WOW the number of people in this thread immediately jumping to the accusers being "false" and deserving jail. Because no actual sexual predator ever got away with it in court...
(Sex crimes are extraordinarily difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt because the actions are taken in private without a lot of physical evidence. Which sexual predators rely on to get away with their crimes, by the way.)
Perhaps we should review the sheer volume of young men from all over the US & UK reporting that Spacey was at best inappropriate with them. One of the youngest being 14 years old:
Yeah this whole thing isn't simple. Even if he's cleared of charges, these allegations are old and that makes them hard to prove or disprove.
Further, the quantity is concerning. Maybe he's just prolifically sexual but my gut can't really get passed how many accusations there are over such a long span of time. Even if innocent, still creepy is my opinion.
And also not admissible in a criminal court. That's part of the problem. If you look at the big picture, it's obvious he did it, but it's not as easy to prove it in criminal court.
Is it really obvious that he did something, or is it obvious that he’s another gay man being attacked for daring to publicly admit that he’s gay? Sure there’s a lot of allegations, but many of them were dropped by the accusers, and as the article points out there was a huge rush of “me too” allegations brought out against many people at the same time because it was the trending get-rich-quick scheme. Even in Spacey’s case, why did most of these allegations not come out until he admitted he was gay?
IMHO if Spacey is actually guilty of these crimes, he’s going to be blackballed by all the studios and won’t ever be seen on the screen again. Although the courts didn’t prove him guilty, the studios know who is doing what, and in today’s market any further allegations will cost them money.
Even in Spacey’s case, why did most of these allegations not come out until he admitted he was gay?
I think it went the other way around, didn’t it? At least the first accusations came out, and he used the occasion to say “I didn’t do that! But now that I’m talking about this stuff, by the way I’m gay.”
It wasn’t a great look, because it came across that he tried to deflect the accusations by coming out as gay.
True enough, and he caught hell for the timing of that announcement. There’s also the issue of there just being such a different culture of what’s “acceptable” in Hollywood. I think it’s great that it finally came to light and those activities were at least tempered somewhat, but I also remember reading a lot of claims a decade ago and just thinking to myself that this is something you’re claiming ‘everyone’ in Hollywood is doing, but you chose to specifically target this one actor? The “me too” train was real, and a lot of people were going after big name actors, so I got burnt out on the whole thing and just stopped paying any attention to it.
In general, any multimillionaire that gets off of a serious charge doesn’t mean they’re innocent.
Don’t forget the flip-side of that - the prisons are full of poor people who do not deserve to be there. It’s almost as if the system was designed to be like this…
Also, being a multimillionaire puts a target on your back. I’ll never forget the story about a man who already had a couple of million winning a huge lottery and how lawsuits, among other ever worse things, destroyed his life.
Indeed. In a thread a couple of days back on a different (though related) subject I was accused of being a rape apologist because I was insistent on the presumption of innocence and the beyond-reasonable-doubt standards that need to be overcome when accusations like this are slung. But it works the same in the other direction too - we can't assume that an accuser is guilty of fraud or libel or filing false reports or whatever just because they failed to prove their case.
It would not be good for justice if these situations ended up being "now that the accusation has been made someone is going to go to jail, either the accused or the accuser." The Thunderdome is not a good model to emulate.
accused of being a rape apologist because I was insistent on the presumption of innocence
Good thing to insist on, but be prudent. Keep in mind that, at least on reddit, there’s a tendency for every thread about rape to become a thread about false accusations. I wasn’t there, but in general, sometimes people object not to the presumption of innocence but to people bringing it up.
I refuse to believe you're actually this stupid. There's a universe of difference between "it didn't happen" and "it couldn't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in court" and you know there is.
Unless you really think OJ didn't murder his wife either
I refuse to believe you’re actually this stupid. You’re throwing these statements as if you have first hand experience of knowing these things happened. Like were you there in person when Spacey was assaulting these people or were you a witness when OJ killed his wife? You don’t wanna believe the witnesses, you don’t wanna believe the jury, you don’t don’t wanna believe in the legal systems (cops/courts and whatever have you). But you believe in some people accusing someone of something. EVEN if they cleared themselves of these accusations.
Are you actually this ignorant to not know that all people are all not down to earth and sometimes people can and do crazy shit. Why do you think there’s zero percent chance that these people were bad, but Kevin Spacey is 100 percent bad without a shadow of a doubt for seemingly just being rich?
“Sooner or later this will end in agreement,” was Putin’s message, arguing that Nato was coming to realise that defeating Russia on the battlefield would be impossible.
Does Putin realize that NATO is effectively fighting Russia with both arms tied behind it’s back right now? We’re funding Ukraine (who are doing a phenomenal job, fwiw), but we’re not even giving them the top of the line hardware. If the US actually got involved, Russia would pretty much instantly lose any glimmer of air superiority they have, and Ukraine could advance all the way to Moscow under NATO air cover. Like, the only reason Russia still exists is because NATO hasn’t even tried to fight Russia on the battlefield yet.
And we’re learning that a teenager with a drone can be hilariously effective against modern weapons.
So is Russia. Except Russia is learning how to combat the kids with drones too. They’re gaining invaluable battlefield experience that NATO troops simply aren’t.
Reports vary from side to side, from showing that Russians are curb stomping Ukraine to Ukraine is holding it’s own. So, sure, NATO tossing the kid gloves to Ukraine and putting up a fight is comforting, but it isn’t the whole picture. Russia wins a war of attrition. NATO is made up of democracies and war fatigue sets in fast when it’s someone else’s war. Russia is a de facto fascist dictatorship with deep oil pockets. The only thing that turns their troops around is the head of state dying, or a massive coup. Reports of ether being imminent seem to be rather premature.
How do you feel about Russia’s deep oil pockets now that Ukraine is going after their refineries and porta? Do you think Russia can continue to advance or hold ground while also defending large swaths of the western part of Russia? Genuinely curious
They’re gaining invaluable battlefield experience that NATO troops simply aren’t.
Oh, yes they are. Ukraine is in close contact with NATO countries and sharing intel. NATO countries are also buying drones in bulk right now. And developing ones that Russia will not see until they try to pick a fight with NATO.
If the US actually got involved air superiority would be the least of our worries. The minute any major NATO nation gets properly involved, the war goes nuclear very soon after
There are people over Putin too. No ruler can rule alone and without consent, his rich oligarch buddies don’t want to cruise their yachts during nuclear winter.
Mutually assured destruction is pretty much why no one will ever actually go through with that if their target also has nukes or is protected by a country that has them. It’s one of the major reasons no country that has nukes wants to disarm.
You realize Muammar Gaddafi only died 12 years ago and Russia only invaded Ukraine two years ago? Nuclear weapon programs take at least that long to develop. Ukraine and Libya had programs (Ukraine actually had weapons) and abandoned them, much to their demise. If they kept their programs, they wouldn’t have had these problems.
The key word in my comment is “will.” That’s a prediction. You can ping me in 25 years to see if this works out. In the mean time, people are taking this prediction seriously (it isn’t only my prediction) when discussing global politics.
No worries. Libya did give up its nuclear program as well, but it was because all the countries that invaded Afghanistan in 2001 said, “do it or you’re next.”
They should have thought of that before co-signing the Budapest accords. At least two NATO countries are already involved.
The last time Russian units engaged Americans in combat they were so outmatched that the Russian chain of command disavowed their own guys and pretended not to know them. Nuclear conflagration would be a much better death by comparison.
If the nuke comes out, it won’t make an ounce of a difference who has more of them: if only each side can manage to land a small handful, everyone is equally and utterly fucked.
This principle alone is why NATO has not engaged Russia more directly.
I wonder if people forgot, or maybe gen Z and millenials never really know how bad nuclear weapons are. Even a regional nuclear exchange would probably lead to a nuclear winter and then a nuclear summer, completely fucking the climate. As long as we have them, it’s inevitable that we’ll eventually use them. Just the law of large numbers / Murphey’s law. The wars climate change will cause will make that even more likely. But hey, lets keep playing stupid games.
I feel like I’m through the fucking looking glass. Trump has called for violence on many individuals/groups, led a goddamn insurrection in which people died, and will certainly be responsible for more bloodshed elected or not, but we’re supposed to play this stupid as decency game because he was shot? I lost all respect for Jack Black today. Must be nice to afford this decency bullshit. He won’t be put in a camp if these fascists succeed.
I feel like it’s just more of that corporate fence sitting. It’s just extra strange and off putting when it’s coming an individual versus your average soulless company.
We feel like we have relationships with entertainers, and most of the time we feel they represent - well, something other than corporate fence sitting. Being reminded they’re a product more than a person really sucks the air out of the room.
You don’t have to elaborate or draw ever finer distinctions in search of a meaningful counter-argument. I reject your premise as not merely untrue, but unhelpful.
Not just their backs, but their audience as well. I wouldn’t put it past one of the crazies to go on a mass shooting spree and kill a bunch of bystanders who are just there enjoying “Fuck Her Gently”.
You lost all respect for Jack Black because his career was worth more to him than one extremely shortsighted comment that he didn’t even choose to make himself?
Your point is apparently that anyone who doesn’t stand proudly by “good” assassinations is a piece of shit?
Trump getting shot has really shined a light onto the Lemmy audience. For fucks sake within 20 minutes every other comment written about it was a stupid conspiracy theory about it.
Now people are saying shit like you did and getting upvoted for it. I guess I won’t be here much longer.
Well said. Jack Black is the fun guy making fun music. He’s obviously not pro-Trump but he’s a professional - I don’t blame him for not wanting to be associated with comments like that for the time being.
I’m a little disappointed with the phrasing of the announcement but there’s unfortunately a high chance Trump will be president and he’s pretty outspoken about getting rid of his critics.
people who won’t stand for their convictions is why the Democrats can’t get shit done. he believes it, just doesn’t want to lose $ saying it out loud. it’s ALWAYS money.
trump deserves it, he wishes violence and death on many people, bummer that someone should make him eat his words.
This isn't anything new. There's a whole lot of people on the Fediverse who throw the word Fascist around willy nilly but who will happily make use of Fascist rethoric in regards to those who they see as political enemies.
They seem to think that the bad thing about Fascism isn't the authoritarianism, political violence, censorship, etc, but the fact it's a "right wing" government behind those - those would all be perfectly justifiable means to an end in the name of a left wing movement.
I see this happening more in american politics than over here, and I think it's in part a lack of knowledge of history, but also never having had an actual fascist regime in the country's recent history. My parents were tortured by the political police. I have a bunch of family who lived under an actual Fascist regime, and colleagues from other countries with a recent history similar to mine, and I notice that people in general, even in the far left, are way more careful about how they use the word Fascist. American internet "leftists" - which I put in quotes because many don't seem to actually hold any left wing views - love LARPing about living under fascism and that somehow excusing every thing they claim Fascism is bad for - against their political enemies.
There was a phrase tossed around by some “leftists” in opposition to the terrible clusterfuck that was gamergate back in the early 2010s. Sometime around then at least.
“No bad tactics, only bad targets”
Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of people in the world lately who believe it.
Exactly. This wasn’t an attempt on your run of the mill republican shitbag. This man is a real fucking threat and so are all of his supporters/followers.
Ah so if they have no income or anything else to lose, they’ll talk mad shit about assassinating a person. Yeah I guess that makes sense. Having absolutely fuck all to lose tends to lead to shit talk
if this were the case, it would have happened sooner. people are not in the best place over the last few years, living literally paycheck to paycheck. I’d bet stats would show higher suicide rates recently than before.
You all somehow are missing the point that an anonymous commenter saying shit isn’t significant compared with a person losing future work for years. Yes JB is a millionaire but he surely still has the right to work and it would be absolutely fucking moronic to give that up to stand behind something any media company wants plenty of distance from. What the fuck would it prove anyway? “We should all want terrible people dead. Hey in fact let’s all openly talk about that all the time too. Don’t agree? Fuuuuck youuu!!” Stupid.
Internet users really seem insulated from reality sometimes. It’s sad.
lol because we expect people to choose real world stances and fight issues rather than “well if I say I don’t like a bad person, I may lose money over it, so I wont stand for basic human rights and morals because it may hurt my wallet”. jack black is a pussy after throwing his partner under the bus.
The point of my comment was to say you dont have a plan either. People are rightfully pissed. Project 2025 is the end of Democracy. If you wanna get upset at people for doing literally anything thats on you.
In one or a hundred years it will still be bizarre to think that standing up for political violence is useful on any level. It doesn’t matter if you want trump dead. It’s the fact you think “standing up” for it changes anything an iota for the better
Standing up? As opposed to what? Supporting the system that birthed a class of corrupt officials in a little over one hundred years? Or just letting it flatten me and my family?
This is real. Real shit happens. If you are the one dialing for violence, and you’ve been stirring that shit up for years, dont be surprised when violence comes out the oven. Its about time people got mad. Its about time we said fuck you. You can’t do that. You can’t hide history from us. You can’t ban books. You can’t take away the one thing a fucking society is supposed to do for us. Its about damn time.
You’re one of those people on the Internet who has no idea what’s being said, goes on an irrelevant condescending tangent, and somehow has no idea that’s what’s happened. Not my issue
I think the shitty thing is that for someone who was supposedly “blindsided” by what Gass said, he was chuckling at it.
This is either Jack Black throwing his bandmate under the bus because he otherwise would have been pulled from future movie projects, or they’ve received more than enough hateful comments and death threats from Trump supporters that they’ve been spooked into cancelling the tour for safety reasons.
This is a strange take to me. Nervous laughter is, famously, a thing. You can simultaneously be surprised by something that was said, not actually support it, but still laugh. Especially when you’re in the middle of a show, literally on a stage, in front of thousands of people.
To play devils advocate, a comment like that has the potential to put you in the crosshairs of one of these nut jobs the FBI/DHS has told everyone to be on the look out for. There was a large uptick in these domestic terrorist groups calling for retaliation (even though the guy was a Republican), but everyone on the Right has intentionally not mentioned his political affiliation and just said things about the “radical left” just pouring gas on the fire.
That’s a fair take. I’ve been very frustrated with the respectability politics this week and it might be a bit unfair to him, as he isn’t a political figure, but an entertainer who didn’t initially choose to say anything. I can’t say I’d throw my boy under the bus like that, but I’m not him.
I don’t take calls against political violence as throwing anyone under the bus. He said he was “blindsided”, which I take to mean he didn’t expect him to say what he said. He also:
did not agree with more violence (a good take when it comes to democracy)
recognized Kyle put the whole crew at risk if the tour continued - as this would for sure make it to front page of every right wing hate filled cesspool
I think Kyle said it as more of a joke than serious, but when you don’t know who is in the cult and who isn’t when your looking out at a sea of people at a concert it sounds like Jack made the right call. Getting on a soapbox and “backing” Kyle would would just further put them and their crew in danger.
A lot farther down the line than this clown show situation at least. We don’t have roaming bands of conservatives disappearing people in the night, anything close to coordinated attacks, or even anything happening yet that remotely resembles targeted violence happening at rising rates.
The US has weathered worse storms than this. Germany recovered. At horrendous loss of life, but it did.
If you’re aware and worried, then now is the time to prepare. Save up money, take a gun safety class, and get one. Get hours in at the range shooting to build your aim and muscle memory. Make sure your emergency bag is well stocked, and you have discussed your emergency plan with your family. Be ready if/when the time comes, or get the hell out of dodge.
Don’t fucking rush its arrival. Don’t get yourself put on a fucking list of early targets by saying dumb shit online.
Don’t be the kind of person yelling into the void for someone else to kick off the bloodshed while you sit around and panic spiral. Prepare motherfucker, and hope you never need to use it.
What an absolutely insane thing to say. At least 70 million people did not, in fact, recover. And that’s just the death toll. The collective generational trauma inflicted by the Nazis has probably affected lives in the order of the high millions or low billions. We are still feeling its impact today. There is a genocide happening right now that is, in part, being enabled by what the Nazis did.
That’s like saying climate change isn’t a problem because the planet will survive. Unbelievably unhinged way to talk about actual human lives.
My whole point of bringing up Germany is that even if things get worse than people are worrying they will, there is still hope and all is not lost. You’re absolutely right that it was quite possibly the most horrific event in human history.
Well, to be fair, I think that is up to each person to perform their own risk assessment. Some people have no fear, a death wish, or just willing to “die for the cause”. I don’t think we should be shitting on performers because they feel responsible for all of the many lives around them, and don’t want to make that choice for all of them. That is something the Right does/wants to do. But I think voting against fascism will prove to be the easiest way, and will have the greatest impact come November. Getting yourself or someone else killed by people that are unwell and armed will just be one less vote against fascism come November.
That’s… pretty fair. It’s easy to say things online, but Gass just made things very hard for concert security. How hard would it be for a right winger to sneak a gun into a concert and get close to the stage?
Basically this. Even if they wanted to continue the tour, Gass just massively increased the chance of another mass shooting by some nut job out to get revenge. If that had really happened, it would’ve completely sunk everyone involved and people would be claiming that they were the ones that invited the catastrophe.
Sincerely I am baffled at the take most comments have on this… Does this mean that because trump is a fucking fascist piece of shit that calls for violence against anyone he doesn’t like we have the right to call for violence against him? Just because trump is a disgusting waste of biological matter that rapes kids do we have the right to rape his kids? What the fuck is with all these comments calling coward to jack black for pointing out how out of place is such a thing to say… It’s a joke that I could do, in a group of close friends, that I know how they will take it. I’m pretty sure jack black would have found it funny in private. But in the middle of a show? Do we really need to remind people that calling for violence is not OK? Yeah we could take his comment as a joke… But what if some people in the audience are unhinged enough to take it seriously? The comment was definitely out of place. Freedom of speech has limits, and his comment is very much crossing the limit.
Look, I’m not going to lie, if I hear trump drops dead randomly tomorrow I wouldn’t feel particularly sad (or at all) but I wouldn’t ask for him to be assassinated or call for terrorism against republicans no matter how wrong I think they are and how dangerous they can be. What the fuck… there’s so many people here hoping for a fucking asshole to be assassinated it’s kinda scary even. That’s not the solution against trump or republicans…
I guess we’ll see how you feel when trumps supreme court sanctioned death squads of deputized gravy seals are murdering and raping in your neighborhood.
Don’t use fallacies to defend violence. Killing trump is not the only way to avoid that from happening. Becoming a terrorist and promoting violence against a political group contrary to your political opinion is not OK no matter how dangerous that group is. You are using the same discussion techniques that fucking maga asshats use. Seriously you don’t see the issue on the way you are defending the idea that assassinating a political opponent is the only way to defeat that opponent?
You are defending the republican gun nutjob that went to shoot trump and accidentally killed someone else? You are saying his decision making was the kind of behaviour to glorify? The same kind of nut job that will happily join in the death squads you talk about? What the fuck, how does your brain work? How can you not see the hypocrisy of what you are saying…
Of course that’s assuming a sincere take and not just some piece of shit bot or account made to increase violence hatred and division.
How about we consider it self-defense and get on with it then? Trump has tried to end democracy once before, January 6th to be exact. Wasn’t justice supposed to prevail or something? No? It hasn’t yet? It likely never will? The only way to protect myself going forward then is to…? You tell us Mr. Violence is never the option, since the courts don’t work, and voting is soon to not matter.
And your proposal is that justice should prevail by a public mass shooting to kill the orange turd?
So your thinking is that because trump tried to end democracy, now you have the right to kill him?
The only way to defend yourself is with guns and killing those who attack you? I wonder what group of people keep proposing that…
People like you, already defeated months before the election, saying that voting doesn’t matter, have a lot to do with the end of democracy. Go vote, make it matter.
Shit’s real fucked, you have in the states a candidate for presidency instead of being in prison like he should. And the problem is that no one has killed him yet? No wonder that justice won’t work…
Either you are just trying to help the orange shit posting this kind of defeatist comment on purpose or you are just as bad as a republican that keeps saying those who oppose him should be killed.
How many lives do you think Trump will destroy? If the answer isn’t “a lot”, you haven’t been paying attention. His supreme court justices from his last term have already started racking up one hell of a body count.
Would you object to police officers gunning down a mass shooter rather than allow them to continue taking innocent lives? How sacred is a single life against the lives of their many potential and actual victims?
From a purely ethical standpoint, it’s hard to argue that killing fascists is anything other than a net moral good. At the end of the day, it’s taking one life to save many, something that we accept as an unfortunate moral necessity all the time. Obviously, we prefer to exhaust other options first, but ultimately we still accept the use of violence to protect the innocent when strictly necessary.
(I am, of course, speaking purely in terms of ethical hypotheticals here)
But you are talking about a completely different thing. Here’s what it boils down to:
Obviously, we prefer to exhaust other options first
Does it look like that? Not really… Not when people are cheering for some asshole to be assassinated. This is not about the value of one life, this is not about the use of violence of armed forces to try and save others, this is not about the lives that trump would destroy. This is about people cheering for a murder, this is about a public figure inciting violence publicly… Did you notice the reaction of someone like Biden or Sanders (the two examples I know of, surely there are others)? immediately rejecting the actions of a violent man that decided to open fire against a big amount of people, it’s irrelevant who he was aiming for. The only solution for anyone talking in this thread is killing trump, instead of voting the other (albeit very imperfect) party. It’s still months before the election and everyone is acting like trump has won already and the only solution is killing him. Wtf.
I guess this thread and conversation has shown me why the US has such a gun problem. Why the police is absurdly violent against anyone they consider a threat. Why someone would resort to shooting a bunch of people if they’ve been bullied for years or whatever and feel threatened. Fucking sad…
All of this is not about me wanting trump alive and well, I don’t want the orange turd around, I’d hope preferably that he rots in prison though and that he has very “nice” cellmate with him, but if he’s gone from the surface of the earth all the better for the rest of us. That is not the same as inciting for violence, or approving the assassination attempt that has killed someone else.
I saw the headline and wondered if this was a repost. Nope. If I had a nickel for every time this guy has been arrested for ocean hamster wheel shenanigans, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t much, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
I don’t think he actually expects to get very far in any of his tries. The attention from his eventual arrest and following news articles are his actual goals. Kinda like that flat earth rocket guy. And they’ll both probably end the same way, dead by hubris.
This guy has a long history of doing things to completion. Ran the perimeter of USA, ran from LA to NYC after 9/11. Big cycling stuff. He is an actual world class athlete. I think he really wants to do this but lacks the finances and connections to have the support needed for such an expedition.
Probably for operating an unregistered watercraft or not having a transponder. The kind of things maritime law requires for stuff like not getting shot be some idiot, not being IDed as a naval mine by the Navy, search & rescue, not hitting other ships, customs and border enforcement, etc, compelling border compliance, etc. There’s a surprising amount of rules for doing stuff in the ocean.
Biden has truly turned this country into a communist dictatorship, even people trying to escape by homemade boats get scooped up by the coast guard and brought back. We’re living in 1984 and animal farm put together.
Technically, they just say that a Wagner linked Telegram channel said it got shot down. They’re probably waiting for better proof/additional sources before they take the full step of saying it was shot down themselves (at which point I think it’d get added to the headline).
Because the only source for that (at present) is the Wagner Group, who have a (dead) dog in the fight and are not bastions of truth. NYT will be trying to confirm it before saying so.
It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn - who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.
I miss when this was the standard for news. Now most (e: major) outlets don’t even try to pretend they have no bias and instead push a subjective point. Even when I agree with the point, I don’t like it when my “news” pushes it instead of just, you know, reporting.
While us Brits love to complain about the BBC being biased (probably an actual issue for internal UK politics) its good to remember that it’s still a world leading media outlet, and one of very few that can be considered not to be push an agenda. (I imagine I can find a lot of people that can probably disagree with that too…)
Even Routers has started editorialising, and I thought they were just meant to be raw facts!
Regardless of their wording, BBC news has a super Israel bias, and they even got called out on live TV during the news for it. They are not the place for unbiased reporting of this specific issue. The UK will always pretend Israel can do no wrong because they created them.
Well yeah, but like you say that’s more of a UK thing than a BBC thing. And in any case, the BBC refraining from calling Hamas terrorists shows that they do at least have some limits on their biases, where they do have them.
Or are you biased which makes you mistakenly think the BBC is 'super' biased in favour of Israel and claim the UK 'will always pretend Israel can do no wrong'?
Well that’s good, perhaps the guy having a go at them had an effect. There was literally nothing about the first counterattack shelling by Israel when it happened and I thought it was very strange.
Well that’s good, perhaps the guy having a go at them had an effect. There was literally nothing about the first counterattack shelling by Israel when it happened and I thought it was very strange.
Pretty much all news sources are good for something, so long as it’s outside of their bias’ sphere of influence. A fully state run national news outlet can potentially give very unbiased news about events in another country - maybe even better than local news sources - so long as there isn’t some conflict of interest.
It is biased and wrong, you can see by the obvious problem in their research, like Hamas is considered terrorists by the entire western world, therefore saying that you don’t call them that because you don’t want people to tell what to think is terrorism support.
I disagree; it’s a loaded, politicized word. Even if you say that the “entire western world” considers Hamas a terrorist organization, that’s a sweeping generalization which, even if it could be called 100% true, does not represent the whole world.
Tell me the facts without giving me those loaded words. I’m smart enough to draw my own conclusions.
You’re not objectively correct, “designated as terrorist by current and former national governments, and inter-governmental organizations” - they’ve expressed an opinion. You’re taking that opinion and presenting it as objective fact.
So you say your opinion on the world is worth more than the collective opinion of like half a billion people whose democratically elected leaders see them as terrorists?
In addition to the word “adjective”, you should also look up the definition of “objective”. Because you keep digging and digging and it’s making you look silly.
You are wrong. Whether it’s because you don’t understand what is being said or you are intentionally ignoring it, what you are saying is inaccurate and factually incorrect.
Proper old-school journalists, like John Simpson, won't be quick to call someone a terrorist. They will however report on someone who called them a terrorist.
It is their job to report the facts. That means that they report what they see and what they hear. Nothing more. That is journalism.
Coming to the conclusion that someone is a terrorist, isn't news or journalism. It's analysis or opinion. Often the journalist is in no position to form an opinion either way, and it's not really his job anyway.
The reason this sounds weird to many, is because journalism has gone down the shitter. This used to be standard. Reuters for example, is still quite rigorous in this. But most news organisations now mix factual reporting with analysis. Some 'news' organisations remove the news/facts entirely. Basically, reading an article written by a good journalist, you should not be able to tell what side of the argument they are.
Eg.
Good: According to Mr. X, the apple was red and tasty. -> the journalist is simply reporting on what Mr. X said. The reader can decide if Mr. X was telling the truth.
Bad: According to Mr. X, the red apple was tasty. -> the journalist wasn't there to see if the apple was red, Mr. X could be mistaken. The reader doesn't realise that the colour of the apple was described as being red by Mr. X and can't form their own opinion on whether to believe Mr. X.
The journalist doesn't avoid mentioning the apple is allegedly red. They just make it clear that they themselves aren't saying what colour it is, as they weren't there to witness what colour it was and because their opinion doesn't matter
And I know this may sound stupid, but it helps avoid (inadvertent) bias or accusations thereof.
then in the next sentence compare The IRA to the fucking Nazis.
What? Did we read the same article? Maybe I’m suffering from a reading comprehension deficit, here, but that wasn’t my interpretation at all. Could you quote where you think they draw that comparison?
I think your confusing a current affair/today tonight with actual news programs. I channel surf from 5-7:30pm and have never heard the main news programs of 7, 9, 10, SBS, nor the ABC editorialise like that in my 38yrs on this planet. At a stretch, they play clips of articles they’ve already covered at the end with the shows theme song over the top.
I see it all the time on aca and TT. Never on the main news shows, like I said, never in my 38yrs of being alive - and for the last 15yrs I’ve been watching the news between 5-7:30 unless I’m out. I seriously think you’re conflating current affairs shows with the news. Current affairs shows are held to a different (read: lower) standards and ethics levels than that of the news. Not to say there isn’t any bias or manipulation of the viewer, but they aren’t doing it with music. That’s aca and TTs domain.
Though I wish this were true it is not. Romanian authorities, specifically Ramona Bolla of DIICOT confirmed that the tweet had nothing to do with locating him.
I don’t think that is necessarily relevant. Romania didn’t seem to be in a hurry to arrest him until she made the post. I think the more relevant thing she did was to embarrass Romania into action.
You suggesting that Romanian authorities rely on tweets of some social media celebrity to arrest another one is not that different from Top scumbag himself suggesting he can bribe his way to stay away from prison in Romania. Both are pretty insulting to Romania.
Granted, yours isn’t as bad, yet you should still reconsider your position.
I almost agree, as there are only very few crimes, and in absolutely certain circumstances, where I think a death sentence would be appropriate. As an example, cases like Anders Breivik.
The system in Japan is… Let’s say “interesting”. You get sentenced to death, but you might still sit in prison for years or even decades until one morning they carry it out with no warning, so you’ll live the rest of your life not knowing if each day is your last or not.
Often it is, but the death penalty isn’t the only thing affecting it - if it did, USA would not be at such a high of a spot for intentional homicides (#55) as most states have the death penalty as well.
Not trying to excuse his actions but read the _Early life and reports of abuse _section.
This guy is a product of a mentally ill mother who abused him. Imagine being 4 years old and your caregiver keeps telling you she wished you were dead. Not a recipe for a well balanced individual.
My point is yes, his place is in prison. But if you want to prevent other acts of this kind, social and mental services need to get better. They clearly failed in this case, more than once.
It’s a bank not a hedge fund. The investors would be the regular people that made deposits- you know, the victims of the fraud. So your knee jerk reaction is “investors bad” without thinking about anything?
You can’t be certain 100% of the time, so one has to accept there will be instances of injustice.
Or perserve it for instances where it is 100% certain only (video evidence, tons of eyewitnesses). I don’t care which personally, but latter is preferred.
What I don’t want is a drawn out affair where it costs more to execute them than to keep them alive.
When people deserve to die, they should be killed with haste, so we can forget they ever existed and move on. I’m not a fan of the slow torturous rot of keeping them alive until they die of natural causes part of the justice system we have come to embrace in western society.
To be fair, I’m focused more on other crimes than the one this article is about. But anything that would end up being the rest of a person’s life, I’m okay with just ending prematurely. I’m morally flexible in this regard.
She didn’t get there by paying the employees of her business empire the share they deserve of the profits they generated for her. If she had, she wouldn’t be a billionaire.
That doesn’t even touch on the issues of constant private jets around the world, owning multiple homes, etc.
Billionaires cause infinitely more problems than death sentences.
I think, though, that it is a simple enough affair for a billionaire to stop being a billionaire, if they are sufficiently motivated to do so.
If we make “acquiring and retaining a billion dollars” a capital offense, the billionaires will get rid of themselves; we won’t actually have to execute anyone.
I don’t really think we need to compare them. Death sentences shouldn’t be a thing. Neither should billionaires. Billionaires are human beings, their wealth is a systemic issue we should do something about.
I disagree. It is not a systemic issue. It is a personal failing. They lack the self control, discipline, empathy, and compassion of fully-functional people. They have no internal sense of the harm that they are causing to all of society, and the only external feedback they get is from sycophants hyping them up to commit ever increasing atrocities.
If there is a systemic failure, it is that we treat them as ordinary decent criminals, protecting them from oppression and discrimination, while ignoring that the only oppression they have ever seen has been the oppression they have perpetrated.
They should be treated as hostile nations, not criminal defendants.
I was happy for a second and then remembered that karma is a bad take and that he will be getting the absolute best available healthcare and even if he does die, he will be doing so having gotten to old age, in extreme luxury and in more comfort than any of us will ever experience.
I worry that if he does die soon it will only embolden royalist sentiment in this country as the grieving masses will cling on to the "young king" which the media will spin as "progressive" or whatever, and we'll just keep getting further and further away from abolishing this disgusting establishment.
We seriously need a King Ralph type thing to happen, only the people take over, instead of a stereotypical American. Turn Buckingham palace in to a community centre with a kitchen and a shelter and childcare and a free mental health clinic, and put those gardens to actual use..
What exactly do you hate about him? Is it his stance on climate change or the Prince Trust maybe? The Royal family are an important source of culture, tourism, and soft power when the UK’s overseas influence is waning. What good to you think will come of getting rid of them?
Feel free to educate yourself bootlicker, I'll even start you off, but I don't have the energy this evening to invest in someone with their head that deep up the ass of the establishment stomping an all our necks..
It doesn’t explain why you have so much venom. I see the royal family as British heritage. I don’t see how having a monarchy with no real power has any effect on the day to day lives of British people. Certainly not enough to explain the hate.
They have influence, not governing power. Sure you could argue they don’t deserve the influence they have just for being in that position. The main point however is questioning the /hate/. I know you’re not the poster who I was replying to, but I didn’t want to distract the point of my post. Why should we hate the monarchy so much?
We shouldn’t hate the monarchy, necessarily. We should hate monarchy as a concept.
It’s archaic, it formalises and legitimises unbelievable levels of inequality and elitism, and it gives rise to at least the strong possibility (and in the UK’s case at least, the actuality) of a tiered legal system, with some laws simply not applying to some people because of their position.
It’s a repulsive idea, based on historical might and hereditary right, and with no regard for democracy or equality of all people.
They don’t even need that sort of power for the argument to hold weight but yes, they do hold exactly that sort of power and use it for things like ensuring that Buckingham Palace isn’t affected by racial equality in employment laws theguardian.com/…/royals-vetted-more-than-1000-la…
The old man that this post is about literally does have governing power, not only in the UK but also in 14 other countries including Australia and Canada. A common argument made by monarchists is that the monarch’s actual influence is negligible, and their governing power should be ignored because it is only ceremonial.
As Wikipedia puts it:
Royal assent is the method by which a monarch formally approves an act of the legislature, either directly or through an official acting on the monarch’s behalf. Under a modern constitutional monarchy, royal assent is considered little more than a formality. Even in nations such as the United Kingdom, Norway, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein and Monaco which still, in theory, permit their monarch to withhold assent to laws, the monarch almost never does so, except in a dire political emergency or on advice of government.
So some guy came to England, killed another guy who claimed to rule it, and now we have to watch their family spend eternity in decadent luxury because "British Heritage". pfft.
Tell you what. I'll go perform some actions that make myself king, and then a few generations from now my family will be British heritage. Then we can all be happy.
I don’t see how having a monarchy with no real power has any effect on the day to day lives of British people.
Then what the hell is the point in the amount of tax money that we spend on them? If tourism is such a big money spinner for the country then getting rid of them and keeping the related buildings would still bring in money without having to pay for the decadent lives of these parasites.
sorry, but arent the crimes of their fathers the sole basis for our worshipping them, allowing tbem political power and sending the pricks millions upon millions of tax payer pounds?
you dont reckon its a little disingenuous to complain about people shitting on their heritage when said heritage is the entire argument for their existence
You’re not wrong. I take the view that our history, be it good or bad, is part of who we are as a people. However, I wouldn’t want Britain to abolish the monarchy without good reason, and something that occured in the here and now rather than the past.
There are some replies to this thread that have enlightened me on the power the monarchy holds, which I don’t agree they shoud have. I initially thought the monarchy was a symbolic relic, but it seems it’s not the case.
Palaces like Versailles and Sanssouci get millions of visitors every year without a group of racists and pedophiles around and actively in power to give it some greater meaning.
What good to you think will come of getting rid of them?
We’d become a proper modern country where the person who represents the nation is chosen by the nation? We’d move on from a system where who’s up front simply depends on who their mum or dad were? We’d rid ourselves of a system trained with centuries of imperial exploitation, racism and subjugation? We’d open up new tourism opportunities, with the palaces and castles being available for anyone to visit, a la Versailles?
The UK truly is in shambles if their tourism industry and culture depend on a cabal of ghouls siphoning vast amounts of wealth from the people purely for show.
Personally, I like to think the people of the UK have a lot more to them than their vestigial rulers.
I can understand you wanting to abolish the royal family (I do too), but I can’t understand your hatred of him personally, to actually be happy he has cancer. He doesn’t seem like a bad/evil person to me
He cheated on his wife, very publicly for years. Idk about your views but maintaining a mistress immediately excludes you from being a good person. Charles was a prick for a long time before he started committing to charity, conservation, social outreach programs, etc
Please point to where anyone wished cancer on anyone?*
Also, the fact that people don't feel sorry for the filthy rich old man getting what is almost certainly an age related disease (because it's not like he was exposed to the levels of shit food and air and stress that gives the rest of us cancer), is wild to you, but the existence of a "god appointed" ruler that leeches off of his people while they struggle to survive isn't, says a lot more about you than me not giving much of a shit does about me..
E: you know what? Even if I had, wishing death on a person whose entire existence depends on the oppression (and death) of others on a mass, almost unimaginable scale, is still less morally repugnant than defending them. ¯*(ツ)/¯
Eat the fucking rich - they've brought it on themselves.
You don’t exterminate mosquitoes because they are evil, you get rid of them because they are parasites, unable to exist without feeding on you and your loved ones. They are disease vectors, it’s us or them.
The royal family feeds into hierarchical structures. They benefit from our subjugation. They knowingly and intentionally contribute to death and misery worldwide for their own benefit. If Charles was a decent man he’d abdicate.
So petition for the monarchy to be dismantled. Write to your MP. If there’s enough support for it maybe we can get a referendum for it. Though unfortunately I don’t think there’s yet a significant majority of the public that do want that.
I just don’t get being happy at him having cancer. That doesn’t even bring us any closer to dismantling the monarchy. But I guess you must have reasons for having more hatred for him that I’ve not been exposed to
When have you ever seen a petition change a single thing? You really think that signing names on a piece of paper would be sufficient to take down the Monarchy?
If sitting on a gold throne, in a gold room, riding around in your gold carriage, covered in jewels, none of which were (or ever could be) "earned", but rather pillaged, without even knowing what a days work feels like, while the people you're parading your "god given right" to lord over, and whose wealth you hoard privately overseas, are having to choose between heating and eating as they work 3 zero hour jobs just to survive - isn't considered evil in your mind, it is your moral compass that is the problem, not me feeling momentary joy when a cancer gets cancer.
Jack Black is trying to use his massive A-list star power to get Biden elected, something that will actually help people. Kyle Gass made an offhanded joke that could jeopardize that. So Jack Black needs to distance himself, and I’ll bet you money Kyle Gass agrees with him.
It’s an impossible situation to be in, but I kind of agree with Jack Black’s move on this. He can do more good as a Hollywood A-lister for Biden than he can as an “edgy” rock star with a guy nobody’s ever heard of.
Recently had to take a trip to the USA for work and it felt surreal… all the posters of whatever celebrity with captions like “XYZ wants you to stop littering” or “Such-and-Such only use Colgate”. It felt like a brain washing operation for toddlers (and this was at the airport)
Nobody needs anything but to have access to the most famous people in the world, the most money in the world, and the biggest markets in the world, and not put them all together is just bad business.
The disrespect to the Gass man is ridiculous. Honestly Tenacious D comes from the same era of ridiculousness that gave rise to Borat, and I don’t see why Kyle shouldn’t be given the same leeway to say wild ass shit that Cohen did.
Yeah… pointing to the Zionist who just got canceled For being sexually inappropriate on set and to defend himself released a video of himself being sexually inappropriate on set isn’t the defense you think it is. Even his wife left him.
And no offense to the gas man. I’m a 35-year-old white guy. I’ve been in love with the gas man for two decades now. But be honest with yourself, Most people don’t know about Tenacious D. The second biggest category think of Tenacious D as Jack Black’s band with that guy. That doesn’t really compete with Bowser from Mario levels of fame.
That doesn’t really compete with Bowser from Mario levels of fame.
I understand what you’re saying but man, I hate seeing people water themselves down for fame.
One more reason to not be excited for the upcoming Minecraft and Borderlands movie.
we’re so fucking high right now we can’t see the people below being eaten alive and actual Nazi flags being flown to scare people from voting. but hey, it’s cooler up here.
I really fucking hate the constant “we go high” shit.
The guy that took a shot at Trump was a Republican. And the guy who would have inevitably driven a car-sized fertilizer bomb into a crowd of Tenacious D fans would also be a Republican.
This isn’t “going high”, its self-preservation. We live in a fascist country swarming with fascist cops and fascist vigilantes, and we need to fucking act like it. Every concert going forward would have had insane security costs because of this one off-handed remark.
Shit is so dark right now. The rational, empathetic person in me is still very much in control, and agrees with you. But the geopolitical realist in me is quietly whispering “Kyle has chosen the path of martyrdom.”
The thing is, our opposition is not rational or empathetic.
Well, seeing as going low does nothing but exacerbate this whole “us vs. them” mentality we have right now, which is how we’re stuck in this situation in the first place… maybe get the fuck over it?
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