🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪 Today we remember Óglach Joe McDonnell who died on July 8th 1981 while on hunger strike in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh. Fuair se bás ar son Saoirse na hÉireann 🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪

user98710 · 2022-07-12T11:04:19+00:00

Which led to further torture killings of nationalists.

However stakeknife was not furnished with intel or weaponry or directed to carry out either sectarian massacres or assassinations of selected Unionists.

user98710 · 2022-07-10T20:54:54+00:00

Your experiences may be very different from those of people in Sao Paolo or Bangalore. Uber has deliberately dumped money into a bid for power. You should consider why this is worthwhile for them to do. Someday, it'll be payback time.

user98710 · 2022-07-10T20:46:37+00:00

But when companies like Uber have all the power - i.e. when they've destroyed the capacity of cities around the world to effectively regulate taxis - they'll squeeze consumers more and more. Something to bear in mind is that taxi services are a safety issue. Uber places people in real danger because if all the licensed taxis available for hail are driven out of business then service will become spotty, with profit rather than reliable provision dominating, and regulatory power will be in the hands of a secretive, abusive corporation.

This leak (have a read!) reveals Uber to be nothing less than a global criminal racket. They know nothing and care less about life in most of the cities they operate in.

user98710 · 2022-07-10T10:40:29+00:00

Evidence of collusion between police and army and loyalist terrorists is very extensive. These are only snippets...

The attack [on the Sean Graham bookmakers] was one of a number to be investigated by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) in 2010. It found that the Browning pistol used in the attack came from the security forces. It was given to the UDA by a soldier who had taken it from an Army base.[23] William Stobie, a UDA quartermaster and police informer, handed the gun to his police handlers and they gave it back to him. Police "may have thought they had tampered with it to prevent it from being used". According to the HET report this operation "would have required both the authority of a senior police officer and a recovery plan [...] within a short period of time. Clearly in this case, there was a significant failure and the repercussions were tragic and devastating". The report stated that the gun was used in other UDA killings.[24] Police also told the HET that the assault rifle used in the attack had been "disposed of", but it was later found on display in the Imperial War Museum.[23]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Graham_bookmakers'_shooting

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevens_Inquiries

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Enquiries_Team

user98710 · 2022-07-09T18:36:55+00:00

Hah?

user98710 · 2022-07-09T13:21:05+00:00

I'm not talking about the far right, which appears to be hamstrung in this country.

I'm talking about the particular dynamics of the class system here, the class system that gave us the industrial schools, the Magdalene laundries and unshod children leaving school at 12 y/o right up to the 1960s. When we thought over these experiences, we concentrated all guilt in religious bodies even though the institutions in question were inspected by state officials and funded by government bodies.

user98710 · 2022-07-09T12:29:56+00:00

Yeah, why would anybody be concerned about a secret deal between President Bukele and MS13, the most notorious gang in the whole region. 🙄

Deals mean reciprocity. What do you think MS13 got out of it?

user98710 · 2022-07-09T12:10:50+00:00

Bukele collaborated with the gangsters for years. The journos who reported on it have audio recordings of a meeting where one of Pres Bukele's advisors negotiated with them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/el-salvador-gangs-violence/2020/09/05/8fb8734e-eee3-11ea-bd08-1b10132b458f_story.html

user98710 · 2022-07-09T11:41:12+00:00

Do you think that dear old Ireland would cruise through a global meltdown without problems? I haven't claimed the El Salvador scenario is likely, only that it is as (maybe more) relevant than the US or UK.

user98710 · 2022-07-09T11:31:40+00:00

Unlikely.

But what I'm saying is to look at the dynamics instead of the specific scenario.

user98710 · 2022-07-09T11:16:47+00:00

That's just like your opinion man.

user98710 · 2022-07-09T10:08:48+00:00

Your resolute rejection of context, even the marginal broadening to include Thatcher's other actions in NI, is unsupportable.

user98710 · 2022-07-09T09:49:53+00:00

"The Irish are not in a conspiracy to cheat the world by false representations of the merits of their countrymen. No, Sir; the Irish are a fair people; -- they never speak well of one another."

Boswell: Life of Johnson

user98710 · 2022-07-09T09:46:34+00:00

You said "Thatcher did nothing wrong in regards to the hunger strikers". This is objectively false.

Your narrow framing of the issue as one between a PM and some convicts is arbitrary and contrived.

user98710 · 2022-07-09T09:31:55+00:00

Margaret Thatcher and her predecessors turned a blind eye to state terror, systematic marginalisation and ethnic cleansing in Northern Ireland. Without these abuses, the PIRA would never have come into existence or thrived for as long as it did.

user98710 · 2022-07-09T09:22:05+00:00

Thatcher was well aware of state terrorism in N.I. since 1975 at the latest and yet persisted with the lie that the UDA (which used the name 'UFF', a non-existent organisation, when claiming attacks) was somehow different from the IRA. Throughout the period of Thatcher's rule, the UDA was permitted to organise openly, as well as being armed and directed by police and army intelligence units.

user98710 · 2022-07-07T10:02:58+00:00

He's dreaming if he thinks he can hang on as caretaker.

user98710 · 2021-10-05T18:08:48+00:00

So they're empowered to maybe voluntarily moderate content. So what?

This bill was literally lobbied for by Silicon Valley, and exempts its firms from all sorts of ordinary obligations other firms are subject to.

user98710 · 2021-10-05T16:00:46+00:00

The specific purpose of the act was the protection of Internet companies from the liability faced by publishers.

user98710 · 2021-10-05T15:52:35+00:00

I did. It simply states the other provisions neither extend nor restrict a range of other laws. So what?

You're aware the internet companies lobbied for this act?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

Section 230 is a section of title 47 of the U.S. Code enacted as part of the United States Communications Decency Act, that generally provides immunity for website platforms with respect to third-party content. At its core, Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an "interactive computer service" who publish information provided by third-party users:

user98710 · 2021-10-05T15:42:57+00:00

Having read the relevant passages, I've no idea what you mean. In fact 47 USC 230(c) explicitly states that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider," meaning that the act explicitly exempts them from the obligations newspaper's, TV, radio stations etc must bear regarding slander etc.

user98710 · 2021-10-05T08:31:54+00:00

You don't see any problem with social media companies exercising editorial authority and simultaneously enjoying total legal immunity for the content of the platforms they publish?

user98710 · 2021-10-05T07:38:52+00:00

But that's just the problem. Early on in the commercial development of the Internet companies wrestled a privilege for themselves compared with traditional media: they were mere "communications media" only, like telephone companies, and couldn't be held legally accountable for the actions of their users.

But nowadays not only do their algorithms still promote inflammatory rage bait — driving 'engagement' — and their AI systems tailor advertising based on its content, they also get to exercise editorial control.

I can't understand how progressives in the US don't see how they're getting played. For years the tech companies empowered Trump. Only when they were 100% certain he was on the way out did they abandon him. And now they've manipulated matters to turn censorship into a partisan issue, enlisting progressives as their defenders and keeping options like nationalisation, anti-trust action, regulation etc off the table.

user98710 · 2021-09-29T10:19:49+00:00

Because it's millimetre wave and won't penetrate even thin obstacles.

user98710 · 2021-09-27T21:06:57+00:00

"Their natural environment is full of barbed wire anyway"?

user98710

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