[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

Mundane & Pointless Stuff I Must Share: The Off Topic Forum

Moderator: Moderators

Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

phlapjackage wrote:Ok, as was said before by Kaelik(?), I'm glad you've backed down from the position of "this is WAR!" and that it was ok for the police to start shooting people. Now it's just an illegal assembly/protest.
I haven't backed down from that stance. It's still the case. There remains no upper limit on how much force Spain can use to put down the Catalonian indepedence movement. None.

Discussions of fair punishments and cruel and unusual punishments and so on and so forth continue to miss the point. Deciding on what constitutes a just punishment is something to be decided in a court. The Catalonians are not in a court. They lost in court and have refused to submit to its ruling. Now it's just an enforcement issue. The executive is now simply going to use as much force as it requires to enforce the law or they run out of resources.

If the police tell you to disperse, you either disperse or you fight. In several places in Catalonia, the separatists chose to fight. I think it's obvious that most of the people who made that choice did not understand the implications. And it is equally clear that most of the people in this discussion thread don't either.

If you choose to fight rather than disperse, the police will beat the shit out of you. If they don't think that's sufficient, they will start shooting you with rubber bullets. If they don't think that is sufficient they will shoot you with real bullets. If they don't think that is sufficient they will call in military vehicles and shoot you with bigger real bullets. They will stop escalating when they think the job is done or they run out of money. That is how it works. The state has a monopoly of force, and it maintains that monopoly by being willing and able to escalate its use beyond anything you could wield or even imagine.

Now the fact that it works this way is completely orthogonal to the question of whether the laws being enforced or the people they are being enforced on are right or wrong. But it fucking always and everywhere works this way, and if you can't or won't accept that, that is your naivete becoming a problem for your ability to process past, current, and future events.

-Username17
User avatar
Maj
Prince
Posts: 4705
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Shelton, Washington, USA

Post by Maj »

Omegonthesane wrote:The vote itself was not, alone, an existential threat.
I'm not exactly sure how indulging the secession desires of a piece of your country doesn't count as an existential threat to the country. The further down that path that people get, the more it seems like there's hope for it.
My son makes me laugh. Maybe he'll make you laugh, too.
Omegonthesane
Prince
Posts: 3680
Joined: Sat Sep 26, 2009 3:55 pm

Post by Omegonthesane »

Maj wrote:
Omegonthesane wrote:The vote itself was not, alone, an existential threat.
I'm not exactly sure how indulging the secession desires of a piece of your country doesn't count as an existential threat to the country. The further down that path that people get, the more it seems like there's hope for it.
A referendum with no legally binding power is, as I said earlier, nothing but a glorified opinion poll. Which was already going to be declared invalid and, separately, rigged no matter how it turned out. The Spanish government had sufficient plans already in place to counter any threat posed by a nonbinding referendum without sending in riot police, and they sent in riot police anyway.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath, Justin Bieber, shitmuffin
hyzmarca
Prince
Posts: 3909
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2011 10:07 pm

Post by hyzmarca »

If people are actually holding succession votes, then the situation in your country is already FUBAR, and summoning Godzilla to fight giant monsters in your capital can't make it worse.

You don't get succession votes unless there are deep regional divides that are not going to get better on their own and a lack of national identity.
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Omegonthesane wrote:The Spanish government had sufficient plans already in place to counter any threat posed by a nonbinding referendum without sending in riot police, and they sent in riot police anyway.
Sincere question: how the fuck do you think rule of law works?

If the law says X and I say "Nah bro, I ain't doin it." and then you take me to court, and the court says the law says X and I still say "Nope." what do you think happens? How do you think this works?

The Spanish unionists had exhausted legal means. They had taken it to the high court and the high court sided with them. The referendum had been ruled illegal and ordered not to procede. The separatists went ahead with the referendum anyway. What the actual fuck do you think comes next?

I'm just trying to wrap my head around what Polyannaish bullshit you think the world runs on. If we go to court and the court sides with you, and I refuse to go along with the court ruling, what possible next step do you think there is other than violence?

-Username17
Omegonthesane
Prince
Posts: 3680
Joined: Sat Sep 26, 2009 3:55 pm

Post by Omegonthesane »

FrankTrollman wrote:
Omegonthesane wrote:The Spanish government had sufficient plans already in place to counter any threat posed by a nonbinding referendum without sending in riot police, and they sent in riot police anyway.
Sincere question: how the fuck do you think rule of law works?

If the law says X and I say "Nah bro, I ain't doin it." and then you take me to court, and the court says the law says X and I still say "Nope." what do you think happens? How do you think this works?

The Spanish unionists had exhausted legal means. They had taken it to the high court and the high court sided with them. The referendum had been ruled illegal and ordered not to procede. The separatists went ahead with the referendum anyway. What the actual fuck do you think comes next?

I'm just trying to wrap my head around what Polyannaish bullshit you think the world runs on. If we go to court and the court sides with you, and I refuse to go along with the court ruling, what possible next step do you think there is other than violence?

-Username17
Did you miss the bit where I said they should've rounded up the organisers? This isn't me disputing the rule of law. It isn't even me disputing that someone somewhere was getting violence'd eventually under the circumstances. It is only, and I mean only, that the exact response that was actually used:
  • had no effect other than to make the state look violent
  • could reasonably be foreseen to have no effect other than making the state look violent
and was therefore the wrong application of violence at the wrong time to the wrong people if the Spanish government wanted to sort this out with a minimum of fuss.

Seriously, if they'd skipped to the tanks I'd have at least *understood*.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath, Justin Bieber, shitmuffin
User avatar
Chamomile
Prince
Posts: 4632
Joined: Tue May 03, 2011 10:45 am

Post by Chamomile »

Quit being dense, Frank. Just about everyone who's dropped by to inform you how stupid and/or monstrous you're being has recommended arresting the people who held the referendum. Beating up civilians for being misled into thinking the referendum was valid is both wrong and completely ineffective, so both of the excuses you keep waffling between are bullshit.

Sending in the riot police wasn't necessary, wasn't helpful, and wasn't right, and no amount of "well, technically" bullshit about "rebellion" or "this is war" is going to change any of that. The very fact that Catalans were totally unprepared for a fight makes it obvious they had no intention of fighting the state, and people with no intention of fighting the state cannot meaningfully be described as a rebellion to the extent that it's worth busting out the guns and racking up some bystander fatalities to put it down. Committing violence on everyone in the general vicinity of your enemies is not automatically justified because said enemies committed any act, no matter how despicable, because obviously the people caught in the crossfire aren't responsible so the justification for heavy escalation has to include an inability to put a stop to whatever horrible thing the violence is supposed to put a stop to without resorting to less discriminate means than walking up to the specific individuals responsible and telling them they're under arrest. As it happens, "walk up to the rebels and tell them they're under arrest" is entirely on the table because the "rebels" have no way to meaningfully resist that arrest.

I mean, Jesus Christ, you're arguing that any level of escalation the Spanish government is capable of would be justified, presumably including shelling the polling stations, a course of action that would obviously incur massive civilian fatalities. Any claim that this would be justified when the "rebellion" is so militarily weak that you can just send a squad car to arrest the leaders - not even paramilitaries, just regular cops - is authoritarian to the point of self-parody.
User avatar
deaddmwalking
Prince
Posts: 3460
Joined: Mon May 21, 2012 11:33 am

Post by deaddmwalking »

My last comment missed a whole bunch of clarification and explanation for what I agreed with 100% and what I was trying to draw as a minor quibble that not knowing Spanish law I was still unsure of. Setting that aside...

I agree with Koumei. I don't think Catalan independence is a thing that is 'right'. I don't have to think it is right to believe that the use of force in this instance was counterproductive. It obviously was.
-This space intentionally left blank
DSMatticus
King
Posts: 5271
Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2011 5:32 am

Post by DSMatticus »

Hey, guess what? When police escalate immediately to lethal force and people die for minor crimes or nonviolent noncompliance, it's a fucking tragedy. It's so much of a tragedy that when it happens we often call it murder and stage huge protests calling for those officers to be prosecuted and then again when they inevitably go free. Eric Garner broke the law. Eric Garner nonviolently resisted the responding officer's arrest. That officer put Eric Garner in a chokehold and as a result he's dead - for selling cigarettes on the street and jerking his arms away when police tried to cuff him.

No matter how much you run your stupid mouth about whether or not it would be legal or appropriate for the Spanish government to firebomb the Catalan capital or whatever because WAR!!1!, everyone who thinks you are a psychopath is going to continue thinking you're a psychopath because that is legitimately fucked up. Reasonable people value proportionality, because things like human life, welfare, and dignity are factors in their ethical calculus, and by considering proportionality in their response to lawbreaking and disobedience the state can pursue its interests while minimizing the damage it causes to those other very important things. What the Catalan people have actually done is voted in an unauthorized referendum and staged some protests. If the goal is the preservation of the Spanish state, the amount of force required to accomplish that is likely very fucking small (dare the Catalan government to actually do something, arrest some officials when/before they do, let the protests happen with standard police presence), and using more force than is reasonably necessary is either evil or stupid.

Trying to stop the referendum at all was either evil or stupid. It very obviously would not help achieve the intended goal of preserving the Spanish state (given they used nowhere near enough force to even remotely accomplish that task), and it also hurt a bunch of people. Sending the military to murder their way through Catalonia would be either evil or stupid. It would probably help achieve the intended goal of preserving the Spanish state - even if the Catalan people picked up weapons to act like the armed rebels they were being slaughtered as, they wouldn't stand a fucking chance. But it would also add several zeroes more to the death toll than any of the equally effective solutions in which Spain weren't being murderous shitbags, so in what way is being murderous shitbags okay?

People are not appalled because your rhetoric about declaring Catalonia in full rebellion and using extreme military force to subdue it would constitute an unconstitutional act by the Spanish government. Presumably if they could muster up enough support within their own government they could just outright formally declare war on a part of themself - I doubt it's a situation that comes up very often, but with enough votes and judges you can make any words you want come out of the government's mouth. That's how it works. No, people are actually appalled because it's wholly unnecessary murderous shitbaggery, and wholly unnecessary murderous shitbaggery is the kind of thing that continues to be wrong even when it is perfectly legal. Especially when it's perfectly legal, in fact - there is presumably someone who will at least try to protect you from the illegal kind, whereas the legal kind leaves you hiding under someone's floorboards hoping your entire existence is forgotten before you end up in one of the world's most poorly rated vacations camp.
User avatar
phlapjackage
Knight-Baron
Posts: 661
Joined: Thu May 24, 2012 8:29 am

Post by phlapjackage »

FrankTrollman wrote:There remains no upper limit on how much force Spain can use to put down the Catalonian indepedence movement. None.
I'm not sure what you mean here, bolded mine. I can see two interpretations:
1. No outside actor (other country, UN, etc) can actually physically stop Spain from using as much force as they want at this point.
That's...pretty trivially true...or maybe you mean
2. Spain is justified in using as much force as they want to put down illegal protestors.
That's psychopathic...

Do you perhaps mean to say "will use" ?
FrankTrollman wrote:If the police tell you to disperse, you either disperse or you fight. In several places in Catalonia, the separatists chose to fight. I think it's obvious that most of the people who made that choice did not understand the implications. And it is equally clear that most of the people in this discussion thread don't either.

This isn't correct, unless your definition of "fight" is "non-compliance". The real choice is to disperse....or not to disperse. A peaceful/nonviolent non-dispersal doesn't give the police the right to kick the shit out of you. Whether any/all of the separatists were peaceful or not, idk. You're right, if you are a violent protestor, it's naive to not expect to get an ass kicking by the police. But it's also reasonable to assume the police won't drop napalm on a city block if the protestors are throwing punches.
Last edited by phlapjackage on Tue Oct 10, 2017 6:43 am, edited 2 times in total.
Koumei: and if I wanted that, I'd take some mescaline and run into the park after watching a documentary about wasps.
PhoneLobster: DM : Mr Monkey doesn't like it. Eldritch : Mr Monkey can do what he is god damn told.
MGuy: The point is to normalize 'my' point of view. How the fuck do you think civil rights occurred? You think things got this way because people sat down and fucking waited for public opinion to change?
Axebird
Master
Posts: 201
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 12:51 am

Post by Axebird »

I'm pretty sure what Frank's getting at is that when the police tell you to disperse, and you refuse, they're obviously going to use force to make you disperse. They're not going to shrug and leave. If you resist being forced to disperse... that's a fight, isn't it?
User avatar
Wiseman
Duke
Posts: 1402
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 4:43 pm
Location: That one place
Contact:

Post by Wiseman »

So Frank's just stating the fucking obvious, and not really adding anything of value.
Keys to the Contract: A crossover between Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Kingdom Hearts.
Image
RadiantPhoenix wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:Legolas/Robin Hood are myths that have completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a bow".
The D&D wizard is a work of fiction that has a completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a book".
hyzmarca wrote:Well, Mario Mario comes from a blue collar background. He was a carpenter first, working at a construction site. Then a plumber. Then a demolitionist. Also, I'm not sure how strict Mushroom Kingdom's medical licensing requirements are. I don't think his MD is valid in New York.
User avatar
Kaelik
ArchDemon of Rage
Posts: 14757
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Kaelik »

Axebird wrote:I'm pretty sure what Frank's getting at is that when the police tell you to disperse, and you refuse, they're obviously going to use force to make you disperse. They're not going to shrug and leave. If you resist being forced to disperse... that's a fight, isn't it?
I mean, he clearly also means the moral dimension that all black people are responsible for their shootings.... I mean, uh.... All anti-Trump protesters deserve to be beaten and arrested..... I mean, uh... that horrible idea that people who don't disperse are automatically in the wrong and deserve to die, but applied to some situation where that isn't horrifically monstrous.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
Korwin
Duke
Posts: 2055
Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2009 6:49 am
Location: Linz / Austria

Post by Korwin »

Kaelik wrote:
Axebird wrote:I'm pretty sure what Frank's getting at is that when the police tell you to disperse, and you refuse, they're obviously going to use force to make you disperse. They're not going to shrug and leave. If you resist being forced to disperse... that's a fight, isn't it?
I mean, he clearly also means the moral dimension that all black people are responsible for their shootings.... I mean, uh.... All anti-Trump protesters deserve to be beaten and arrested..... I mean, uh... that horrible idea that people who don't disperse are automatically in the wrong and deserve to die, but applied to some situation where that isn't horrifically monstrous.
While Frank is trolling us, he very carefully did not give Spain an Moral endorsement.
As far as I understand him, he is talking about the legal right to do in Spain, what Spain wants to do.
Red_Rob wrote: I mean, I'm pretty sure the Mayans had a prophecy about what would happen if Frank and PL ever agreed on something. PL will argue with Frank that the sky is blue or grass is green, so when they both separately piss on your idea that is definitely something to think about.
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Wiseman wrote:So Frank's just stating the fucking obvious, and not really adding anything of value.
Well, you'd think so, but for some reason this is deeply contentious apparently.

If you are told by the national government that a referendum is illegal and you insist on going ahead with it anyway, the following events are inevitable:
  • The national police will then tell people participating in the referendum that they are participating in an illegal gathering and must disperse.
  • Some non-zero number of people will refuse to disperse.
  • The police will kick the shit out of a bunch of people.
There is no possibility of it not going down like that. The moment you see the high court ruling there is no path that involves going ahead with the referendum that does not also involve a bunch of people getting the shit kicked out of them by police at the minimum. Whether it is right or wrong to proceed depends entirely on what is at stake. If your cause is sufficiently just, then sending your supporters into a situation where they get the crap beaten out of them by cops is acceptable.

The reality is that the police response is going to be exactly the same whether your illegal mass protests are the soul stirring call to arms against slavery and genocide or a bunch of priviledged white people bitching about federal municipality tax transfer ratios. People are expressing shock and disgust that Spain's police force is coming down on protesters in ways we normally associate with dictatorships attempting to crush movements for democracy, but that's a stupid thing to get upset or even surprised about. Spain's police force is simply acting the way all police forces everywhere react to revolutionary movements that reject the legal and political system of the country they are in.

The real question you should be asking is why the Catalonian separatists think that they should be running the playbook of protest movements from repressive countries. We ran this playbook in East Timor because Indonesia was a brutal dictatorship with roving death squads and no pathway for the Timorese to affect political change. The separatists in Barcelona aren't being forbidden from running for office, they just don't have enough seats in parliament to do the things they want to do. And that is not nearly as good a reason to tell the police to "Come at me bro."

-Username17
User avatar
Kaelik
ArchDemon of Rage
Posts: 14757
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Kaelik »

Korwin wrote:While Frank is trolling us, he very carefully did not give Spain an Moral endorsement.
As far as I understand him, he is talking about the legal right to do in Spain, what Spain wants to do.
I very specifically said "means" as opposed to "says."

It's sort of like how a whole host of trolls will attack anyone who criticizes Trump, and defend Trump not matter what, and never ever criticize Trump under any circumstance, including coming up with the most batshit defenses of Trump possible, but then say "hey, I never said I support his decisions."

Sure, but if you spend 36 hours making posts about how Spain has a "legal right" because of the "rebellion" to just shoot completely innocent people who did nothing illegal or wrong in the head while at the same time calling the pampered rich racists trying to shirk their taxes..... you can read between the lines.

I don't actually have an opinion on Catalan independence, although watching how completely in the wrong and unreasonable the arguments for it sure isn't helping me stay neutral, but I do have a strong opinion on the police state rounding up people not doing illegal or wrong things and beating them on the way to rounding them up. It's not good. Should probably do something like confine police action to people who have actually done something wrong or illegal.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
User avatar
Kaelik
ArchDemon of Rage
Posts: 14757
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Kaelik »

FrankTrollman wrote:People are expressing shock and disgust that Spain's police force is coming down on protesters in ways we normally associate with dictatorships attempting to crush movements for democracy, but that's a stupid thing to get upset or even surprised about.
Shock and disgust aren't exactly surprise. I'm shocked and disgusted when the US police arrests 300 protesters and prosecution tries to lock them up for 70 years because a couple windows broke in the proximity of the 300 people, so definitely all of them were rioting. But I'm not surprised.

I am upset, and yeah, being upset when the police beat down and arrest people who did nothing illegal or wrong is definitely something to be upset about.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Kaelik wrote:I am upset, and yeah, being upset when the police beat down and arrest people who did nothing illegal or wrong is definitely something to be upset about.
Why do you believe they did nothing wrong and nothing illegal?

For the people who participated in an illegal referendum to have done nothing wrong, you would have to say that participation in the illegal referendum was itself not wrong. That's a pretty big value statement, which the majority of people in Spain do not agree with.

I don't even know how you pretend they did nothing illegal. It's an illegal referendum, and participating in it is also illegal. If you believe that Catalonian Separatism is a positive end, you can make the argument that participating in the referendum should not be illegal. But it very definitely is and was illegal. There was a case about it that went all the way to the Spanish high court. You don't get to sleight of hand in some Is/Ought bullshit where you say that because you think the Catalonian situation should be handled through legal and democratic channels that participating in a referendum isn't illegal. In actual factual real world conditions, some referendums are legal and some are not and this one wasn't.

Again and still, if you want to claim that the Catalonian Separatists are in the right, you have to make the claim that their cause is right and justifies breaking the laws of the country. You don't get to skip that bit and claim that laws aren't being broken and start playing sad violin songs for the poor oppressed people of the third-richest commune of Spain.

Participating in the referendum was illegal. Period. There is one set of laws that count for that question, they are the laws of Spain. Spain's laws said the referendum was illegal, end of discussion on that point. If you want to make the argument that the referendum should not be illegal, go ahead. But so far not one person has presented the slightest bit of evidence to that effect. Stop playing moral three card monte. If you want to claim the Catalonian Separatists are right, say why you think they are right.

-Username17
User avatar
Kaelik
ArchDemon of Rage
Posts: 14757
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Kaelik »

FrankTrollman wrote:Why do you believe they did nothing wrong and nothing illegal?

For the people who participated in an illegal referendum to have done nothing wrong, you would have to say that participation in the illegal referendum was itself not wrong. That's a pretty big value statement, which the majority of people in Spain do not agree with.

I don't even know how you pretend they did nothing illegal. It's an illegal referendum, and participating in it is also illegal. If you believe that Catalonian Separatism is a positive end, you can make the argument that participating in the referendum should not be illegal. But it very definitely is and was illegal. There was a case about it that went all the way to the Spanish high court. You don't get to sleight of hand in some Is/Ought bullshit where you say that because you think the Catalonian situation should be handled through legal and democratic channels that participating in a referendum isn't illegal. In actual factual real world conditions, some referendums are legal and some are not and this one wasn't.
Spain. Article 9.3 of the Spanish Constitution guarantees the principle of non-retroactivity of punitive provisions that are not favorable to or restrictive of individual rights. Therefore, "ex post facto" criminal laws or any other retroactive punitive provisions are constitutionally prohibited.
On Tuesday, the court also ruled unconstitutional a law passed by the Catalan regional government allowing it to call such votes.

...

In September, the court had ruled to block the regional government, which favors independence, from conducting the referendum in November.
Long story short, because unlike you, I know how the law works.

Voting in a referendum your state officials set up is not an illegal act, even if they are wrong to set it up. Setting up the referendum is illegal. Voting in it is not. Which is why I have consistently pointed out that the Spanish Government can totally use all it's police powers on the officials who tried to co-opt governmental offices to pursue their agenda, but you know, not shoot up people on the street.

Because the people who went to vote did not do anything wrong or illegal. Because it's not illegal to vote in the referendum. So independence referendum voters clubbed by police are acting exactly as illegally (which is to say, not at all) as protesters marching down the streets on election day, and more legally than G20 protesters who were attacked by police for wearing masks.

I'm willing to admit I'm wrong if you can find a Spanish statute that criminalizes voting in non sanctioned elections. But I made cursory attempt and didn't find any, and it's very unlikely that you will find one, because it's pretty stupid kind of law.

Too bad the only people who did something illegal are the government officials so you can't keep justifying police crackdowns on innocents Frank.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
User avatar
Stahlseele
King
Posts: 5974
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2010 4:51 pm
Location: Hamburg, Germany

Post by Stahlseele »

Meanwhile:
Boss of catalonia Carles Puigdemont is still for their independence.
But he has gotten cold feet and asked to postpone it untill next week.
Spains government has declared the implicit declaration of indepence as illegitimate.

Well, any bets as to when we hear/read about fighting in the streets?
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
Voss
Prince
Posts: 3912
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Voss »

Not sure we will at this point. The Catalonian parties are starting to disentegrate on the issue after the cognitive dissonance of 'I'm declaring independence but suspending the Declaration of Independence at the same time' Mainly, the big economic party CUPS is freaking the fuck out about businesses leaving and how he's handling things, so a lot of support is walking away.

Meanwhile, in Madrid, everyone seems to be scratching their head and trying to figure out if this actually counts as independence or not. (And if not, Puigy may just be an asshole) If it is, they largely want to start the constitutional process for direct rule. So far they seem to have backed away from unleashing police on people (let alone the troops they never unleashed on people) and are going back to the legal process.
Last edited by Voss on Wed Oct 11, 2017 2:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
RobbyPants
King
Posts: 5201
Joined: Wed Aug 06, 2008 6:11 pm

Post by RobbyPants »

North Korean hackers stole a vast cache of data, including classified wartime contingency plans jointly drawn by the United States and South Korea, last year.
One of the plans included the South Korean military’s plan to remove the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, referred to as a “decapitation” plan, should war break out on the Korean Peninsula, the lawmaker, Rhee Cheol-hee, told reporters.

Mr. Rhee, a member of the governing Democratic Party who serves on the defense committee of the National Assembly, said he only recently learned of the scale of the North Korean hacking attack, which was first discovered in September last year.

It was not known whether any of the military’s top secrets were leaked, although Mr. Rhee said that nearly 300 lower-classification confidential documents were stolen. The military has not yet identified nearly 80 percent of the 235 gigabytes of leaked data, he said.
Voss
Prince
Posts: 3912
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Voss »

Oh, no. Not the decapitation plan. How will they survive such a breach of information about a subject they... talk openly about with the news media. Seriously, that was an interview on the BBC months ago, expressly as a deterrent to little Kim: 'If you start something, we'll specifically pin your head to a wall.' The SKs even created a unit explicitly for that task.
User avatar
Judging__Eagle
Prince
Posts: 4671
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Lake Ontario is in my backyard; Canada

Post by Judging__Eagle »

Voss wrote:Oh, no. Not the decapitation plan. How will they survive such a breach of information about a subject they... talk openly about with the news media. Seriously, that was an interview on the BBC months ago, expressly as a deterrent to little Kim: 'If you start something, we'll specifically pin your head to a wall.' The SKs even created a unit explicitly for that task.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/worl ... tion-.html

Perhaps the hacked data clarifies details about this Damocles sword?
The Gaming Den; where Mathematics are rigorously applied to Mythology.

While everyone's Philosophy is not in accord, that doesn't mean we're not on board.
Post Reply