Spike

1 minute ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

If it was for the UCLA counter protest, I think it's a good thing to look into and question for sure. People should know if public figures and their wives are funding domestic terrorism.

Seinfeld was fucking a 17 year old when he was 38.

Just now, Dr. Gonzo said:

Is she donating the counter protest group that conducted the attack in UCLA? Because honestly, was a form of terrorism: unlawful use of violence & intimidation, against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. Textbook definition.

Probably won't hear it called "terrorism" though in the media though because it wasn't brown people doing it.

Couldn’t tell you mate, the details seem vague, the only thing we know it was for the UCLA counter protest. So even if it wasn’t direct, I’m sure some of it has made it’s way into certain pockets.

2 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Are the other things really noteworthy though? Police wanting to keep journalists away from seeing them do things that aren't legal is pretty common in the US tbh. I guess the president of Harvard being stupid is fairly noteworthy. But then you take a look at what's happening at some of these big name universities in the US and it really begs the question "have these schools let their standards slip?" I think they have, honestly. These students can't even direct their ire at the right organisations to direct their ire at... they can't be that smart.

 

IDK mate I think it's pretty worthwhile discussing things like Jerry Seinfeld's wife donating to pro-Israel counter protesting groups. There is plenty of shit going on that isn't just people lobbing scimitars at each other.

9 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Then what are you saying? Because I've given an answer of why we talk about the extreme fringe group of people. And I'm not wrong, just days after the pro-Palestine extremists did something beyond the pale in NYC, pro-Israel extremists did something beyond the pale in LA. Otherwise, what else is there really to report on. "Students are protesting to get their universities to divest from companies that do business in Israel, universities say 'nah we're not going to do that'" - and that's basically the crux of the story there.

I think it's a much bigger story when you've got increasingly violent outbursts happening over a divide in opinions over a conflict half a world a way where violence is the norm.

I know why we bloody talk about it, you just keep answering questions I never asked nor have disagreed with I have said this several times, I'm asking why is it the only thing we are talking about, not that we shouldn't talk about it. There are plenty of other things we can discuss like how police were ushering journalists away from areas for god knows what reasons, or how the president of Harvard gave a stupid answer to congress about genocide. Mate you could just tell me you aren't interested in the other stuff, that's all I'm looking for

You're having an argument with someone else mate

41 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Because they're the ones actively making things unsafe and doing all that they can to drive people who feel passion for this conflict to keep escalating their rhetoric and actions in support of "their side" in the west. And honestly how do we want to define "fringe" because honestly I think protesting over their university's role in the Israel-Palestine conflict is just worthless performative activism. Especially if you look at some of these schools' academic calendars - they've got more important things to worry about than taking sides in a conflict between two sides with little regard for human rights.

They've got a right to protest... but is it meaningful? Typically when people protest for things here, (the womans march, BLM, etc.) the location of the protests has been the federal building since the ire of protestors is directed at the federal government. I think if these protests were directed at the government trying to change policies and implement sanctions that can only be relieved if Israel refrains from committing war crimes and recognising the human rights of Palestinians... that's a worthwhile and meaningful protest. But this is kids trying to do something that in the grand scheme of things... hurts a company's shareholders for maybe a week or so... and in the process they're hurting each other, getting arrested, and probably fucking up their own grades because they want to take sides in a conflict between people who refuse to see the other as human.

I think if you just ignore the radical weirdos and don't treat them as serious threats, they just spread their radical weirdness and then the threats become much worse. Look at the far right weirdos all around the world that weren't taken seriously for a long time in the US and look how much the right wing of the US has shifted to extreme views.

But I'm not saying that at all though

53 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

We all know the reasons for the protests in the first place. I think these people delegitimise themselves with their own rhetoric, personally, rather than anything the media does. I'm sure there's a large part of the protestors that have good intentions and are far from being absolute cunts, but they're lost in the sea of the rest of the crowd tbh. But for a lot of people this is tribal passion that arises anytime anything flares up between these two, rather than any legitimate interest in standing up for the human rights of oppressed people or standing against radical extremists.

And ultimately I think the impact of what these student protests end goals are (divesting from companies that have ties to the IDF... but are also companies like Microsoft) is minimal compared to if they were protesting against the Federal Government for turning a blind eye to Israeli war crimes and demanding the government step in to put restrictions on these companies. The impact of what they're calling for is some companies have their share price drop for a very, very, very brief moment in time... while these companies continue to do business with the people they don't want the companies to do business with... because surprise surprise - large companies don't give a shit about human rights when it comes to making money. The impact of actually calling for sanctions would be a lot more significant. But they can't even think to call for that.

Again, what happened at UCLA wasn't from a minority of protestors. It was a coordinated effort of people who specifically went to protests at night to kick off violence. And then the police were very slow to react, putting the actual protestors (many of whom I don't even respect, let alone agree with) in harms way.

I don't see how condemning violence aimed at protestors (many of whom I don't really have any time for) is delegitimising their civil unrest. The kids at UCLA were on public property that they're allowed to be on (and so were the violent zionists who attacked them) they had every right to have their right to protest protected. The police let down the kids that were protesting and weren't being violent.

The officers that night should be investigated for their slow response, and anyone who was arrested for the violence shouldn't be treated with kid gloves by the justice system is my point.

Do we? I don’t know what the impetus to these massive protests were, I know what they are about but I have no idea the sequence of events that has brought this to fruition.

It’s not really the point I’m getting across your addressing. I don’t disagree with anything you’ve stated except merely this hyper focus on the extremists is limiting discourse and scope. Why do we only talk about fringe elements ?

12 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

That's not really free speech then if you're putting conditions on it. People should be allowed to protest and publicly voice their opinions without being violent idiots about things.

What the anti-pro-Palestinian group did at UCLA wasn't really a protest - it was a coordinated attack. They fired fireworks into crowds of people and also used "bear mace" (which I think is just very strong pepperspray, but I'm not sure) on the pro-Palestinian protestors.

It deserves condemnation. Especially when everyone involved is living safely in a country with no threat to themselves from Hamas, Hezbollah, or the IDF. There is legitimately no reason to bring the violence from this conflict to foreign shores by people so far removed from the conflict. And from two groups of people that largely can't even get the history of the region they're protesting about right.

I don't think "protests always have a violent minority" really excuses the idiocy and vile propaganda spreading to justify shit like a group of kids in uni getting painful liquid sprayed into their eyes and having fireworks shot at them for making a public political display that these people who attacked them agreed with. The police not getting involved with what happened at UCLA quicker and standing by and watching that happen, is an absolute fucking joke tbh. I think it's a bit different to the kids in NYC at Columbia University getting raided by police for vandalising school property after they took over a building.

At UCLA the victims were students, not a building.

I didn’t say it was an excuse, I said getting hyper fixated on the minority section of violent protesting just obfuscates the overall reasons for the protests in the first place. It’s the same tactic used by the media to delegitimise any form of civil unrest, throughout this thread the discussion has never been about the protesting but rather the radical actions of some protesters. 

8 hours ago, MUFC said:

Is it me or do protests for each side take place at the same location on the same day? Surely a rule to say that if both sides protest in the same city. They shouldn't be allowed to cross paths and they should be miles apart.

Another rules should be that if you want to protest. You have to be barefooted or wear flip flops.

Protesting is not really about following rules, my mate.

19 hours ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

By the same token the US pro-Palestinian protestors at Columbia University have been disgusting for their rhetoric and violence, the pro-Israel protestors that attacked the pro-Palestinian protestors at UCLA last night are also disgusting. Honestly, this sort of selective outrage for this conflict is infuriating to me. Oppression and conflict elsewhere in the world is routinely ignored... unless it's Israel-Palestine, in which case the world seems like it tears apart at the seems trying to lend support to one side or the other.

I can't understand why so many people feel the need to take sides in such an ugly conflict.

There is always violence during protests but getting hyper fixated on the minority just leads to broader generalisation and then condemnation. 

3 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

The seasons where Klopp’s spent the most he’s also had to sell to get money in, while trying to compete with clubs that don’t really have to worry about money. That’s a bit like Arsenal while more money was tied up in the stadium loans.

Adjust Wenger’s prices for inflation and Arsenal aren’t the biggest spenders, but also weren’t small spenders. Ozil for example in 2013 (so before Neymar to PSG really brought prices of players to truly fucking mental levels), it was around the end of Wenger’s era - when they were in that constantly rebuilding phase. And that was £40m - within the top 5 most expensive signings made that season.

I’m not saying either manager never spent a lot of money - they both clearly did. But they also sometimes had to work with financial constraints that I don’t think other managers could have done and gotten the same performance.

So for that reason, if you’re picking a manager to do a job with a decent amount of money but not an absolutely obscene amount of money… out of the choices listed, I think it’s Wenger or Klopp.

Mate he still spends more, I don’t really care what the impetus was or where the money comes from. We are talking about bargain hunting not flipping a player and then buying Alisson and van Dijk for record numbers. Klopp has had financial advantages over Wenger, that is just a fact not an insult, English fans in-particular  need to get over spending = bad and shit managing 

2 hours ago, MUFC said:

A couple of years after we got Rio. Wenger signed Sanchez and Ozil. They were expensive, wasn't Ozil over 40 milllion?

That was over a decade later, mate

1 hour ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Yeah, I did say that he built them into a financial behemoth and that his sides were not cheaply assembled - despite the fees not looking quite as insane as they do now (although I remember the Ferdinand one felt particularly insane at the time, and probably only feels less insane because now £30m doesn't seem that expensive for a football player because we live in a silly era).

But that's why I did say "I'd go with Klopp or Wenger" - even though it's not like the Liverpool and Arsenal sides they managed were skint, they didn't have the same financial backing as their main competitors for silverware. 

Feel like Klopp had a bit more financial muscle than Wenger. I really feel Wenger's Arsenal only has serious financial backing in the 90s and the towards the end of his tenure. They really clamped down during the Emirates move.

On 30/04/2024 at 12:08, Dr. Gonzo said:

If it's £100m in today's money - I'd go with Klopp or Wenger.

Ferguson didn't spend the insane amounts of money that fly around in today's era of football and he deserves a lot of credit for being the United manager and bringing them success in an era when money started flowing into football. But his best sides were not cheaply assembled sides by the standards of the day. But honestly given that he was the one that built United into a financial behemoth with his football, he could probably do a good job as well.

Not Pep or Mourinho for me, though. Chequebook managers that I can't see reaching the heights they want to reach without spending loads of money - other than instances where they inherit a dominant team at the same time as having a bunch of brilliant players coming through the academy (like Pep). They're obviously good managers, but they're the sorts of managers you want with an unlimited budget... not with financial constraints that in today's football is not all that much of a warchest to truly change a side.

Fergie constantly broke transfer fees, mate with inflation of the GPB; Rio Ferdinand’s £33,00,000 fee in 2002 has nearly doubled to £60,000,000, check it out on the bank of England.

‘Genociding your own people’ 

Hahaha 

11 minutes ago, OrangeKhrush said:

You said its not genocide/war crimes  because Russia think Ukrainians are Russians.    You can carry out Genocide against your own,  Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Che, Maduro, Assad just a few that have killed their own.    Putin is not afraid to kill others,  he has invaded Chechnya twice and carried out war crimes if not genocide.   He has also carried out the ethnic cleansing in nagorno karabakh in the end what is happening in Ukraine is war crimes but it is not even spoken about.   

Wouldn't stopping both conflicts be equally important. 

You literally don’t know what the word means, do you?  And don’t lump genocide/war crime on me like that you dishonest prick.

Please tell me the ten steps to genocide without googling and explain where everyone you have listed have followed through that. You can’t because you don’t know.

16 minutes ago, OrangeKhrush said:

That was a reference to Hamas,  which they are,  they have killed their own,  they have killed Jews and they have killed Lebenese,  their preoccupation is Jihad. 

So it’s savagery when Hamas does it but not when the IDF kill, that’s okay? You are literally dehumanising them and can’t see through your own hypocrisy.

On 29/04/2024 at 04:12, OrangeKhrush said:

I can't see anything wrong with Bill Maher calling out people that espouse hate speech.  Not all instances are but media has caught rampant hate speech on camera and it is inexcusable.  Calling them out is not moral high ground and given that bill Maher is a Democrat for life anti Trump I would say he is the most critical liberal of the bullshit on his side of the aisle. 

Yesterday a student leader for Columbia called for killing of "zionist" which is a call to kill jews, there are intefada chants, burn down tel Aviv, river to sea, preventing jews from entering campus, these are all latent cases of hate speech so good on Maher for not tolerating it

I know you can’t see anything, you’ve proved time after time that you’re walking blind through life.

You’ve literally called Palestinians ‘savages’ in this thread. Maybe you should start checking your own hate speech.

I am uneasy about any ground invasion over Ramadan.  These savages attack over our religious observance days, because they dehumanise us for being Jewish,  I don't want to stoop to their level, no invasion over Ramadan

13 minutes ago, Happy Blue said:

Stop what? 

It’s early in the morning and you almost had me but I remembered who I’m talking to 

2 hours ago, Happy Blue said:

We don't agree, Pep's hardly spent a penny. he's bought a league 2 striker and promoted 4 players from the Academy, had to buy an old Chelsea reject to sure up the midfield, 15million Akanji, make do with a goalkeeper on the free ..i really don't know how he does it 

Stop that haha

4 hours ago, Happy Blue said:

It's you. he inherited an old team when he arrived at City so had to replace it all

Thats what he said lol, you guys agree

7 hours ago, Danny said:

Pep won the treble in his first season at Barce taking a team that finished 18 points behind Real Madrid in 3rd place the season before and turning them into one of the greatest teams to have ever played the game, whilst spending under £100m, so I chose him!

Same logic applies to Jose Mourinho at Porto, mate. (well to a degree)

Probably Wenger, he was largely stingy in the 00s when Arsenal were paying for the Emirates. Everyone else were much more prolific spenders.

2 hours ago, OrangeKhrush said:

Jews are linked to palastinians, they are essentially cousins so does that make it fine? One could also say the entire region is eretz yisrael so therefore you can't carry out war crimes against your own. 

Keep plugging away Ivan. 

 

It's a war crime and should be addressed and if people know and do nothing that is complicity.  

It is good to see the BBC finally come out and scrutinize the death toll in Gaza following the UN finding irregularity in the data in a sitting early April.  We see conflicts not painted by the same brush

Hahaha, that’s not even close to what I said. I can’t believe you would use Russia-Ukraine to downplay Israel-Palestine and even suggest that if one is a genocide so must be the other. Why not call them all genocides to make you feel better? 

I trust Norman Finkelstein’s analysis on both of these wars more than fucking Bill Maher or that neo-Nazi YouTuber you like to post.  
 

What are you even trying to say you dumbass? That Ukraine is a genocide, or are you just throwing a fit that people are calling Palestine a genocide? You don’t even know what you statements are, you literally just accidentally admitted that Israel is genocide Palestine.

Anyone that sincerely uses SJW or political correctness should fucken kill themselves with their own hypocrisy.

What do those terms means? Fuck all. They are just used to posture moral superiority while doing the exact same thing they accuse SJWs of, that is shaming people who differ. 

Smug wanker.

Bill Maher is a fucking cunt.

Russia literally thinks Russia and Ukraine is one and the same people, how the fuck is it a genocide? I can't believe the shit people think up.