Other News & General Chat

[nudge+]

On 7/25/2018 at 08:41, Machado said:

Stay strong Greek friends...

 

On 7/25/2018 at 21:36, Stan said:

just seen some pictures of the Greek wildfires. Looks mad. Would hate to be caught up in that. As above, hope @Fusion and @Dalmore are safe. And anyone else living in the areas affected!

Just seen a map of wildfires in Europe since July 17th and the prognosis of potential ones, it's horrible:

(black triangles mark the wildfires that happened, and the coloured areas represent the probability of new ones, the darker the colour the more likely it is...) 

[Stan]

that bottom band of Spain, southern italy & Turkey look fucked. 

I could never imagine wildfires happening in the Scandinavian countries either  

[nudge+]

4 minutes ago, Stan said:

that bottom band of Spain, southern italy & Turkey look fucked. 

I could never imagine wildfires happening in the Scandinavian countries either  

And Ukraine and Moldova  

[Stan]

3 minutes ago, nudge said:

And Ukraine and Moldova  

yeah. and that part of Southern Russia just above Georgia. 

[Danny]

On 20/07/2018 at 04:01, Stan said:

Thought this was quite a nice story to read and some good publicity for a big company/organisation for once.

Morrisons have announced that they're opening early for an hour on Saturdays primarily for supporting families who have autistic children; the store will have no music, tannoy systems won't be used, lights will be dimmed - all so that it's easier for parents to shop without their autistic children feeling unsafe in the open environment on other days where those changes aren't made.

Other supermarkets/stores do it but not nationwide hence Morrisons getting this story as all of their stores across the UK will do it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44884183

 

Seen a few supermarkets do that, good move. We've got a sensory room in our new stadium, never been in or seen one but I like the idea.

[Inverted]

1 hour ago, nudge said:

 

Just seen a map of wildfires in Europe since July 17th and the prognosis of potential ones, it's horrible:

(black triangles mark the wildfires that happened, and the coloured areas represent the probability of new ones, the darker the colour the more likely it is...) 

I can't tell if those black areas in Sicily, Spain, Ukraine etc are lots of black triangles, or black shaded areas. 

[nudge+]

44 minutes ago, Inverted said:

I can't tell if those black areas in Sicily, Spain, Ukraine etc are lots of black triangles, or black shaded areas. 

Lots of black triangles. A better overview available on Copernicus EMS map: https://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/static/effis_current_situation/public/index.html

[God is Haaland]

On 13.7.2018 at 20:22, Inverted said:

Alexa, show me America in two images.

A woman owning $1.000.000.000 instead of $990.000.000 is more important than a man's life, because it's so important to help women to break the glass ceiling, while men make up the vast majority of homeless people and those who lose their lifes at their workplace doing jobs that are dangerous and have a permanent, negative impact on the health, but should not be paid better than the average office job according to feminists. (White) Men are the new Jews(scapegoats) in the media and inside the political establishment except for right-wing parties which are disgusting for other reasons. Ironically they blame the racism and sexism of the straight, white male for Brexit and Trump, when it's their reverse sexism, constant race baiting and reverse racism that lead to emotionally-driven, irrational acts of defiance.

Perhaps my opinion of the population of the UK is too naive, but I don't think 50% of it is made up of racists and economically illiterate, right-wing morons. In my opinion a substantial amount of Brexit voters were angry protest voters who wanted to send a signal to the political establishment. Without the Rotherham scandal, which was the result of political correctness and the acceptance of false accusations regarding racism, remain would probably have won.

Likewise in the US general elections Bernie supporters abstained from the vote or even voted for Trump, because the only noncorrupt candidate was eliminated by a plot between the DNC and the establishment media. I don't consider Bernie voters to be a racist, sexist bunch.

If the left-leaning establishment keeps on throwing false accusitions(racism, sexism, etc.) instead of getting rid of their own extremist and nonsensical positions - and most of those stem from post-modernism(ie: a pseudo-scientific ideology based on envy) - they forfeit their right to be surprised when they lose against right-wing lunatics such as that tiny-fingered, ferret-wearing, cheeto-faced traitor.

[Inverted]

@BartraPique1932

I think it’s misguided to attach idpol to leftism necessarily. Idpol is to me apolitical in the sense that it can be coopted by all kinds of people. You can have centre-right neolibs like Clinton using it, the alt-right types in the states are up to their necks in identity politics, except they don’t realise that being anti-diversity is as much idpol as being pro-diversity is.

I think that it’s important to realise that leftism should be about trying to draw a majoritarian solidarity, and that minority concerns can only be understood when they are part of chipping away at the fundamental material division in the world: the vast, working majority versus the tiny oligarchical minority.

Things like fights against differences between executive pay between men and women don’t tackle any real injustice in the world. Campaigns to equalise the genders at the peak of the pyramid are not progressive - in fact their material effect is to seek to normalise and moralise the basic division of wealth whilst ignoring the most egregious inequality - that of the shareholding rentiers in the corporate structure vs the actual value-generating employees who have almost no control.

And that’s just one example. I think people on the left need to be wary of confusing actual progressive politics with ridiculous liberal self-indulgence and individualism.

Edited July 30, 2018 by Inverted

[God is Haaland]

1 hour ago, Inverted said:

@BartraPique1932

I think it’s misguided to attach idpol to leftism necessarily. Idpol is to me apolitical in the sense that it can be coopted by all kinds of people. You can have centre-right neolibs like Clinton using it, the alt-right types in the states are up to their necks in identity politics, except they don’t realise that being anti-diversity is as much idpol as being pro-diversity is.

I don't claim that idpol is to be found exclusively on the left, but rather that given the demographical reality in countries like the UK, Germany and the US and a couple of other (minor) factors it is an obivous, strategical blunder for true progressives/liberals/egalitarians.

Quote

I think that it’s important to realise that leftism should be about trying to draw a majoritarian solidarity, and that minority concerns can only be understood when they are part of chipping away at the fundamental material division in the world: the vast, working majority versus the tiny oligarchical minority.

Things like fights against differences between executive pay between men and women don’t tackle any real injustice in the world. Campaigns to equalise the genders at the peak of the pyramid are not progressive - in fact their material effect is to seek to normalise and moralise the basic division of wealth whilst ignoring the most egregious inequality - that of the shareholding rentiers in the corporate structure vs the actual value-generating employees who have almost no control.

And that’s just one example. I think people on the left need to be wary of confusing actual progressive politics with ridiculous liberal self-indulgence and individualism.

Indeed, although inequality between the sexes, races, religous groups etc exists and needs to be dealt with eventually, class is still the most important parameter when it comes to inequality. Therefore - regardless of what the real reasons for the adoption of idpol by the establishment really are - I think it's important to realise that it's effectively a divide-and-conquer strategy. Men vs women, race 1 vs race 2 vs race 3 vs race 4, cis vs trans, hetero vs homo vs bi and all the religions against each other; there are so many ways to divide potential members of the egalitarian/progressive movement and make them fight each other instead of the establishment. And because of this annoying victimhood mentality it's only the disabled, 1/3-black, 1/3-hispanic, 1/3-asian, bi-/homosexual, islamo-jewish trans-women who will be allowed to criticise anything and take leadership. It sounds absurd, but it actually happened. In the US a secular movement was first turned into a feminist movement and after the feminist got rid of all the non-feminists, they started fighting each over whether homo-sexuals or trans-sexuals are more oppressed. The movement's size shrunk down to about 1% of the size from the time before the feminists started invading.

Edited July 30, 2018 by BartraPique1932

[Kowabunga]

Bigly debated among the Spanish Left (and mocked by uncompromising defenders of "identity politics"). You wouldn't hear about it anywhere else, though. It talks about Maggie and anyone's favourite mythical beasts, too.

 

 

 

[Bluebird Hewitt]

Wasn't sure whether to post this in the gaming area or in here, but though this was a better place as it delves more into the, quite frankly, laughable 'journalism' of one newspaper (and the actual journalist themself, of which some of it is quite concerning for a media outlet) rather than the game itself.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-08-01-anatomy-of-a-tabloid-fortnite-front-page-story

Edited August 3, 2018 by Bluebird Hewitt

[Dr. Gonzo]

This is fucking disgusting https://abcnews.go.com/US/11-children-rescued-filthy-compound-looked-world-country/story?id=57040114

Edited August 5, 2018 by Dr. Gonzo

[nudge+]

WTF is happening in Bangladesh? 

[Dr. Gonzo]

6 hours ago, nudge said:

WTF is happening in Bangladesh? 

It’s looking like a sad repeat of modern history  - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_disappearance_in_Bangladesh

and with now reports of tens of thousands of people being abducted and not seen again as a result of recent protests.

The world is so depressing sometimes.

[nudge+]

6 hours ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

It’s looking like a sad repeat of modern history  - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_disappearance_in_Bangladesh

and with now reports of tens of thousands of people being abducted and not seen again as a result of recent protests.

The world is so depressing sometimes.

Yeah, it's just so ridiculous that it started as a student protest over road safety, apparently... and now there are riots, beatings, abductions, killings, rape. It's hard to fathom.

[Stan]

45 minutes ago, nudge said:

Yeah, it's just so ridiculous that it started as a student protest over road safety, apparently... and now there are riots, beatings, abductions, killings, rape. It's hard to fathom.

seen on Twitter a thread that there's a lot of corrupt government involvement here, apparently from a group called BCL which is a student-activist group 'working with' government. This BCL group have taken guns and machetes to these protesting students.

Irony being that the 'protest' actually started quite peacefully and amicably  by children and some headway was being made on road safety/traffic conditions. But then suddenly BCL got involved and it turned nasty. 

Interesting to see how the media report this - apparently government have shut down mobile services so that pictures etc are prevented from being shared en masse on just how bad the violence is by BCL. They sound like a nasty piece of work. Wonder when there'll be some intervention, if any, from any other countries to stop the stuff like the rape and murders of women and beatings of journalists recently. 

It's hard to fathom for sure, even more so when you know the government are on the side of this BCL group, and not innocent children wanting to make roads safer after friends were killed by a bus 

[Dr. Gonzo]

9 hours ago, nudge said:

Yeah, it's just so ridiculous that it started as a student protest over road safety, apparently... and now there are riots, beatings, abductions, killings, rape. It's hard to fathom.

I think when you've got a government that's had insane crackdowns like this before escalate from other situations, even though they were not as "innocent" as the student protest for road safety, but their protests from 2012-2013 in the run up in their election show that they'll just abduct people never to be seen again... it sort of just becomes an instinct for governments that do shite like this. The brutality sends a message.

It's like Iranians who were protesting the recent presidential elections & more recently, the protests because of the inflation & food crisis (which have started popping up again actually). Once the protests grow to a certain point, they seem to have their will to protest beaten and shot out of them, with the leaders mysteriously disappearing and turning up years later released from Evin prison (if they're lucky).

Seems to always make people think twice about taking to the streets about their legitimate grievances.

[Dr. Gonzo]

Apparently Saudi Arabia made a thinly veiled threat to Canada recently, because Canada dared to believe that the Saudis should respect human rights: https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-appeared-to-threaten-canada-with-a-911-style-attack-2018-8

[Dr. Gonzo]

Saudi Arabia's been very upset with tweets from Canada and is now trying to support Quebec's secession from Canada 

[Azeem]

Looking at Egypt during the 70s they were in a similar condition to us under Anwar al Saddat. He was inexperienced like Imran Khan newly in power and he also got a failing economy prehand.

His advisors said him to go for World bank and IMF i.e US proxies and he fell into that trap. Egypt became enslaved to IMF and their decisions. Later they got Egypt to do what they wanted. They made Egypt to recognise Israel and let their ships pass through the Sues canal gifting the Sinai border areas to Israel under Egyptian control.

I fear we are under a similar threat. Unless we get an economy wizard we also must go for IMF bailout package in other words letting IMF control our country.

The only thing they would want us to do will be give up on our nuclear assests. If that happens Pakistan will turn into Syria and Iraq within months.

 

 

[nudge+]

A US-backed, UAE and Saudi-led coalition airstrike hit a bus carrying mostly children in Yemen; at least 29 children have been confirmed dead, even more injured. The coalition called the strike a “legitimate military action” and accused the Houthi rebels of using children as "human shields".

[Dr. Gonzo]

Man charged with walking pig without lead in Norwich - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-45130907

[RandoEFC+]

@Marc disgraceful behaviour.

[Azeem]

15 hours ago, nudge said:

A US-backed, UAE and Saudi-led coalition airstrike hit a bus carrying mostly children in Yemen; at least 29 children have been confirmed dead, even more injured. The coalition called the strike a “legitimate military action” and accused the Houthi rebels of using children as "human shields".

Iran Saudi Arabia fucking up another country. Thats why our military and ISI is pain in the ass for the West only because of them we arent like Yemen Iraq or Syria.