Scott75

It is not against the law to sext with another adult. That depends on the adult and what they're pretending to be. If the adult is an undercover officer pretending to be a minor, then yes, it is definitely against the law to sext them, at least in the U.S. If it wasn't, Mr. Ritter would never have been charged, let alone convicted. You seem to be suggesting that something I've said wasn't factual. Is that the case? And if so, which statement(s) of mine do you think aren't factual?

Actually, there are binders full of chat logs indicating that Mr Ritter, who was 48 years old at the time, was trying to meet up with underage girls for sex. You've made a few unsubstantiated and erroneous assertions already, I suspect this is just one more. But if you actually have -evidence- for your assertion, by all means present it. He was indeed found guilty by a jury, but I've seen no evidence that he was convicted for what -you- think he did. As Rick Karlin, who I suspect you quoted, stated: "He was convicted in 2011 in Monroe County, Pa., after Barrett Township police presented evidence that in 2009 he had masturbated in front of a webcam being viewed by an undercover officer who was posing as a 15-year-old girl." That's all he was convicted for. Yet another unsubstantiated assertion -.-

All paedophiles use that excuse. If I had a dollar for all the unsubstantiated assertions I've heard -.- But go ahead, just -try- and prove that assertion. We're not even getting into the fact that you haven't even established that he's a pedophile to begin with. First of all, he only masturbated to the last undercover officer, Venneman to be precise. Secondly, you've presented no evidence that Mr. Ritter thought that any of the undercover officers he chatted with were underage. As a matter of fact, he testified to that effect: ** At trial, Ritter told the jury that he assumed Venneman was a housewife pretending to be 15, and that he had never for a moment believed he was talking to a minor, despite the fact that “Emily” repeatedly stated her age. When prosecutors were successful in moving to unseal his New York files and presented evidence from those arrests too, Ritter steadfastly maintained that he was aware, in both instances­, that he was talking to undercover cops. ** Source: Scott Ritter’s Other War | The New York Times There's absolutely no evidence that he was looking for underage girls at all. Matt Bai, writing for the New York Times, makes this quite clear: ** According to court testimony, by 2004, when he stopped attending therapy, Ritter had made an almost daily habit of trying to meet adult women from the chat rooms, in cars or out-of-the-way places, so they could watch him masturbate. (Ritter maintains that he never engaged with an actual minor online, and there’s no evidence to suggest he did, beyond his interactions with undercover police officers in chat rooms for over-18-year-olds.) In 2007, he started using the webcam instead. He admits he couldn’t stop. “I always sort of chuckle when people say, ‘What were you thinking?’ ” Ritter told me. “Well, what part of ‘depressed’ don’t you understand? Find me someone who says depressed people engage in coherent thought.” ** Source: Scott Ritter’s Other War | The New York Times

"According to court testimony, by 2004 when he stopped attending therapy for clinical depression, he had made an almost daily habit of trying to meet women from internet chat rooms, in cars or out-of-the-way places, so they could watch him masturbate." I imagine you got that from Wikipedia's entry on Scott Ritter, as it has that precise passage. I see that you snipped off the last sentence in the paragraph though, which reads: "He has blamed this behavior on his ongoing depression." Not sure where you got that quote, but I suspect you got it from one of Wikipedia's sources for their article on Scott Ritter, an article by Rick Karlin that was published in Times Union- it's exactly the same, only it has "He" instead of "Ritter" at the start of the paragraph. In any case, no one's debating his conviction, I mentioned it in the opening post of this thread. However, as your source points out, no minor was actually involved.

"In 2001, Ritter was involved in two other similar sex sting cases, prosecutor Michael Rakaczewski said in his opening statement. Defense attorney Gary Kohlman said Ritter was never charged in 2001 and that those cases had been sealed. Kohlman also blamed Ritter’s behavior in 2001 on his state of depression over resigning as chief U.N. weapons inspector." source: https://web.archive.org/web/20220307204810/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sex-ritter-idUKTRE73B7PG20110412 You're right, Ritter was involved in 2 sting operations in 2001. I think the reason I said 1 was that he was apparently only charged in one of them. This conflicts with your own source, which states that he wasn't charged at all in 2001. Here's what Wikipedia says: ** Ritter was the subject of two law enforcement sting operations in 2001.[44] He was charged in June 2001 with trying to set up a meeting with an undercover police officer posing as a 16-year-old girl.[45][46] He was charged with a misdemeanor crime of "attempted endangerment of the welfare of a child". The charge was dismissed and the record was sealed after he completed six months of pre-trial probation.[46][7] ** Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ritter Another thing, your article backs up what I was saying previously, that his behaviour was caused by his depression. I didn't know that it was apparently specifically tied to his resigning as Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector.

As I mentioned in the post you're responding to, I made a thread to discuss Mr. Ritter. I don't want to derail this thread going on about him here, so I've responded to your post in said new thread. For anyone interested in my response to DUI, it's here:

Ex-UN Inspector sentenced to prison for online sex case Ex-UN inspector guilty of sex with children Ritter was caught by authorities twice, trying to solicit sex from minors. Once in 2001, and again in 2009. He spent 2 1/2 years in prison. Ritter is a unrepentant paedophile. No, he wasn't. In the first case, he was caught trying to meet up with an adult undercover cop. In the second instance, he was caught exposing himself to an undercover cop. He claims in both instances that he believed that they were both adults. Which they were. The only reason these incidents even happened is because undercover cops chose to enter the adult chat rooms() Mr. Ritter was in. There's no hard evidence that Mr. Ritter was actually looking to do anything sexual with an actual minor.

The sad thing is that there's no evidence that Mr. Ritter ever did anything inappropriate with a minor. All he did was agree to meet an undercover cop in the first instance and expose himself to another in the second. No minors were involved. As to Trump, I definitely believe there's good evidence that he did in fact rape a minor: The lawsuit accusing Trump of raping a 13-year-old girl, explained | Vox That being said, evidence is not proof. And if he can avoid nuclear Armageddon in Ukraine and perhaps even help end the war there before the end of his term, I suspect he may well have been the better pick between him and Kamala. I'm also quite happy with some of his cabinet nominations, most notably that of RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. I suspect that Matt Gaetz might also be good, but I know that he has allegations of his own to contend with. Still, allegations aren't proof.

LOL, sure, other than the fact that he was tried and convicted of doing just that, found guilty by a jury. No, he was convicted of sexting with an adult undercover police officer. Furthermore, he testified that he never believed the person he was chatting with was a minor. Well, from what I've seen of the transcript between Mr. Ritter and Mr Venneman, the undercover LEO in the case that got Mr. Ritter convicted, I saw no indication that Mr. Ritter was looking for a minor. Had he been, I doubt he would have been frequenting an adult chat room to start with. Matt Bai, reporting for the New York Times, believes that the only reason he got time was because he refused to plead guilty. From his article: ** It’s tempting to try to find some deeper connection between Ritter’s public crusade and his most private transgressions. Does he simply crave attention wherever he can get it? Does he need to feel admired? If there is a connection between Ritter the activist and Ritter the accused, though, it probably lies in the uncompromising, even heedless way in which he insists on his version of reality, and how he sees himself always as the victim of a system that is self-evidently corrupt. “I’m someone who believes the truth needs to be heard,” Ritter told me. “And if I’m empowered with the truth, I’m not going to shut up.” Such stridency has repercussions. Taken in isolation, this latest case against Ritter — the one in Pennsylvania stemming from Ryan Venneman’s sting — is hardly the kind of thing that lands you on “America’s Most Wanted.” It’s not as though Ritter, who is the father of twin 19-year-old daughters, was trolling an adolescent site looking to prey on minors. Nor did he ever hint at meeting with the fictional Emily face to face. There’s little question the man needs help, but such cases are routinely disposed of through plea bargains, and prosecutors in Ritter’s case were willing, initially, to let him escape with a single guilty plea, which may well have meant probation rather than jail. Especially given Ritter’s previous arrests in New York, this seems to have been a more-than-equitable resolution, and most accused sex offenders in the age of Megan’s Law would probably have jumped at it. But Ritter has forcefully insisted all along that he did nothing wrong, beyond betraying Marina’s trust. “Why would I plead guilty to something I didn’t do?” he asked me, when I raised the issue of a plea arrangement. I suggested he might have done it to avoid going to jail. “No,” he replied. “Wrong answer. Then I’m not a man. Then I’m not a human being.” At trial, Ritter told the jury that he assumed Venneman was a housewife pretending to be 15, and that he had never for a moment believed he was talking to a minor ** Source: Scott Ritter’s Other War | The New York Times

This is an understatement. He was caught, arrested, and convicted by a jury for trying to engage in online sexual acts with a minor. Those 2 LEO "sting operations" were also attempts by him to solicit sex with a minor. I mean yeah, people in society tend to frown on adult men trying to exploit minors for sex. First of all, there were only 2 sting operations he was involved in. Secondly, there is no indication that Mr. Ritter was trying to exploit any minors. As Matt Bai, writing for the New York Times put it: ** Ritter maintains that he never engaged with an actual minor online, and there’s no evidence to suggest he did, beyond his interactions with undercover police officers in chat rooms for over-18-year-olds. ** Source: Scott Ritter’s Other War | The New York Times Secondly, he testified that in both cases, he thought that the undercover officer wasn't a minor, which was true. If any other adults other than law enforcement officers had pretended to be minors, he wouldn't have been charged with anything. A question that few tend to ask is why did Ryan Venneman, the second undercover officer, choose to "spend some time hunting for sexual predators online"? Why did he just so happen to pick the adult chat site that Mr. Ritter was in and why is it that he started to chat with Mr. Ritter instead of others that were presumably around? And then there's the fact that prior to Mr. Ritter's fall from grace by the powers that be, he hadn't engaged in any of these actions. A bit more from Matt Bai's article: ** In the years after he resigned as a weapons inspector in Iraq, after he changed his mind about the likelihood that Hussein was stockpiling weapons, Ritter briefly basked in the adulation of America’s liberal aristocracy. He was asked to speak at Hollywood fund-raisers; at one, he recalled, Barbra Streisand “sequestered” him for 40 minutes, and then Warren Beatty drove Ritter to his house for homemade chili and a 90-minute political discussion. Streisand, he said, later invited him and Marina to one of her retirement concerts, in New York, where the Ritters were ushered backstage for a private reunion. But what Ritter really needed was a paying job. A much-maligned documentary about Iraq, which he made in 2000 with the dubious financial backing of an Iraqi businessman living in Detroit, failed miserably and plunged him into debt. His ambition was to land a fellowship for which he could write papers and fly off to conferences, or to get some steady gig as a TV commentator, or to dash across the globe on assignment for a glossy magazine. But the Council on Foreign Relations hired Richard Butler instead, and NBC stopped using him as a TV analyst, and Vanity Fair’s editors would only spring for lunch. He wasn’t so much an academic or a journalist as he was a peace activist, something for which think tanks and networks had little use. ** Had Scott Ritter been able to get a well paying job after his brave work in pointing out that the Weapons of Mass Destruction bit was false, rather than essentially becoming jobless, I can easily imagine that he would never have ended up in 2 sting operations. Finally, there are other issues that suggest powerful people wanted Ritter disgraced. Case in point- who unsealed his previous arrests back in 2003? Again Matt Bai elaborates: ** In the days leading up to Ritter’s sentencing in the last week of October, a significant development suddenly brought him new hope. Responding to an appeal from Ritter’s lawyers, a panel of appellate judges in New York ruled unanimously that the files from his 2001 arrest should never have been unsealed and used in his trial. This presented a legal quandary between two neighboring states; the records from Ritter’s arrests in New York were now under seal once again, but in the meantime they had been instrumental in convicting Ritter in Pennsylvania. His lawyers — Gary Kohlman, a white-collar trial lawyer in Washington, and Todd Henry, a Philadelphia-based specialist in sex crimes — filed a motion asking the judge in Pennsylvania to throw out the conviction. ** The judge didn't throw it out though. Why? Who knows. Perhaps she was just really against anyone who would agree to do something sexual with someone who said they were a minor. Then again, perhaps some powerful individual persuaded her to convict him regardless. Evidence that seems to support this is that she even decided that Scott Ritter should be classified as a violent predator "despite having never displayed a sexually violent tendency", as Matt Bai put it. Food for thought.

I think what I like to call Spoc's rule (Star Trek, and I know he didn't come up with it first) applies: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." When I think of people, I try to think of what they bring to the community. If the good they bring to a community is more then what they take away, they get a pass in my book. Scott Ritter certainly made some mistakes in the aughts (the period between 2001 and 2009), but I think that even then, he did far more good then bad. I also highly suspect that the -reason- he's been targetted so often has frequently been -because- he was doing good things that annoyed some powerful people. It may also be because of the repercussions he faced that he engaged in at least some of the bad decisions he made in online chat forums. There's a good article on Scott Ritter from the New York Times that I think is quite revealing in some ways. Quoting from it: ** The timing of the revelations about Ritter’s two-year-old arrests, which somehow became public just as the administration was preparing to invade Iraq, certainly seemed to indicate that his political adversaries meant to destroy his credibility. The charges made international news and effectively ended any hope Ritter had of becoming a public intellectual or a war correspondent. He continued churning out op-eds and books (six in all), but he struggled to pay his bills, and his role as an advocate receded to the point where he was talking to only a small community of policy experts. In the years after, Ritter sought other outlets for his energies. He and Marina joined Delmar’s volunteer Fire Department (he as a firefighter and she as an E.M.T.), and Ritter became one of its most active members, eventually selected as an assistant chief. In the hours left to himself, though, Ritter struggled. According to court testimony, by 2004, when he stopped attending therapy, Ritter had made an almost daily habit of trying to meet adult women from the chat rooms, in cars or out-of-the-way places, so they could watch him masturbate. (Ritter maintains that he never engaged with an actual minor online, and there’s no evidence to suggest he did, beyond his interactions with undercover police officers in chat rooms for over-18-year-olds.) In 2007, he started using the webcam instead. He admits he couldn’t stop. “I always sort of chuckle when people say, ‘What were you thinking?’ ” Ritter told me. “Well, what part of ‘depressed’ don’t you understand? Find me someone who says depressed people engage in coherent thought.” ** Source: Scott Ritter’s Other War | The New York Times

I've seen no evidence he's ever done anything innapropriate with a minor. He was entrapped at least twice by cops though. I've discussed him at length in other forums, the latest being over at justplainpolitics. It seems that one can't post links to that forum here, though, so I decided to make a new thread on him here, if you'd like to discuss the man rather than the articles he's written. It can be found here:

Some may have heard of Scott Ritter in the past. He was a former U.S. Marine Intelligence Officer, a former U.N. Weapons Inspector and is currently a journalist who is quite knowledgeable on certain global conflicts, in particular the war in Ukraine. Some, however, choose to focus solely on the fact that he was the subject of 2 law enforcement sting operations. Wikipedia sums it up: ** Arrests and conviction for sex offenses Ritter was the subject of two law enforcement sting operations in 2001.[39] He was charged in June 2001 with trying to set up a meeting with an undercover police officer posing as a 16-year-old girl.[40][41] He was charged with a misdemeanor crime of "attempted endangerment of the welfare of a child". The charge was dismissed and the record was sealed after he completed six months of pre-trial probation.[41][8] Ritter was arrested again in November 2009[42] over communications with a police decoy he met on an Internet chat site. Police said that he exposed himself, via a web camera, after the officer repeatedly identified himself as a 15-year-old girl.[5] The next month, Ritter waived his right to a preliminary hearing and was released on $25,000 unsecured bail. Charges included "unlawful contact with a minor, criminal use of a communications facility, corruption of minors, indecent exposure, possessing instruments of crime, criminal attempt and criminal solicitation".[2] Ritter rejected a plea bargain and was found guilty of all but the criminal attempt count in a courtroom in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, on April 14, 2011.[5][43] In October 2011, he received a sentence of one and a half to five and a half years in prison.[3] He was sent to Laurel Highlands state prison in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, in March 2012 and paroled in September 2014.[4][7][8] ** Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ritter#Arrests_and_conviction_for_sex_offenses Now if that's all he had ever done, that'd be one thing, but as mentioned already, he was also a well regarded U.S. Marine Intelligence Officer, U.N. Weapons Inspector, and now, a very respected journalist, at least by people I personally respect, and also has his own substack page where he posts many articles on subjects like the Ukraine war that I think are quite good. In September, he posted an article regarding the proxy war between the U.S. and Russia that I brought up in a thread here, namely this one: SCOTT RITTER: 72 Minutes | Consortium News I thought it was quite good, but as has happened many times, someone decided to focus solely on Ritter's arrests and conviction instead of anything he's done before or since. Anyway, I decided to make this thread to try to have a respectful debate with people who have generally been respectful with me, and also as a sort of bookmark to direct anyone who can't seem to focus on anything but the aforementioned arrests and conviction.

No. They are laws of nature. Do you have any evidence for your assertion? Can a woman procreate without a man? No. Can a man procreate without a woman? No. Thus...law of nature. A biological woman can't procreate without a biological man's sperm. But for people who define men and women as people who identify as such, a woman could in fact procreate with another woman's sperm- it's just that this other woman would have to biologically be a man and identify as a woman. This actually turned into a real life issue not too long ago: N.J. trans prisoner who impregnated 2 inmates transferred to men's facility | NBC News There are certainly laws of nature, but those laws don't include words. Words are defined by groups of people and can mean whatever said groups want them to mean.

The KKK hates black people and used to murder them, I just want the LGBT community to stay in their lane, Oh, they don't just hate blacks. Recently, they sometimes don't even mention that part: ** June 18, 2021 by Ben Cohen Police in Virginia are investigating a series of violently antisemitic and homophobic flyers targeting a local school board that were distributed by a white supremacist group affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Flyers denouncing the school board in Fairfax, Va., as “Jew-inspired, communist, qu*er-loving sex fiends violating the words of the Holy Bible” were discovered on Wednesday, ahead of the board’s meeting on Thursday night. The flyers carried the insignia of the “Loyal White Knights,” one of several groups around the country that compose the organized KKK movement, along with the warning that “Yahweh is Watching!” ** Source: Ku Klux Klan Fanatics Distribute Antisemitic, Homophobic Flyers Targeting School Board in Virginia | The Algemeiner It certainly looks like in some ways, you might fit right in. Personal attacks, the last bastion of those who have no substantive argument to make.

I believe I have, but if you believe there's a post where you believe I didn't respond properly to a source you or someone else gave me, by all means point it out. No, I'm pretty sure you didn't, but that doesn't matter anymore. Your response suggests you don't really have a high opinion of information sources. I don't have a high opinion of YOUR sources, for sure. Oh, that's a given, but you apparently don't even have a high opinion of your own. You say things like "You've been given links" and suggest I haven't gone through them, but when I challenge you on your assertion, you say that it "doesn't matter anymore." I suspect it never did. I suspect your primary source is your own opinion, objective evidence be damned.

Agreed, at least for the forseeable future in Israel. I think Zelensky knows at this point that the writing is on the wall. As I've said in the past, in Ukraine, the most likely outcomes are that Russia wins or the everyone loses (nuclear armageddon). I think the U.S. got the message around September and since then they've been making placating gestures to Ukraine while making it clear to Russia that they're not willing to risk nuclear war. At least I hope I'm right here. An article from Scott Ritter published in September got me to think this: SCOTT RITTER: 72 Minutes | Consortium News

You ignore the answers and they're all stronger than anything you've got, yet you keep flapping your cyber gums. What "answers" are you referring to?

Well no, that's kind of stupid. Yet another unsubstantiated assertion. I do that at times, if I think looking at that point in time is worth the trouble and I actually find the answer I'm looking for. Not everything is just an internet search away. You definitely seem to like using the word "stupid". Anyway, it seems that you're implying that I've ignored some question. If so, which question do you think I've ignored? First of all, what statements are you referring to?

But we have. Where? And your evidence for this is where?

Yet more unsubstantiated assertions. You're just reinforcing my point- what you do is easy. Backing up assertions isn't. No, your posting links without any thoughts of your own is easy. I've put a lot of thought into my posts, but I also back up many of my points with evidence picked up from various sources. Most of the time, you and others on your side of this debate don't actually post evidence of any kind, instead just voicing your opinions and calling it a day.

Posting links instead of actually engaging in a real argument is easy too. I clearly do both. You and people like you, on the other hand, tend to rely solely on what you already believe, and generally don't have much in the way of evidence to back up your beliefs. That depends on how you're defining substantiation. I think the second definition of substantiate from the American Heritage Dictionary, 5th Edition is educational here: ** The act of substantiating or giving substance to anything; the act of proving; evidence; proof. ** Source: https://www.wordnik.com/words/substantiation I can certainly agree that most if not all Wikipedia entries don't prove anything. They -do- provide evidence for things, though. Evidence is not proof, but it's the first step towards it. And it always beats having no evidence at all. Research is frequently defined as a very thorough afair, which in turn implies something that can't be done quickly. But there are some definitions of it that fit the bill here. One I particularly like is "inquire into", that one being from Princeton University. Whenever a term is under debate, I think it's good to inquire or look into well known sources to see what they have to say on the matter.

The very problem you are sitting here claiming you are solving. That there is some need for language to clarify what a real man is. No, we already have that language. Men are men and trans people are trans. Your solution only works if everyone defines a man as a biological man and a woman as a biological woman and perhaps do our best to simply ignore intersex people. I and many others think that's a bad solution, which is why we no longer define gender to only include people of a given biological gender, but rather anyone who identifies as that gender. Now, I know, this isn't the traditional way of doing things, and I also know that conservatives tend to love traditions, but sometimes, traditions hold us back from a better world. I believe this is one of those cases. I have in the past mentioned a recent animated film that I think gets into all of these concepts without the lengthy words. I think it has a very good metaphorical way of describing gender fluidity. It's called Nimonia and it's available on Netflix. Here's the trailer:

All you make is unsubstantiated assertions. No, that would generally be posts you and others like you make. Full of assertions, yet almost completely lacking in evidence for said assertions.

It's not a question of caring. It's a question of whether or not anything you say has value. If it contributes to a conversation or not or is just you being a pathetic little weasel. One thing I hope you learn one day- personal attacks never contribute to a discussion in a positive way. Your emotions are in control, not you.