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Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

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superboyac:
ad hominem
beat you (whoever you are) to it!

wraith808:
In another Holy Crap moment over this...

NSA affair: Ex-President Carter condemns U.S. snooping

this particular quote is one of the main reasons that he is not well liked in Washington... he's too honest.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in the wake of the NSA Scandals criticized the American political system. "America has no functioning democracy," Carter said Tuesday at a meeting of the "Atlantic Bridge" in Atlanta.

--- End quote ---

Renegade:
The fact remains that there are countless "conspiracy theories" out there that are proven facts. Not matter for debate.
-Renegade (July 17, 2013, 11:29 AM)
--- End quote ---

You're talking chalk and cheese here.

However, branding something as "a conspiracy" in order to deflect attention away from there being corroborating evidence to support its claims is no less a pile of dingo's kidneys than insisting something is "a conspiracy" to deflect attention away from its being an assertion without adequate corroborating evidence.
-40hz (July 17, 2013, 01:21 PM)
--- End quote ---

No argument there.

'Conspiracy' has become an intellectually bankrupt term. Right up there with 'organic' and 'green' IMHO. Let's stop using it.
-40hz (July 17, 2013, 01:21 PM)
--- End quote ---

But that is a bit of a problem. How can you stop using the term when every time you attempt to bring up a few uncomfortable facts, someone starts screaming "CONSPIRACY"? Buddy boy in the article does exactly that.

So we end up with a situation where we've got this horrible abuse of language that has emptied word of any useful meaning, and we're still stuck with them.

I suppose you could simply talk about "plotting in secret", which is explicit/accurate in a literal sense, but it won't cover "conspiracies" that are publicly out in the open. (I'll skip examples for the sake of not stirring anything up.)

But, it seems like there's quite a bit of debasement of the language. Lots of examples out there. C. S. Lewis walks through the example of "gentleman" in an essay and talks about how that word was debased until it had no real meaning anymore. It's rather annoying as it destroys part of your ability to communicate effectively.

Renegade:
I was closing tabs when I noticed something in the LawFareBlog page...

Inconvenient!Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

The inconvenient evidence:

WHICH PATH TO PERSIA?
Options for a New American
Strategy toward Iran

06_iran_strategy.pdf (1202.37 kB - downloaded 170 times.)

Table of Contents:

Introduction
The Trouble with Tehran: U.S. Policy Options toward Iran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.
Part I
Dissuading Tehran: The Diplomatic Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Chapter 1: An Offer Iran Shouldn’t Refuse: Persuasion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Chapter 2: Tempting Tehran: The Engagement Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Part II
Disarming Tehran: The Military Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Chapter 3: Going All the Way: Invasion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Chapter 4: The Osiraq Option: Airstrikes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Chapter 5: Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an
Israeli Military Strike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Part III
Toppling Tehran: Regime Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Chapter 6: The Velvet Revolution: Supporting a Popular Uprising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Chapter 7: Inspiring an Insurgency: Supporting Iranian Minority
And Opposition Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113
Chapter 8: The Coup: Supporting a Military Move Against the Regime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Part IV
Deterring Tehran: Containment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Chapter 9: Accepting the Unacceptable: Containment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Conclusion
Crafting an Integrated Iran Policy: Connecting the Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
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tomos:
Okay, maybe I made a mistake -
maybe I should not have replied after you said:
Start a thread in the Basement to continue if you like.
-Renegade (July 17, 2013, 11:35 AM)
--- End quote ---
- that was good advice :D

I would have thought though, that if you disagreed with the content of the article, that you could say that here. In this thread. All of this about the site - while I can very much relate to it, and find it nice and juicy - and sure, it gives us context - but it's irrelevant in terms of rebutting the content of the article.
What you're doing doesnt seem to me that different from someone looking at, say, a libertarian site, and saying - oh, look, they're libertarians - everything they say is dodgy biased propoganda.

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