There is some sarcasm... Also, taxing speech means the poor don't get a voice, which is the elitism which lead to poor people not being allowed to vote. So let's not go back to this.

. If that was the case, nobody would watch mens college athletics because its not as good as pro, but college football and basketball are just as big as their professional leagues I think that the US is very unusual in this regard. Pretty much everywhere top tier sport commands far larger live and ...

Overpaid athletes deserve to earn no more than the average industrial wage. Then we can have pay parity and avoid the most disgusting excesses of capitalism. Also a wealth tax, and massively increased taxation of all income earned after the first million. Performers will still do it for the status, ...

Umm there is no God check your medications or go get some. Any male who thinks they have a say in this is just a male. Sorry guys you don't get to choose. Next you will tell me mathematics doesn't exist. It is a rather pointless argument. Because we can use maths whether it exists or not in order t...

In defence of the church, they are not the only organisation which has been used by paedophiles to abuse children, (in Ireland alone i know séin ireland and scouting ireland both had issues). However the responce of the church authorities was an abuse of power. When they (several bishops) decided to...

@orathaic, as part of the inquest did they come to understand **why** all the deaths occurred? I assume that it largely came down to lack of resources and no oversight (religious institutions often get a pass because of their special status)? <snip> The investigation is ongoing, see: https://en.m.w...

Following on from that rant, indulge me in a second one. Are foetuses babies? Well categorical thinking is another tool for simplifying things. It often leads to errors, and i would advocate for defining things based on their qualities. For example, brain dead humans in a vegetative state do not hav...

Literally none of what I do is relevant to whether the fetus is a human being or not. The problem with a lot of societal issues is people like you always assume malice or ill intent in the other side. Like it's just so mind numbingly stupid for pro choicers to go around claiming "Pro-lifers don't c...

What is weird to me is, and you can use this to advantage predictions here. England and NI just had elections. Local elections which will give some idea of where votes will go. This day two weeks, Ireland will have European elections, Local elections and a referendum on divorce (as it is currently l...

It is a bit different though than people like Ellsberg or Snowden. They both worked for the government with security clearances. Assange is a foreign national. As a foreign national wanted for spying on the US, I would expect him to have an even tougher time. However he isn't foreign in the sense t...

Some great legal analysis here, including limitation placed on Muller by the fact that he was investigating a sitting president : https://youtu.be/f71Rasj_0JY

webDip has a few redirecting issues. It's currently possible to access the site through five different urls and three different logins. I think the plan is to eventually route them all to either https://webdiplomacy.net or https://www.webdiplomacy.net. That is not necessarily secure. It is still su...

My local hospital: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/ ... -1.3869722

I am against vegan neo-Nazis and tree-hugging xenophobes.

I love how this happens... Not on schedule to suit some media cycle, not two years in advance so you are constantly on a campaign footing. Just within a certain number of years of the last election. Sireit is vulnerable to politics of the moment messing about. But it still seems more healthy than ce...

Nothing. In the modern era only the Trump Show is on, every channel, all the time.

See also: "firehose of falsehood model of propaganda"

It seems appropriate here to point out the the 'classic Nation-state' model lead directly to the game of diplomacy - via the wonderful experience of two world wars. Nation states can not be trusted to live peacefully next to each other... Is what the above logic would conclude. And yet those same n...

Can we not use undiagnosed medical conditions as slurs? Trump has done enough wrong without throwing people with dementia under the bus.

It seems appropriate here to point out the the 'classic Nation-state' model lead directly to the game of diplomacy - via the wonderful experience of two world wars. Nation states can not be trusted to live peacefully next to each other... Is what the above logic would conclude. Instead you need to c...

Documents published by Wikileaks relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan revealed how the US military had killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents. The US has already charged Assange with a single count of participating in the hacking of intelligence computers to reveal controversi...