If every speech which somehow, in some abstract sense, may harm, is forbidden, then you have free speech on the level of Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. This is because every speech against the actual government many somehow, in an abstract sense, harm the country. So, it will be forbidden. Complete nonsense. Feel free to quote the relevant evidence from those reports. I have read the indictment against the bots and found nothing. I have not heard any serious claim that further reports have added anything serious to the indictment, so I can leave this to you. And yet another cheap propaganda technique to suggest that I support slavery immediately follows. What I was aware of was that the liberals think and teach about the Civil War. Because of the evil sources did not hide this, but openly questioned this story with own arguments referring to facts on the ground. (At that time, I simply wanted to find out who is right, and so I asked those whose position was attacked by DiLorenzo if they have counterarguments. You had some, but in my opinion, at best sufficient for a draw, namely that slavery played a role, but not the decisive one and certainly not the only one. If you want to question this summary, do this in that old thread.) The aim of ad hominem defamations is to impress those poor souls who believe the mainstream, thus, those who believe that slavery was the only point of the Civil War and will never even read DiLorenzo because he is somehow evil, as explained by iceaura. Nonsense. I simply accepted what is claimed about the content. Namely that there is something about Russian attacks, like the 13 bots and the DNC hack theories, that there is no evidence for collusion, that there is something about obstruction of justice and something about money laundering and tax avoidance by Manafort and lies under oath by some people in the Trump environment. I have classified this as uninteresting inner policy issues and nonsense against Russia, based on my knowledge of the indictment of the 13 bots and what I have heard about the DNC hack. You have not mentioned or quoted anything more interesting to me. Of course, I will not accept the words in the form "as described by others" if these others are known as anti-Trump propagandists like you and Tiassa. So your descriptions will be, first of all, reformulated in a neutral form to understand what is really claimed. But this does not change the point that I base my assumptions what is inside on your claims, without questioning the content of your claims. LOL. There is nothing even in your claims about the content which would be able to threaten me. That Trump is an evil guy and should be impeached? Start the impeachment, I have no problem with this at all. I even wish you success. Ok, I also wish success to the Trump team, Trump as the US president is, last but not least, the best anti-American propaganda imaginable. (My relation to this is close to the Russian commentators about terrorist infights in Syria: "We wish success to both sides.") That Russia really did the DNC hack? So what, they should be praised for this even by the Dems. Last but not least, the evildoer who replaced Sanders by the only candidate able to lose against Trump stepped down and can no longer harm them. That Russian has tried to influence the US elections? No problem for me, even if this would have tried to harm the US population. The US meddling into elections everywhere is well-known and almost nobody denies it, thus, the US deserves such things by tit for tat. The reelection of Yeltsin, which has seriously harmed Russian people, and which was openly supported by the US, is sufficient for justifying even harmful meddling. So what could threaten me? You simply have failed up to now to tell me about anything which would be slightly interesting to read - that means, something which is somehow in conflict with what I think.
Ok. So what is it, that threatens you and the US Republicans? Nobody puts this much work into denial and willful refusal and so forth without a motive. Like this, for example: So why the denial? Why the silly argument (The US had it coming, so it didn't happen?) I share your opinion of US meddling and tit for tat vulnerability - but that is no reason to deny that it happened. Trump - like those dictators and fascistic autocrats put in power by Republican meddling in other countries - betrayed his country for personal gain. That is no problem for you, of course, especially since you can't see the consequences - but being no problem doesn't explain your denial of the events. So pick your own others - there are dozens, including Mueller himself. You can't, of course. You assign the identity of "anti-Trump propagandist" on the basis of the information presented, and then you reject the information based on the assigned identity of its source. So for you there are no "others", and no sources of information other than the Republican media feed. You have cut yourself off, as instructed, just like the rest of the Republican voting base. You didn't. You accepted only what was claimed about the content by known liars with a known agenda (Barr, Trump, Fox, Hannity, the Murdoch press, etc) and the Republican media feed. You rejected what was claimed about the content by everyone - everyone - else, including Mueller himself. And you absolutely refused to read the report - even the redacted version. And so did the Republican Party, voting base and all. The Mueller report will never impinge on their worldview, because they will never acknowledge what's in it. The rest of the country is going to have to handle the situation without Republican cooperation.
What Republicans don't understand is that in spite of what's promised, you're not getting any of it. It all ends up in the pockets of the rich and if we're lucky we get enough to eat. The American Dream, you have to be asleep to believe it.
Ask yourself this stupid question of why you have to invent a threat. The "denial" is your invention too. Ok, a "denial" is easily explained, for a true believer everybody else who refuses to follow his fantasies is in denial, always. I like to argue, and if it is easy to show that some Americans, in particular of the dangerous sort (supporters of globalist policies) are in denial of reality and invent fantasies about Russian meddling, this is an opportunity I will use without hesitation. Once one cannot believe your claims even if what is claimed is not even a problem, this further diminishes your remaining credibility. This is a nice description of your propaganda techniques, which I reject. A clear case of projection. I have not rejected any information because it comes from anti-Trumpers, I leave this for victims of ad hominems. I simply have to use standard techniques to identify the information contained in their propaganda. Such a standard technique is translation into neutral language. Such a translation means that I do not accept claims in the form "as described by others". Translation into neutral language is a general technique, you don't even have to classify somebody as a propagandist to do this. Simply many reliable texts remain unchanged, other reliable texts only lose satirical elements. No. I did not refuse any information about the content, and my refusal to read is in no way absolute - simply nobody has yet told me anything which would made this worth reading. Tell me a single interesting for me thing which is somehow nontrivial, and I will read the related part. I have a long enough list of more interesting readings. Sounds like claims that your country moves toward a civil war are not completely without a base.
So, let me get this straight: After all your shit about being scientific, and all your bawling about ad hominem and defamation, you went with willful misrepresentation? You're not even a joke. The thesis is that "libertarian anarchism" is an antisocial ouroboros: • More particularly: The missing information is what all gets cut off if the society accepts every arbitrary secession. The underlying principle creates, at best, an unstable checkerboard or patchwork effect as subgroups dissent and assert other paths. Antisocial ouroboros theses are, by definition, antisocial, and thereby no proper course for a society. [#533↑; boldface accent added] • That is, the principle devours itself. (See also #505: "Libertarian anarchism" is, by function, perpetual instability. One of the things that happens with anarchism is that any social contract must be established anew with each participant.) [ibid; boldface ccent added] That was just pathetic, Schmelzer. The peaceful split you refer to is not of masters and servants, but of subject peoples deciding what to do after a problematic government, and thus the nation, had fallen apart. Beyond that, you pretty much make the point for me. Make-believe; anything to drag out slavery. Yes, that's kind of how you do things, as if it doesn't really matter whether you have a clue or not. Really: A pretense of being clueless and overseas does not change the fact that Americans have endured this grift so damn many times, before. Crackpottery is crackpottery, even if outsourced or imported or what the hell ever. Here's how you justify the Confederacy: Argue that humans are imperfect, therefore nobody has the right to mess with slavery, and everybody, especially the slaves, owed it to the slavers to peacefully learn how to get over themselves. Y'know. Because that happens. Like abolishing slavery by threat from the monopoly on coercive force, sixty-six years after they could have, and despite a series of revolts. Like, y'know, Brazil. What was that you were saying? Oh, right, sixty-six years worth of slaves. Liberated later. In a peaceful way. Well, as long as we ignore the series of slave revolts that did occur. Sixty-six years worth of slaves after the colonial government collapsed. How many slaves alive in 1822 actually didn't live long enough to see the end in 1888? Oh, right, they're just ... useful slaves. Y'know. For the sake of whatever you're pushing. And how many entered slavery during that period? Doesn't really matter to you, does it, because, hey, at least you can pretend they serve your libertarian anarchism. You actually found a way to need slaves. And here we actually come back to your bawl about ad hom; it's the behavior, not the fact of the other person. Like you, that one hit his marks despite trying to present himself as clueless. And you bring us to an example of the point: Of course you found a way to need slaves; that's what happens when you try to justify the Confederacy. Those who have seen it so many times before aren't surprised. To the other, it's amazing how much effort you'll put into it. Although I admit, this was an innovative need for slaves. I think that's what strikes as funny. Most Americans don't pay attention to Brazil; your ambition got ahead of you. And then it circled 'round to devour you from behind. But that's just the thing, every argument justifying circumstances including the perpetuation of slavery inherently needs slaves.
Trump derangement syndrome has made idiots much easier to spot. Makes my life much more interesting since many in here when asked what element could hold the rest reply with "that's already been done"
I don't. I only have to observe that one must exist, to explain the bizarre contents of the Republican media feeds - which includes your posts, of course. Ignorance alone, although obviously a major factor, does not explain this level of stridency and hyperactive flailing. The contents of the Mueller report are not a fantasy of mine. You can't "translate" anything into neutral language without knowing the physical reality involved. That "standard technique" is not available to you. Says the guy who claims he has not rejected any information. We once again enter the realm of comedy. You have somehow convinced yourself that you can identify and evaluate propaganda without information about the reality involved. You can't. You just described - explicitly - one aspect of your continuing refusal of information about the contents (you "translated" it into "neutral language"), and you have refused to read the Mueller report. And if not, we don't. It's "not". So no worries - unless Trump is allowed to expand his current censorship program beyond the confines of the agencies directly under White House control. Meanwhile: There's nothing "abstract" about the Mueller report's documentations. - - - -
The reaction to my "This is a thesis that the right of secession is an antisocial ouroboros one." is an outcry as if I had done horrible things. And that's all that justifies that outcry? The only point being that I have omitted the "arbitrary"? That's, in fact, not even an omission, because if there is a right of secession, which is not restricted by any additional specification who has this right, it is automatically the right of arbitrary secession. Let's just compare how you handle what I wrote: Let's count the willful misrepresentations: 1.) I do not even try to justify the Confederacy. I have made clear many times that the discussion is only about which side is less evil. 2.) I do not claim that nobody has the right to mess with slavery. I claim only that one does not have a right to start a war to end slavery. Simply because starting a war, where people are murdered in great numbers, is even eviler than slavery. 3.) I have never questioned that the slaves have every imaginable right to fight for their freedom. Here it is not even clear what you could have used to misinterpret to invent such nonsense. (Maybe an extremely primitive position that whenever something is somewhere wrong, the US has the right to intervene with its military power? Thus, if I deny that the North has this right to start a war because of slavery, I would have to think that everything is ok with slavery, and therefore I should think that even the slaves have to accept slavery? Sounds too primitive. But I don't see anything better.) Interesting but not clear enough. By referring to the separations of Nagorny Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhasia, Crimea, and Pridnestrowje, do I make a point for you? This would be a surprise. It is a point for me, given that these have been wars, with a lot of victims, which would have been unnecessary if these regions would have had a right to separate. Otherwise, please recognize that if I see arguments about the content, and they are correct, then I have no problem accepting them. Secessions are problematic, they lead to conflicts. Today they often lead to wars, which is the horror itself - and even if secession is prevented, what follows is far from ideal because the conflict remains, and the losers will consider themselves as suppressed by the winners. With the right of secession, such wars could be prevented, but the secession itself would remain harmful anyway. You, for example, have a point mentioning that leaving the Confederation alone would have extended slavery for some sixty-six years and also would have caused death by slave revolts. But then your argumentation goes completely off: Just to explain to you what I really need: Once I propose ethical rules which are actually not accepted by the existing societies, I recognize that such proposals may have unwanted, unexpected dangerous consequences. If I would be a Marxist, I would throw away thinking about them, we have to destroy the bourgeois state now, and the future generations of proletarians will find out what to do after this. The results of this approach are well-known. I care about such possible side effects. What is the appropriate way to care? Imagine that those rules will be applied in circumstances where one would think that something else should be done. Namely, that a foreign territory should be attacked even if it did not even plan to attack you, simply because they do horrible things there. Use the most horrible things imaginable for this purpose, and then evaluate the result. If your proposal has a problem, it will probably show up in such thought experiments. In this case, think about how to modify your rules in such a way that the result in that situation becomes acceptable. I'm thinking about the rules of territorial sovereignty. This is because everybody wants to be safe from foreign meddling into what is done in their own community with their own support. (There are only a few exceptions, the most important one is a split inside the community so that some part prefers foreign intervention in their favor. To solve this issue, I care about the right of peaceful separation.) Once one wants territorial sovereignty for oneself, one has to give it others too. (With the exception of the "exceptional nation", of course, which thinks it can rob everybody without being punished for this.) And you have to give it even to those who do evil things on their territory because one does not want to be invaded by others who think you are doing evil things on your territory. Should this right be made almost absolute, forbidding foreign military powers any aggression, even if evil things are done inside? Here, the US Civil War vs. Brasil gives an interesting example. One has to compare the victims of the Civil War with the victims of the Brasilian way to solve the problem of slavery. If the horrors of the Brazilian way would be much greater than those of the Civil War, then I would have a problem defending a right of secession and of territorial sovereignty even of those who do not accept libertarian principles. If not, find something else. Once this method leads to nonsensical results (like my being threatened by a report which is simply uninteresting for me) you would better think about what leads to such nonsense in your thinking. The ability to identify and evaluate propaganda is certainly not a yes-no question. Of course, information about reality is very helpful. But if you already have it, there would be no point reading the propaganda source. Even propaganda texts of the other side are very helpful. But some aspects of identification can be done even without such help. You don't know them, I have learned them in childhood where only communist propaganda was available for me. LOL. The very point of translation into neutral language is that the information destroyed is minimal - it consists only of the emotions which the propaganda source wants to raise, thus, it is not information about the reality described. The information which is lost in such a translation is useful only for one other thing - the identification of the ideological prejudices of the source. In this sense, it is only ad hominem information which is removed. But, of course, given that for you ad hominem is the main content of your argumentation, such a translation may indeed completely destroy all the "information" you have given. Learn to read. (Read the context of the argumentation where "abstract" was used, try to understand about which of your claims the argument was made, and recognize that this has nothing to do with a claim that the Mueller report is somehow abstract or so.
Victims of Republican media feeds never know what "ad hominem" means. It's almost a field mark of the bubble-dweller. (There is no such thing as "ad hominem content" of an argument, or "ad hominem information". An ad hominem argument is an invalid form of argument, and I never use it). Your intentions - your "points" - don't matter. You can't identify propaganda, and you can't identify neutral language, with no information about the physical reality involved. You will instead reject information, and adopt propaganda language as informative (recent examples: "Russiagate" in that silly video, "free speech" for the Russian troll operation). You have. Explicitly. And you did that immediately after identifying the anti-Trumpers by the information they presented. Your circles are not wide. You don't have it. And so you are unable to identify "propaganda" in the first place, let alone its source, or what would be a "neutral" translation. (We have you on record as not even knowing where your own posted language and "arguments" come from). You did try to justify the Confederacy. And in doing so, you chose the more evil side by far - plantation slaveowners launching war to prevent their slaves from escaping their ownership. 1) Slaves have a right to start a war to end their slavery. They also have a right to seek and accept help in fighting that war. That's according to you, justifying Russian military aggression in Syria and Ukraine. But not even that happened - instead: 2) The Confederate slaveowners started the Civil War to preserve slavery. You took their side - the side of war and slavery both. Such as slaves. You keep forgetting about the slaves, denied their territorial sovereignty by brutal force and even - in this case - outright war launched by their owners. For that, one would need information - you don't have any. You don't even know who started the American Civil War, or why they started it. My guess is you have no real idea when, where, or how slavery was "ended" in Brazil, or why no formal "war" was involved (the physical situation was much different from the US). The very first country in the world to actually end plantation or industrial slavery - the chattel slavery created by the capitalist entrepreneurs of the colonial age - was Haiti. Compare that with Brazil - which still has de facto slavery, on its frontiers. The context was your attempt to blow off the Mueller documentation of Russian troll crimes by pretending it was based on an abstract prohibition of any speech which might harm the government. That was bullshit, and I noted the fact. I did not bother, at the time, to remark that it was bullshit you got from the corporate US authoritarian rightwing media feed, the Republican Party line of crap you mistake for "neutral language", complete with the "If + bs" rhetorical tactic so familiar from the wingnut feeds - allow me to fill in that detail now. You are a parrot, essentially. Which is where the threat and fear aspect come in: whatever is in that Mueller report, you and your Republican handlers are going to extraordinary lengths to keep people from reading it. The stridency, the repetition, the threats, the personal attacks, the slander, the levels of ludicrousness you guys are reaching - it looks like panic. It supposedly exonerates Trump, remember? Tell me why we shouldn't take this scene you are creating for what it looks like.
I had to delete a lot of nonsense beginning with "You" which was never about me but about some fantasy strawman iceaura created for own propaganda. Then follows a triviality which I have never questioned: Then follows a repetition of an own claim which has been questioned, without any new evidence, as if it is now an accepted fact in this discussion: Then, again, several "You" (as wrong as usual) had to be disposed of. But one joke I could not resist to copy: LOL, now I not only see no reason to read it myself but try to keep other people from reading it. Propaganda fantasy going insane. In reality, I try hard (without success) to motivate iceaura to present something interesting from that report, something that I (as well as other potential readers) would find it interesting to read.
I didn't claim you had a reason. I didn't even claim you knew what you were doing. I simply referred to your visible behavior, your posting, here on this forum. It's characteristically, even stereotypically, fear-driven. You have devoted an extraordinary amount of effort to demanding that others somehow persuade or cajole you to read the report you are posting about continually - while refusing to read it yourself, supporting all Republican attempts to withhold, redact, and misrepresent it, and posting obviously false claims about its content that are largely verbatim parrotings of the Republican Party line. It was posted as a fact of the physical and historical record. No claim was made that you and your Republican media feeders "accepted" this fact. On the contrary - the opposite claim has been made, repeatedly. The claim here is and has always been that you do not accept that fact. You refuse to accept that fact. You post rank idiocy about tariffs and taxes motivating soldiers, you post silly misrepresentations of the motives of people who were clear and explicit about their motives (in short and easily comprehended written documents presented to you as links etc), and you continue to post anything else fed you by Republican media pros, anything at all, rather than accept that fact. And that pattern continues with regard to the Mueller report - you will post anything, argue anything, claim anything, as long as it allows you to make Republican Party line assertions about the Mueller report without actually knowing what's in it. That's the Republican agenda - nobody reads the Mueller report, unredacted and entire. Not even the people Constitutionally mandated to to read it, people Constitutionally and legally responsible for overseeing the executive branch behavior it specifically addresses. For some reason, that report is off limits to them - and to all but Trump loyalists - at any cost, any price in media effort and public credibility and legal risk and personal reputation.
Just thoughts and questions that have been bugging me about your attitude... Do you think that inter government head, corruption investigations are possible in Russia? Do you think that Putin would ever have to face a Mueller inquiry? Do you think that the resultant media flak would be presented in the Russian media with out serious censorship? === Do you feel a President should be above the law as appears to be the case in Russia? I feel you don't appreciate that the USA is prepared to air it's dirty laundry at such a high level and that it is admirable that they are capable of doing so. Perhaps you feel that public scrutiny of those in powerful positions is unnecessary to the promotion of a fair and just society? ==== The current situation is that the USA congress is pushing back against the very propaganda that you complain so often about, yet you seem to consider it a sign of systemic weakness? Why?
That would be even worse. Namely, it would be completely totalitarian - people will be punished if what they do, for whatever reasons, somehow harms the world revolution - even if they don't know that they were doing such evil things. A fear you invented yourself. In reality, it does not exist, and therefore is unable to drive me. In a discussion where this "fact" has been questioned by me. This is the classical Goebbels tactic: Repeat it often enough as if it is a fact, and no evidence is necessary. It follows that you don't even know elementary rules of decent behavior. If one knows that the other side does not accept this "fact", one handles it in the discussion not as a fact, but a thesis under question, and mentions it only if one wants to present further arguments. And, first of all, decent behavior starts with not naming it "fact" once the other side does not believe this. Except in phrases where you describe it as your own belief. Certainly not. Whatever I have written here was clear about that I have not read it, and know only what some others have told about the content. For me, this looks like a description of the state of mind of a conspiracy theory freak who posts conspiracy theories where the Reps play the evil role. Replace "Rep" with "Jew" and your texts would be classical anti-semitic texts. Even worse, once even people who clearly are not Reps, do not support them at all (considering them as less evil does not count as support, and even this "less evil" holds only for Trump vs. Clinton, not for Reps vs. Dems), are presented as Rep supporters.
Top level arrests for corruption are not only possible but even common. Is the level of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Ulyukaev high enough? Some Russian analog of it? I doubt, there would be no base, but in principle, this would be possible. Mueller himself, or whatever US police, will not reach Putin. The US would have to win a war to reach this, like against Serbia to get Milosevic. You can find in the Russian media all the interviews of Putin made by Western media, so if Mueller simply makes an interview with Putin, why not? I do not think so, and I think it appears so only to victims of anti-Russian propaganda. I do not appreciate it because I don't think it is true. The whole Russiagate is simply fighting for power, an attempt of a coup using legal means. Collusion with foreign powers is nothing the Dems would care about, they do it themselves with Israel all the time (and once the Reps do this too, this is not a problem at all), and the collusion between Clinton and Ukraine may even hit back at her. Scrutiny of those in powerful positions is necessary, and this is a position Putin supports too. Do you know what was Navalny doing when he became (from a Nazi who compared Muslims with insects he would kill) a fighter against corruption? He used a new law which required to put all government contracts as well as the tender for them into the public domain and tried to find there some evidence of corruption. Because I see the media lies and propaganda have even increased, up to levels unimaginable even under Obama. In particular the anti-Russian ones. Say, the Russians expect that in the next Syrian fake gas attack (which will come in short time during the Idlib operation) they will blame not Assad, but Russia directly. I hope you are not that clueless that you think that those media campaigns against "fake news" are really directed against fake news. As long as they are against Trump, they are the simply the fake news from the other side. Internationally, their aim is to defend the fake news of the mass media against criticism from other states and the internet, and are simply one more propaganda source.
I see that you have an issue with what you refer to as propaganda. Let me ask you the following: Is it propaganda that: The Congress and the Executive branches of the USA Government are supposed to be more or less equal in authority? (constitutionally) That the Mueller report, a report into the corruption of the Executive, has only been presented in severely redacted form to Congress even after repeated demands for the unredacted version by that potentially corrupted administration. That Trump has prevented key administration personnel from bearing witness to congress. That Mueller has publicly and formally complained of misrepresentation by the DOJ, who's main function is to enforce the law and defend the interests of the USA. That Trump has refused to work with Congress whilst they investigate him for possible corruption. Are the above five points propaganda to you? Or are they facts that can be reasonably relied upon... Which ones are false?
Quite obviously, some of the sources you consider as trustworthy I consider as propaganda. But this is quite irrelevant here, simply because you seem to care about questions I don't care about at all: These are all inner policy questions. How many time I have to explain that they are not interesting for me, I care only about US foreign policy. Even if they start to kill each other, as long as they don't invade other countries that's their own problem. They have created too many civil wars all over the planet that they would deserve some of their main product of export too. So why do you ask me questions about things which I have said many times are out of my interests?
I would have thought that obvious, as Trump IS foreign policy. And it is Trump who is being investigated for potential corruption. And we are having a discussion in this thread devoted to Trumps potential corruption and that includes all his foreign policy decisions, including sanctions against Russia and a trade war with China that may ultimately benefit Putins Russia at the significant cost to the USA.
But mostly i felt it necessary to emphasise that there are some indesputable facts that you appear to be claiming as propaganda or fake.
I have not made claims about your questions, and had not planned to make such claims. If these questions would have been of interest for me, I would have cared to read that report. No. A successful impeachment would have side effects for foreign policy too, but is not the probable outcome of what the Dems actually do (at least this is what imho reliable people think about this). And in itself, the actual discussion is afaiu mainly about Trump's possible obstruction of justice, thus, is purely inner politics. Putin is not a zero-sum thinker so that he would certainly not tell Trump to start an economic war with China. He would prefer if everybody cares only about their own country.
