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[somebum]

5 hours ago, leicsmac said:

I want the opinion on the motivations laid out in plain English. I want it to be obvious to everyone.

The

Agenda

To

Take

Down

Trump

 

Hopefully clear enough for you. I don't care for who or what exactly is behind this agenda, sounds like you are looking to escalate the argument beyond what I actually wrote tbh.

[leicsmac]

42 minutes ago, somebum said:

The

Agenda

To

Take

Down

Trump

 

Hopefully clear enough for you. I don't care for who or what exactly is behind this agenda, sounds like you are looking to escalate the argument beyond what I actually wrote tbh.

Ah, thank you for the clarification - it seemed that there was more to it than merely removing Trump and quite frankly I've been on the internet long enough to have seen some real Infowars-style conspiracy stuff about the whole thing, so pardon my wariness.

 

Personally I'd like to see the guy go because he wastes time (that we have precious little of) not addressing climate change properly at a governmental level and he enables legislators and others to push anti-woman and minority group practices of their own, but that's my own take.

[MC Prussian]

9 hours ago, leicsmac said:

Ah, thank you for the clarification - it seemed that there was more to it than merely removing Trump and quite frankly I've been on the internet long enough to have seen some real Infowars-style conspiracy stuff about the whole thing, so pardon my wariness.

 

Personally I'd like to see the guy go because he wastes time (that we have precious little of) not addressing climate change properly at a governmental level and he enables legislators and others to push anti-woman and minority group practices of their own, but that's my own take.

This is probably best saved for the Science & Environment thread, but what about the US under Trump pulling out of the Paris Agreement for example is wrong in your opinion?

 

And examples/proof of him enabling others to push anti-woman and anti-minority practices of their own, please.

Under Trump, there have been plenty of female judges appointed (more than under any other Republican president before him, on par with Clinton) and until recently, he had a cabinet with plenty of women in it - he still has a top number in terms of female advisors:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/02/trump-has-appointed-a-larger-share-of-female-judges-than-other-gop-presidents-but-lags-obama/

[leicsmac]

1 hour ago, MC Prussian said:

This is probably best saved for the Science & Environment thread, but what about the US under Trump pulling out of the Paris Agreement for example is wrong in your opinion?

 

And examples/proof of him enabling others to push anti-woman and anti-minority practices of their own, please.

Under Trump, there have been plenty of female judges appointed (more than under any other Republican president before him, on par with Clinton) and until recently, he had a cabinet with plenty of women in it - he still has a top number in terms of female advisors:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/02/trump-has-appointed-a-larger-share-of-female-judges-than-other-gop-presidents-but-lags-obama/

The Paris Agreement is sadly largely ineffective as it lacks enforcing teeth (another example of international orgs/agreements not having it because the big nations don't want to be answerable to anyone), but the symbolism of pulling out and not replacing it with commitments at a national level is quite clear: environmental policy is extremely low priority to this administration and they value both a quick buck economically and "national energy security" (read: pollute as much as they want because it's all in-house) above it. They could also use the considerable political power they possess to lobby other polluters such as China and India to get them to toe the line more too....but that's not happening either.

 

WRT the second paragraph, the numerous challenges to Roe v Wade that have popped up to be heard by the Supreme Court, the legislation mooted to attempt to defund and by doing so shut down Planned Parenthood (among other female healthcare centres), ruling that trans discrimination is not protected under workplace anti-discrimination laws, and getting rid of existing federal non-discrimination protection that requires equal access to housing regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity are things that immediately jump to mind. I don't think Trump wants many of these things himself, but he's certainly not lifting a finger to stop them, and his appointment of Gorsuch and Kauvanagh to the Supreme Court has given those within and without his administration at the state and federal level who would push such legislation what they believe to be a chance at getting that legislation passed in the legal arena.

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49950445

 

"As police officers investigated, there was no suggestion that his death was linked to the Guyger trial."

 

....well, if it was and it turned out the PD carried out an extrajudicial execution of a "snitch", would they really tell anyone?

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49953225

 

Let's see what this one has to say.

[Carl the Llama]

9 hours ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49950445

 

"As police officers investigated, there was no suggestion that his death was linked to the Guyger trial."

 

....well, if it was and it turned out the PD carried out an extrajudicial execution of a "snitch", would they really tell anyone?

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49953225

 

Let's see what this one has to say.

And then let's see what mental gymnastics the annoying orange and his fanboys come up with this time. 

[Finnaldo]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-49956698

 

Sad day for the Kurds. Hopefully it's just the border region and not a total military operation, Erdogan is a brute though so I don't expect much.

 

I do feel for the Kurds, they seem extremely fair (their gender equality policy speaks for itself) and whereas you may have seen massive repercussions from other groups in their position (dominating the region after being repressed for so long) they've handled Raqqa and the Arabic population very carefully and respectfully.

[The Horse's Mouth]

On 05/10/2019 at 11:42, Carl the Llama said:

Amazing that the same people who argue that Trump is of sound mind despite showing clear signs of old age, even dementia, long before taking office are now feigning concern that the far more lively and coherent Sanders (who knew eating more than just burgers and steak and doing a bit of occasional exercise made you more healthy) is too unfit due to old age.  If you're good enough you're old enough, Trump is neither, Sanders is both.

Neither should be running for office ffs lol, they should be in homes shitting in a bucket 

[leicsmac]

55 minutes ago, Finnaldo said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-49956698

 

Sad day for the Kurds. Hopefully it's just the border region and not a total military operation, Erdogan is a brute though so I don't expect much.

 

I do feel for the Kurds, they seem extremely fair (their gender equality policy speaks for itself) and whereas you may have seen massive repercussions from other groups in their position (dominating the region after being repressed for so long) they've handled Raqqa and the Arabic population very carefully and respectfully.

...folks really didn't think Trump would let his bird of a feather Erdogan swing for long...did they?

[leicsmac]

I See You nailing it once more.

 

 

"I see you, Greta Thunberg.

I see your unwavering glare, your face set with absolute determination. I hear the howling storm of indignation coming for you, for hell hath no fury like adults raging against their oncoming obsolescence. The backlash against you has been as predictable as it has been meaningless. Is it galling for those in power to be called out with such ire by the adorable little kiddies who are supposed to respect their elders? It must be, particularly when those kids absolutely refuse to coddle their egos and instead cut straight through the self-congratulatory bullshit. It’s an adult’s world, Greta Thunberg. Don’t you know you’re supposed to stay in your lane and go be a kid?

 

Therein lies the grotesque hypocrisy at the heart of it all - that the boomers and capitalists now burying their heads in the sand want to both have their Earth and eat it. Kids today are spoiled, self-involved, ungrateful little narcissists up to their elbows in the sort of exploitative tech and disposable consumerism that’s killing the planet, so how dare they then turn around and complain about it? The very same adults that are apparently disgusted by the shallowness of the social media age and the rampant consumption they’ve somehow blamelessly bred into their children are now appalled when a teenager from Sweden stands up and rallies against it. Kids today don’t know how lucky they are but heaven forbid they stand up and pressure their governments to make their lives less convenient for the greater good.

 

Then there’s the other argument - that this couldn’t possibly be coming from you, that you must be being exploited, that there is a sinister cabal of environmental lobbyists backing you up with their evil plans for stalling economic growth and plunging us all back into the ice ages. You’re just a child! How could you possibly be intelligent, conscientious and passionate, capable of making your own decisions and forging your own alliances? Only children who run away to join Isis do that. The rest are mindless babies.

 

But someone has to fly your boat crew back, Greta Thunberg! Look at you, eating food on a train, a train made of presumably turtle-choking plastic and hydrocarbons. You’re using a microphone! A microphone made of industrially produced components and dolphin tears! How can you preach to us, when by the very act of existing you’re such a hypocrite?

 

It’s the same hollow nonsense espoused by every clod-skulled idiot who thinks they’re successfully combating the message without even realising they’re shouting at a different channel. If you could do enough to change the world by living in a carbon-offset biodegradable yurt, living off organic lichen and planting a tree for every fart you accidentally released you’d do it, Greta Thunberg. The point is that wouldn’t exactly get the message across, would it?

Yes, we all need to take some responsibility for our individual actions on a micro level. If nothing else, the simple everyday actions we can all take go some way to instilling the sense of collective accountability that we all need to be feeling. Unfortunately for all that, the fact of the matter remains that we can give up all the plastic straws and go vegan twice a week as much as we like and it would remain a drop of poison in the ocean compared to the damage caused by industry and policy.

 

The correct response to that is not a sense of abject pointlessness. The correct response is to get angry and pile on the pressure on the dinosaurs and lobbyists who ceaselessly pursue the short-term gains throttling the planet. If their best argument is ‘but China’ then they have no fvcking argument. If you pass a beating on the street, do you pile on, or do you intervene? Do you help with kicking the shit out of the hippy, or do you stand up to your own government and suggest that maybe we should do a few less of the street beatings, before we’ve all thoroughly kicked the shit out of ourselves?

 

Even if you’re sceptical of the climate science (and why wouldn’t you be? You don’t need a PHD to ignore facts and read Breitbart) there is absolutely no common-sense argument for continuing to rely on the increasingly finite resources our planet has offered up for our ceaseless expansion and exploitation. The shift is coming and it’s a simple matter of either taking bold decisions to act now or absolutely floundering ones to act when we have no other choice. We can continue to grease ourselves into a corner, killing off our planet’s biodiversity and ecosystems as we go, or we can do now what we’re eventually going to have to do anyway.

 

The only question is whether we let the roadblocks stall us. And you, Greta Thunberg? You know exactly what the roadblocks are and you know where to find them.

 

I see you in your iconic yellow raincoat, your boots splashing on the floor of the sewer. I hear your footsteps echoing down the tunnel, a drumbeat announcing your arrival. From somewhere far away in the dark I hear the giggling, the grotesque celebration of a creature lurking in the darkness. A creature who’s never before faced a challenger like you.

 

I see it, Greta Thunberg, as you emerge into the cavern of the sewer junction. I see the vortex swirling, a host of twisted faces in a slowly-turning funnel of rot and petrol and ocean plastic. I see the swarms of bees, sluggish, spiralling in their death throes as they twist and turn, born aloft not by their own wings but by the poisoned currents of the beast.

 

This is its true form, a geyser of tar-slicked banknotes, gouts of industrial fire flickering across its surface. I see the corpses of cormorants drifting aimlessly in the noxious air. They all float down here, Greta Thunberg.

 

I see the dread thing coalesce, faces bubbling out of the slick, revealing wild eyes and yellow teeth. The oilmen and politicians, sneering, snarling. They rule by fear, drawing everything around them down into the mire.

 

I see the corner of your mouth lift into a smirk, Greta Thunberg. I see the pinwheeling eyes considering you pause and lock for a moment, hesitant, never before confronted by a force like this.

 

They’ve thrown all they had at you, expecting fear as they always have. It’s not for you though, is it?

 

You’ve got zero fvcks to give and you’ve come for all of them.

 

You see them, Greta Thunberg. You fvcking see them."

[Guest MattP]

She really is the child messiah isn't she? "Never before confronted by a force like this"

 

What a weird cult the environmentalist movement is becoming, up there with US gun nuts and religious fanatics. 

[leicsmac]

4 minutes ago, MattP said:

She really is the child messiah isn't she? "Never before confronted by a force like this"

 

What a weird cult the environmentalist movement is becoming, up there with US gun nuts and religious fanatics. 

Yeah, it's weird how someone saying pretty much exclusively (when you boil it down) "listen to the science, listen to the scientists, look at the data" can draw so much flak.

 

Let me know when the US government starts taking guns away en masse and/or the Second Coming starts to happen and then perhaps those comparisons might be accurate - for all the occasional kooks that turn up that people who want to do nothing use as strawmen.

[Guest MattP]

6 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Yeah, it's weird how someone saying pretty much exclusively (when you boil it down) "listen to the science, listen to the scientists, look at the data" can draw so much flak.

 

Let me know when the US government starts taking guns away en masse and/or the Second Coming starts to happen and then perhaps those comparisons might be accurate - for all the occasional kooks that turn up that people who want to do nothing use as strawmen.

She's not saying that though is she?

 

She's running around shouting and screeching at people, lecturing them all whilst offering no solutions or any opportunity for political debate. 

 

She's the weird child messiah of a cult who is going to do more damage to her cause than good.

[Innovindil]

Hopefully these extinction rebellion **** nuggets are all locked up by next Monday. If they ruin my London trip to see lindsey I swear to jesus i'll burn every shrub I can find. 

[leicsmac]

6 minutes ago, MattP said:

She's not saying that though is she?

 

She's running around shouting and screeching at people, lecturing them all whilst offering no solutions or any opportunity for political debate. 

 

She's the weird child messiah of a cult who is going to do more damage to her cause than good.

She is saying exactly that, again if the message is understood. Why do people persist in thinking there are no solutions being floated (hell, I've quoted Drawdown numerous times in this very place and that's hardly the only source of such solutions) and that an increase in global average temperature and its consequences are somehow an (overly) political matter? It's deckchairs on the Titanic.

 

With respect, Matt, I believe you are seeing exactly what you want to see, rather than what is. Of course, you could turn round and say the same about me, but the temperature data speaks for itself, and always will.

 

4 minutes ago, Innovindil said:

Hopefully these extinction rebellion **** nuggets are all locked up by next Monday. If they ruin my London trip to see lindsey I swear to jesus i'll burn every shrub I can find. 

Never had you down as a lover of fine violinists, Inno - seems at odds with your sense of self-interest.

[Innovindil]

Just now, leicsmac said:

 

Never had you down as a lover of fine violinists, Inno - seems at odds with your sense of self-interest.

Love her. Literally the music of my soul. First chance to go see her without having to travel to Germany. Should be a blast. 

[leicsmac]

9 minutes ago, Innovindil said:

Love her. Literally the music of my soul. First chance to go see her without having to travel to Germany. Should be a blast. 

I'm envious. One day I hope I'll get that chance too.

 

Hope you enjoy yourself whether ER are still there or not - and please, as above, remember that the kooks among the green movement, such as they are, don't detract from the necessity of the task.

[Guest MattP]

35 minutes ago, Innovindil said:

Hopefully these extinction rebellion **** nuggets are all locked up by next Monday. If they ruin my London trip to see lindsey I swear to jesus i'll burn every shrub I can find. 

You just know someone is going to plough through them in a vehicle soon anyway - that might put an end to the morons. 

 

Or we'll have a a couple of deaths from then blocking ambulances etc and the public will take matters into their own hands.

 

Either way it's not going to be a pretty ending 

[leicsmac]

12 minutes ago, MattP said:

You just know someone is going to plough through them in a vehicle soon anyway - that might put an end to the morons. 

 

Or we'll have a a couple of deaths from then blocking ambulances etc and the public will take matters into their own hands.

 

Either way it's not going to be a pretty ending 

I sincerely hope not - one Heather Heyer is too many.

(Or not enough, depending on who you talk to.)

[Carl the Llama]

3 hours ago, Finnaldo said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-49956698

 

Sad day for the Kurds. Hopefully it's just the border region and not a total military operation, Erdogan is a brute though so I don't expect much.

 

I do feel for the Kurds, they seem extremely fair (their gender equality policy speaks for itself) and whereas you may have seen massive repercussions from other groups in their position (dominating the region after being repressed for so long) they've handled Raqqa and the Arabic population very carefully and respectfully.

Donald Trump in zero integrity shocker.  I'm surprised his body managed to produce heel spurs when he got drafted, it would have been better served dedicating those vital resources towards something resembling a spine.

[bovril]

4 hours ago, Finnaldo said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-49956698

 

Sad day for the Kurds. Hopefully it's just the border region and not a total military operation, Erdogan is a brute though so I don't expect much.

 

I do feel for the Kurds, they seem extremely fair (their gender equality policy speaks for itself) and whereas you may have seen massive repercussions from other groups in their position (dominating the region after being repressed for so long) they've handled Raqqa and the Arabic population very carefully and respectfully.

Kurds have been betrayed a great deal over the years. 

[Heathrow fox]

Pizza Express struggling under a mountain of debt.Yet another restaurant chain in deep trouble.

[Izzy]

12 minutes ago, Heathrow fox said:

Pizza Express struggling under a mountain of debt.Yet another restaurant chain in deep trouble.

Yeah, just read that. They're paying nearly £100m a year in interest alone on a debt of more than £1bn.

 

Mental

[MC Prussian]

7 hours ago, leicsmac said:

Yeah, it's weird how someone saying pretty much exclusively (when you boil it down) "listen to the science, listen to the scientists, look at the data" can draw so much flak.

"Listen to what science, listen to which scientists, look at what data?"

She does nothing but utter superficial claptrap and drama that helps nobody, only helps inciting more division.

 

She's nothing but a gatekeeper and a pawn for the left/environmentalist movement. Sad times we're living in when children are being used for political/activist movements, and we believe children more than we do scientists.

[leicsmac]

4 hours ago, MC Prussian said:

"Listen to what science, listen to which scientists, look at what data?"

She does nothing but utter superficial claptrap and drama that helps nobody, only helps inciting more division.

 

She's nothing but a gatekeeper and a pawn for the left/environmentalist movement. Sad times we're living in when children are being used for political/activist movements, and we believe children more than we do scientists.

You know the answers to these questions, you just reject them.

 

As I said in the Sci/Tech thread, no longer interested in discussing this with you as it is a waste of time.