Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

At 9/29/13 05:29 AM, BumFodder wrote:

At 9/29/13 05:12 AM, lapis wrote: *Due to a lack of criminals actually being caught. Just in the news today (use Google Translate if you want to read it): 3.1% of all people in the Netherlands were a victim of burglary in 2011 alone, up from 2.5% in 2008, which amounts to a rise of 100,000 annual victims in three years.

I really doubt that, newspapers are really bad sources in general.

They're quoting a report from the Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, which is the government agency in charge of gathering statistical data about the Netherlands.

At 9/27/13 08:33 PM, AmateurPsychonaut wrote: Meanwhile, the Dutch are having to close 8 prisons due to a lack of crime.

*Due to a lack of criminals actually being caught. Just in the news today (use Google Translate if you want to read it): 3.1% of all people in the Netherlands were a victim of burglary in 2011 alone, up from 2.5% in 2008, which amounts to a rise of 100,000 annual victims in three years.

At 9/13/13 07:43 PM, Cynical-Charlotte wrote:

At 9/13/13 01:52 PM, poxpower wrote: You are just naming things that exist and ascribing them to culture in a way that, again, makes the word culture mean nothing.

You are willing to stand by the assumption that Canadian culture (which includes music, tradition, beliefs, art, and architecture) is no different than that of the Japanese,

I'm willing to bet that a Canadian philharmonic orchestra actually has more in common with a Japanese philharmonic orchestra than with a Canadian dubstep formation, who in turn have more in common with a Japanese dubstep formation. So what is 'Canadian music', other than the completely tautological definition of music made in Canada? And is dubstep culture also a culture? And is 'multiculturalism' then also something witnessed in a country with both a dubstep scene and philharmonic orchestras?

At 9/11/13 06:09 PM, Cynical-Charlotte wrote: It is the differences in culture which optimizes problem-solving - contributing to the long-term betterment of all human societies.

In a weird this actually has something to do with multiculturalism. Israel punches far above its weight scientifcally partly because they know that when their country is not on top for a short while it'll be destroyed. Maybe the increased ethnic tensions in Western Europe will encourage people to spend a greater portion of their wealth on subsidising scientific research in military and security technology, leading to all kinds of civilian spin-offs that everyone can benefit from.

something as unclean as 'rent'.

* 'interest'

Pox, I love you, but this thread lacked structure and the discussion is really messy as a result.

At 9/9/13 06:14 PM, Fim wrote: I can't help but feel that you're ignoring the Dutch who do extremely well as a country, whilst speaking 4 languages,

That's Switzerland you're thinking of. And Switzerland is highly decentralised, with each canton basically making its own laws. If you look at Belgium on the other hand, you see a mess that's solely caused by the animosity between the Ducth-speaking Flemish and French-speaking Walloons --- a state that's it been in for decades. It recently spent a year-and-a-half without a real prime minister because of the language-based parties not being able to agree on anything. They're so pro-European because they hope that the EU may replace their failed attempt at a nation-state.

At 9/9/13 07:31 PM, Entice wrote: which is why you see more racial problems in European countries

There are no 'racial' problems in Europe. You're trying to explain what is happening in Europe by what you know from the US and maybe South Africa. That isn't helping anyone.

At 9/9/13 08:45 PM, Warforger wrote: The Middle Eastern Arabic Muslims seem to get all the attention, but according to statistics they're only a small fraction of the Muslim immigrants much less all immigrants.

What "statistics"? Are you amalgamating the entire continent into a single entity with identical problems across the region? Dude, I know that you must realise that the problems of a Swede in Malmö have fuck all to do with the problems of some Serb in some remote village in the Balkans. You're muddying it all.

At 9/9/13 08:59 PM, Warforger wrote: In the short run maybe, in the long run it's a downright necessity.

In the long run, what the countries of Western Europe might face is a complete breakdown in national solidarity and a situation similar to what you now see in Lebanon, with a completely dysfunctional national government and regional bodies of power holding sway over the different ethnic groups. Things that people now take for granted, like a nationalised pension scheme, need not exist in this long run you speak of. Give it a decade or more, but frankly I think it's only a matter of time before Muslim communities in Europe start to demand their own pension funds so that they don't have to sully their pension money by having it invested in haram things like pork processing or alcohol, or to even use an immoral system using something as unclean as 'rent'.

Japan on the other hand doesn't and they're facing a huge crisis.

Erm, can you back this up? I'm pretty sure that they've actually had the worst. Their baby boom occurred before ours, but if I'm not mistaken they're stabilising right now. And I don't think they're right now looking at the ghetto suburbs of Paris or the riots in Sweden a few months ago and thinking: "wow, we really missed out on something".

At 9/11/13 01:11 PM, Fim wrote: While the Dutch speak Dutch, english, German, and to a lesser extent French

This can't possibly be what you originally meant by "the Dutch (...) speaking 4 languages", I hope? Right? Please say that you meant Switzerland and that this was just some sort of short lapse of judgement.

My apologies for being so late to respond, my internet connectivity has been crap lately.

At 9/4/13 05:24 PM, Camarohusky wrote: however, dramatically increasing the number of people that voters need to focus on is a dangerous concept as far as I am concerned. Far too little of the US populace (or any country's populace for that matter) is not smart enough or interested enogh to spend that kind of effort voting. I fear thatthis amount fo effort would result in dramatically decreased voter turn out and efficacy.

This doesn't have to be the case. Like I said in my first post, it'll always be necessary that people vote for one main party to represent them in general and then on their representative for the subcategories. The reason is that there are certain subjects (like the approval of the budget, which I think needs to be done by parliament in most representative democracies) that simply transcend all forms of categorisation. People who do not want to vote for all categories simply only vote for their one main party --- their vote in all subcategories will then go that one party.

At 9/5/13 11:06 AM, Camarohusky wrote: he wants to replace our bi-cameral legislature that deals with all issues with 30 separate bodies each that are specialized in their own issue.

Sort of, but there don't really need to be 30 completely distinct houses of parliament. It could just be that we just lose the principle of one vote per representative. You just make sure that each party that would have a seat in one of the 30 categories has at least one seat in parliament, and then you adjust the voting power of the representatives in such a way that the total amount of votes per party represents the total percentage of the vote that this party got on the relevant policy area(s).

At 9/5/13 10:06 PM, Warforger wrote: Otherwise your idea would make sense but it would again face some of the same problems as mine especially when area's of policy overlap,

You could assign multiple areas to a single bill, and then weight the votes that each party gets according to the votes they got on all policy areas relevant to the proposal.

At 9/3/13 08:36 PM, Camarohusky wrote: and calling it a massive change.

No, that's not the point. Most Western systems of democracy are the result of hundreds of years of best practice, and I'm not arrogant enough to think that I can do much better by means of a complete overhaul. Still, I think that due to certain technological and societal changes in the past few decades voters increasingly expect their voices to be heard. I'm interested in small adjustments to the system that give voters bigger participation without damaging the core of the representative democratic system.

By allowing voters to not just vote for a single representative on all issues, but for 30 representatives for 30 issues, you alleviate the fact that under the current system, voters can only choose between a select handful of packages. I realise that voters in the US can for example vote for both a representative and a senator, but that's still only the choice between two total packages, and in most races there are only two serious contenders anyway, meaning that you have only have four choices for total representation in Congress.

All in all, the current US system is like a Subway outlet where you can only choose between four sandwiches. I'm proposing a system where you don't have to choose these packages but where you can customise your vote --- you can vote for a type of bread, for a main ingredient, for whether there is cheese or whether it's toasted, what sauce and vegetables you'd like, etc. You give voters more choice, hence you improve the degree to which they identify with the decisions taken by the system.

Take privacy issues as an example. If I may exaggerate a little: in the US you currently have the choice between one party that wants a surveillance society and another party that wants a slightly less intrusive surveillance society. If you allow voters to vote for a party only on the issue for privacy, then suddenly the Libertarian Party may end up with like 20% of the vote on this issue, even though most of the people who vote for them on this specific subject would not vote for the complete package that the Libertarian Party is offering. Hence, decisions made by parliament tend to more closely represent the will of the people, without changing the entire system into a direct democracy à la Switzerland.

Being an active in a modern Western democracy doesn't require much effort. There are lobbyists and activists who try to influence politicians all year long, but for most citizens their participation in the process ends when honour their call to vote. Usually there are several bodies for which to cast votes; Europeans usually have some levels of regional, national and EU-wide representation, while US citizens (I think) have elections for presidents, senators, governors, representatives and even judges. Still, for each of those bodies there's no more involvement than to choose a representative for the next four or so years and that's it; nothing more. And I think that's actually quite little.

I don't support a system of direct democracy like in Switzerland where voters have the right to decide through referendum on nearly every policy proposal; I think this can only work in a small, strongly decentralised state. But what I'm proposing is slightly more towards direct democracy.

First, 30 policy areas are introduced by an impartial-ish committee that cover all possible areas of policy. Examples could be categories like labour rights, defence, green energy, asylum, treatment of animals, foreign military interventions, you name it. Each citizen votes for a party to represent them in general votes (like those concerning the budget) and then votes for a party in each of the 30 policy areas. Each time (a house of) parliament votes on a motion, the associated policy area(s) of the motion are then determined by a body like the judiciary (with a right to appeal if there's a party that thinks it's getting shafted) and the voting strength of the parties regarding this motion are then determined by the votes they got within these policy area(s).

I think this increases the way voters identify with the political process. You too often hear complaints by voters that they feel they are not being represented by their politicians and this lowers the degree to which you are voting for the lesser of several evils. It's not perfect, but I think it's a improvement with little cost.

Your thoughts?

I remember how a couple days someone praised the BBC as one of the more neutral international media and I largely agreed, but, seriously, what is this? I want an article about me to restore the balance.

Syria crisis: Internet user criticises Cameron for being a douche

An Internet user has criticised David Cameron for his role in Parliament trying to get Britain to take part in a military strike against Syria.

The Internet user, from the Newgrounds Politics forum, is known as lapis.

He had been venting his opinions and observations on Syria earlier this week.

Lapis told the BBC's Newsnight he would invite Mr Cameron and his family to spend time with Kurdish civilians whose families had been massacred by al-Nusra militants.

The UK prime minister's office said it had not seen the Newsnight interview but said the Tories leader had made clear that finding a diplomatic solution to the Syrian crisis should be at the top of the agenda at next week's G20 summit (...).

David Cameron loses Syria vote in Commons. Put the guns back in the rack, everybody.

At 8/29/13 05:58 AM, Feoric wrote: You're under the assumption there's a counterargument when it's simply just more (huge) evidence that the regime is responsible. Anyone who was already convinced the regime carried out the attack knew the government had the capacity to launch the missiles, obviously. But, as previously stated in several posts, the munitions were so unique it was unclear exactly what kind of launcher was used.

If the Assad regime caried out the attack then they'd certainly need launchers becuase they didn't control the areas that were attacked. But rebels don't, they could even launch hollow shells and have the nerve agents set off by ground forces in the areas that they control.

along with multiple dozens of regular standard munitions, seeing as the CW attack occurred in conjunction with strikes with non-CW warheads

The Syrian government had been shelling at least some of those areas for days already. The rebels could have moved in the nerve agents and set them off there.

Which raises another question: why would the regime continue shelling the shit out of the areas? Why wouldn't they stop immediately and be the first ones to break the news?

Because they were panicking and didn't know what to do? Wasn't it you who said that the US government had intercepted phone calls of Syrian officers doing just that?

I'd be crying wolf if I kept saying "this is it, there's no denying it"

You said: "Here's the undeniable proof we've needed", and then gave something that wasn't proof and that was deniable. It was apparently just one of the puzzle pieces that were increasingly telling your gut that it's the Syrian regime who's responsible for this. But apart from you, outside this BBS, there are forces that want to take down one of Iran's allies in the region and that are currently selling us a war, and those forces would be just thrilled to have some "undeniable proof" as you seemed to claim we just witnessed.

But it isn't undeniable proof, the sort that any semblence of actual international law would require before intervention would be justified. As long as I can poke holes in the presented theories, there's no ground for intervention, especially not without the approval of the Security Council.

I know that you're not calling for an intervention, but what I didn't like about your post was the wording. If instead of "here's the undeniable proof we've needed" you had said "here's the something else that makes me believe it was Assad that did it", then I wouldn't have had any problem with it. But you're speaking the language of Cameron and Hollande, and I was actually expecting something grand when I clicked on the link. Nothing grand was found, and that irritated me.

All in all, the rebels have the bigger motive and Assad has the bigger capacity. We aren't any further at this point.

At 8/28/13 07:12 PM, Feoric wrote: Here's the undeniable proof we've needed. You can clearly see the unique munition and the launch system being used. Note that this is not footage of the actual CW attack, rather evidence of what kind of system the regime had in place to orchestrate such an attack in the first place. Everything matches up perfectly. There is no doubt whatsoever that the regime is responsible.

So now it's proven --- if it's actually the Syrian military in that video --- that the Syrian military has the capacity to fire chemical ammunition? What was the counterargument exactly? That Assad had that stuff lying around just for the bling, the same way some people have a samurai sword on the wall in their living rooms that couldn't even cut through butter? We know that this video doesn't match in anyway with was previously claimed about the actual chemical attack - it isn't the 155th Brigade in the video, it isn't their missile base and the time of day doesn't match. Pretty far from a smoking gun, then.

You're crying wolf - be careful with that.

why hasn't the regime just come out and say so as opposed to just flat out denying there was ever a chemical attack in the first place?

Is the Syrian government denying that there was ever a chemical attack in the first place? Can you source this? From what I've read so far they're only denying that they were the ones responsible.

Israeli sources seem to confirm the chemical strike being carried out by the 155th Brigade on Mt. Kalmun, but this mountain is now suddenly located to the north-west of Damascus instead of the south or the north-east where Mt. Abu al-'Ata is located. This is all getting a bit chaotic.

Diplomacy is not going to work because it's bound to focus on some sort of power sharing in Syria while the whole concept of a Syrian (or a Lebanese or Iraqi for that matter) nation is flawed. It has been made glaringly obvious in the past few decades, but especially in the last two years, that, for example, a Lebanese Shi'ite sympathises and identifies with Syrian Shi'ites and Iraqi Shi'ites first, moreso than with Lebanese Sunnis. That's because throughout these three countries the primary source of one's identity is religion instead of one's geographical background. It sometimes even transcends cultural/linguistic boundaries: a typical Arab Shi'ite Iraqi sympathises more with a Persian Shi'ite Iranian than he does with an Arab Sunni Iraqi.

The giant elephant in the room in Iraq and Syria is that the borders drawn between those countries in the 20th century were a historical mistake, and nothing more. While this error is not fixed, there will always be instability. Any solution that requires people to work together who have no desire to do so will fail, and any 'peace' in Syria will be a temproary lull in violence; as the stocks of angry young men are replenished about 15 to 25 years from now, war will resume, simply because there will be no universally respected state institutions that supercede the ethno-religious identities of the people.

I read on the BBC website that people in the US government are looking at the intervention in Bosnia to see what lessons they can learn from that situation. The main lesson is this: carve up Syria into a Sunni Arab state, a Shi'ite/Christian state and a Kurdish state, and grant them large degrees of autonomy. I think the Shi'ites and Christians can work together with the Sunnis as their common enemy, the same way the Croatian Catholics and Bosniak Muslims work together with the Eastern-Orthodox Serbs as a common enemy in Bosnia. But the Sunnis need to be separated from the rest.

Ideally, this would extend beyond Syria. In my view, you need three countries: a Shi'ite/Christian Lebanon in what is now Lebanon together with the Alawite heartlands on the Syrian coast, then a Sunni Syria that unites the currently Sunni parts of Syria with Sunni Iraq, and a Shi'ite/Christian Iraq in the marshlands of modern Iraq. A largely autonomous Kurdistan would then exist within Sunni Syria; the only reason to not grant it formal independence is to not piss off the Turks more than necessary.

Oh, for this to work there need to large population exchanges. Yes, that's cruel, and yes, that would violate the right of return guaranteed to people under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No other option, though. It worked in Greece/Turkey, to some extent in India/Pakistan and to some extent in Israel/Palestine. The irony is that as the civil war in Syria continues, more people are internally displaced, which may actually encourage the creation of contiguous nation-states.

The main problem of course is that modern international law assumes that borders are perfect and permanent; there is nothing whatsoever to justify the redrawing of borders or exchanging populations. But that's a failure of international law, not of the solution. Western powers at the moment seem to be very eager to bypass a UN Security Council mandate for an intervention. If you're going to ignore international law anyway, do it right, I would say. Doubt they will though.

As long as the Western powers lack the fortitude to acknowledge the root of the problem, I'm against intervention. Sad as it may be, a continuation of the violence actually stimulates the creation of ethno-religious homelands. These mixed states can only exist under a brutal dictator (Saddam, Tito (!!!), formerly Assad) or not at all. Sad, but I have seen little evidence to the contrary in the past ten years.

At 8/26/13 06:04 PM, Feoric wrote: Considering that's the only source that claims

No, it's at least the second, along with that kurdishcause blog that's cited by Brown Moses himself.

I'll take it with a grain of salt

I'm sure you'll forgive me when I do the same with your Brown Moses blog, who cites a blogger contradicting him without even mentioning this fact, let alone attempting to explain it.

seeing as in either case it's ludicrous to think the rebels were behind the attack,

Whatever. For me, the first question that I ask myself is who gains from this. If Assad were stupid or suicidal he wouldn't still be in power, so I'll need a lot more than the authority of a blogger to convince me of either possibility.

At 8/26/13 04:38 PM, Feoric wrote: Then there's been a mixup.

That's a bit euphemistic considering that they're directly contradicting each other. Either the 155th are firing their missiles from Mount Kalmun to the south or from that unnamed base on that map wiki that's near Mount Abu al-'Ata to the north. You look at blog posts from a day before this blog post with the internet forensics and you also hear people say that they're fired from Mount Kalmun - better yet, that Mount Kalmun is only one of three bases where chemical weapons are still being kept. None of the other two are to the north of the shelled area.

At 8/26/13 04:10 PM, Feoric wrote: More evidence was released based on forensic evidence that strongly imply the missiles were launched from the 155th Brigade missile base.

As one of the commenters under that blog post points out, he's quoting a source that says that the 155th Briagde isn't responsible because their base is in the south and the missile came from the north. The blogger then responds that he's isn't saying that the 155th fired that missile, he's saying that the rebels of the Syrian National Coalition are saying that it's the 155th that fired that missile. Big difference.

At 8/25/13 06:57 PM, Fim wrote: This. There's a bunch of different groups involved, some of which are more dodgy than others, but if you were in there position you'd take help anyway you could too. The west's response has been incredibly underwelming up till now.

What do you think about this, author of article on the BBC website front page?

The Western powers have never wanted the rebels to win. Their strategy has been to redress the balance so that the regime came under such pressure that it would cave in, dump the Assad leadership and negotiate a transition that would exclude the inner ruling circle while preserving stability and state structures.

There has never been evidence to suggest such an approach might work. The signs have always been that the regime would pull the whole house down around it before capitulating, and also that its strategic allies, especially Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, would not allow that to happen.

In addition, the West faces the reality that the moderate opposition elements it has been trying to boost have proven neither cohesive, credible nor effective on the ground. Instead, the running has largely been made by Islamist factions, many linked to al-Qaeda.

Seriously, there are no secular forces among the rebels to speak of to begin with, and while their ideas range from sympathy to the Muslim Brotherhood to outright allegiance to Al-Qaeda it are the latter groups that have the ideological and military upper hand.

At 8/25/13 06:57 PM, Fim wrote: The situation in Syria is nothing like the situation in Iraq pre invasion.

The only difference is that Saddam was more effective in squashing the (both Shi'a and Kurdish) uprisings in his country at the time. But don't pretend like this situation is so much different in the sense that Assad has committed crimes that Saddam never committed during his time in power.

Why are you talking about this conflict only in terms of how it affects American politics?

Because of the influence that it seems to have on posters on this BBS (and another blog that I sometimes visit).

At 8/25/13 06:09 PM, Fim wrote: People also need to understand that this is not like Iraq, (...) this is a atrocious situation where the Syrian government has been tearing the shit out of its own people (...) and now using chemical weapons.

Right, because the Iraqis under Saddam never tore the shit out of their own people, nor did they ever use chemical weapons. Except for that one time of course, when they killed 3,500 to 5,000 of their own people with mustard gas and nerve agents and the outside world was like 'meh'. Other than that, this is a completely different situation.

I find this so funny. I was here eight years ago when Bush was president and the Iraq war had just started and back then, you could draw a line between liberals and conservatives and you'd know that all the liberals were against the war and the conservatives all supported it. Now, Obama is president and i seems like the reverse is taking place: the liberals all want the West to enforce regime change and the conservatives all have reservations.

It's really sobering to see how support for a war just seems to depend on who's the current president. At least I was (and are) against both wars so I can look at myself in the mirror, bwah.

Does anyone here sometimes read the English Al-Jazeera webpage? I find them hilariously hypocritical, considering how they're the mouthpiece of the Qatari government. So you have opinion articles like this which are written by Communists, judging by the use of words like 'proletariat', while Indian wokers in Qatar live in utter squalor. Their English website has a 'human rights' page (their Arabic version doesn't, as human rights are already perfectly respected in the Arab-speaking world *ahem*), where, for example, they feature articles about asylum seekers in Australia 'languishing', while Qatar itself hosts a grand total of 50 refugees. And then you have them paying for Al Gore's TV Channel; a country earning ridiculous amounts of money by selling the carbon product oil funding a guy warning people about global warming.

They know that only leftists are interested in reading an English version of Al-Jazeera anyway so they adapt their message to them, which is funny because Qatar is almost medieval in its class differences.

So, yeah, BBC ftw.

I read them a lot; they're okay, especially in international affairs (although I'm not completely happ about their Syria coverage). In issues involving the UK they tend to be pro-British, but that's logical considering that they're funded by British taxpayers. Also, they're convincd multiculturalists (I can't remember which British poster on this forum said this, but I think he was right) so don't take any article mentioning racism or related issues seriously.

I'll try to respond to both of you with one post.

Let's move this from Manning to Snowden: do you two both believe that what the NSA did deserved to be exposed? Sure, it's not clearly clear that they broke the law. After all, going by this article, they were allowed to procure relevant data under the Patriot Act, but if the phone metadata of every single American already qualifies as relevant then you could wonder what would be irrelevant. And sure, even though they're not allowed to read an American citizen's mail or e-mail under the FISA Amendments Act they were able to guarantee with 51% certainty that the e-mails they read were foreign --- although I'm actually under the impression that it's this rule that was intentionally or semi-intentionally violated thousands of times. But does it need to be be crystal clear that they broke any rules for whistleblowing to make sense?

I mean, didn't they lie to Congress about this? But is that alright as well if it does not violate the US Consitution (not sure if it does)?

In short, what do you two think about the following statements:

- What the NSA (or the US Army in the case of Manning) did deserved to be exposed, if for nothing else than for voters in a democracy to be able to judge the actions of their democratically mandated institutions.
- The American security apparatus in fact does not believe that what they did deserved to be exposed, regardless of whether people think voters have a right to know, regardless of whether they followed the law or not and regardless of whether the whistleblower completely followed procedure.
- The American security apparatus would want to disincentivise any whistleblower to come forward, again regardless of whether said whistleblower actually played by the rules laid out to him.

And now the more controversial one:

- The American security apparatus actually has the power to screw people over big time. In the mild sense that could mean knowing about minor offences such as, I don't know, insurance fraud for not completely filling out a form correctly, that could be blown up to great proportions by a sympathetic (military?) court. In the not-so mild sense that could mean planting drugs in a person's home or child porn on a person's computer, or even orchestrating a car crash (although I'm not saying that that's certainly what happened with Hastings, just checking whether you think some gropus within the US security agencies have the power to do so).

I think it requires a lot of confidence in the system to say that every whistleblower should abide by procedure even though there's simply no guarantee that all the people that he's going to piss off will do the same. I'm not following the Rand Paul thing raised by Camaro --- sure Rand Paul can raise the issue in Cpongress but he cannot protect Manning if (planted) child porn is found on his computer.

I mean, Camaro is actively questioning Manning's and Snowden's motives but one could question the motives of the US government (including the court that convicted Manning) as well. Did they go hard on him because he did not play by the rules or simply because he was a whistleblower? And if this is a serious issue then what do you think future whistleblowers are going to do?

At 8/21/13 07:08 PM, orangebomb wrote: Don't do the crime if you aren't willing to do the time,

Did James Clapper 'do the time' for lying to Congress?

At 8/21/13 05:56 PM, Feoric wrote:

At 8/21/13 05:46 PM, lapis wrote: I wouldn't go to the UK either.

England isn't very nice for some reason.

It's the bad weather, makes people easy to irritate.

Just to be sure: I didn't mention Ecuador and Russia with the intention of making them look like free speech havens compared to the US. I'm just saying that by clamping down on Manning the US authorities are actually incentivising whistleblowers who may have some doubts about the integrity of the American judicial system to leave the country. And that's something to think about. That is, unless CIA operatives are as I'm typing this putting Polonium-210 in Snowden's spaghetti.

At 8/21/13 05:23 PM, Feoric wrote:

At 8/21/13 05:10 PM, lapis wrote: The main lesson for whistleblowers here is that if you're going to take on the US security agencies, you'd better be in Ecuador or Russia when you do it.

Oddly enough, if you're going to take on especially Russia's security agencies, you better be in the US when you do it.

I wouldn't go to the UK either.

At 8/21/13 04:50 PM, orangebomb wrote: I don't mind whistle blowing, as long as (...) it's done by legal means.

Maybe Manning could have contacted a Congressman, and by doins so he would have completely stayed on the good side of the law. Maybe then three women would have come forward and say they've been raped by Manning, and he he would have gone to jail anyway, where he'd have been charged with taking part in a riot and in the end would have spent 36 years in prison anyway.

I mean, you know that the adversaries of Manning and (especially) Snowden don't play by the rules, one of the revelations of the latter was specifically that they had broken the rules thousands of times. I'm really struggling to see why you believe that institutions (and by that I mean the whole US security apparatus) that don't care about violating the rights of millions of Americans would care even one bit about the rights of a whistleblower.

Besides, the Manning trial isn't going to stop anymore whistle blowers anymore than the death penalty in Texas would deter murderers.

The main lesson for whistleblowers here is that if you're going to take on the US security agencies, you'd better be in Ecuador or Russia when you do it.

It's funny how the 36 years that Manning got is almost exactly ten times the three years, seven months and about eight days that Calley spent under house arrest for having his men slaughter at least 347 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. Just to put things in perspective.

Another gem that I saw some user post in the comments section of a BBC article about this was: "when exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are ruled by criminals".

At 8/20/13 04:00 PM, Feoric wrote: Obama's foreign policy in Egypt has been awful

It was impossible for him to do anything right. If he had chosen the side of the brotherhood, people would have been chastising him for alienating important regional allies like Saudi Arabi, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, and for putting an Islamist regime in control of Egypt, the Sinai and the Suez Canal that ultimately sympathises more with the Hamas than with the US or its allies. Besides, as pointed out in that Daily Beast article, Saudi Arabia can easily compensate any loss in military funding that the Egyptian army may experience, so if US seriously wanted to 'flex muscle' they should have gone all the way, and in doing so they would have generated loads of criticism anyhow, brought a huge financial burden upon the US and emboldened Jihadist and ultraconservative groups that see any US influence in the region as a threat and an insult.

If he had chosen the side of the military, he would have alienated Qatar and Turkey, and people would have chastised him for emboldening Islamist movements across the region (including the Taliban) by sending a message to them that they will not be allowed to democratically gain any power anyway. It has been US policy for years to try to engage Islamist movements in the democratic process and this would have killed that. Lots of criticism this way as well.

He could have pushed harder for negotiations but ultimately, the brotherhood and the Egyptian military have nothing to talk about. The brothers say they have won democratcially, going by the rules that were set beforehand, and they are right. The military says that the brotherhood was dividing Egypt and that a majority of the populace wanted him ousted and they are also right. When there are no outcomes that please both sides, there can be no settlement and the only way to resolve the conflict is through blood. That's also exactly what we're witnessing now, and those 600 casualties of last Tuesday will later turn out to have only been the beginning.

Now he's trying to stay out of it as much as possible and people are criticising him also. He could have done anything or nothing and people would have lambasted his policies for being a failure. Let's not forget that.

At 8/18/13 05:26 PM, Feoric wrote:

At 8/18/13 05:08 PM, lapis wrote: By "shutting the Suez canal to US naval vessels" I meant that the Egyptians would threaten to intercept all US military ships that enter the canal, and to take them under fire using land-based missiles or artillery or aircraft should the US vessels resist being intercepted. Other nations need not care about that.

This would never happen. The Egyptian military would not allow this to happen and neither would the US or anyone else. There are more than enough Egyptian soldiers to secure the canal if there were ever any credible threat to it. Yes, other nations absolutely would care if US ships were targeted in the canal, you think this wouldn't disrupt the billions of dollars worth of trade that passes through there everyday? Not only that, this would be a violation of an international treaty which Egypt and the international community is bound to.

We're on two different wavelengths. I'm talking about the Egyptian military shutting the Suez canal to US naval vessels in response to US sanctions imposed upon it as a response to the bloodshed committed by the Egyptian military government. The Egyptian military would allow this to happen because they would be the ones doing it, there would be no trade lost because the US Navy doesn't typically transport merchandise and if the US imposes sanctions upon the Egyptian military government that would seriously threaten its existence then they may very well be prepared to waive or infringe upon the treaty.