Your parent poster presented a reasonable argument for their position. You responded by calling it "deranged nonsense", without specifying what you found problematic in the parent's post.
The GP quoted what they believe to be deranged nonsense, which is a reasonable position to have. The coffee shop down your street is not a Government Agency. Get real.
> The GP quoted what they believe to be deranged nonsense, which is a reasonable position to have. The coffee shop down your street is not a Government Agency. Get real.
I never said that GP is wrong about it being deranged nonsense, I merely pointed out that they didn't make any attempt to explain their position or convince anybody else. They made a low-quality knee-jerk shitpost that added no value to anyone reading it. If they want to convince other people, they should use at least a few words to explain what they thought was wrong.
Not everything requires pedantic justification, especially deranged calls for dehumanization and ethnic prejudice. It is Common Sense (and legally correct) that coffee shops are not government agents just because they are registered in a particular place.
> Not everything requires pedantic justification, especially deranged calls for dehumanization and ethnic prejudice. It is Common Sense (and legally correct) that coffee shops are not government agents just because they are registered in a particular place.
Nobody claimed that coffee shops (or fishing vessels) are "government agents". The claim was that a fishing vessel registered to Russia has "ties" to Russian government. This claim is factually true. For instance, they pay some amount of taxes to the Russian government. This also holds true for a coffee shop: a coffee shop registered to Finland pays some amount of taxes to Finnish government.
So, Osama bin Laden had a valid justification after all. /s
> You may then dispute that all the above does not justify aggression against civilians, for crimes they did not commit and offenses in which they did not partake: This argument contradicts your continuous repetition that America is the land of freedom, and its leaders in this world. The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq. These tax dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to attack us and penetrate our lands. So the American people are the ones who fund the attacks against us, and they are the ones who oversee the expenditure of these monies in the way they wish, through their elected candidates.
You're comparing the murder of 3000 civilians to the act of cancelling cats from a cat show. These acts are different, as one is a peaceful act of protest, while the other is a violent act of war.
If Osama bin Laden had initiated economic sanctions and boycotts (cancelings) against the U.S. would it have been justified? Yes!
I am rather concerned about the recent willingness of some HN commenters to jettison basic practices of civilised discourse when it even remotely involves the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
If one has a convincing argument, one should just make it. There is nothing pedantic about that. Insinuating derangement and denying common sense should not be necessary. Those who feel they have to resort to such practices usually do so precisely because they are unable to make a convincing argument. Why else would one act like this?
