[Ann Drysdale]

Well, it won't help your wings to grow, Rory, but you might like to think about our government's plans for defence cuts. The Archbishop of York was generally assumed to be clutching his pearls unnecessarily, but I'm not so sure.

Dr Sentamu called for the cuts to be carried out with 'greater sensitivity'.

Under government plans, the Territorial Army will double in size from 15,000 to 30,000 and be known as the Army Reserves while the number of full-time soldiers in the British army is set to fall from 102,000 to 82,000 by 2020.

Army Reserves. Militia. Second Amendment.... Dear God,no!

[Jesse Anger]

I've been considering whether or not to post this here since I read it yesterday. I want to say upfront that I do not equate the American people with any faction of the American government. I don't believe for a second any of what the American media outlets pass off as fact. There has just been too many instances of obvious misdirection or flat out lying over the last ten or so years; 911 and the Bin Laden assassination are foremost in my mind.

I'm no conspiracy nut and I don't wish to tarnish the memory of any person who perished in the tragedies mentioned above. I don't offer any solution either, nor do I claim to know the truth myself. I do think though that there is something absolutely evil going on behind the American Government.


http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/12...ut-of-control/

[Rory Waterman]

Ann,

I think I agree with you. But, of course, that would be an actual militia of sorts. The American concept of a militia, apparently - according to modern interpretations of the Second Amendment - covers any nutter of any kind who likes to shoot things and so on, regardless of affiliation to the military etc. There are currently almost as many members of the TA (and they cannot keep guns) as there are deaths per year from firearms in the USA.

[Michael Cantor]

Jesse - you say, "I'm no conspiracy nut," and then put up a link to a crackpot, hate-filled web site that sees conspiracies everywhere - and throws in a solid dose of anti-semitism for good measure. Did you check out that site? Did you google the writers? Try this from Wiki.

Veterans Today (VT) is an American political website that is criticized for promoting antisemitism, Holocaust denial as well as anti-Israel and 9/11 conspiracy theories.[2][3] It often shares articles and contributors with Iran's state-owned Press TV which are generally critical of US foreign policy, especially towards Iran, Palestine, and Israel. VT's articles are reposted widely on the Internet, primarily on Press TV and conspiracy-oriented and right-wing extremist websites.

Or, better yet, this recent Veterans Today article: Did Mossad death squads slaughter American children at Sandy Hook?

Is this where your mind is, Jessie? I'll do my best to respect the ad hom guidelines of the Sphere. Fortunately the link you provide - and the links it contains - send their own message.

[Gregory Dowling]

What Michael said. That website is full of some seriously deranged people. The comments after the article are even more disturbing than the paranoid article itself. Deranged people of this sort are to be found all over the world, of course, but right now they seem to cluster in greater numbers and to speak more loudly in America than anywhere else; can you sane Americans (most of the contributors to this thread) please try raising your voices? Or find some way to get these people into padded cells? or perhaps one state (say Texas) could be set aside for all gun-maniacs and paranoiacs, where they can enjoy blasting away at imaginary enemies, while the others adopt the kind of laws prevalent in all other civilized countries. (Sorry to any sane Texans out there...)

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

never mind

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

Michael,
I think Jesse can hear VT called out but also deserves the benefit of the doubt before being tied to the rest of the site to tightly. We have all found articles on the internet that seemed intriguing only to later find the sources were sketchy or like VT clearly unhinged.

I believe Jesse's family is Jewish and I am sure he is unaware of many of the problems in VT's analysis especially regarding Israel. Gilad Atzmon and the flirting with revisionist crap that passes for analysis over there has made many in the Palestinian rights movement uncomfortable with his advocacy of their cause.

If you look at Jesse's words themselves you will not see much to disturb any lingering ad hom itch.

[Rory Waterman]

Gregory, it would be a very crowded state. I think you'd have to set aside at least 25 of them.

The gun laws and attitudes to guns in the US terrify me, and put me off wanting to move there probably more than anything else. My wife is originally from New England and feels much the same. The country (which I think wonderful in some respects) has a number of huge problems and the gung-ho attitude to gunslinging is perhaps the most abhorrent of them, in a way - but it is part of another, altogether bigger problem.

Jesse, that link is somewhat worse than banal. Perhaps you hadn't read it properly.

[John Riley]

Gregory wrote:

. . . perhaps one state (say Texas) could be set aside for all gun-maniacs and paranoiacs, where they can enjoy blasting away at imaginary enemies, while the others adopt the kind of laws prevalent in all other civilized countries.

I wish we could send them all to Texas but I don't know that it's big enough. The body politic of the U.S. is approximately fourteen-years-old. Any suggestion of a policy change that would require citizens to make a sacrifice, even a minor sacrifice, to help create a more peaceful or prosperous society for everyone is attacked with much the same rhetorical violence and intellectual inconsistency that my kids used in their early adolescence. I posted a comment a while back which was ignored that sums up what is wrong with America:


"Why should I have to give up my Bushmaster because some guy flipped out and killed a bunch of babies."


If this man, a police officer from my state, isn't voicing a majority opinion he is speaking for a sizable minority. I'm coming to believe that even a semi-democratic country like the U.S. that is populated by voters with this type sensibility will eventually succumb to some type of coup, and in the U.S. it'll most likely be a military coup.

[Jesse Anger]

Michael, I should of known you'd go off the deep end about it. I don't give a shit about the site's blah blah anti this or that, everyone knows that I have a Jewish child and that I'm respectful of the traditions and beliefs of all. I said that -- the article is interesting. That's all, who said I stand behind the site's content? What I said (just to be clear) is that I wouldn't put it past the American Government to perpetrate such an act for whatever reason it sees fit.

Put that in your pipe.

J

Rory, if you don't think that that article makes some interesting points you're sleeping man.