Of course it should be tried in the civilian court of the country in question, how else? For it to be otherwise would mean that the country doesn't exercise effective sovereignty on its territory, and the military in question is an occupying force in all but name, not even subject to the laws of the country that it occupies.

The problem with containment is that it doesn't prevent the atrocities that take place on the already occupied territories. And we're talking about genocide level here - they're wiping out entire tribes (like Shaitat and Albu Nimir) and religions (like Yazidi).

There's no way there can be a grassroots-organized local government that's stable enough for this to work out. Someone from the outside has to step in and, to put it bluntly, basically occupy the place well and good, with an occupation administration in place running things the way they need to be run (including forcibly suppressing revolts that are bound to happen on account of said occupation) for at least a decade, and possibly more.

It doesn't have to be the West. It can also be Iran, for example, or Turkey. It could also be all of those (occupation zones, like Germany post WW2). Or an organized multinational force under the aegis of UN. Or aliens from outer space.

It won't happen, though, because in the past few decades, we have placed national sovereignty and self-determination (and pretend that Iraq is even a single nation to begin with!) over preventing collapse of a stable society and civil wars.

And how many recruits are they actually getting? The numbers right now are somewhere in the thousands, all across the West - that's several hundred million people. So if we assume that ISIS recruiting rate == radicalization rate == failure to give people a stable life and/or treat their mental problems, we're talking about 0.001% rate here. Pretty good, compared to the local rate in places like Iraq, where it's easily into double digits in some localities.

And why would that be worse than ISIS, exactly? Iran has a stable government and a fairly high standard of living for the region (if you account for wealth distribution and not just wealth). It doesn't go around waging wars of aggression. And while it is an authoritarian regime, it's not genocidal - there are plenty of Sunni and Christians and even Jews living in Iran who, while not having all the same rights that Shia enjoy, can live and worship their gods in peace without having their head cut off.

I would dare say that letting Iran take over Iraq (at least the Shia-majority parts of it) is the most realistic way of actually stabilizing the damn thing for more than a few years.

The nuclear huggers are aware of the fact that there aren't all that many places around the world where you can build such a thing (if you want it to be efficient, and/or the costs per kWh to not be astronomical).

Which is why they are not all that interesting from the zombie perspective. For zombies, you need to build a model that accounts for things like 300+ million civilian guns in USA, and the corresponding stockpiles of ammo.

I haven't built one, but my gut feel is that in US, the outbreak would be over in a week, tops, as zombies would be mowed down by the trigger happy redneck horde that finally gets their adventure of a lifetime.

NJ would still be screwed, tho. ~

The only problem is, there are way fewer ships than there are people. If you go to a harbor and get a ship, that's great. If they're all gone, congratulations, you're most likely in a middle of a large city with no escape route.

Imagine what kind of a civil war it'll be over there when they're hit by a never-ending drought, then.

The companies may dodge the taxes on their income, but it's pretty hard to dodge taxes on their employees. Granted, WA doesn't have income tax, but there are also property and sales taxes. It would actually be interesting to see just how much the employees of all the companies listed (specifically, their WA offices) generate.

LLVM support is actually coming already in VS 2015 (it's there in the current CTPs). It's snuck away under "C++ mobile development" category, but effectively it's using Clang to compile binaries, and lldb over ssh to remotely debug them on an actual Android device.

While ACLU doesn't defend 2A by itself, they often get involved in 2A cases where there is some other aspect involving discrimination or privacy (like e.g. various "shall-issue" states refusing permits to non-citizens). Though I don't think this case qualifies...

It might have used to be true, but I can assure you that anyone caught doing that would be in for a major smackdown at least in the past 5 years.

This was especially a thing due to the officially supported Windows 7 N.

That's okay, for all the countries they care about (to keep tabs on their citizens), they'll have mutual agreements with. Just like Echelon works due to data sharing between USA, UK, Australia etc.

As for Snowden, he may be free from NSA, but he has Russian snoops keeping an eye on him. Google SORM-2 and see what they have in place for many years now. The same applies to pretty much any other country that would not be chums with USA.

LaPierre is a hysterical moron. It's not worth paying attention to what he has to say, and it's not worth arguing with people who take him seriously, because they lack (or voluntarily surrendered) the ability to reason logically and surrendered themselves to emotions.

I would like to point out, though, that the law prohibiting mentally ill from possessing firearms is already in place. The point that NRA keeps raising is that the checks are done on federal level, while the databases are compiled on state level in a very ad-hoc and inconsistent way. Basically, each state decides what goes on the list and when it gets to the feds. So the effect is that we have a law on the books that is supposedly helpful (I'm not familiar enough with the topic to judge whether it actually is or not, though I suspect it would be with the proper criteria), but the implementation of which is hindered in practice. It stands to reason that either the law needs to be repealed, or it needs to be fixed to do what it's meant to be doing.

Regarding allowing people to buy guns after having convictions - I don't see a problem with this in principle. Rights are rights, and the right to keep and bear arms is there on the list alongside the right to free speech or to privacy and protection against warrantless searches. We don't refuse the latter to criminals after they have served their sentence, why should we refuse the former? (BTW, the right to vote is also one thing that is unfairly denied to such people, and that so many states still do it is a travesty).

The bigger problem there is the justice system that's designed to be punitive in nature rather than corrective or deterrent - we release criminals on the streets knowing full well that they're still sociopathic, and we put people in prison for years for crimes that don't harm anyone, or that they wouldn't repeat anyway because they already understand the error of what they did (and after they spend those years in prison, they often turn into sociopaths). Fix that, so that sociopaths remain isolated so long as they remain a danger to society, and gun rights for felons becomes a non-issue.

As far as terrorist attacks in malls go, it would seem that actual terrorists don't have a problem sourcing weapons for them even in countries where gun laws are fairly tight (like, well, France). In any case, in US, even if you were to make them all illegal overnight, you'd end up with all those millions of guns ending up on the black market, still readily available for those who intend to use them for some nefarious purpose. It would take not years, but literally decades for the circulation to scale down - a time scale that doesn't really mesh with the "here and now" nature of the terrorist threat.

And, of course, terrorist attacks are usually not gun massacres. Explosives were, and remain, a best and most reliable way to wreck havoc on a large number of people at once for maximum shock value. In Nairobi mall attack, it took at least four (almost certainly more, initially they reported closer to a dozen attackers; 4 is how many they have arrested in the aftermath) guys with AKs, engaged for several hours, to kill 67 people. In Moscow metro bombings, it took two women with suicide belts a few seconds to kill 40. Much easier logistics, too - no training necessary for the bombers, and explosives are homemade stuff with nails and scraps of metal for a shrapnel load. Pretty much the only reason for them to use guns is when they want to fight off police (in e.g. hostage scenarios like Beslan, or simply when they want to make a statement of how inept the government forces are by holding them back, like in Nairobi).