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I'd encourage some real skepticism regarding any "study" published by the IFS. This is not peer-reviewed social science or statistically valid poll data- this is data of, by, and for people paid by churches to encourage more marriages in the US. Obviously, marriages represent an important business to many US churches and they are highly motivated to create negative data about the decline in marriage. These same guys had a much published study in 2014 saying that gay couples were harmful to children. When Putin started quoting it to justify laws in Russia, scientists started pointing out how invalid the study's methods were and the IFS was compelled to admit there wasn't much science to their methods. Think of this as motivated blog science- a study showing that coffee is good for you paid for by Starbucks, etc.
- I'm skeptical of data right on the surface. A study that says 0% of married women 22-35 had no sex in the past year just doesn't pass the smell test for me. I'm sort of willing to believe that men 22-35 who go a year without sex has increased 6% in 8 years just based on the rise of the internet, video game culture, free porn, etc during that period. There's a whole lot of social interactions that have seen similar declines for similar reasons. But I'm skeptical about why the number of women who have gone a year without sex would 1) be lower than the number of men and 2) would remain static while the number of sexless men increased.
- I read this study as an advertisement designed by paid marriage promoters to sell marriage as an idea to men who haven't gotten laid in a while- wow! 0% of married women don't have sex? I've got to try that!
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Trump is going to run because being a prominent Presidential candidate buys him a lot of deference and delay in the courtroom. Win or lose (almost certainly lose) it helps his legal problems and funding problems big time and Trump does not give a single fuck whether that's good for the GOP or not. If the GOP doesn't want him, he will certainly run independent. (and if the GOP does want him, Cheney had all but promised to run a spoiler campaign.) The best thing that could happen to the GOP is the death of Trump.
Likewise, Harris' best shot is if Biden dies in office and soon- giving her a shot at some executive experience before 2024. I don't think Harris wins a head-to-head against Trump or DeSantis. Personally, I prefer moderate technocrats and I like the idea of a Buttigieg/Booker kind of ticket.
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@bmdrocks21
So am I to believe that interracial organ transplants have many more complications than within-race transplants because of a socioeconomic concept?
Belief has nothing to do with it. Race has nothing to do with it. The more genetically related two individuals are, the less chance of rejection. Barack Obama has black skin but he would be a better organ donor for his white-skinned, English-Scottish mother than almost any other white skinned person in the world. We don't choose or separate organs by race but by many genetic markers, 99.9% of which have nothing to do with skin pigmentation.
Do we just prescribe BiDil to only black people because of a socioeconomic concept from the 16th century?
No. We don't really prescribe BiDil and haven't since 2009, although it is still made by a French pharma (so they could own the patents) and sold for a very high price. It was a fad in 2006 when it first came out but the studies behind it were small and unscientifically based on self-identification. There is more real genetic difference within Africa than anyplace else. Genetically speaking, all white people, Asians, Australian aboriginals, Native Americans are more genetically like Ethiopians then Ethiopians are like Kenyans or West Africans or South Africans. If White European was a race, then we would expect to see more genetic similarity between say, Germans and Spaniards then between Spaniards and East Africans but that's not true. White Spaniards are more closely related to black Ethiopians than white Germans. White Russians are more closely related to Asian populations than white German populations. Africans are the most genetically diverse continent of all- South African blacks are far more different from West Africans genetically then Aztec people are from Irishmen. You say, "but look at Aztecs and Irishmen, they look so much more different from one another than West Africans from South Africans but all those phenotype differences are incredibly superficial compared to the differences in human adaptations we see between African haplotypes. Masai and Pygmy descendents would both identify as "African Americans" but there's absolutely zero reason to believe both groups would respond the same to vasodilators like Bidil. By 2009, better science had pretty much trashed the validity of BiDil and its equally effective subcomponents were far more available at a much cheaper price.
from The Lancet, Jan 2012 (more than a decade ago)
The SHORT LIFE of a RACE DRUG
So what has happened to the first “race drug” approved by the FDA? At the time BiDil was approved, there was an estimated market of 750 000 black Americans out of a total of 5 million people with heart disease who might benefit from a pill. Wall Street analysts predicted annual sales of US$500 million, even $1 billion by 2010. According to the 2009 Securities and Exchange Commission 10K report filed by NitroMed, the company's sales from BiDil were $12·1, $15·3, and $14·9 million in 2006, 2007, and 2008, respectively. NitroMed began developing an extended release formulation of its drug, which it called BiDil XR, hoping it would capture a larger market. Between Jan 1, 2006, and March 1, 2009, stock shares in NitroMed fluctuated dramatically between a low of $0·15 to a high of $14·90 a share. Many physicians were sceptical about the “race drug”. A focus group study of 90 primary care physicians' attitudes toward race-based therapies reported that the physicians expressed a wariness of using such therapies. Geneticists also voiced their opposition to approving and marketing a drug based on outmoded racial categories. In the wake of poor revenues and rising deficits, NitroMed offered itself for sale. In April, 2009, the health-care investment company Deerfield Management acquired NitroMed and paid its stockholders $0·80 per share, or about $36 million. NitroMed removed its stock listing on NASDAQ. In its 2009 10K report, NitroMed declared that the company had never been profitable and expected its future revenues from BiDil to fall significantly based on declining prescriptions, unwillingness of third party payers to provide reimbursement, and a reduction in their sales force and promotional efforts. In that same month the French company NicOx S.A. had announced that it agreed to purchase NitroMed's unlicensed patents covering nitric oxide-donating compounds, a field of continuing research activity.
The idea behind BiDil has not been disputed—namely, that for some people with congestive heart failure who do not produce enough nitric oxide, vasodilators can be an effective adjunct therapy in reducing heart attacks. But who can benefit? Neither socially constructed nor self-identified concepts of “race” can serve as a proxy for an unknown or ill-defined biological marker that provides a causal connection to or strong association with a drug's effectiveness. Personalised medicine requires nothing less. If a drug works it is because of the genetics and physiology of the patient. Nothing I have reported about BiDil or concluded about the limitations of “self-identified race” as a clinical marker diminishes the progress and expected value of personalised medicine. At its best, personalised medicine promises to reduce adverse drug reactions through the discovery of genomic-based drug-interaction mechanisms that could reduce the guesswork associated with drug therapies. BiDil has underscored the importance of that approach. Racial blood lines are a thing of the past. Thus far, the short life of BiDil shows us that racial pharmacokinetics has nothing to offer in its place.
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@bmdrocks21
-->@oromagiShe's not white. She's not even human.Half white person, half fish“In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish.“Humans have a race. So it follows that the human head and upper body has a race as well.
Humans don't have a race in any scientific or rational sense. Race is a 16th century socio-economic concept used to justify a lot of conquest and social stratification but ultimately invalidated by 20th century biological and genetic study. That is, Africans and Asians and even Europeans were talking about mermaids for centuries before there was such a thing as a "white person." When Christopher Columbus reported seeing mermaids during his voyages he was quite clear that they were brown and furry from head to toe and not in any way mistakable for a "white person." Human is a species which is the most basic taxonomical division based on the capacity of Individuals to produce offspring. To make the claim that mermaids are half human you would have to show evidence of live births between mermaids and humans.
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Russia withdraws troops after Ukraine encircles key city
By JON GAMBRELL and ADAM SCHRECK
October 1, 2022 GMT
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — After being encircled by Ukrainian forces, Russia pulled troops out Saturday from an eastern Ukrainian city that it had been using as a front-line hub. It was the latest victory for the Ukrainian counteroffensive that has humiliated and angered the Kremlin.
Russia’s withdrawal from Lyman complicates its internationally vilified declaration just a day earlier that it had annexed four regions of Ukraine — an area that includes Lyman. Taking the city paves the way for Ukrainian troops to potentially push further into land that Moscow now illegally claims as its own.
“The Ukrainian flag is already in Lyman, Donetsk region. Fighting is still going on there. But there is no trace of any pseudo-referendum there,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Saturday.
He was referring to “referendums” that Russia held at gunpoint in the four regions before annexing them — Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
The fighting comes at a pivotal moment in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war. Facing Ukrainian gains on the battlefield — which he frames as a U.S.-orchestrated effort to destroy Russia — Putin this week heightened threats of nuclear force and used his most aggressive, anti-Western rhetoric to date.
Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed to have inflicted damage on Ukrainian forces in battling to hold Lyman, but said outnumbered Russian troops were withdrawn to more favorable positions. Ukrainian forces moved into the city, and Zelenskyy’s chief of staff posted photos of a Ukrainian flag being hoisted on the town’s outskirts.
Lyman had been an important link in the Russian front line for ground communications and logistics. Located 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, it’s in the Donetsk region near the border with Luhansk, two regions that Russia annexed Friday.
Ukrainian forces have retaken vast swaths of territory in a counteroffensive that started in September. They have pushed Russian forces out of the Kharkiv area and moved east across the Oskil River.
Moscow’s withdrawal from Lyman prompted immediate criticism from some Russian officials. The leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, blamed the retreat, without evidence, on one Russian general being “covered up for by higher-up leaders in the General Staff.” He called for “more drastic measures.”
Meanwhile, on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, the governor of the city of Sevastopol announced an emergency situation at an airfield there. Explosions and huge billows of smoke could be seen by beachgoers in the Russian-held resort. Authorities said a plane rolled off the runway at the Belbek airfield, and said ammunition on board had caught fire.
Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 in violation of international law.
Russian bombardment has intensified in recent days as Moscow moved swiftly with its latest annexation and ordered a mass mobilization at home to bolster its forces. The Russian call-up has proven unpopular at home, prompting tens of thousands of Russian men to flee the country.
Zelenskyy and his military have vowed to keep fighting to liberate the regions that Putin claimed to have annexed Friday, and other Russian-occupied areas.
Ukrainian authorities accused Russian forces of targeting two humanitarian convoys in recent days, killing dozens of civilians.
The governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleh Syniehubov, said 24 civilians were killed in an attack this week on a convoy trying to flee the Kupiansk district. He called it “сruelty that can’t be justified.” He said 13 children and a pregnant woman were among the dead.
“The Russians fired at civilians almost at point-blank range,” Syniehubov wrote on Telegram.
The Security Service of Ukraine, the secret police force known by the acronym SBU, posted photographs of the attacked convoy. At least one truck appeared to have been blown up, with burned corpses in what remained of its truck bed. Another vehicle at the front of the convoy was torched. Bodies lay on the side of the road or still inside vehicles that were pockmarked with bullet holes.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its rockets destroyed Ukrainian military targets in the area but has not commented on accusations that it targeted fleeing civilians. Russian troops have retreated from much of the Kharkiv region but continue to shell the area.
And a Russian strike in the Zaporizhzhia region’s capital killed 31 people and wounded 88, Ukrainian officials said. The British Defense Ministry said the Russians “almost certainly” struck a humanitarian convoy there with S-300 anti-aircraft missiles. Russian-installed officials in Zaporizhzhia blamed Ukrainian forces but gave no evidence.
In other developments, in an apparent attempt to secure Moscow’s hold on the newly annexed territory, Russian forces seized the director-general of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Ihor Murashov, on Friday, according to the Ukrainian state nuclear company Energoatom.
Energoatom said Russian troops stopped Murashov’s car, blindfolded him and took him to an undisclosed location.
Russia did not comment on the report. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Russia told it that “the director-general of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was temporarily detained to answer questions.”
The Vienna-based IAEA said it “has been actively seeking clarifications and hopes for a prompt and satisfactory resolution of this matter.”
The power plant has been caught in the crossfire of the war. Ukrainian technicians continued running it after Russian troops seized the power station, and its last reactor was shut down in September as a precautionary measure amid ongoing shelling nearby.
In other fighting reported Saturday, four people were killed by Russian shelling Friday in the Donetsk region, governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said. The Russian army struck the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv twice overnight, once with drones and the second time with missiles, according to the regional governor.
Russia now claims sovereignty over 15% of Ukraine in what NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called “the largest attempted annexation of European territory by force since the Second World War.”
Zelenskyy on Friday formally applied for NATO membership, upping the pressure on Western allies to defend Ukraine.
In Washington, President Joe Biden signed a bill that provides another infusion — more than $12.3 billion — in military and economic aid linked to the war in Ukraine.
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@bmdrocks21
But the fact is, every HCA book illustration for the source material and the movie were white characters. So I don’t see why everyone is wasting their time pretending otherwise.And while a lot of details were changed from book to movie, this was something that stayed the same. Now it’s something that they’re changing, and it is obviously not due to any merits of the actress.I figured I’d see good faith arguments like “the business is just too lazy to make a unique story about a different mermaid” or “they’re doing it to appeal to an increasingly diverse America” or some other bland talking point. Wasn’t expecting any denial that the at the very least Ariel is White lol
She's not white. She's not even human.
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Winston Churchill
August 8, 1939
Broadcast to the United States from London
August 8, 1939
Broadcast to the United States from London
There is a hush over all Europe, nay, over all the world, broken only by the dull thud of Japanese bombs falling on Chinese cities, on Chinese universities or near British and American ships. But then, China is a long way off, so why worry? The Chinese are fighting for what the founders of the American Constitution in their stately language called: "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." And they seem to be fighting very well. Many good judges think they are going to win. Anyhow, let's wish them luck! Let's give them a wave of encouragement—as your President did last week, when he gave notice about ending the commercial treaty. After all, the suffering Chinese are fighting our battle, the battle of democracy. They are defending the soil, the good earth, that has been theirs since the dawn of time against cruel and unprovoked aggression. Give them a cheer across the ocean—no one knows whose turn it may be next. If this habit of military dictatorships' breaking into other people's lands with bomb and shell and bullet, stealing the property and killing the proprietors, spreads too widely, we may none of us be able to think of summer holidays for quite a while.
But to come back to the hush I said was hanging over Europe. What kind of a hush is it? Alas! it is the hush of suspense, and in many lands it is the hush of fear. Listen! No, listen carefully; I think I hear something—yes, there it was quite clear. Don't you hear it? It is the tramp of armies crunching the gravel of the parade-grounds, splashing through rain-soaked fields, the tramp of two million German soldiers and more than a million Italians—"going on maneuvers"—yes, only on maneuvers! Of course it's only maneuvers just like last year. After all, the Dictators must train their soldiers. They could scarcely do less in common prudence, when the Danes, the Dutch, the Swiss, the Albanians and of course the Jews may leap out upon them at any moment and rob them of their living-space, and make them sign another paper to say who began it. Besides, these German and Italian armies may have another work of liberation to perform. It was only last year they liberated Austria from the horrors of self-government. It was only in March they freed the Czechoslovak Republic from the misery of independent existence. It is only two years ago that Signor Mussolini gave the ancient kingdom of Abyssinia its Magna Charta. It is only two months ago that little Albania got its writ of Habeas Corpus, and Mussolini sent in his Bill of Rights for King Zog to pay. Why, even at this moment, the mountaineers of the Tyrol, a German-speaking population who have dwelt in their beautiful valleys for a thousand years, are being liberated, that is to say, uprooted, from the land they love, from the soil which Andreas Hofer died to defend. No wonder the armies are tramping on when there is so much liberation to be done, and no wonder there is a hush among all the neighbors of Germany and Italy while they are wondering which one is going to be 'liberated' next.
The Nazis say that they are being encircled. They have encircled themselves with a ring of neighbors who have to keep on guessing who will be struck down next. This kind of guesswork is a very tiring game. Countries, especially small countries, have long ceased to find it amusing. Can you wonder that the neighbors of Germany, both great and small, have begun to think of stopping the game, by simply saying to the Nazis on the principle of the Covenant of the League of Nations: "He who attacks any, Attacks all. He who attacks the weakest will find he has attacked the strongest"? That is how we are spending our holiday over here, in poor weather, in a lot of clouds. We hope it is better with you.
One thing has struck me as very strange, and that is the resurgence of the one-man power after all these centuries of experience and progress. It is curious how the English-speaking peoples have always had this horror of one-man power. They are quite ready to follow a leader for a time, as long as he is serviceable to them; but the idea of handing themselves over, lock, stock and barrel, body and soul, to one man, and worshiping him as if he were an idol- That has always been odious to the whole theme and nature of our civilization. The architects of the American Constitution were as careful as those who shaped the British Constitution to guard against the whole life and fortunes, and all the laws and freedom of the nation, being placed in the hands of a tyrant. Checks and counter-checks in the body politic, large devolutions of State government, instruments and processes of free debate, frequent recurrence to first principles, the right of opposition to the most powerful governments, and, above all, ceaseless vigilance, have preserved, and will preserve, the broad characteristics of British and American institutions. But in Germany, on a mountain peak, there sits one man who in a single day can release the world from the fear which now oppresses it; or in a single day can plunge all that we have and are into a volcano of smoke and flame.
If Herr Hitler does not make war, there will be no war. No one else is going to make war. Britain and France are determined to shed no blood except in self-defense or in defense of their allies. No one has ever dreamed of attacking Germany. If Germany desires to be reassured against attack by her neighbors, she has only to say the word and we will give her the fullest guarantees in accordance with the principles of the Covenant of the League. We have said repeatedly we ask nothing for ourselves in the way of security that we are not willing freely to share with the German people. Therefore, if war should come there can be no doubt upon whose head the blood-guiltiness will fall. Thus lies the great issue at this moment, and none can tell how it will be settled.
It is not, believe me, my American friends, from any ignoble shrinking from pain and death that the British and French peoples pray for peace. It is not because we have any doubts how a struggle between Nazi Germany and the civilized world would ultimately end that we pray tonight and every night for peace. But whether it be peace or war—peace with its broadening and brightening prosperity, now within our reach, or war with its measureless carnage and destruction—we must strive to frame some system of human relations in the future which will bring to an end this prolonged hideous uncertainty, which will let the working and creative forces of the world get on with their job, and which will no longer leave the whole life of mankind dependent upon the virtues, the caprice, or the wickedness of a single man.
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So, I guess the question is if nothing about this story is set in canon- not her hair color, not her name, not her romance, not even her being a mermaid! Most earlier versions of this story have her as a river nymph with normal human legs. If nothing else about her story is canon- not language or country or culture or moral of the story or even the species of the main character why is it so fucking important to make sure her skin color is creamy clam chowder white? Why would that be the only single fucking detail to rage on about if you are not just some racist looking for another victimization to pretend to?
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@bmdrocks21
Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid's skin is described as clear and delicate as a rose leaf but her hair was raven black. So Disney changed her hair color. Disney gave her the name Ariel. Disney also edited out most of the story. In the story- the mermaid wants to seduce a human in order to win an immortal soul, the Prince decides to marry a princess from anther kingdom which dooms the Mermaid to death. Her sisters sell their hair to buy the Little Mermaid a knife which she much plunge into the heart of the Prince as he sleeps on his wedding night and spread his blood on her feet to turn back into a fish tail (human legs are incredible painful for her). She can't do it and throws herself into the ocean to die but air nymphs save her and give her back her mermaid form plus 300 years plus an immortal soul. The story tells children if they are good, that will help hurry the mermaid to heaven but if they are bad her time on earth grows longer.
So the Disney version took a whole lot of liberties with the HC Anderson version.
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@TWS1405
Write a new story instead of ripping off a well-known and well-established story/movie script.Shows a huge lack of intelligence and creativity to do otherwise.
DIsney and Splash were both ripping off Hans Christian Anderson's 1883 Dutch fairytale Den lille havfrue which itself is just ripping off Fouque's 1811 Undine (who was a water spirit but had human legs) which was just ripping off Comte de Gabali a 1670 French novel by Nicolas-Pierre-Henri de Montfaucon de Villars which was ripping off Paracelsus' 1566 Latin work Ex Libro de Nymphis, Sylvanis, Pygmaeis, Salamandris, et Gigantibus etc.
Mermaid myths in sub-saharan Africa, Korea, and Japan pre-date the medieval conception of mermaids based on Roman interpretations of Greek Sirens.
Why is ripping off across language, cultures, continents, time all just fine but when totally irrelevant skin pigmentation enters the picture, you are suddenly weeping about "them" stealing my culture.
100% irrational emotional argument based on skin color
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@Shila
Can you make a list of members I should avoid? I am new here and don’t know anyone well enough.
I don't think you should avoid anybody. Give 'em hell and damn their torpedos of tortuous torpor. When they start blocking you, then you'll know who's down for debating and who's a chickenshit loser.
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@Shila
GO has 15,281 attempts at fake news. Is anyone buying his BS.
IlikePie5's entire persona on this site is just liking GP and buying his BS
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Meanwhile, White people are not getting to whitewash other Black people's cultures, such as those found in Kenya, Chad or Mauritania (if you disagree, find me an example).
off the top of my head-
fried chicken, jazz, barbeque, afros, macaroni and cheese, gospel music, collard greens, dreadlocks, mustard greens, Rock and Roll, okra, Elvis, Disco, hush puppies, hominy, dreadlocks, Reggae, grits, Rap, kale, Pentecostal and Baptist preaching, call and response, yams, sweet potatoes, non-standard handshakes, high-fives, fistbumps, cornbread, hip-hop, jambalaya, Mardi Gras, all of modern US athletics, black-eyed peas, Beatles, sorghum, peanut butter, cayenne pepper, sneaker culture, marijuana, voodoo
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You can’t be that daft.
GP is not daft. His mission is fake news. His job is to corrupt our capacity to perceive the truth to the maximum extent possible.
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beep boop, indeed. rusbot, ahoy!
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@zedvictor4
the only end to the current Ukrainian debacle will be the end of the current Russian regime, and the only people who can do that is the Russian people.
Agreed. The whole of the Ukrainian War is the object and blame of one dictator, Vlad. By all accounts, his health is failing, his mental state is uncertain, his concern for the Russian people is nil. Kill Richard III and the war is over. Capture Napoleon and the war is over. Kill Hitler, kill Mussolini and the war is over.
Russians, Ukrainians, Europeans, Americans- nobody wants this war except Putin. Take him out and this war is over.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
I don't think it is stupidity that keeps Republicans from acknowledging Trump's Big Lie as a lie. I think everybody knows it is a lie.
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@Intelligence_06
I have read thousands of threads and what I have noticed is that in the older ones, most constructive posts don't get a single like. Whereas now if you say anything, you are being liked on that forum post.
- I feel compelled to point out that the like button is a relatively recent option- Autumn 2020, I believe. The reason you don't see any likes on earlier posts is because that wasn't an option before then and only people looking back through old posts would do any liking.
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@Shila
These more recent posts by GP- that is GP's authentic voice. Short and shitty. When you see him using words like "modicum" or "debacle" you can be confident he's stealing the intellectual property of others.
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@Shila
Be sure to note that Greyparrot isn't really an analysis kind of guy. His style is terse deception, propaganda, cynical doublespeak. When you start to see any compound sentences, nuanced analysis, or criticism of fascism or dictators you can be confident Greyparrot is plagiarizing the intellectual property of others. He steals the intellectual property of others quite often with varying degrees of effort toward disguising the work of others as his own.
This is a cut & paste from an April 6th interview with Yanis Varoufakis- the Marxist forced to resign as Greek Minister of Finance after precipitating the 2015 Debt crisis. This was at the height of Russian incursions. It would be interesting to hear a more current interview regarding Russian inevitability. It's a wonder how a Fascist like Greyparrot will get in bed with the most fervent liberals as long those liberals are talking shit about America, the country GP is ostensibly loyal to.
This one's a mix of GP's statements and 90% a July 21st interview with FOX News favorite Daniel Davis. So that means when Davis says,
"The idea that by next month the UAF could both halt Moscow’s offensive and then launch its own counteroffensive has no realistic basis. It is therefore time to consider the unthinkable: Ukraine may not be able to stop the Russian offensive and could lose the war."
that was just a little less than a month before the UAF halted Moscow's offensive then launched its own highly successful counteroffensive, driving Putin to incredibly unpopular tactics like full mobilization, forced, fake annexation votes, and now the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines. Since Davis' analysis, India, China, even Kazakhstan have backed away from supporting Putin and a shocking number of Putin's political allies have fallen out of windows in the past six weeks. Putin's health is deteriorating so rapidly he had to delay the announcement of mobilization until he could stop shaking long enough to be seen on TV. GP wormtongues disloyally about American provocations but the fact is this is Putin's war and Putin's alone. Put a bullet in Putin's head on Monday and the War, the annexations, the draft, the sabotage all ends on Tuesday. No other analysis really counts for much beyond simply kill Putin before his shaky fingers reach for the red button.
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Got that folks? Putin's lapdog wannabe thinks
- Putin is fighting to end oligarchies
- Putin is fighting to end imperial hawkishness on the day he forced Ukrainians at gunpoint to vote to become Russia and like magic got 99% of the vote
Orwellian doublethink doesn't get more backwards than Greyparrot's cucked up reasoning, does it?
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a is b and c and/or d or e and also f
that is, if PRO can prove e which is "punishing" then PRO has met burden even without proving b and c and/or d and also f.
Without even bothering to recall the details of RM's ban, I am quite certain that the ban was intended as punishment and therefore "punishing"
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The good hygiene portion of the hygiene hypothesis should be expected to have a greater impact than very young children staying at home which is most of what they do anyway. Seems like the age group where the hygiene hypothesis comes into play is generally much younger than school age. I suppose there were many children who would normally have gone to daycare for that year and gotten more exposure to diseases but children that young in daycare is also a relatively new phenomenon with unknown impacts. I would guess the advantages of very young children spending more time with their families accrued more psychological survival advantages than immunological disadvantages. I expect that if the most virulent generations of COVID had hit more children earlier, the long term impacts to some of those children would have far outweighed any long-term immunological or psychological effects of quarantine.
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@TheMorningsStar
So, how much damage do you think has been done?
To children? Not much and almost all that harm is in the past now.
Do you think that people went way too overboard with the lockdowns?
No.
Do you think that lockdowns, mask, and/or other policies should continue to exist?
For COVID? No. I think we are past the point where COVID will overwhelm our medical system again. Certainly, we should refine and be prepared to implement lockdown and/or masking strategies as appropriate for new disease outbreaks.
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@Intelligence_06
I have a friend who was outright allergic to dairy and most protein products. She hence is vegetarian not by ethical reason but for health. Though her social skills tell her to paint it as a deliberate socially progressive act to make her seem more liberal and “American” by the time she applies to college.Is Veganism really seen as a socially “American” act?
Not really, no. We're a country famous for exporting McDonalds and KFC culture and I would say meat-eating is an important part of US identity. I ate vegetarian for in the 90's and I certainly met far more hostility than tolerance for it. I have relatives who believe that eating meat is part of being a Christian and fulfilling humanity's role as the dominant species in the world. Vegetarianism and veganism is is rapidly increasing in popularity now though still fairly unpopular in the mid-west and rural areas. A few years back a vegan bakery opened up in my neighborhood but I thought the food was terrible- all sort of less tasty compromises for animal products then really figuring out new methods that taste good. My neighborhood has traditionally hosted most of the vegetarian restaurants in town but for some reason that tradition has always come with a lot of attitude- bad service, bad food. The point was to point was to be seen to be making a sacrifice. But that attitude is changing now, certainly in my neighborhood. Just about every restaurant has some good vegan or vegetarian options.
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@zedvictor4
Vegetarianism is the future but not for any ethical consideration. Meat is just a very impractical luxury an overpopulated planet can't afford any longer.
Just consider the basic math. Humans can harvest more plant-based calories then we expend in the growing. Humans expend roughly 50 calories for every 1 animal-based calorie we grow. This wasn't always true. In the early days of civilization, meat was much rarer but it was also less labor intensive than early agriculture. Modern machinery, irrigation, genetic improvements, seed outputs, etc have resulted in far greater efficiency in plant calories over meat. Meat is also environmentally toxic and far less efficient in terms of water, land usage than growing crops. There will come a time in the not too distant future when we are going to want to curb all of those inefficiencies quite dramatically just to improve our chances of survival. Meat will probably still be around but just far more expensive and so a luxury item.
If a pound of chicken cost $30 and a pound of beef $50, how often would you eat it? If you are low income, meat might only be a holiday treat kind of thing. Certainly, as meat consumption becomes rarer, human appetites, tastes, and culture will probably shift. A hundred years from now, meat eating might be considered kind of old fashioned and gross the way we think of eating organ meats or monkey brains today. In two hundred years, eating meat might be considered outright barbaric or outrageously wasteful.
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@TWS1405
I recommend you learn how conditional reasoning works, then read up on analogies. When you're done with that look up how informal fallacies like straw men and non-sequiturs work because you don't understand any of that shit.
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- How does the presence of race hoaxes disprove the presence of racism? Swatting hoaxes don't disprove the presence of gun violence. Just as swatting hoaxes are more convincing because of the prevalence of gun violence, race hoaxes are more convincing because of the prevalence of racism.
- Because you major premise is false, your conclusion is disproved.
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@Novice_II
THBT the majority of animal farming is slavery. (something the moderator in question has called a logical leap).
slaves are always defined as people so that seems like a pretty easy beat
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or Russia could preserve its sovereignty by disposing of Putin and ending the war. Seems like a small price to pay.
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@Terran_01
Hi Jeremy-
- The healthcare you are being denied is the kidnapping and torture you fear.
- Nobody gets to diagnose themselves and demand medication without confirmation and approval by medical professionals. You may not control your own diagnosis or treatment, as difficult as that is to hear.
- It is a big ask but I am confident that if you will bravely submit to that kidnapping and torture at the hospital and give it a few weeks, you will feel better.
Hope you feel better soon.
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Trump Fumes: DeSantis Stole My Plan for Shipping Migrants
Conservative pundits are fawning over DeSantis’ cruel political stunt to fly immigrants to Massachusetts. Trump thinks the "credit" should be his
ASAWIN SUEBSAENG, ADAM RAWNSLEY
SEPTEMBER 18, 2022
IN RECENT DAYS, Donald Trump has privately voiced his anger over Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis sending planeloads of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. Trump’s displeasure, however, has nothing to do with moral revulsions at the governor using human beings as unsuspecting pawns for a political attack. Instead, Trump is telling allies and confidants he’s outraged that DeSantis seems to think he’s allowed to steal the ex-president’s mantle as both media star, and as undocumented-immigrant-basher-in-chief.
Since the Florida Republican — possibly under false pretenses — flew migrants from the Texas-Mexico border to Massachusetts, Trump has pointedly complained to some of his closest associates that DeSantis is attempting to take the national news cycle away from him, two sources with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone.
Trump has fumed over all the praise DeSantis’ action has been receiving in influential conservative circles lately — such as on right-wing media like Fox News — and has privately accused DeSantis of doing this largely to generate a 2024 polling boost for himself among GOP voters. (Earlier this month, Trump and his political operation blasted out a brief statement claiming, “Mar-a-Lago raid gave Trump a 10-point boost over DeSantis with Republican primary voters, poll shows.”)
The twice-impeached former president, the sources say, has also vented that DeSantis’ latest stunt was yet another one of “my idea[s]” that the governor allegedly stole from Trump.
Neither Trump nor DeSantis have officially declared a 2024 presidential run, though both have laid the groundwork for a national campaign. Trump remains the leader of the Republican Party and its most popular national figure. But DeSantis has a similar MAGA brand and in recent months has made gains in the polls — and among the conservative elite.
Conspicuously, in the days since the migrants arrived on Martha’s Vineyard, Trump has publicly commented on it only sparingly. He has also declined to profusely laud DeSantis in the ways that his fellow Republican icons have repeatedly done so. The former president is famous for quickly and verbosely responding to any number of headlines or controversies — political, legal, pop-cultural, and so on — thus making his general omissions regarding DeSantis and the stunt even more glaring.
And Trump’s apparent sense of right-flank vulnerability on immigration was evident on his social media platform, Truth Social. There, the former president spent his weekend intermittently teasing his alleged plans to run again in 2024 while hailing his own record of cruelty to asylum seekers.
In a manic posting spree, Trump shared a series of articles in quick succession teasing his 2024 plans (“Why Trump Will Run Again” and “Trump is Running”) while sharing pieces that credit himself following the Martha’s Vineyard stunt (“Libs dumped with illegal immigrants discover the merits of Trump’s ‘safe third country’ deals”) and a warning to DeSantis to back off (“Running against Trump is more of a risk for DeSantis than peaking too soon’).
A Trump spokesperson did not provide a comment on this story.
Unnamed officials went to a shelter in San Antonio and reportedly deceived roughly 50 Venezuelan and Colombian migrants into boarding a chartered flight to Martha’s Vineyard, possibly with misinformation about available jobs and housing. DeSantis directed the stunt, involving migrants who’d never set foot in Florida. Other Republican politicians have also been engaging in this tactic recently, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been busing migrants to Democratic enclaves to the delight of the anti-immigration right.
Amid questions on the legality and morality of what DeSantis did, the fracas doubles as a proxy fight between the two most prominent figures in modern American conservatism. It’s a political conflict likely to produce more cruel, ostentatious, and draconian policy proposals and actions, as leaders such as DeSantis and Trump compete to out-MAGA one another.
“With about 10 million job openings, these Venezuelan asylum seekers will soon have jobs and [be] supporting their families. Too bad they had to be the pawns in an old fashioned game of ‘Own the Libs,’” says Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst working at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, DC. “It’s important to note that this stunt is just an escalation of 2016. Trump changed the politics radically, DeSantis is just trying the same old Trunpian playbook. There doesn’t appear to be a real political entrepreneur this cycle like there was in 2016.”
Nowrasteh adds, “I’ve been observing the escalating chaos on the border for the last 2 years. The situation is only made more chaotic by governors stepping [in] to fly migrants to parts of the country where they don’t want to go. Venezuelan migrants are integrating well. Their largest community is in Florida and many of the migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard will eventually end up there.”
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@Shila
You must mean Trump (76)
nope. Putin is suffering from some kind of rapid neurological degeneration- likely Parkinson's. But also, Putin's escalation in Ukraine was supposed to be a short and profitable restoration of Ukraine's satellite status and now Russia will be lucky not to lose Crimea again. Putin kept his plans quite secret and now the oligarchy and army both feel betrayed and threatened. Traditionally, violent autocrats like Putin die violent deaths and I don't think Russia is in a position to wait much longer. I think Putin is weakening fast and vulnerable from several directions. I predict he will be dead before the next US presidential election. Who will be in power after is the question.
Putin is (59).
70
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how come none of Trumps’s lawyers are telling the judge overseeing the case that the FBI planted evidence?
perjury
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@Shila
Can we put together a Biden supporter list?
I guess you'd have to qualify Biden supporter. I voted for him for president but there 40 other candidates I'd prefer to see in that office. I think qualifications for public office should exclude any candidate over 70 years old. Everybody else has to retire because they are getting too slow, why shouldn't politicians?
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@Shila
Putin will be dead by Nov 2024
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WHY BIDEN is SEEING a RISE in the POLLS
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 09/19/22 2:10 PM ET
President Biden is enjoying what looks like an enduring bump in approval polls, a shift that is linked to a number of factors that could help Democrats in the midterm elections.
Here’s what’s behind it:
Legislative wins
Biden and his party’s ultra-narrow congressional majorities have notched a series of legislative successes over the past 18 months. First, there was the American Rescue Plan that pumped nearly $2 trillion into the economy to fight the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, there was the massive infrastructure bill last fall.
But it was the Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed last month that has appeared to do the most for the president’s recent political comeback.
The law includes some of Biden and his party’s biggest policy priorities. It marks the United States’s largest-ever investment in the fight against climate change and raises taxes on corporations and wealthy investors. It also takes steps to reduce health care costs by extending federal health-insurance subsidies and allowing the government to negotiate prescription drug prices for seniors on Medicare.
Of course, the law has been targeted relentlessly by Republicans, who claim that it will raise taxes on Americans and worsen already-high inflation. Still, Democrats see the law as a lifeline heading into the midterms — one that shows the party’s voters that Democrats can deliver on their campaign promises.
“Things are a lot different today,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist and senior adviser to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). “You need to look at the fact that, not only is the president’s legislative agenda very popular, but much of it has been delivered.”
Gas prices
Gas prices rose dramatically throughout 2021 and the first half of 2022, putting a strain on Americans’ pocketbooks and, consequently, on Biden’s approval numbers. The cost of fuel peaked in mid-June at more than $5 per gallon, according to AAA.
But drivers are breathing a little easier nowadays. As of Monday, the national average for a gallon of gasoline sits at just shy of $3.68 — down from about $3.72 a week ago and nearly $3.92 a month ago.
That’s still higher than it was at this time last year — about $0.48 cents higher. Still, it’s trending in the right direction, helping Biden’s approval rating claw its way back from the depths it reached over the summer.
Gas prices usually rise and fall with the cost of oil, meaning the president can only do so much to influence those prices. At the same time, U.S. oil production hasn’t fully hit pre-pandemic levels.
In March, Biden announced a plan to release 1 million barrels per day over six months from the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to bring down rising gas prices. And while there may be longer-term questions about what will happen when those releases end, the easing fuel prices have taken some political pressure off of Biden for now.
Trump
Former President Trump never really disappeared from the public eye; since leaving the White House last year, he’s issued endorsement after endorsement in GOP primary contests, held rallies for his preferred candidates and continued to publicly push his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
But he’s reemerged as a headline-grabbing figure in recent months, especially as investigations into a wide range of alleged wrongdoing have ramped up.
The most high-profile probe of the former president’s conduct broke out into the open last month when the FBI searched his private Palm Beach, Fla., residence as part of an investigation into his handling of classified documents. But he’s also facing legal jeopardy in Georgia, where a special grand jury is investigating whether Trump and his allies sought to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state.
Biden, meanwhile, has stepped up his criticism of Trump once again, casting him and his political movement as a threat to American democracy. An NBC News poll released on Sunday found Trump’s favorability rating sinking to one of the lowest points of his post-presidency.
While midterm elections tend to focus more on the current president and his party, Trump has proven to be an effective foil for Democrats in the past, and his recent tendency to grab headlines has helped reignite the energy that juiced support for Biden in 2020.
“Forget that he’s not the president anymore,” one Republican strategist said. “I think a lot of people are being reminded of Trump now, and it makes Biden look better in comparison.”
Abortion rights
Biden and his party have also seen a boost in the polls amid an effort to rally Americans against Republican efforts to curb abortion rights following the Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The political impact of the decision has already been made clear: Kansas voters quashed a proposed amendment that would have stripped abortion protections from the state constitution, Democrats overperformed in a handful of hotly contested special elections, and polling shows the issue of reproductive rights taking on heightened importance in the midterm elections.
Poll after poll has made clear the support for abortion rights. A New York Times-Siena College Poll survey last week found that 62 percent of registered voters believe that abortion should remain legal, at least in most circumstances.
And it’s not just Democratic voters. Sixty-five percent of independents said that abortion should remain legal in most cases.
Consequently, Biden has ridden the same wave as other Democrats in the post-Roe political environment. In July, he signed an executive order that seeks to protect access to abortion medication and emergency contraception. He has also vowed to veto any legislative attempt to ban abortions nationwide.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
In the mean time, perhaps you would like to explain why I should trust the FBI as an authority on QAnon when they have so often displayed either incredible incompetence or else malice... such as when they paid an accused Russian spy in regards to an investigation over evidence he planted at the ultimate behest of the Clinton campaign.
What are you talking about here? If you're talking about Igor Danchenko then every claim you've just made is just popular fake news from this weekend.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
I'm not practicing for democracy, I'm trying to find the truth.
....and yet all you do is talk about yourself. The subject here is Trump's doubledown on QAnon rhetoric. You've posted ten times with all your feelings about expert opinion that contradicts your assumptions and the mental contortions you must play out internally to protect your confirmation biases. None of which could be of interest to anybody not you. Do you have any opinion about QAnon you'd like to express?
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Call it a game if you like but it's the game that forms the basis of all law and legislation in a any democratic society. All games are practice for societal skill sets. If you aren't willing to play by the rules, if you aren't willing to risk losing, then you aren't really practicing for the real thing- which in the case of debating is democracy.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Yet I debate all the time
A debate is an argument formalized by rules and limits ending with a vote or other formalized decision. What you are doing is preaching into a well, in love with the echo.
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@Shila
-->@ShilaMore people know and have seen VanGogh’s work than care to follow Putins war.color me skeptical re: that assertionThe Van Gogh Museum has passed the milestone of 2 million Instagram followers! ..
80% of US voters are following the War in Ukraine, that's .8 x 168 million = 134,400,000 which is more than 67 times 2 millon and that's just in American. I would assume most of Europe is paying attention and significant percentages of the rest of the world.
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@Shila
More people know and have seen VanGogh’s work than care to follow Putins war.
color me skeptical re: that assertion
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UKRAINE ALLEGES TORTURE at VILLAGE near RUSSIAN BORDER
By ELENA BECATOROS and LEO CORREA
today
KOZACHA LOPAN, Ukraine (AP) — In a dank basement behind the local supermarket, metal bars cordon off a corner of the room to form a large cell. Dirty sleeping bags and duvets show three sleeping spots on top of sheets of Styrofoam for insulation from the damp earth floor. In the corner, two black buckets served as toilets.
A few meters (yards) outside the barred cell, three dilapidated chairs stand around a table, cigarette butts and empty husks of pumpkin seeds littering the floor around them.
Ukrainian authorities say this was a makeshift prison where Russian forces abused detainees before Ukrainian troops swept through the village of Kozacha Lopan in a major counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region this month. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said more than 10 such “torture chambers” have been discovered in the region since the hasty withdrawal of Russian troops last week. The claims of what occurred in the room could not be independently confirmed.
Kozacha Lopan, whose edge lies less than two kilometers (just over a mile) from the Russian border, was retaken by Ukrainian forces Sept. 11.
In a statement posted Saturday on its Telegram channel, the prosecutor’s office of the Kharkiv region, in whose jurisdiction Kozacha Lopan lies, said the room seen by AP journalists was used as a torture cell during the occupation of the area. It said Russian forces had set up a local police force that ran the prison, adding that documents confirming the functioning of the police department and implements of torture had been seized. The statement said an investigation was being conducted.
Images the prosecutors released showed a Russian military TA-57 telephone with additional wires and alligator clips attached to it. Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of using the Soviet-era radio telephones as a power source to shock prisoners during interrogation.
In his nightly address to the nation Saturday, Zelenskyy mentioned another location, at the railway station in Kozacha Lopan, where he said “a room for torture and tools for electric torture was found.” AP journalists did not see that location.
Zelenskyy compared the Russians to the Nazis during World War II.
“And they will answer in the same way — both on the battlefields and in the courtrooms,” he said.
Burial sites have been found in some areas where Russian forces were pushed out, most notably in the city of Izium, where Ukrainian officials say more than 440 graves have been found near the city’s cemetery. Zelenskyy has said they contain the bodies of civilian adults and children, as well as soldiers, showing signs of violent deaths, some possibly from torture.
Vitalii, a commander in the National Guard, said his team is hunting for graves of possible victims of abuse at the detention center in Kozacha Lopan. He asked to be identified by his first name only for security reasons.
The team is also recovering bodies on the battlefield, which are lying where they fell on farm fields or inside burned-out tanks. The Russian army was pushed all the way back across the border into Russia after holding the area for months. But artillery shells still whistle through the air, fired from inside Russia and landing with resonating thumps and billows of black smoke on Ukrainian territory.
Despite the shelling, a small group of soldiers winds its way along a rutted mud track to where a dead Ukrainian combatant lies, spotted by a drone used to search for bodies and shallow graves.
“It’s a risk. We are always risking our lives and at any moment there might be some shell flying in from the territory of Russia,” Vitalii said.
The dead Ukrainian is lying on his back in body armor and helmet, a cap beneath it to block out the sun. The body has been there for a long time.
They document the scene and lift the remains into a body bag before heading farther along the track to a charred Russian tank. It takes only one of the team to carry away the body bag holding the remains of the Russian found inside.
Autopsies will follow, and the details of the sites recorded and passed on to investigators looking into potential war crimes, Vitalii said.
Throughout this border area, where fierce battles raged, villages bear the devastating scars of war: houses bombed and burned, roads pitted with craters from exploding mortar shells, smashed cars lying by the roadside.
In the days after the Russians were chased out, local people have been returning to see what is left of their homes.
“Three days before we decided to leave, it was like hell in here” from all the shooting, said Larysa Letiucha, 56, in the nearby village of Prudyanka. “It was flying from all over the place. It was whistling and exploding. We hid in the basement and … our door was blasted off.”
She left with her family in April, and returned to check on her property a few days after Ukrainian soldiers retook the village.
“I saw a horror. I still cannot pull myself together,” she said in recounting her first sight of what remained of her house. “We were living here our whole lives. We were building it, making renovations. Our whole life was invested here.”
The windows are blasted in and the ceiling leaks from where a patch is missing from an explosion. In the small house her parents built on the same plot, the entire back part is missing. Shrapnel and debris litter the house.
“Our houses are comfortable even though we live in the village,” Letiucha said. “It’s a horror. I don’t even know when we will renovate and rebuild all of this.”
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Looks like I'm in for an enormous embarrassment just as soon as you post this quote (in full context) with link.
The truth value of the assertion does not depend on the asserter.
vs
appealing to authority is not fallacious as long as it is understood that it is an inductive argument the strength of which rests entirely on the degree of trust in the authority.
backtrack
appealing to authority is a fallacy no less than appealing to popularity or appealing to force. They are all proxies of various kinds, proxies for the best argument and proxies don't beat the real deal. In almost any other context using the fuzzy logic of proxies could be forgiven, but not in debate. Debate is the one time to set aside as much fuzzy logic as can be set aside given the subject.
[and yet you are terrified of debate]
vs.
appealing to authority is not fallacious as long as it is understood that it is an inductive argument the strength of which rests entirely on the degree of trust in the authority.
It's like relying on a weather forecast for the current moment instead of looking out the window. Raindrops falling on your head beat a theory that there wouldn't be any precipitation
[strawman because nobody goes to a weather FORECAST for the current weather but also a swamp dweller who relies on his senses to predict hurricanes dies in the flood]
vs.
appealing to authority is not fallacious as long as it is understood that it is an inductive argument the strength of which rests entirely on the degree of trust in the authority.
etc
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@ILikePie5
Like the purple dinosaur? Ya, I can take him
Hasn't Barney recently challenged you to a debate and you scampered?
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@Public-Choice
Have you actually read anything by Q?
- Yes. There's little enough of it.
Or do you just love government documents.
- I do love government documents, yes.
You pretend the FBI never lies.
- I don't. I've known a few FBI agents over the years and I don't mind saying they're a bunch of right-wing fascists. Hoover was a very Trump-like autocrat. Like most cops, FBI agents are generally well trained and reliable reporters of facts. Like most cops, FBI agents would sooner destroy themselves through perjury than report any criminal conduct by a fellow agent.
Just ask Waco cult members
- I think it is quite possible that the ATF shot first and covered their asses. I think it is quite likely that the FBI used pyrotechnics in spite of Reno's orders and covered their asses. The fault for the dead cops, the dead Branch Davidians and especially the dead children lies 100% with the Branch Davidians. No citizen has a right to use force to prevent arrest, even an unfair unrest. No citizen has a right to hold children hostage to prevent arrest. even an unfair arrest. Every death could have been prevented if Branch Davidians had chosen to obey the law at any point over 50 days. Any FBI misconduct seems accountable to fog or war or CYA. Many hostage situations end badly and I think it's hard to fault the good faith efforts of police in violent, uncertain situations.
or MLK's family if the FBI lies...
- The FBI definitely led the charge on systemic racism in America. I think there's still a lot of racism in policing generally. I don't accept that racism means that all police testimony and analysis can't be trusted. Even so, I don't think that means the FBI deliberately distorts their factual reporting, even if that evidence might be rife with inherent bias. What I like about govt reports generally and FBI reports specifically is that they are subject to a lot of scrutiny and challenge and testing. Government data is not truth from on high but its pretty easy to find all the memos and studies that points out all the potential problems with the data. I like data that survives that kind of constant testing.
- Seems like the FBI is more likely to be biased in favor of QAnon than against. I don't think there's much reason to distrust their general analysis of QAnon.
Federal Government sponsors a portion of mass shootings to take away guns.
- I call that mentally ill. Even on the most superficial basis I just can't see how such an Op could be pulled off or civil servant co-opted to participate in mass evil like that. Its just entirely inconsistent and out of touch with who really does government and why. I've never seen one shred of evidence that suggests any validity to such a claim.
And, yes, I agree with Qanon that a lot in power are pedophiles and they definitely run a sex trafficking ring.
- I mean, hooking up rich and powerful men with prostitutes including some underage girls and then using those contacts for blackmail is a very commonplace tactic in organized crime. I think there's pretty clear evidence that Jeffrey Epstein and Roger Stone were running ops like that at various points. The Ritz-Carlton in Moscow is famous for running Ops like that. Do I think a lot of powerful men have discretely, independently paid for sex with sixteen year old girls? Yeah, that seems likely
- But do I think that there's some kind of cabal of govt men and women gang-raping pre-pubescent children in public venues for years as QAnon asserts? No, man. That's fucking nuts. That doesn't even fly on basic logistics or normal human behavior. Public figures with locked down schedules, surrounded by staff and security details all meet up with a bunch of mysteriously unaccompanied minors in the basement of some pizza place?
I believe every ideology, no matter how stupid or illogical, still has at least one thing right.
- That doesn't make much sense. I don't see why any ideology must necessarily get even one thing right. Some people are wrong about everything.
Paul Furber and Ron Watkins were both Q.
- Yeah, but in the summer of '16 Flynn was tweeting abut Hillary is a pedophile for months before anybody was repeating that shit. Then, on the day of the election, Flynn's son and partner is the first person to publish the original fake news story that the FBI found child porn on Hillary's laptop and she was about to get arrested. The same week Flynn reverses his position on Erdogan (Flynn now admits he did took more than half a million dollars from Erdogan in payment) and writes an Op-ed calling for the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, Turkish newspapers are all running the "Hillary is a pedophile" story before most media in the US is even noticing a handful of whackjobs theorizing on 4chan. By Dec 4th, Flynn's son gets fired from team trump because some shooter following 4chan shows up at Comet Pizza, looking for Hillary's captives. Clearly, team Trump thought Flynn was doing more with FBIAnon then just spectating. Here's a guy who as deep in Military intelligence as it gets, working for Trump, Russia and Turkey and lying to everybody about it, the guy who coined the phrase "lock her up" and he's right there with first four or five guys on the original subreddit doing FBIAnon. That's circumstantial evidence and it doesn't make Flynn the voice of Q but its hard to believe an Op that experienced and connected to Trump isn't the guy making certain the show is run to Trump's benefit.
I'm still waiting for sources for these "dozen incidences."
- https://www.start.umd.edu/qanon-crime-maps
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents_involving_QAnon
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2021/05/27/qanon-believers-committed-nearly-80-conspiracy-motivated-crimes-report-finds/?sh=6eb51c931840
Also, there are quite literally MILLIONS of Qanon members. f even 1,000 of these people are violent, we are only looking at 0.0625% of the KNOWN movement. Therefore as a whole, is nonviolent.
- Is that really any way to reason?
By 1922, the Ku Klux Klan had 4 million members but only lynch 57 people that year. Fewer than one in a thousand Klan members were actually murdering blacks, therefore the Klan was a whole was a non-violent movement.
Q published a short manual on information warfare.
If the movement is non-violent why are they calling it information warfare?
This is no different than MLK's ideology or Ghandi's ideology. So people who were violent as a response to MLK's death are not part of the true MLK movement any more than people who are violent following the Qanon movement. That is my point. I find it hard to believe a movement founded in nonviolence is now a violent movement. Like any other movement or cult founded in nonviolence.
- the core QAnon theory is that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic sexual abusers of children operating a global child sex trafficking ring conspired against former U.S. President Donald Trump during his term in office
- KIng: ". Nonviolence recognises that
evildoers are also victims and are not evil people. The nonviolent resister seeks to defeat evil, not
people"
- QAnon seeks power for one man by inventing the most outrageous lies possible about his political opponents and demanding their destruction as fake retribution.
- Gandhi and King sought to convert and persuade unjust political policy and failing persuasion, sought to change policy by radical non-participation in unjust political systems.
- Gandhi and King would not recognize any moral worth in QAnon. Gandhi and KIng would resist QAnon as the inherently unjust tool one aspiring dictator.
Do you believe Hillary Clinton is a pedophile?I think it's possible, but there isn't any credible evidence of it that I know of.
- Since there's no evidence, why believe it is possible? Why
I do, however, think there is credible evidence she is an absolutely vile, nasty, elitist person who had fits of violent rage.
- The Secret Service was quick to point out that Gary Bryne had little access inside the White House
- "The closest contact that Byrne could have had, according to [Secret Service association president Jan] Gilhooly and others, is seeing the president or the first lady pass in the hallway — far from the intimate access he would have needed to catch Bill Clinton in the act or see Hillary Clinton fly into the cursing rages he now writes have convinced him that she doesn't have the "integrity and temperament" to be president
- The former supervisor of the presidential protective division said that at best Byrne is working from office rumors that he's cinematically written himself into."
- Once it became clear that stories told in the book directly contradicted Byrne own sworn testimony under oath- that is, either the book was lying or he was a felony perjurer, even FOX News refused to book Byrne as a guest anymore
- Byrne is now an unemployed blogger
And depending on your take of the Podesta emails, she could even be a satanist. But I can't personally say I've tried to verify that, so I can't say I agree to it.
- By "depending on your take" you mean depending on whether you're willing buy into a world where Oprah Winfrey raped Justin Bieber and that every time Podesta emails the DNC about "cheese pizza" it is secret code for "child pornography."
- As a student of American history I note that accusations of Satanism are a very reliable marker for bullshit. There are extroverts who claim adherence to Satanic ritual as a way of provoking fake outrage from the gullible. I don't think there's any evidence for some sincere underground practice of Satanism. It seems pretty common that accusations of pedophilia are accompanied by accusations of Satanism and from the Salem Witch trials to the Memphis Three, every single one of those has proved to be total bullshit.
- We know Russian Intelligence hacked and published Podesta's emails, hoping to provoke a scandal. When Podesta's emails turned out to be pure vanilla, basically verifying that the public DNC largely comports with the private DNC (which can never be said in any detail about the GOP). Doesn't it make far more sense that after going through all the expense and trouble of breaking into the heart of the Democratic Party, Trump, Flynn, GRU, Q, whatever you want to call them tried to turn a goose egg into profit by inventing a secret code that turns ordinary emails into insane devil-worshipping cabalistic orgies?
- Anybody with a tiny bit of skeptical thinking should probably assume that every claim of Satanism just means "unjustified slander invented for the gullible"
The Daily Mail is banned as a linkable source of evidence on Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales says that the Daily Mail has "“mastered the art of running stories that aren’t true."
mediabias/factcheck rates the Daily Mail as a "questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda/conspiracies, poor or no sourcing to credible information, a complete lack of transparency, and/or is fake news. Fake News is the deliberate attempt to publish hoaxes and/or disinformation for profit or influence. Sources listed in the Questionable Category may be very untrustworthy and should be fact-checked on a per-article basis. Please note sources on this list are not considered fake news unless specifically written in the reasoning section for that source
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