US Politics - Trump cancels summit having to do with North Korea

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Memento Mori
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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Memento Mori » Fri Feb 23, 2018 3:26 pm

Even for him the speech Trump is giving at CPAC right now is spectacularly incoherent. The dementia is bad today.

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Monkey Man
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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Monkey Man » Fri Feb 23, 2018 6:44 pm

Gates pleading Guilty to 2 charges right about now -

twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/967088334462963712



twitter.com/bradheath/status/967133081084878848



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Harry Ola
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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Harry Ola » Sat Feb 24, 2018 9:40 am

The indictment for perjury to which Gates pled guilty to yesterday is extraordinary. He took part in a proffer session with Mueller's team. A proffer session is an opportunity for a suspect to tell he what he knows (so the FBI knows if you have valuable info to make a deal) but they won't use that information against you. It was in this session, where you can tell the truth without worrying about the consequences that he lied! What is wrong with these people :fp: :fp: :fp: :fp: :fp: :fp: :fp: .

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Harry Ola
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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Harry Ola » Sat Feb 24, 2018 9:43 am

This one is interesting from yesterday. Susan Rice's lawyer replies to Grassley and Graham.

twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/967178517409599488



"In light of communications between Trump team and Russian officials before and after the election"

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Harry Ola
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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Harry Ola » Sat Feb 24, 2018 9:50 am

twitter.com/matthewamiller/status/967173340292100096



#popcorn :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

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Peter Crisp
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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Peter Crisp » Sat Feb 24, 2018 1:49 pm

The lies and obfuscation of the Trump team are going to go into overdrive as will the attempts to turn peoples attention to anything but the investigation.

Vermilion wrote:I'd rather live in Luton.
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Alvin Flummux
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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Alvin Flummux » Sat Feb 24, 2018 2:22 pm

Peter Crisp wrote:The lies and obfuscation of the Trump team are going to go into overdrive as will the attempts to turn peoples attention to anything but the investigation.


So, a resumption of the war with North Korea, then?

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$ilva $hadow
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PostRe: US Politics - Mueller subpoenas Trump's Deutsche Bank accounts
by $ilva $hadow » Sat Feb 24, 2018 3:14 pm

Karl wrote:I'm going to start spoilering my replies to $ilva so they're easier to skip.

Click this, $ilva:
$ilva $hadow wrote:So now that you found those passages used by bhuddists to enable violence, I can drop the whole bhuddism is peaceful and move on to Jainism.

You got unlucky when you bigged up Buddhism because I've actually skimmed the Mahāvamsa before; I knew where to look for that quote. I've never read a Jain text, so I have no idea whether there are passages that justify violence or not. For what it's worth I think there has been at least one Jain emperor who has led armies and so forth, but that's just from a general, very shallow knowledge of Indian history, so I could be wrong.

But beyond that...

$ilva $hadow wrote:...and move on to Jainism

Why? Think about the argument you're making here. Are you saying "if I can find a nice religion out there somewhere, it proves my Islamophobia is justified"? I am sure eventually you will find a religion that has never hurt anyone, but what does that prove?

You're still left with the vast majority of all religions, including all of the big six of over ten million followers (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism), being mixed bags with some shitty passages that are sometimes used by pricks to justify being pricks. That doesn't justify your hatred of Islam any more than it justifies a hatred of Hinduism. What it might justify is a hatred of religion in general: I think that view would still be a bit edgy for my tastes but I at least wouldn't think you were bigoted for it.

The fact that you admit you were wrong and yet still say...

$ilva $hadow wrote:but islam is still worse

...based on absolutely no reasoning whatsoever is proof you're not really learning anything from this conversation, which is a shame.

All I want you to do is think a little bit about the nature of terrorism. We've recently waged several wars in a region of the world that contains an absolute huge number of people, most of whom live shitty lives in shitty going-nowhere countries. Do you not feel that might be a contributing factor to why we sometimes experience terrorism from that region or people of that ethnocultural background, rather than their cultural bedrock being somehow uniquely evil? I understand that this isn't as emotionally satisfying an explanation as us being 'good' and them being 'bad', but it's the explanation that allows us to approach understanding the geopolitical realities and perhaps to even start doing something about them.

Insofar as 'evil' actually illuminates anything as a descriptor (sometimes your own moral outrage - while valid - doesn't help you to understand a problem, y'know?), I do think ISIS and other related terrorist groups are evil organisations, and that individual violent extremists are evil. I think that's self-evident. It doesn't mean that Islam is uniquely evil as a religion, any more than the existence of the Bodu Bala Sena means Buddhism is uniquely evil.

For centuries, while medieval Europe ate itself in a Dark Age, it was the Islamic Golden Age which kept the light of civilisation alive. Baghdad was basked - comparatively speaking - in the glow of learning and tolerance, particularly when juxtaposed with 8th century Catholicism. What changed? Complex socioeconomic factors lead to the decline of the Middle-East relative first to East Asia, then to Europe at the dawning of the Renaissance. When Western powers became overwhelmingly dominant during the Industrial Revolution, the Middle-East was stomped and carved up, primarily by the British and Russians... and even when our empires came to an end, outside powers continued to methodically destabilise the region.

Let's bring this back to you and your views. You seem to really want to find a passage in some religious text that explains everything we observe in that part of the world...

$ilva $hadow wrote:If a religion has no texts of violence, then you cannot be that religion and still be violent.

...basically coming down to "they're bad people because they follow the wrong religion", and I mean, I don't really agree with anything about this statement on any level, but I think the actual core of the problem you have is visible here. You're looking in the wrong book, don't you think? If you want to understand ISIS, read some histories of the Middle-East from the 6th century onwards. The establishment, rise, fall, and subjugation of that culture is a genuinely fascinating story. And though I don't think you'll find all the answers you want there, you'll have a much better feel for why the region is so messed up than you currently do.


Spoiler because off-topic - Karl

I'm going to leave this gooseberry fool spoilered, but I'm back after looking over bhuddist texts. I take back my apology and resume my status as "are you strawberry floating kidding me?"

In the quran there are specific verses that are telling you to kill people, and here you are quoting texts from bhuddism that aren't even on the same level as the quotes found in the quran. The whole nature of the bhuddist religion is different to the one and only literal translation that is uniform across all languages in the way the quran is.

Whatever you said above is gooseberry fool that I'm not saying. I'm saying that islam directly leads to this kind of terrorism, just like christianity leads to it's own form of christian terrorism. I can't believe I even caved to that one quote and thought you might have had a point. The 'violent' texts found in bhuddism are few and far inbetween, so much so that even quick googling doesn't get you much, and then you have to see where the quote comes from, which bhudda or figurehead and see how much weight that authority holds. It's nothing like islam.

The fact of the matter is that islam is an awful religion compared to bhuddism, which is why you can't easily justify violence with bhuddist texts as opposed to islam,where the texts are plain and plentiful for anyone to be brainwashed.

There is no literal quote in bhuddism that says a woman can be hit by a man. In the quran it specifically says you can hit your wife or woman, as long as you don't leave any marks on her. Not only that but the prophet muhammad in the hadiths says to his soldiers that any female you own, you can rape and do whatever you'd like with her.


Thanks for trying to obfuscate and mislead everyone on the nature of islam, and trying to make out a strawman that this is all about hating muslims, but this is sickening bullshit nonsense that even I fell for because it came from you.

Anyone who wants to read the bhuddist texts, go read em, and try to compare them to islam which are literal instructions in the quran, backed up by the prophet muhammad in the hadiths. The violent verses are easily able to be used as justification over any peaceful means due to the nature of abrogation, which is how the quran is interpreted.

strawberry float islam, and strawberry float anyone trying to look like some sort of whiteknight just out there defending islam like we're all a bunch of racist prejudiced strawberry floats.


Complete and utter dogshit trying to compare bhuddism with islam, one is clearly worse than the other by several magnitudes.

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PostRe: US Politics - Mueller subpoenas Trump's Deutsche Bank accounts
by Moggy » Sat Feb 24, 2018 3:59 pm

$ilva $hadow wrote:
Karl wrote:I'm going to start spoilering my replies to $ilva so they're easier to skip.

Click this, $ilva:
$ilva $hadow wrote:So now that you found those passages used by bhuddists to enable violence, I can drop the whole bhuddism is peaceful and move on to Jainism.

You got unlucky when you bigged up Buddhism because I've actually skimmed the Mahāvamsa before; I knew where to look for that quote. I've never read a Jain text, so I have no idea whether there are passages that justify violence or not. For what it's worth I think there has been at least one Jain emperor who has led armies and so forth, but that's just from a general, very shallow knowledge of Indian history, so I could be wrong.

But beyond that...

$ilva $hadow wrote:...and move on to Jainism

Why? Think about the argument you're making here. Are you saying "if I can find a nice religion out there somewhere, it proves my Islamophobia is justified"? I am sure eventually you will find a religion that has never hurt anyone, but what does that prove?

You're still left with the vast majority of all religions, including all of the big six of over ten million followers (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism), being mixed bags with some shitty passages that are sometimes used by pricks to justify being pricks. That doesn't justify your hatred of Islam any more than it justifies a hatred of Hinduism. What it might justify is a hatred of religion in general: I think that view would still be a bit edgy for my tastes but I at least wouldn't think you were bigoted for it.

The fact that you admit you were wrong and yet still say...

$ilva $hadow wrote:but islam is still worse

...based on absolutely no reasoning whatsoever is proof you're not really learning anything from this conversation, which is a shame.

All I want you to do is think a little bit about the nature of terrorism. We've recently waged several wars in a region of the world that contains an absolute huge number of people, most of whom live shitty lives in shitty going-nowhere countries. Do you not feel that might be a contributing factor to why we sometimes experience terrorism from that region or people of that ethnocultural background, rather than their cultural bedrock being somehow uniquely evil? I understand that this isn't as emotionally satisfying an explanation as us being 'good' and them being 'bad', but it's the explanation that allows us to approach understanding the geopolitical realities and perhaps to even start doing something about them.

Insofar as 'evil' actually illuminates anything as a descriptor (sometimes your own moral outrage - while valid - doesn't help you to understand a problem, y'know?), I do think ISIS and other related terrorist groups are evil organisations, and that individual violent extremists are evil. I think that's self-evident. It doesn't mean that Islam is uniquely evil as a religion, any more than the existence of the Bodu Bala Sena means Buddhism is uniquely evil.

For centuries, while medieval Europe ate itself in a Dark Age, it was the Islamic Golden Age which kept the light of civilisation alive. Baghdad was basked - comparatively speaking - in the glow of learning and tolerance, particularly when juxtaposed with 8th century Catholicism. What changed? Complex socioeconomic factors lead to the decline of the Middle-East relative first to East Asia, then to Europe at the dawning of the Renaissance. When Western powers became overwhelmingly dominant during the Industrial Revolution, the Middle-East was stomped and carved up, primarily by the British and Russians... and even when our empires came to an end, outside powers continued to methodically destabilise the region.

Let's bring this back to you and your views. You seem to really want to find a passage in some religious text that explains everything we observe in that part of the world...

$ilva $hadow wrote:If a religion has no texts of violence, then you cannot be that religion and still be violent.

...basically coming down to "they're bad people because they follow the wrong religion", and I mean, I don't really agree with anything about this statement on any level, but I think the actual core of the problem you have is visible here. You're looking in the wrong book, don't you think? If you want to understand ISIS, read some histories of the Middle-East from the 6th century onwards. The establishment, rise, fall, and subjugation of that culture is a genuinely fascinating story. And though I don't think you'll find all the answers you want there, you'll have a much better feel for why the region is so messed up than you currently do.


Spoiler because off-topic - Karl

I'm going to leave this gooseberry fool spoilered, but I'm back after looking over bhuddist texts. I take back my apology and resume my status as "are you strawberry floating kidding me?"

In the quran there are specific verses that are telling you to kill people, and here you are quoting texts from bhuddism that aren't even on the same level as the quotes found in the quran. The whole nature of the bhuddist religion is different to the one and only literal translation that is uniform across all languages in the way the quran is.

Whatever you said above is gooseberry fool that I'm not saying. I'm saying that islam directly leads to this kind of terrorism, just like christianity leads to it's own form of christian terrorism. I can't believe I even caved to that one quote and thought you might have had a point. The 'violent' texts found in bhuddism are few and far inbetween, so much so that even quick googling doesn't get you much, and then you have to see where the quote comes from, which bhudda or figurehead and see how much weight that authority holds. It's nothing like islam.

The fact of the matter is that islam is an awful religion compared to bhuddism, which is why you can't easily justify violence with bhuddist texts as opposed to islam,where the texts are plain and plentiful for anyone to be brainwashed.

There is no literal quote in bhuddism that says a woman can be hit by a man. In the quran it specifically says you can hit your wife or woman, as long as you don't leave any marks on her. Not only that but the prophet muhammad in the hadiths says to his soldiers that any female you own, you can rape and do whatever you'd like with her.


Thanks for trying to obfuscate and mislead everyone on the nature of islam, and trying to make out a strawman that this is all about hating muslims, but this is sickening bullshit nonsense that even I fell for because it came from you.

Anyone who wants to read the bhuddist texts, go read em, and try to compare them to islam which are literal instructions in the quran, backed up by the prophet muhammad in the hadiths. The violent verses are easily able to be used as justification over any peaceful means due to the nature of abrogation, which is how the quran is interpreted.

strawberry float islam, and strawberry float anyone trying to look like some sort of whiteknight just out there defending islam like we're all a bunch of racist prejudiced strawberry floats.


Complete and utter dogshit trying to compare bhuddism with islam, one is clearly worse than the other by several magnitudes.


There’s a religion thread you know, take it over there.

t:religion?f=7

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PostRe: US Politics - Mueller subpoenas Trump's Deutsche Bank accounts
by That » Sat Feb 24, 2018 4:44 pm

Spoiler because off-topic

Silva:
$ilva $hadow wrote:I'm going to leave this gooseberry fool spoilered, but I'm back after looking over bhuddist texts. I take back my apology and resume my status as "are you strawberry floating kidding me?"

You've been mad about this since early December. That's almost three months. Are you OK?

$ilva $hadow wrote:[ranting about Buddhism]

I still don't understand why you care so much about Buddhism. I thought you'd already moved on to Jainism as your perfect theology?

Earlier in this thread - it was three months ago, so I sympathise if you've forgotten - you tried to make the point that Islam is uniquely dangerous. The way you tried to argue this was by saying, to paraphrase, I've heard Buddhism doesn't have any violent stuff in, and its followers have never done anything bad, so what's Islam's excuse?.

Buddhism has violent stuff in, like the bit in the Mahavamsa that justifies genocide. Its followers do violent things, like the Buddhist terrorist group in Sri Lanka. You tried to move the goal-posts to misogyny; the Vinaya Pitaka is full of it, like the bit where the Buddha tells a monk that it's better to put his dick in a snake or a fire than a woman.

Maybe Jainism doesn't. But it doesn't matter, because...

$ilva $hadow wrote:[ranting about Islam]

Here you try to make the point that Islam is uniquely bad because it contains more violent verses than Buddhism. This could be true. I don't think it's obviously true for a comparison with Judaism or Christianity or Hinduism, and you don't seem to have a hate-boner for those religions.

You are uniquely predisposed towards criticism of Islam because you are uniquely biased against it as a religion.

You also try to make the point that Islam is uniquely bad because it is not open to individual interpretation. This is clearly nonsense. There are multiple Muslim sects even within the Middle-East, and Muslims all over the world have differing moral outlooks that reflect the cultures and philosophies of the society in which they live. There are gay drag queen Muslims in the UK, there is a pro-LGBT Muslim youth movement in Lebanon, and so forth. Islam doesn't need to have had a formal reformation for its followers to freely interpret the religion, because the important thing historically in liberalising religion has been that copies of the texts exist in the vernacular and can be read by ordinary adherents.

The text of the Bible says a lot of things that ordinary Christians find silly nowadays, and there seems to be plenty of evidence that Muslims are not somehow intrinsically different.

You finally try to make the point that Islam uniquely justifies religious violence (despite admitting that you think Christianity leads to Christian terrorism...?). But you've just said previously that you consider Buddhism to be a good religion vs. Islam which you think is a bad religion, and Buddhist terrorists exist. This is leads to a conclusion even within your own framework and by your own arguments that terrorism and religious violence are not directly or wholly caused by the religion involved.

The Middle-East has a relatively high rate of political instability and violence because the people there are poor and badly-educated and angry.

$ilva $hadow wrote:Thanks for trying to obfuscate and mislead everyone on the nature of islam, and trying to make out a strawman that this is all about hating muslims, but this is sickening bullshit nonsense that even I fell for because it came from you.

strawberry float islam, and strawberry float anyone trying to look like some sort of whiteknight just out there defending islam like we're all a bunch of racist prejudiced strawberry floats.

I don't know why you think I have a vested interest in defending Islam or making you look like a bigot. I'm an atheist, I don't care about Islam in particular or any other religion. And you look like a bigot because you keep coming into an unrelated thread - this is so far off-topic now - swearing and frothing about how much you hate Islam.

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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Peter Crisp » Sat Feb 24, 2018 5:07 pm

Alvin Flummux wrote:
Peter Crisp wrote:The lies and obfuscation of the Trump team are going to go into overdrive as will the attempts to turn peoples attention to anything but the investigation.


So, a resumption of the war with North Korea, then?


I wouldn't rule Trump out of trying to start WW3 just to try and stay out of prison.
The entire world can burn as long as he's ok in his bunker with enough frozen McDonalds to last a lifetime.

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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Alvin Flummux » Sat Feb 24, 2018 5:21 pm

Peter Crisp wrote:
Alvin Flummux wrote:
Peter Crisp wrote:The lies and obfuscation of the Trump team are going to go into overdrive as will the attempts to turn peoples attention to anything but the investigation.


So, a resumption of the war with North Korea, then?


I wouldn't rule Trump out of trying to start WW3 just to try and stay out of prison.
The entire world can burn as long as he's ok in his bunker with enough frozen McDonalds to last a lifetime.


Almost certainly a thought he's had on more than one occasion since entering the White House.

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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Alvin Flummux » Sat Feb 24, 2018 9:19 pm

twitter.com/CBSNews/status/967507326147100672



I don't know how much they've redacted, but it's probably important stuff that would make Trump or his pals look bad.

Edit:

Schiff and the White House respond:

twitter.com/CBSNews/status/967512297865469958



twitter.com/CBSNews/status/967511449445851136




And another Democrats weighs in...

twitter.com/tedlieu/status/967512030117679104


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Harry Ola
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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Harry Ola » Sun Feb 25, 2018 7:44 am

This one made me laugh/cry.

twitter.com/brianstelter/status/967566191207370753


twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/967563946063523840


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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Moggy » Mon Feb 26, 2018 10:48 am

twitter.com/jacobawohl/status/967508874151383040



I think he missed the word “white” before the word “people” there. :lol:

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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Peter Crisp » Mon Feb 26, 2018 2:58 pm

It also does beg the question that do these people think all the rest of the free world without guns live in some kind of crime nightmare world where 1 guy with a gun can take over entire defenceless towns? The attitude to guns by some in the US is that the 2nd amendment is somehow sacred and more important than anything else.
It really does make me wonder just how any conservative american who ends up living in Europe (maybe for work) copes without a gun as they must find the situation intolerable.

Vermilion wrote:I'd rather live in Luton.
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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Hexx » Mon Feb 26, 2018 3:11 pm

I pretty sure they Europe is filled with failed and burning countries, overtaken by Muslims and following Sharia Law

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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Preezy » Mon Feb 26, 2018 3:33 pm

Hexx wrote:I pretty sure they Europe is filled with failed and burning countries, overtaken by Muslims and following Sharia Law

Indeed, the prevalence of Muslamic ray guns is a real concern.

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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Peter Crisp » Mon Feb 26, 2018 3:37 pm

I follow the law of the jungle.
Screw human laws.

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PostRe: US Politics - LA Times: Rick Gates to plead guilty + testify against Manafort in Russia investigation
by Garth » Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:25 pm

twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/968468176639004672



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