Originally posted by @robbie-carrobie
you want to keep a score?

Nazis 1 , ANTIFA 0

who has claimed they were defenceless? You are in a moral dilemma fatboy, I suggest you deal with that first and then you can fantasise about the hippy flower children of ANTIFA. placing flowers in the machine guns of those dastardly permit holding right wingers.

I want a link from a reliable news source indicating such an incident ever occurred. You keep insisting that some group of leftists "charged" the Neo-Nazis and the rest swinging baseball bats (a deadly weapon though not as deadly as the semi-automatic rifles the right wingers had); where is the evidence supporting this claim?

American Nazis and the KKK have killed counter demonstrators in the past and did again here; I do not demand or expect those who protest against these groups to leave themselves at their mercy.

Originally posted by @roma45
Imagine being in a civil court case say a hedge dispute with a neighbour you Lose but shout " you only won because you are friends with the judge"
There is banter but that statement went way over the line.
I agree it's settled but not accepted by the cheats they are the ones going on about unfair treatment now accusing the site owner if being part of it.
...[text shortened]... deserve to be shouted down
It's obvious what side you are on despite playing the neutral card.

You haven't the brains to see what 'side' I'm on.

I wanted two things to come out of the discussion after the disaster of the 2016 season.

First, I wanted a different metric for calculating clan standings. Several metrics were proposed. ELO was only one of them; it's dead, there is no need to bring it up ever again. mghrn55 proposed another, hybrid, metric; it had merit and I said so, both to mghrn55 privately and in several forum threads. Unfortunately, the vote did not really take account of this issue; it focused instead on the punishment issue.

Second, I had hoped to see clear definitions of "sandbagging" and "collusion" and a clear statement under what conditions these would constitute cheating. This too did not happen.

What we got instead was an ad hoc decision to retract some points. This works only so long as people continue to have faith in Russ as a fair and impartial referee. Maybe Vespin has no faith and maybe that is what his statement really means; if so, I'll shut up and let him speak for himself.

Originally posted by @chaney3
So far, I have obtained no useful information in this thread regarding England, or Scotland.

It's as if you guys are speaking a foreign language.

Wow........there is dumb......there is dumber........and then there is.........well.... you.

Here is the reaction of CNN's Don Lemon last night directly after Trump's speech in Phoenix, Arizona.

"I'm just going to speak from the heart here. What we’ve witnessed is a total eclipse of the facts—someone who came out onstage and lied directly to the American people and left things out that he said in an attempt to rewrite history, especially when it comes to Charlottesville.

"He’s unhinged. It’s embarrassing. I don’t mean for us, the media, because he went after us—but for the country. This is who we elected president of the United States, a man who’s so petty he has to go after people who he deems to be his enemies like an imaginary friend of a six-year-old. His speech was without thought. It was without reason. It was devoid of facts. It was devoid of wisdom. There was no gravitas. There was no sanity there. He was like a child blaming a sibling on something else. ‘He did it. I didn’t do it.’

"He certainly opened up the race wounds from Charlottesville, a man clearly wounded by the rational people who are abandoning him in droves, meaning those business people and the people in Washington now who are questioning his fitness for office and whether he is stable—a man backed into a corner, it seems, by circumstances beyond his control and beyond his understanding."

Originally posted by @robbie-carrobie
Gee tell me why I ain't scared.

Too stupid?

Originally posted by @robbie-carrobie
I have stated my case plainly, either the Americans uphold First Amendment rights for all or they rip up the constitution and let baseball bat wielding thugs with riot gear make the laws. I have no intention of fueling the arguments of contributors who are devoid of both substance and reason and who need to resort to outlandish fantasies.

Sorry, but the only "riot gear" I saw was on the Nazis marching into town with their automatic weapons.

Stop watching FoxNews.

Originally posted by @robbie-carrobie
Fascism, a form of radical authoritarian nationalism, characterised by dictatorial power and the forcible suppression of opposition.

Denying people the free exercise of a constitutional right by violent coercion is an attempt to forcibly suppress opposition.

You see how issues get strangled here?

People have rights and freedoms. Like free speech, assembly, protest. That's good stuff which we must protect. They have many other rights too, like the right to be free from violence or the fear of violence, the right to economic opportunity, the right to fair treatment, the right to equality before the law....

Now who does or does not have these rights and on what grounds?

You make a point of identifying a clause in the US constitution granting (or conceding?) a right, but to whom does the US constitution give those rights? It obviously gives not a single right to people in other countries and offers no restraint on US violence abroad. It gives less rights - a lot less - to migrants in the US who are not US citizens. Less obviously, it appears to give more rights to some American citizens than to others. It certainly gives more rights to those with wealth and property than those without. It seems pretty unhelpful to those in poverty or to women. It has often and pretty consistently shown itself to be decidedly unhelpful to those who are not white.

Some legalistic purist will say that the constitution willl eventually prove itself to be democratic and fair (only an idiot would attempt to argue that it always has been) but many honest observors are dubious of this. This is especially so because the independence of the judicial system from party politics and partisan politics is simply not assured. The evidence is that we have to think in terms of not just progressive or reactionary judges but of Republican judges or Democrat judges - judges owing their positions to political influence and hence acting not for the public good but for vested interests.

And when we see the independence of the judiciary curtailed so severely, then we already have in place one of the building blocks for fascism. One of the most important commentators on the American constitution, De Toqueville, was quite clear that nothing in the constitution prevents America moving in that direction.

The whole language of rights is dangerously individualistic and non-social. At a minimum, if I have a right and you also have a right, there will come a point when we cannot both enjoy our full rights - there will be a conflict. One of us will have to make a concession, or compromise in some way. How will that work out? Who will arbitrate? Talking about rights without talking about society leads to nonsense.

What happens when my right to free speech infringes your right to be free of the threat of violence? After all, a threat can be conveyed with language and gesture long before it becomes actually physical. What is the boundary between an opinion and a threat and an actual assault? How far must I allow you to push your rights without compromise or concession to mine, before I am entitled to protest?

And again, where is the fair arbiter who might intervene in good faith between us? Can I rely on the police to be fair? The politicians? The judiciary? Let's agree I should be able to, it is essential that I am able to, but let's not be entirely naive about this. What is the limit when I have a responsibility to myself not to tolerate an abuse of my rights, even if the abuser is exercising their rights?

Maybe my problem is in your wording. "Denying people the free exercise of a constitutional right". Now what does "free exercise" mean? Are there really no constraints, do we really operate in a world that is not social, that does not require recognition of the rights of others, where we can demand our own rights be exercised "freely" and to hell with everyone else?

Well, at times that does seem to be exactly the case and because that is so, because people are prepared to push their own rights to the extreme without constraints, because the police, the politicians and the judiciary and perhaps the sacred constitution enables that, then sometimes, at some point, maybe people are entitled to respond by exercising some of their own rights in a confrontational way, saying no, setting a boundary, drawing a line ... And meaning it when they say "no" - to the point of exercising their right to defend themselves, and being prepared and equipped for that.

One of the mad rights enjoyed in the US constitution is the right to bear arms. Why is it only the Right that feels entitled to be armed against tyranny? If one person feels entitled to turn up at a protest with weapons, why would they be concerned that others do the same or similar? Using the language of rights, why do you insist on calling counter protestors violent when they are simply exercising various of their rights?

If you want to demand for the fascist marchers the right to march through Charlottesville, armed and carrying aggressive and abusive regalia, while chanting threatening and racist slogans, then at least recognise that their right is exercised at the expense of the rights of their neighbours to enjoy their own, decent lives free of such abusive and threatening behaviour. The right of decent citizens are being infringed and in such a way that they are not satisfied with the protection of a complicit state and choose instead to defend their space with no less determination than the fascists.

Sadly, once fascism is emboldened in this way, such confrontations become necessary.

Originally posted by @jacob-verville
Alright, then: as an American by birth, I suggest that the First Amendment was meant for the tolerance of free speech which includes hate speech.

609.72 DISORDERLY CONDUCT.
§Subdivision 1.Crime. Whoever does any of the following in a public or private place, including on a school bus, knowing, or having reasonable grounds to know that it will, or will tend to, alarm, anger or disturb others or provoke an assault or breach of the peace, is guilty of disorderly conduct, which is a misdemeanor:
(1) engages in brawling or fighting; or
(2) disturbs an assembly or meeting, not unlawful in its character; or
(3) engages in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others.

Originally posted by @robbie-carrobie
I have already refuted your vacuous claim, How long will you continue with your airhead rhetoric before you realise that the vast majority of your sentiments are meaningless bumper sticker memes. You would be just as well posting gifs of fluffy pussycats with machine guns.

How many defenseless Neo-Nazis, KKK members and other white supremacists were killed and seriously injured by this murderous baseball bat attack you claim occurred?

Originally posted by @robbie-carrobie
I have already refuted your vacuous claim, How long will you continue with your airhead rhetoric before you realise that the vast majority of your sentiments are meaningless bumper sticker memes. You would be just as well posting gifs of fluffy pussycats with machine guns.

What you fail to notice is that no one believes you any longer. Your post is filled with irony as this is how people finally see you and your claims. You didn't even bother to re-brand yourself before coming back here, over-confident, as always, in your ability to confound and sweet-talk people.

Sorry, but people just aren't as stupid as you think they are.

Originally posted by @robbie-carrobie
Actually I read it on those ultra right wing sources yahoo news and Vox.

We the British practically wrote your constitution for you sweetie! and seem much more inclined to hold to it than those who claim it as their own

I'm surprised Russ let you back in, Zeroboy.

I thought we had rules against cheaters.

Originally posted by @robbie-carrobie
Actually I read it on those ultra right wing sources yahoo news and Vox.

We the British practically wrote your constitution for you sweetie! and seem much more inclined to hold to it than those who claim it as their own

I didn't see any stories on Vox (which I read regularly) reporting a crazed baseball bat charge from Leftists. I did read this though:

White supremacists went to Charlottesville to protest the city’s plan to tear down Confederate monuments, particularly a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. This has become a hot-button topic over the past several years, as civil rights groups and protesters have condemned the monuments as symbols of a Confederacy that fought to maintain slavery and white supremacy in America.
On Friday, some of the white supremacist protesters — made up of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and members of the Ku Klux Klan — brandished torches and marched onto the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville. When they were met by counterprotesters, they surrounded and eventually attacked the counterprotesters, triggering brawls.
On Saturday, white supremacists planned to hold a bigger rally — dubbed “Unite the Right” — at noon.
Things quickly spun out of control as protesters and counterprotesters faced off and clashed around the city. Eventually, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency and police told the crowds to disperse.
As one group of counterprotesters moved away from the demonstrations, a Dodge Challenger, allegedly driven by reported Nazi sympathizer Alex Fields, drove into the crowd. The driver killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer, a local from Charlottesville who went to the protests to, her mother and friends said, stand against hate and bigotry.
Meanwhile, a state police helicopter responding to the protests crashed, killing two pilots.
In total, at least three people were killed (counting those who died in the helicopter crash) and dozens others were injured as a result of the white supremacist protests.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/8/14/16143168/charlottesville-va-protests

I'm still waiting for a link showing this baseball bat charge you keep insisting occurred.

So Trump didn't say there are "many sides" to the terrorist attack in Barcelona, and didn't say there are many "fine people" among extremist jihadists. Odd.

Originally posted by @whodey
http://www.lifenews.com/2017/03/03/nation-brags-how-it-has-aborted-100-of-the-babies-with-down-syndrome/

The government of Iceland is praising it's genocide against those with Down Syndrome. It boasts that all unborn children that have been or are diagnosed with Downs are aborted.

Yay!

Think how they could also irradiate things like poverty and racism. The sky is the limit it seems.

Eradication means complete removal.
Irradiation means applying radiation in some form, and could potentially lead to eradication.
Suggest you consult a dictionary. Oh, and while you're at it, study the correct use of apostrophes. That's if you actually want to sound as if you know what you're talking about.

Originally posted by @whodey
True dat.

Shav has always wanted to speak German or Russian.

Too bad the US was there to stop that.

I think, when you read history, you'll find it was Stalingrad that broke the Nazis, not D-day.