[Mark]

The church was given tax exemptions on the condition they remain politically neutral in elections. If they choose a side its as though they are using taxpayer money to support a specific candidate or party. I'm sure a Google search can give a better explanation. I'm going to assume that for decades the pastors or priests have their political views and may make them known in a low key fashion. But to organize a church gathering to protest or support a candidate or use church funds for it is against the statute. If they want to become a political machine they can do so but must give up their tax-free status.

[Radar]

The church's tax-exempt status was never given on any condition. It's to prevent the government from using tax as a weapon. The Johnson Amendment came waaaay later. I personally see it as a limitation on free speech, but it is an admittedly ineffective one, as churches can still sound off on any other issue.

[Mark]

Wow, if thats true I have been hearing for 20 years that there was a statute clearly stating what I thought was the case.

I saw it on the internet, it must be true.

[Jimmy]

Just get rid of taxes, solve hundreds of problems.

"The right to bear arms is because that's the last form of defense against tyranny. It's not to hunt. It's to protect yourself from the police. ... If somebody wants to kill people, they don't need a gun to do it." - Ice T

This quote is always relevant. What happened to George Floyd was a form of tyranny. If all the helpless bystanders filming, watching, and nagging the police officers had been armed with handguns, rifles, and/or shotguns they could have lawfully pointed their weapons at the group of police officers and ordered them to stand down. But no one was armed except the oppressors.

You know, there was a time in this country where towns only had one or two police officers, and they'd never try some shit like this because they knew they'd be hung by the townspeople by the next morning.

The State can only oppress the people via the people's own consent.

[Morpheus Kitami]

While I certainly hope Twitter, Facebook and that kind get both barrels, I can't help but feel the government is going to screw things over somehow. Its just a feeling I have, you know?

Forge, on 29 May 2020 - 08:50 AM, said:

but we're just going to ignore the elephant in the room on why they're destroying everything not a police department:

Yeah...destroying everything that's not a police station. *whistles*
Not saying the rest of your point isn't valid, but a point that usually isn't passed has been passed, with no good consequences.

[ck3D]

MARTYR, on 29 May 2020 - 05:09 PM, said:

"The right to bear arms is because that's the last form of defense against tyranny. It's not to hunt. It's to protect yourself from the police. ... If somebody wants to kill people, they don't need a gun to do it." - Ice T

Not trying to argue anything as I know it's a controversial topic and I have no real opinion on the matter myself, but there is a dichotomy just in the approach to gun laws from country to country that I find interesting to observe and discuss, and the particular point of defense against tyranny is one I regularly see brought up with understandable sincere passion, yet the credibility of which is hard to grasp for my European ass - what are an individual's handguns going to do against, say, fucking tanks, when governments are essentially just the resource holders in this whole stage play to begin with and thus have direct access to whatever they need to overwhelm the people (armed with guns or not) if need be? You've probably had to address the question countless times, but personally I never heard a counterpoint to that logic besides wishful thinking. Also, I feel like some people spend their life projecting phantasmal action movie tropes over their reality but, once confronted to it, would surrender their guns first thing if a pack of armed soldiers aggressively came in blasting (which is another reason why I don't feel like having an actual opinion on the topic - it's a constructed and orchestrated debate bound to distract people from the real stakes with abstractions times and times over). Isn't it way too late to just imagine being on equal footing with the ones who already stole the pie, just because here and there they might have let us have some crumbs over time? I'd appreciate it if you could explain your reasoning there to me; growing up in different contexts, people naturally develop different perceptions of everything (guns being one random object to consider) and I like trying to paint my little picture from every angle.

About the current situation, I don't know what to say besides the obvious this world is fucked and tomorrow's going to be hectic. Riots against police brutality and murders have been on a boiling hot rise here too so it's not even just in the U.S. (or maybe they've just been covered more in general to generate more mass hatred and paranoia geared towards some eventual business plan on the global scale). Even independently from all the recent events, I've been sensing a build-up in pressure both on and from the people over the past years locally, but now it's a guarantee that if shit does blow up it's going to be in the whole Western world. The whole situation is getting so post-Orwellian I feel like I'm living in a caricature.

[Mark]

What helps things escalate is the groups of left-wing hired thugs to get bussed in and spread the violence.

There must be some credibility to the protection from tyranny side of the argument. What do many if not all those leaders do as they take power? Take away the guns from the people. An armed populace does threaten them.

[Radar]

The American military consists of normal people just like you and me. If things ever got bad enough that millions of Americans were willing to overthrow the US government, I imagine there would be no small faction among military ranks as well.

[Morpheus Kitami]

Vietnam. Remember Vietnam? We didn't lose that because we were bad at fighting, the generals were idiots, but that's not why we lost. We lost because morale among our troops and especially at home was terrible. Now, unlike that, the US isn't going to just leave a token force and pretend everything's fine, the US has no choice but to fight, one way or another. Which ties into the guns, if the revolutionary side has guns, good guns, they're less screwed off the bat, not needing to raid some kind of armory for guns or make their own. After that, well, there's a lot of ways for things to go south for the government, trust me.

[ck3D]

Mark, on 30 May 2020 - 07:08 AM, said:

There must be some credibility to the protection from tyranny side of the argument. What do many if not all those leaders do as they take power? Take away the guns from the people. An armed populace does threaten them.

Yes that is a fact, by credibility I guess I really meant actual efficiency; it's not so much the idea that I was failing to grasp (it's pretty basic), but how things would actually play out and to which extent an armed populace could really fight back against military forces. Again it's easy to project action movie tropes but I can't really seem to jettison the idea that no matter what, due to how intertwined governments in general are with industrials, they're always going to have the best logistics and the whole sensitive topic of gun laws is just pocket sand for the masses, to create confusion and division all the while making them feel safer than they actually are until the time comes to actually hit. And whilst every peasant is busy pointing fingers at the next peasant for supposedly ruining the market, no one is watching the crops.

But I'm seeing more nuances now, yeah, thanks. I think part of why I'm kind of intrigued by the idea is from how maybe ten years ago, I was in a conversation on the subject with a good friend in New Jersey whom I regard as smart, and when I naturally raised the idea that maybe guns still wouldn't be enough to fight back specialized forces equipped with explosive weapons, tanks, snipers, helicopters and what have you, he looked like he genuinely had never considered the possibility in his entire life, and I never saw him any more vulnerable and scared than that second, so the image kind of stayed with me.

I'm trying not to underestimate the power and wits of the people, though. In Paris I've visited some of the 200-kilometer underground network of tunnels and rooms that the French Resistance had repurposed out of the old catacombs - when not literally dug up themselves - into secret shelters and hospitals during WW2 seventy feet below the surface; I think it's a good example of the people coming together to successfully manage some impressive operations with real stakes, real risks and even some result in the most critical times.

[Danukem]

ck3D, on 30 May 2020 - 08:43 AM, said:

I think part of why I'm kind of intrigued by the idea is from how maybe ten years ago, I was in a conversation on the subject with a good friend in New Jersey whom I regard as smart, and when I naturally raised the idea that maybe guns still wouldn't be enough to fight back specialized forces equipped with explosive weapons, tanks, snipers, helicopters and what have you, he looked like he genuinely had never considered the possibility in his entire life, and I never saw him any more vulnerable and scared than that second, so the image kind of stayed with me.

Also, thousands of networked armed drones and robots (maybe not now, but soon enough). And that speaks to Radar's point -- the more automated the military becomes, the more disconnected it becomes from the will of normal people. Even if the drones and robots aren't fully automated and require some people to maintain and direct them, those people can be paid very well and isolated from the consequences of their actions. And if you are fighting against those things, how much more demoralizing is it when your people are getting killed and your enemies are only losing replaceable parts? So yeah, as technology advances I agree that the potential effectiveness of an armed populace against the government tends to diminish.

[Forge]

ck3D, on 30 May 2020 - 05:04 AM, said:

when governments are essentially just the resource holders in this whole stage play to begin with and thus have direct access to whatever they need to overwhelm the people (armed with guns or not) if need be?

the US government does not "own" any of the private companies that provide them arms, oil, food, or any other logistical supplies and resources.
They do have (finite) stockpiles though.

it would be a battle of attrition
there are 2.2 million people in the us military
there are 329 million 'citizens'

taking into consideration that not all citizens are armed & some military people would be deserters:
the military isn't big enough to hold the entire country and all their supply lines, and knuckle under manufacturers and farmers into forced labor.
eventually the tanks will run out of fuel, & soldiers that didn't refuse to kill their fellow countrymen in the first place will start to defect when they go hungry. There will be no one to take their place.
even if there was some kind of decisive 'victory' by the military the country would end up like what post-war iraq or afghanistan has been over the last decade & a half with insurgents and terrorist doing attacks & killing people all the time.

the entire country having a revolution is unlikely. It would be something more akin to the civil war where certain states seceded from the union because their local government rebels against the federal government.
if that were the case, then the federal military would have a more focused target & could possibly be more effective and maintain supply chains to keep it active.
there will still be a lot of terrorism & defectors that don't won't to uphold the part of their oath which states that they will defend the union against enemies both foreign and domestic.

[ck3D]

Thanks for the clarification, I'm definitely seeing more nuances now, especially when it comes to the eventual civil war state as opposed to a straight up revolution - things don't seem so Manichean anymore when the picture is more complete.

One thing I still have doubts about is governments having finite resources though. Technically they do when it comes to what they actually own on paper, but what about the lobbyism and the countless strings to pull (or see pulled) amidst industrials? I'm under the impression that we've come to a point where most current Western governments seem to be in place to help businesses fructify first and foremost like they're an extension of them and now have no remorse doing it in broad daylight - for instance, mine involves people such as https://fr.wikipedia...manuelle_Wargon who's the head of both the Ministry of Ecology, and the marketing and PR at Danone with a 'side interest' for developing the use of GMO's and palm oil. Such direct ties have low-key existed for a long time, but I feel like governments barely even try to hide them from the public now - as though they're confident that they've brainwashed the masses so bad, no one is going to really catch the clues or it doesn't matter if they do as most individuals have no actual power but in their imagination (e.g.. on their Facebook feed) until they actually organize themselves (which is happening now).

Cops are setting their own cars and stuff on fire as false flags apparently - a buddy of mine in the U.S. just got beaten and arrested by the same person he had seen light up a Molotov cocktail earlier. I'm also hearing about 'accelerationists' whose ideal goal would be to make the current society trip on a race war to eventually rebuild a new one that would be an ethnostate - sounds a bit extreme, but all the ingredients are being planted - again I'm seeing people point fingers everywhere, but mostly at consequential actions/behaviors and never at the common origin of the problem I feel like which appears to be governments/industrials casually trying to get rid off the plebs getting in the way of their exclusive business.

Just for curiosity's sake, here's a record of most known (keyword: known) instances of police brutality in my country over the past 15 years, to emphasize on the universal aspect: http://www.urgence-n...ne.fr/123663553

Oh yeah and of course, right now my country is trying to remove its people's right to take photos and videos of police officers, literally as we speak - what a coincidence!

[Kyanos]

My favorite part of the show is when they pull the 'leaders' out of the crowd of rioters right as things start getting violent. Those brotherhood clubs are above race and uniform.

[Radar]

The riots have clearly been compromised. Who is behind this?



(note: this may have happened in Dallas, video is inaccurately titled)

[Forge]

ck3D, on 31 May 2020 - 02:08 AM, said:

One thing I still have doubts about is governments having finite resources though. Technically they do when it comes to what they actually own on paper, but what about the lobbyism and the countless strings to pull (or see pulled) amidst industrials?

the only thing the government owns is the gold reserve. Also a finite resource.
The government isn't a necessary entity in a true free market & only exists to be an arbitrator to foreign nations.

It's one thing to give corporations grants and tax breaks, it's another to try to make them produce under threat. If the US government went Venezula and tried to take ownership of banks, large industries, etc., by force, those entities would flee and possibly be on the side of the revolutionists.
At a lower scale, if the US government tried to suspend the bill of rights, the workers for those corporations would likely rebel, so even if the government kowtowed an oil company, they wouldn't have the work force to produce a product.

[Mark]

https://twitter.com/...587860947394560

[Hank]

50 million, plus their dependents lost (or are in a very good position to lose) their livelihood, due to the Covid-19 con. No riots. This Floyd thingy is just a side show fueled by BLM (not sure yet) and local gangs, to keep Cuomo, Newsom and cohorts in their cushy autocrat status, whilst keeping people scared and at home. I’m impressed though and admire this con in progress.

The numbers are a conservative estimate, it’s probably many more, since everyone will be affected by this re-engineering of the West, sooner or later. Main issue are credible sources, and my perpetual laziness, I'm working at both.

[Jimmy]

ck3D, on 30 May 2020 - 05:04 AM, said:

what are an individual's handguns going to do against, say, fucking tanks, when governments are essentially just the resource holders in this whole stage play to begin with and thus have direct access to whatever they need to overwhelm the people (armed with guns or not) if need be?

If the government has become so tyrannical that tanks are deployed then I'd rather take my chances. Give me liberty, or give me death.

ck3D, on 30 May 2020 - 05:04 AM, said:

I feel like some people spend their life projecting phantasmal action movie tropes over their reality but, once confronted to it, would surrender their guns first thing if a pack of armed soldiers aggressively came in blasting

Probably. It's happened before in the Revolution and the War of Northern Aggression. The American spirit runs deep in me. My family has shed a lot of blood for this country. I'm prepared to do the same.

Speaking of projecting movie tropes, deployment of tanks is extremely unlikely in most situations. A war between Americans and their governments would not be unlike the Middle East or Vietnam, when it comes down to it tanks are really fucking useless 99% of the time and are mostly used to guard places and movement. And while tanks have many strengths, they also have many weaknesses.

If it was me I'd be more concerned about air superiority.

ck3D, on 30 May 2020 - 05:04 AM, said:

Isn't it way too late to just imagine being on equal footing with the ones who already stole the pie, just because here and there they might have let us have some crumbs over time? I'd appreciate it if you could explain your reasoning there to me; growing up in different contexts, people naturally develop different perceptions of everything (guns being one random object to consider) and I like trying to paint my little picture from every angle.

I'd rather die than be a slave. I don't care how equal my footing is, and neither did the Founders before me. Wars are won primarily by those who don't give up no matter the cost. They can take my life but they can never take my spirit.

ck3D, on 30 May 2020 - 08:43 AM, said:

Yes that is a fact, by credibility I guess I really meant actual efficiency; it's not so much the idea that I was failing to grasp (it's pretty basic), but how things would actually play out and to which extent an armed populace could really fight back against military forces.

Even a 1% chance of winning is enough for me depending on the circumstances.

ck3D, on 30 May 2020 - 08:43 AM, said:

But I'm seeing more nuances now, yeah, thanks. I think part of why I'm kind of intrigued by the idea is from how maybe ten years ago, I was in a conversation on the subject with a good friend in New Jersey whom I regard as smart, and when I naturally raised the idea that maybe guns still wouldn't be enough to fight back specialized forces equipped with explosive weapons, tanks, snipers, helicopters and what have you, he looked like he genuinely had never considered the possibility in his entire life, and I never saw him any more vulnerable and scared than that second, so the image kind of stayed with me.

There's a lot of fairweather shit talking boogieboys out there for sure. New Jersey? Pansy ass Northerners if ya ask me. This country was built and protected by Southerners, and always will be. Northerners have a perpetual chip on their shoulders about this.

Trooper Dan, on 30 May 2020 - 01:50 PM, said:

Also, thousands of networked armed drones and robots (maybe not now, but soon enough). And that speaks to Radar's point -- the more automated the military becomes, the more disconnected it becomes from the will of normal people. Even if the drones and robots aren't fully automated and require some people to maintain and direct them, those people can be paid very well and isolated from the consequences of their actions. And if you are fighting against those things, how much more demoralizing is it when your people are getting killed and your enemies are only losing replaceable parts? So yeah, as technology advances I agree that the potential effectiveness of an armed populace against the government tends to diminish.

Blowing up a robot isn't murder. Much easier to pull that trigger or pin in that case.

Forge, on 31 May 2020 - 07:48 AM, said:

the only thing the government owns is the gold reserve.

In reality, our military is quite unprepared for any such battle, and in fact was setup that way almost by design. There are oathkeepers among them as well. If soldiers are told to kill their brothers and sisters, many of them would reject those orders. Some would defect, some would be more like spies, sabotaging efforts from the inside. Then it all comes down to the fact that the military itself actually doesn't handle a lot of it's own shit anymore and relies quite a bit on civilian contractors for a lot of things, most importantly food.

The military's greatest weakness against an internal battle is how exposed supply lines are to the average person. I live near a military base myself. I can actually go through the checkpoint and drive around and there are even businesses within the base I can go to. It's crazy from a security standpoint, but that's their problem I guess.

I can't find it but there was a released/leaked internal military war game where the military decided that fighting American citizens would be the most risky war possible, because the weapons they primarily use as deterrents against other countries would be useless at home.

Think about how successful the insurgents in the Middle East have been, then consider how shitty most of their resources and weaponry are. This has been going on for over twenty years already and the US really hasn't "won" anything. I know multiple dudes with collections of HUNDREDS of well maintained and effective guns, shit that's better than stuff our military has. Body armor, explosives, whatever you can think of. It's all legal to own as well. There are more guns in the hands of civilians in this country than people.

[Radar]

Great post as usual Jimmy... but, I think that "chip on their shoulder" is the other way around.

[Jimmy]

You don't see Southerners moving up North making everyone eat pimento cheese.

But you sure as shit see Northerners coming down here and trying to turn our cities into the shitty fruity places they came from.

[Radar]

PLEASE encourage your friends to move up here. We need more hicktowns.

[Jimmy]

Dude you're in the midwest, you're fine. Y'all deep fry anything and we can fuck with that. If that war happened today half of y'all would probably be with us lmao

[Radar]

Lmao I know I would.

[ck3D]

Thanks for your insightful reply. Good point regarding how unprepared a government can be when it comes to facing its own citizens as well - coincidentally, a friend of mine in the U.S. has since told me the National Guard by their own admission wasn't equipped to handle the current situation, although I'm not sure if that's something they publicize or if my friend had a personal connection. I guess shop windows crumbling apart are a perfect metaphor for the current situation in the West as a whole.

Haha, bringing North vs. South into this, I love it. I have plenty of friends all over Texas too, so I'm aware of all the archetypes. My friend wasn't that guy though, if I remember correctly he's originally from L.A. anyway. I'm guessing gentrification plays a big role in all those moves in general (maybe another situation where it's interesting to also watch the game and not just the players).

[Forge]

Jimmy, on 31 May 2020 - 04:51 PM, said:

The us government illegally started hording precious metals starting in 1933 and gave the citizens worthless paper.
they illegally posses the horde, so they "own" it, no matter what some bank based out of germany says.

[High Treason]

That face, it's everywhere recently, there's obviously something I'm not clued in on here, I miss when people used words to communicate like a big boy, but whatever.

It's quite interesting how people before this did everything in their power to prevent the current system coming into effect. With no internet and no television, people back then still had this uncanny ability to smell corruption and bullshit a mile away, where most people today are clueless about how any of it works, or how it affects them, and they will do everything they can not to listen if you try to tell them.


As for Covid, I"m still ignoring the 'rules' here. My friend isn't, he's been locked in his house panicking, wearing masks and gloves and refusing to go into shops if anyone else is inside, since the whole thing started. I have to wonder how bad this is for his health versus me being outside (more now due to shortages and closed shops) as I doubt it can be particularly good to lock yourself away, in fact it seems like it'd ruin your immune system.
"But it could kill you!"
So could a sandwich if it goes down the wrong way, it's a part of life, stop worrying about it, because it seems like a miserable existence to me.

[Hank]

Jersey to cut half of civil servants work force, including cops, if feds don't pay losses to the covid-19 con
https://www.greenwic...ic-15302808.php

NYC may become as it was during the glory days of 1975, again due to the covid-19 con.
https://www.abi.org/...to-ruin-in-1975
It's is on a paywall, but a good site to see who is going downhill, worth the membership.
from New York Times, similar text
https://www.nytimes....navirus-ny.html

As I wrote before, this is work in progress.

[Kyanos]

An update from Ontario, Ford sent the military into a few of the worst hit nursing homes, they found some horrid stuff you can google yourself (like reusing cathaders...) About %75 of the "deaths" here are from places like this. Our current reported infection rate is 0.02% deaths are 0.0002% (28K "infected" 2K "deaths")

On my part I've dug deep into research regarding cosmobiology, I believe now that upper atmosphere micro-organisms are the root of the virus infecting Humans. The airplane is literally sucking them into the cabin as it cycles air, the evil air off the mountains litterally made the bug catching boy sick in the legend of zelda so he had to stay inside, the polar storms of November 2019 litterally dispersed this amongst the Northern Hemisphere. Why the North, because that is the direction of travel Earth has through space, towards the North star, with all the seeded stardust falling onto the North.

[Forge]

so....blame canada