fault_lines

The Kremlin is not a propaganda agency any more than the White House is a propaganda agency.

In the UK, you're looking for JTRIG, Institute for Statecraft/Integrity Initiative, and the 77th Brigade, and probably tens to hundreds of smaller organizations.

> Look near the end where he describes Trump helping a dictator as a good thing because "it brings the corruption out in the open".

I could not find this in the article.

> He goes on to explain that Trump has publicly done many corrupt and terrible things that you normally don't see because "they're in the shadows".

This is a statement of fact, what part are you disagreeing with?

It’s made clearer in the text, but the conflation of “citizen” and “resident” here is a common irritant that makes it really difficult to understand just what non-citizens are entitled to.

The issue here isn’t that they were sent to non-citizens (I am not a citizen and received a stimulus I’m fully entitled to) but that they were sent to non-citizen non-residents. I wouldn’t be surprised if this persistent mistake contributes to animosity towards immigrants.

Right-libertarian "variants of anarchy" fundamentally ignore the foundational concepts of anarchism and are frankly a joke.

They most certainly are not. Some right-libertarians have convinced themselves that they are anarchists so that they can pretend to be radicals but that does not make it so. Anarchism and capitalism are incompatible, anarchism is a left-wing ideology that among other things, seeks the end of capitalism.

I don't know why you interpreted my comment as being a criticism of communism or anarcho-syndicalism (it was just a probing question to understand what somebody thought anarchism would look like), and neither does your criticism of those ideologies make much sense. I don't think you actually know what anarcho-syndicalism is if you think it involves party politics.

I'm struggling to understand what you're trying to argue, to be honest.

The current geopolitical situation prevents anarchists from living in their desired society because there is zero (or practically zero) free land to create such a society without it existing within a state that is not anarchist. This should be obvious.

How do you amass power in an anarchist system? In capitalism you generally amass power by amassing capital. What's the equivalent under anarchism?

In America, the validity of a search is rarely an impediment to carrying it out.

Your implication was that Seamus Milne, or his team, command a sort of "troll army" through WhatsApp. This is substantially different to disseminating talking points to friendly media faces (which is something all parties do, and is normal in political campaigning).

When you got trolled, it wasn't because of a secret WhatsApp group conspiring against you. It was because you said something that a large number of left wing people disagreed with, and Twitter worked the way it usually works and encouraged an organic pile-on. I can assure you that the UK left-wing network on Twitter has no need to get marching orders from a mythical WhatsApp group. If somebody says something that the left disagrees with, pile-ons will happen naturally.

Ironically, by dismissing people who disagree with you as commanded by Seumas Milne, you are shutting down debate yourself.

> I captured the attention of the Corbynite WhatsApp group run by Seamus Milne's team, and was heavily trolled...Rachel Swindon et al...

This is a conspiracy theory with no basis in fact.

I'm sure they could finagle a job description to say this and maybe even get away with it, but unfortunately the job description they did use was unambiguously "spying on labor organizing", which makes it an open and shut case.

It is, however, illegal to engage in, or create the impression of engaging in, surveillance of union activities.

No, it isn't.

Is there evidence that cats are actually a problem for local wildlife in NZ? Which species are under threat?

I've found this belief is common, and it may well be true in some places (including NZ), but it's not true in many, too. In the UK for example there's no evidence to suggest cats are a problem for bird populations[1]. There is a lot of wild extrapolation going on with this subject.

Often I see people quoting statistics such as an absolute number of bird deaths caused by cats, not really understanding that you can't tell from just that statistic whether or not the species are under threat.

[1] https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/gardening-...

The right wing in the UK has been inserting their own people into top BBC positions for years. The BBC has a history of working with the security services to deny employment to anyone 'too left wing'. Some of the most well known faces on the BBC are Conservative supporters - Nick Robinson was chair of the Oxford University Conservative Association, Andrew Neil was the editor-in-chief of the Conservative supporting fascist rag The Spectator and remains chairman of its publisher. Its function over the last 10 years of government has been increasingly, and highly visibly, to propagandize for the Conservatives and smear the left.

The right controls the non-government media organizations just as well, what's the difference? The BBC is harder to control because it legally is supposed to be impartial.

You're probably not the target audience, to be honest.

> No, the modern welfare state is not capitalism, it's a socialist reaction to capitalism.

You have this completely backwards. The welfare state is a bourgeois reaction to socialism. It is capitalism with a bulwark against revolt.

To be charitable to the guy, maybe he didn't realize that Capital is actually about capitalism, not communism.

I would rather measure 2.5 grams on the scale I'm already using, it's far easier. Volumetric measurements should only be used for liquids.

You should revise your original statement from "he didn't say those things" to "he said those things, but I agree with them". Thanks.

"Screaming 'racism' at people because blacks are collectively less intelligent...is insane."

“You cannot run a high IQ [white] society with low IQ [non-white] people…these [non-white] immigrants are going to fail...and they're not just going to fail a little, they are going to fail hard…they're not staying on welfare because they’re lazy...they’re doing what is economically the best option for them...you are importing a gene set that is incompatible with success in a free-market economy.”

—YouTube video, The Death of Europe | European Migrant Crisis, October 4, 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eydDN55Vyc&amp=&feature=you...

This is just two quotes from one appearance. There are many more: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi...

It's not much of a coincidence that the bug manifests at a time when there is considerable internet activity around Winston Churchill when Google's system automatically chooses photographs to display based on an effectively black boxed algorithm. It does not seem far fetched that the activity may have caused the algorithm to change the result to use an image that has some kind of error, for example. Your "simplest explanation" is a wild leap.

I simply don't believe that mistakenly saying "links" instead of "URLs" is sensationalist. The author is not engaging in clickbait by substituting that word. A layman understanding of the web will not make a distinction between a URL and a link. The issue is clearly the fact that the browser deceives the user, whether it is changing a link in a page or changing the URL typed in the address bar, these are both equally deceptive from the user's point of view.

Hell, I have a reasonably good knowledge of the terminology and I will regularly ask people to "send me links" or "send me URLs" interchangeably. It's just needlessly pedantic.

They are equally bad because in both cases the user is taken to a place that they did not intend to go. They are not bad because something is getting "stolen", they are bad because the user is no longer in control. That is a significantly more concerning aspect than someone not receiving affiliate revenue, which to be completely honest, I couldn't care less about.

Regardless of whether the terminology is technically correct, it's easily understood what the meaning is. Modifying links and modifying typed URLs are equally bad, so your claim that it is sensationalist doesn't make sense. Your post is pure pedantry that does not make any substantive contribution.

From the inside (UK -> US immigrant), it is really bad right now. From an American perspective, maybe it is not so bad as we think because of the difference in 'overton windows'. We now have the president essentially demanding the criminalization of left wing politics, and there is a large contingent of support in the Republican base, gorged on misinformation, frothing at the mouth at the prospect of throwing anyone to the left in Gitmo. Considering that the politics of most of Europe are considered to be communism by many in the US, it's worrying to say the least. The US is very clearly, very openly sliding into a degenerate fascist state.