Out of Pod Experience

That's nice. How many people have you trained in the use of surface to air missiles? You know, those things that are actually useful when an AC-130 is circling overhead killing you.



The point of #2 is that cost isn't an issue. We use a million dollar missile to blow up a tent because we have to keep up at least a superficial image of caring about collateral damage. If you just want to bomb a rebellion into submission, shells for an AC-130 are a lot cheaper. You're going to run out of willing martyrs for the cause long before the government runs out of money to kill you.



It's not about fear, it's about not being a delusional moron. If things are so bad that armed revolution is justified, the balance of power is so absurdly in favor of the government that any attempt at armed revolution is just pointless suicide. Pretending otherwise is no different than the other LARPers running around pretending that there are dragons and magic spells.



That's the nice (where by "nice" I mean "terrifying") thing about modern weapons, you don't have to go out into the field to kill the enemy. You can kill them from a nice safe office building thousands of miles away from the "battle", and watch everything through a grainy TV camera so you don't actually have to think about your targets as people.

Not that I'd be the one doing it, but it's just wishful thinking to assume that an oppressive government is going to have any problem finding enough people to do its dirty work.



There's no contradiction at all. We're killing a lot of people (many of them innocent), but we still have to at least pretend to minimize civilian casualties. So really, it just emphasizes the point. As horrifyingly bad as the war in Afghanistan is, it could be MUCH worse, and would be in your hypothetical revolution.

He did follow him, against the advice of a representative of the authority's intending to start a confrontation. Unless Martin dragged him out of his car he must have got out and started an altercation of some sort. Either he attempted a "citizens arrest" or he started some sort of argument.

If he tried a citizens arrest as Martin had committed no crime Zimmerman was acting unlawfully. If he started a verbal argument, Martin after being followed and intimidated had a certain amount of justification for starting the fight, if he did start the fight. People are taking the word of a man that might be trying to avoid a murder charge at face value, including the damn police.

The real key to what happened here is who started it, if Martin was on top of Zimmerman punching him that's still justified if Zimmerman started the fight.

Zimmerman is obviously paranoid, he had plagued the police with calls over nothing but shadows and imagination. This time the "criminal" was just walking down the road and looked at him. After ignoring official advice he continued to follow him and continued to make his intent clear with the "they always get away" comment.

It is no stretch of the imagination to believe the paranoid vigilante started the fight under those circumstances. If he did start the fight how can he say the shooting was in self defence?

Herzog needs to look at how the real oppressive governments deal with "rebels". Just imagine the Syrian government with access to the kind of equipment the US armed forces have. A few well trained people with rifles wouldn't accomplish anything against that apart from getting a lot of civilians killed.

The cost represents the value of the technology, if a ballistic missile was $2, the technology would have been copied many times over.

The million dollar price tag is to ensure that black market sales are easy to detect. Its a lot easier to notice the books down 1 million dollars than if the books were 2 dollars.

Price of tech in wars isn't the factor, the time spent by the operators is the behaviour that invokes the cowed response. Even retired soldiers have a cowed response for active soldiers.


1 million dollars vs 40 dollar tent - The fight breakdown:

1a. The million dollar missile is already afixed to a ship / craft for the purpose of being deployed by the operator should the need arise.
1b. The fact that the pilot has to traverse more than 300 miles to get to the (max.) 3m^2 tent is why that missile is loaded, otherwise the tent would be a house or office in the city.

2a. The 40 dollar tent isn't some yokels camping, the people in the tent are purported to be involved in terrorism
2b. The terrorism is likely to cost the terrorists approximately 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, for as many years as they are not captured.
2c. These terrorists (albeit a term that is now a stereotype) are purported as cultivators of opium with the sole intention of "creating a narcotic" maybe, just maybe, they are involved with the production of opiates for the medicinal industry. Although the lack of government support renders this point moot.
2d. That 40 dollar tent could perceivably contain the loss of future hours of enjoyment when the terrorists carry out an act of terrorism "To terrify an individual by act or deed"
2e. The people in the 40 dollar tent are likely to invoke or attempt to invoke a positive adoption of their schema to perpetuate
2f. If all the US Government appointees were in the 40 dollar tent it would be as expensive to society as The Whitehouse is with all US Government appointees in, only if all the US Government appointees are in the tent (Edit: left this one a little sloppy had to make sure the point is clear)
2g. A farmer of opiates would likely have been asked to do so by the "terrorists". If his neighbour said "no!", when asked to do the same, then the neighbour would likely be shot. The original farmer would then have two farms to tend, to grow opiates for the "terrorists" with no additional income, and still with the threat of violence if the farmer refused.

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re: Original thread:

Out of all the factual accounts and eyewitness testimonies, the moment of decision would have already been reached in all thread posters.

Unless its a forum debate, which makes some of the quote/unquote it, rebuke / rebuttle this guy - just a simple metagame over the fact that a 17 yr old was shot by a neighbourhood watch captain in a gated community, with the police likely having as much evidence as possible, as well as a likely call from someone claiming to be Elvis Presley.

You are looking forward to a completely unnecessary bloodbath? Get help, seriously. There must be some mental health professionals you can turn to about these violent fantasies.

Because having a hand gun is going to stop a main battle tank...

Common conservative extremist logic: use a few dictators that took over in history to prove giant point that (insert stupid conservative viewpoint here) always results in (insert absolutely asinine logical conclusion here) for all cases.

Two of the worst dictators in history, and because they were against guns (I have no idea even how true this is), all gun control must be bad.

You know what? I'll play this game. H!tler hated gays. Ergo, we must accept gay marriage or else WE'LL ALL BE EXECUTED!!!

PS: Nice job at not mentioning any of the other countries which enact strict gun control laws, and still have a lot of freedom in the civilians' lives, and are in fact NOT being killed off randomly.

Are you done stating the obvious? Any tyrant is against arming the oppressed population.

But this doesn't indicate anything. This line of reasonning is so stupid you can make it say whatever you like. For example, I suppose that you, like any decent republican, are against abortion. Stalin and Mao where against it, too, so you must be an evil tyrant-lover scumbag...

And, if you want to refer to death tolls, you might want to look at the record of the last republican president. Who, if you need your memory refreshed, started a war on false WMD claims and pure neocon ideology.

This gets the "F for History" award of the week. The whole point of our Second Amendment is to ensure that the citizenry has the means to overthrow tyranny in its own government should the need arise. Our founders were deeply suspicious of massively centralized governments, having just finished rebelling against one.

It has more to do with the ability to defend their own lives and the fact that around this time, militias were required to defend the U.S., but either way, it's rather a moot point now....