the view

[rabbitfufu]

THe view and Whoopi must go spewing hated very evil people.worse than anything i ever seen on the media EVER!!!

[Stavros]

So shut it down. Why defend free speech when it upsets you so much?

[rabbitfufu]

free speech is to be so hateful

[Stavros]

free speech is to be so hateful

Free speech can also educate, inform and entertain.

In a society that cares about the fate of its citizens, regulations can be found that place limits on what can be said in public. Elon Musk - and other controllers of social media platforms- will be asked to give evidence to a House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, which is going to investigate social media and the riots that broke out in July this year.

False information, which could have been nipped at source by responsible agents for the platforms, alleged that the man (17 at the time of the incident, now 18 ) who murdered three young girls in a dance class, was a Muslim who crossed the channel on a boat the previous year and claimed asylum -the consequence was a series of attacks on hotels housing asylum seekers, some actual violence against persons and property, and a barrage of hate speech; all lies, but fanned by 'the usual suspects' -Nigel Farage, 'Tommy Robinson' et al. In fact, the person who killed those girls is English, and not a Muslim, though he has evidently had some fascination with the violence of al-Qaeda which may help explain his actions, if not his motives.

The truth is out there, it all depends on whether people value truth over lies, no matter how uncomfortable that might be. If in a free society we all have the right to be offended, do we not also have the right to be defended from citizens who wish to cause us harm?

MPs to summon Elon Musk to testify about X’s role in UK summer riots | Social media | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/nov/20/mps-summon-elon-musk-x-role-uk-summer-riots)

[Paladin]

Someone can be English and a muslim, although extreme islamic doctrine puts their religion above any state loyalty.

[Stavros]

Someone can be English and a muslim, although extreme islamic doctrine puts their religion above any state loyalty.

Which is why Roman Catholics were persecuted in Tudor times -to whom were they loyal? King Henry and Queen Elizabeth -or the Pope?

The real danger is Religious Nationalism of any kind.

The Hindu Nationalism of Modi has deepened and embittered communal relations in India -Muslims and Christians are afraid for their lives and property, and why? India has always been a majority Hindu country, why make it the National Religion?

Islamic Nationalism has deepened and embittered communal relations in Pakistan -how many Christians accused of blasphemy were then deprived of their land, which was taken over by the same people who accused them of blasphemy, no matter if there was no evidence for it?

Jewish Nationalism in Israel now means that the law of the State gives National Rights only to Jews. What rights do non-Jews have in Israel? Can Judaism, or any religion be compressed into a 'Nation'?

Christian Nationalism in the USA, currently a central pillar of the forthcoming Trump administration, seeks to create separate classes of citizen, where Christians will have rights, powers and privileges other citizens do not. Christian citizens already are shaping school curricula and access to books based on their religious views, regardless of whatever it is the Constitution says.

The US Constitution has been the foundation of an open democracy since 1776, flawed though it has been, subject to amendments as it has. I don't think the new Trump Administration believes the Constitution is anything other than an historical document, and will effectively dare other US citizens to prove it wrong when it does something contrary to the law -assuming that the Supreme Court then supports Trump rather than the Constitution, albeit with some sophisticated reasoning that real scholars will question.

Best to leave Religion out of politics even as we see it being inserted all over the place. Consider Nietzsche's cynical remark- 'There was only one Christian, and he died on the cross'.

[Paladin]

"The US Constitution has been the foundation of an open democracy since 1776, flawed though it has been, subject to amendments as it has. I don't think the new Trump Administration believes the Constitution is anything other than an historical document, and will effectively dare other US citizens to prove it wrong when it does something contrary to the law -assuming that the Supreme Court then supports Trump rather than the Constitution, albeit with some sophisticated reasoning that real scholars will question."

Sure...

It's the dems under biden-harris and obama-biden that were shredding the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 10th amendments for 12 years.

87,000 new IRS agents - for what???
Raids on rep homes while biden gets a courtesy message a month out so he can move / hide the classified docs.

fbi & irs targeting parents and church organizations

...

[Stavros]

"The US Constitution has been the foundation of an open democracy since 1776, flawed though it has been, subject to amendments as it has. I don't think the new Trump Administration believes the Constitution is anything other than an historical document, and will effectively dare other US citizens to prove it wrong when it does something contrary to the law -assuming that the Supreme Court then supports Trump rather than the Constitution, albeit with some sophisticated reasoning that real scholars will question."

Sure...

It's the dems under biden-harris and obama-biden that were shredding the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 10th amendments for 12 years.

87,000 new IRS agents - for what???
Raids on rep homes while biden gets a courtesy message a month out so he can move / hide the classified docs.

fbi & irs targeting parents and church organizations

...

To this wild set of accusations I would suggest evidence, but a quick search reveals the usual suspects have itemized what they think are violations by a man who used to teach Constitutional Law. In this case, one notes your accusations, but I think giving them a pass will balance out the boll from the wheevils. Even as we write, Trump is violating a basic principle of the Transition that none other than Justice Scalia insisted was essential for the maintenance of American democracy.

Where is the money coming from that Trump is hiding? Russia (via Tulsi Gabbard, a Putin Asset)? Saudi Arabia (via Kushner)? Or his boyfriend in North Korea? As for The Great Elon Musk -is it a case of You Put Your Money In, and Get What You Want?

And you are excited by something Obama did ten or more years ago?

[Paladin]

Calling Colonel Gabbard a putin asset shows just how bigoted you really are.....

[Stavros]

Calling Colonel Gabbard a putin asset shows just how bigoted you really are.....

I guess that depends on how you define 'asset'. And it is not about me, but her, and the wider implications for the NATO alliance, which you may nor not support.

For example

"Tulsi Gabbard (https://apnews.com/article/trump-gabbard-director-national-intelligence-466dfdfe2f949ea20bc2f4ef13e21438), President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the U.S. intelligence services, in 2022 endorsed one of Russia’s main justifications for invading Ukraine (https://apnews.com/hub/ukraine): the existence of dozens of U.S.-funded biolabs (https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-covid-science-health-donald-trump-300742272576985618e1d5a30f53bb23) working on some of the world’s nastiest pathogens.Moscow claimed Ukraine was using the labs to create deadly bioweapons similar to COVID-19 that could be used against Russia, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin had no choice but to invade neighboring Ukraine to protect his country.
In fact, the labs are public (https://apnews.com/general-news-39eeee023efdf7ea59c4a20b7e018169) and part of an international effort to control outbreaks and stop bioweapons.
Gabbard, a military veteran and a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, later said she wasn’t accusing the United States or Ukraine of anything nefarious and was just voicing concerns about protecting the labs.

But to critics in the U.S., including lawmakers in both parties, the comments showed a disturbing willingness to parrot Russian propaganda — a tendency that has earned Gabbard praise on Russian state TV.
Gabbard’s past comments supportive of Russia — as well as secret meetings with Syria’s president (https://apnews.com/united-states-government-abdc4a6d5d624f4eb76e7a0e1c1dc3cb), a close ally of Russia and Iran — are attracting fresh scrutiny from Democrats and national security analysts who fear that as Trump’s director of national intelligence (https://www.dni.gov/index.php) she could give Russia a major win, undercut Ukraine, weaken U.S. national security and endanger intelligence ties with allies.".
Tulsi Gabbard's sympathetic views toward Russia cause alarm | AP News (https://apnews.com/article/gabbard-trump-putin-intelligence-russia-syria-a798adaf9cd531a5d0c9329f7597f0f6)


"Even before Gabbard left the Democratic Party, ingratiated herself with Donald Trump and secured his nomination to become director of National Intelligence, she was known as a prolific peddler of Russian propaganda.
In almost every foreign conflict in which Russia had a hand, Gabbard backed Moscow and railed against the US. Her past promotion of Kremlin propaganda has provoked significant opposition (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tulsi-gabbard-b2647900.html) on both sides of the aisle to her nomination.".
Tulsi Gabbard’s history with Russia is even more concerning than you think | The Independent (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/tulsi-gabbard-russian-connection-dni-trump-syria-b2653673.html)

‘Gleeful’: Russia and Putin reportedly thrilled about Trump’s choice of Tulsi Gabbard for DNI job - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6dj0gK1PTw)

[MrFanti]

Someone can be English and a muslim, although extreme islamic doctrine puts their religion above any state loyalty.
If folks think Christianity is more dangerous than Islam, all one has to do is look at Iran and Afghanistan before "conservative Islam" took over.

[Stavros]

If folks think Christianity is more dangerous than Islam, all one has to do is look at Iran and Afghanistan before "conservative Islam" took over.

Why cast your net so far when you only need to ask what have the Christian militants like Greg Abbott done in Texas? What have they done to the rights of pregnant women in distress with medical complications? Increased their distress, sent them close to death for life-saving treatment in another State.

Can you also explain why your Big Daddy thinks The Ten Commandments should be publicly displayed but not The Lord's Prayer?

And can you confirm that it was the Christian Greg Abbott who licensed for sale the Battlefield Artillery and Kiddy-Shredder ammunition that a week later was used to spray six year olds all over the walls of their classroom in Uvalde -in contravention of the Law of the United States, and also a violation of the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States -?

Maybe focus on the Taliban on your doorstep?

[Paladin]

Let me guess, you never served in your country's military, whatever that country is.

[Stavros]

Let me guess, you never served in your country's military, whatever that country is.

So what? Serving in the military in this country (UK) does not have the aura of loyalty that some Americans like to think it is, though some would like it like that. There have been attempts to make it so, but how can anyone call every veteran a 'hero' when all they did was spend every day in Camp Bastion cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner? Merely serving in the military doesn't make anyone a hero. The rhetoric got out of hand, when the reality was that the British were as much a flop in Afghanistan as they were in Iraq, two conflicts that left both countries worse off than they were, and that's a grim conclusion given what they were in, say, 1979.

Is there such a thing as a 'Just War'? Many will argue that the Second World War was justifiable because of the Nazis, but it could be agued that the German ambition to dominate Europe was the same in 1939 as it was in 1914, and that in both cases the aim of the war was to prove that one power dominating all the others is not acceptable, indeed you could go back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and all that happened after it with the concept of a 'balance of power' to see how international politics has moved up and down the scale of armed conflict and peaceful co-operation.

Something goes wrong, and some wise guy emerges who talks tough and says he will change things. The key is not to care who or how many die to achieve the ambition. The Americans got it wrong in Vietnam, in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, in Iraq and Afghanistan. But look at the catastrophic mistakes also made by al-Qaeda and Da'esh/ISIS -you would think all this militarism would be judged to be what it is: an expensive way to fail, while counting the cost of the hatred, the bitterness and resentment, and the pain that endures has no statistic.

[Paladin]

WW1 and WW2 started for completely different reasons, or have you forgotten...

"when all they did was spend every day in Camp Bastion cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner?"

As you Don't know, we (NATO) had nearly zero cooks cooking anything anywhere. It was all contracted out and all the work was done by third country nationals, with a small number of US & NATO personnel supervising and managing the work.

That said, even the "cooks in camp Bastion" and everywhere else were subjected to regular indirect fire and occasional ground attacks against even the largest of bases.

Bottom line, you weren't there; I was so don't step on that land mine.

[Stavros]

WW1 and WW2 started for completely different reasons, or have you forgotten...



You don't think the domination of Europe was the key fact in both World Wars? The British Empire went to war in 1914 because it had a treaty obligation to Belgium whose sovereignty was violated by the German Empire -the aim was to reject Germany's aim to dominate Europe.
The British went to war with Germany again in 1939 because it violated the sovereignty of Poland, having previously annexed Austria and through Czechoslovakia shown it's ambition was to dominate Europe.

[Paladin]

Go back and review the sequence of events in July & Aug 1914. The war didn't state in western europe, it started in easten eurpos and crossed over later as a result of really asinine idiots in charge of the major powers. Three cousins all going to war with each other...

[filghy2]

Go back and review the sequence of events in July & Aug 1914. The war didn't state in western europe, it started in easten eurpos and crossed over later as a result of really asinine idiots in charge of the major powers. Three cousins all going to war with each other...

Not quite. The chain of events leading to war was triggered by the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne, but the fighting actually started on the Western front.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_World_War_I

[Stavros]

Go back and review the sequence of events in July & Aug 1914. The war didn't state in western europe, it started in easten eurpos and crossed over later as a result of really asinine idiots in charge of the major powers. Three cousins all going to war with each other...

Serbia is not in Eastern Europe, and Christopher Clark has made a strong case for the origins of the war with the Balkan Wars that followed the demands of Serbian Nationalists in the first decade of the 20thc, and it was the ultimatum Austria-Hungary delivered to Serbia following the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand that was the occasion which sparked off a world war.

The point was made by Harry Hinsley in Power and the Pursuit of Peace when he pointed out the difference between an event or an occasion and a cause. The assassination in Sarajevo was the occasion, but the cause was Imperial Domination, in this case, of Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm II resented the fact that Germany was a late player to the Great Game, unification taking place in 1870 long after the maritime powers -Spain, France, the Netherlands and Britain- had carved up the resource rich corners of the world between them. The Conference of Berlin in 1884-85, the so-called 'Scramble for Africa' did parcel up those parts of the Continent not already taken by the Big Three (Britain, France and Spain) but meant all Germany got was the parts nobody wanted, in East and West, and South-West Africa. Thus Wilhelm saw the European continent ripe for German domination, with the Balkans and Greece offering large tracts of agricultural land and access to the Mediterranean Sea. Adolf Hitler shared the same obsession, and in his case considered the people living in these lands little more than savages who were surplus to the needs of the Aryan Race.

So I suggest you re-adjust your set, and think again about how the Imperial Ambitions of one collided the with the Treaty obligations of another, and how a jigsaw of such alliances led to the mash up of Europe, and with it the Middle East -and, incidentally, was also the spark that lit the Nationalist and Communist movements in China (May 1919 and all that), but that is a whole other plate of noodles to unravel.

[Paladin]

Not quite. The chain of events leading to war was triggered by the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne, but the fighting actually started on the Western front.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_World_War_I

But the first declarations of war were in the east, Austria on Serbia and Germany on Russia. It's in you own quoted list! Jeez...

The Germans thought they could take out France quickly, had to go through Belgium which pissed of GB, but it was their plan to quickly take out France and then punish Russia for being insolent. But the Austrians sucked wind and the French, British & Belgians held (barely), so that plan went to hell fast.

And when Austria went after Serbia it got its ass handed to it.

[Stavros]

But the first declarations of war were in the east, Austria on Serbia and Germany on Russia. It's in you own quoted list! Jeez...

The Germans thought they could take out France quickly, had to go through Belgium which pissed of GB, but it was their plan to quickly take out France and then punish Russia for being insolent. But the Austrians sucked wind and the French, British & Belgians held (barely), so that plan went to hell fast.

And when Austria went after Serbia it got its ass handed to it.

Serbia is not in Eastern Europe!

[Paladin]

Serbia is not in Eastern Europe!


Yes it is. look at some maps. All of the Balkans, and any country east of the Adriatric is considered eastern Europe.

[Stavros]

Yes it is. look at some maps. All of the Balkans, and any country east of the Adriatric is considered eastern Europe.

Ravenna is not in Eastern Europe, at least it wasn't when I bought a pair of red shoes there, neither is Brindisi when I arrived there by boat from Greece. Your knowledge of Geography confirms what many think of the state of education in the United States of America. Then, and now.

[filghy2]

Ravenna is not in Eastern Europe, at least it wasn't when I bought a pair of red shoes there, neither is Brindisi when I arrived there by boat from Greece. Your knowledge of Geography confirms what many think of the state of education in the United States of America. Then, and now.

East is on the right side of the map, unless you are holding it upside down

[Paladin]

Ravenna is not in Eastern Europe, at least it wasn't when I bought a pair of red shoes there, neither is Brindisi when I arrived there by boat from Greece. Your knowledge of Geography confirms what many think of the state of education in the United States of America. Then, and now.

It is in many definitions and especially if you want to differentiate between eastern europe and western europe .

[Paladin]

East is on the right side of the map, unless you are holding it upside down

Or if you live in Oz.

:cheers:

There has to be a dividing line somewhere and Serbia was NEVER considered to be in western Europe.

[filghy2]

Or if you live in Oz.

:cheers:

There has to be a dividing line somewhere and Serbia was NEVER considered to be in western Europe.

I was agreeing with you for once, dude. Jeez.

[Stavros]

Serbia is in Southern Europe, as are the other countries in the Balkans, including Greece. The fact is elementary geography, but we live in a world where people make up their own facts, and/or are completely indifferent to the truth. Maybe because Planet Earth appears to be round, people in these arguments go round and round in circles. In the end there is no actual debate on the issues, just word tennis, without the scores, and not much love.

[filghy2]

There are various definitions of subregions within Europe. As there is no clear geographical demarcation, it all comes down to man-made conventions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Europe

How about I say it's in Southeast Europe, then you two can argue about whether this means it's the Eastern part of Southern Europe or the Southern part of Eastern Europe.

[Paladin]

I was agreeing with you for once, dude. Jeez.

That's Why I put the mugs toasting little icon!