution that declares parts of itself as off-limits. For example, in the new (post-US-invasion) constitution of Afghanistan, the part of the constitution that declares Islamic law to be the supreme law of the land is something that cannot be amended in any way.
In any case, you have to admit that a provision that explicitly sets something as not subject to any sort of vote is certainly anti-democratic. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing can be argued differently in any given case.
They're offering their service on the Internet, and that's their prerogative. If Germany finds Internet to be too free and unrestricted to their liking, they can build their own national network that is tightly regulated, and firewall all gateways to the outside world (like DPRK and, to a lesser extent, China).
In the US you are free to promote pedophelia as long as you do not deny its past flaws. This way a pedophile has a harder time to prepare future crimes.
In US, you can promote pedophilia to your heart's content. See NAMBLA for an example.
Of course there is protection of free speech in Germany. And that freedom ends exactly where freedom of others starts. What is prohibited is public speech that aims at depriving minorities (religious, ethnical, etc.) from constitutional rights, or calls for criminal acts. If can't personally find this to infringe on my freedom.
Can you explain which ones of those goals have required id Software to strip all swastikas out of Wolfenstein in order to be able to publish it in Germany? Were they trying to deprive some minorities of their rights? Which ones were it?
Example if you said all members of NOTWHITE race need to be rounded up and taken to "work camps" where they belong and you were known to have a fleet of vans then you could be arrested for HATESPEECH in my area.
No, you couldn't. And if you were, that'd be overturned pretty quickly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Unless, that is, the area where you live is actually full of white supremacists who have specific and detailed plans for carrying out such things, and have made preparations to that effect.
If I, as a US citizen, want to deny the holocaust on Facebook, FB then has two choices - Remove the offending comment entirely, or at least block it from viewers in Germany. Either of those infringe on my right to express whatever brand of bigotry I may subscribe to despite living in an entirely different country that doesn't feel the need to outlaw critical thinking.
How does them hiding that comment from users in Germany infringes on your right to express yourself?
it's effectively an extra penalty for the motivation behind a hate crime, which is often supported by evidence of hateful speech.
Note the important distinction here. The extra penalty is for motivation, not for speech. Speech itself is not illegal.
In a similar vein, firearms are generally not illegal in USA, but committing a crime with a firearm will often trigger additional laws that increase the sentence.
Yes, ISIS should have the right to spread their propaganda.