Politics Thread!

[PFVA]

And in direct on TV right at the time of the evening news our government just announced the recognition of the Palestinian state.
Most likely too late for the Gaza Strip but maybe still in time to save the West Bank. If I understood all the explanations that means Israel won't be allowed to create new settlements over there. Not sure how they will stop them though for as long as the US continues to support the Israeli government and veto UN resolutions.

[zip accident]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg3jl0ylkyo

Welfare reform 'must happen', minister says

,,,

"We've reallocated support to people who've been away from the labour market for a long time, who've been, frankly, signed off, paid benefits and untouched for years. That's wrong," he said.

How is this guy not a Tory?

[KlaxonCow]

It's Andrew Gilligan all over again.

If you remember, during the Iraq War, this was the reporter who said, regarding the "45 minute WMD" claims, that "the government probably knew it was wrong" when writing the dossier.

So Alistair Campbell goes full "Malcolm Tucker" on Channel 4, raging about how offended he was, as if this was the worst thing anyone's ever said about anything ever. And Andrew Gilligan got sacked.

But, umm, "the government probably knew..." is in the subjunctive tone. It's not a statement of fact, but "an unreal or imagined condition". Facts can't "probably" be true. The addition of that word is crucial because it inherently says that that statement is speculation, not fact.

But Blair and Campbell and all the war-mongers were freaking out that he'd said this, and were treating it like a statement of fact, which it wasn't.

Compare "you are tall" - a statement of fact - with "you are probably tall" - not only not a statement of fact and inherently a speculation, but if it's a speculation then it's also implicitly telling you that I've never met this person in the flesh yet, because if I had then I'd know if they were tall or not.

The "probably" is doing a lot of leg work, sure, but it's crucial to the interpretation of the sentence. You can't have a "probably" in a statement of fact. It switches it to what's called "the subjunctive tone", where you are talking about an imagined or speculative possibility, not anything you actually know.

Even at the time, this was some kind of weird "Twilight Zone" where interested parties were reacting to words that were not actually said, in ways that had no connection to the reality of the matter.

It's like walking past a black person and just saying "hello, how are you?" and then they freak out that you used the "n" word and aggressively suggested that all black people should be killed. And, like, umm, what the fuck?!? None of the things you're saying or reacting to actually happened. You're reacting to some alternative reality that never transpired. None of your complaints have any connection to reality. What the hell is going on?

It should also be noted that, later, they held a public inquiry into the Iraq War and a judge decided that the government had "subconsciously" added these lies to the dossier. Quite how a judge can rule on what was in someone's mind in the past - to know if it was subconscious or conscious - is another matter, that even this official ruling is basically a nonsense.

But the point is that Gilligan suggested they "probably knew" it was wrong. And the official legal ruling in the end was that they "subconsciously" added it. So, honestly, Gilligan's speculation was eventually legally ruled as basically correct. But no apologies nor giving his job back, of course.

I bring all this up in regards to Jimmy Kimmel's comments, because what he said and the footage they showed of Trump, bears absolutely no resemblance to anything they're complaining about:



He doesn't say anything about Charlie Kirk himself. Only that the right were using it to score political points and were desperately trying to paint the assassin as a "leftist" without any evidence, at the time, to do so. All of which is just factually correct.

Then - and I think this is really what sank him - they showed footage of Trump showing not even half a second of grief nor compassion to his supposed "friend" Charlie Kirk, as he's immediately boasting about making improvements to the White House. They just ran VT of Trump proving to everyone that he's a cunt, basically.

The reaction to Jimmy Kimmel's comments really have nothing whatsoever to do with what he actually said. Beyond that he perhaps did too good a job of showing Trump to be an arsehole with that footage - but, hey, that's down to Trump. All Kimmel and his crew did was play the footage back.

There's also the slight problem of Trump saying "Kimmel will be next", after Colbert's show was cancelled. So unless he's psychic, the real reason that the reaction has nothing whatsoever to do with what Kimmel said is because the Trump administration had already pre-decided that he was the next host to get cancelled - in their crackdown on free speech criticising the Orange God King - and so the reaction was pre-planned and rehearsed before Kimmel had even said anything.

[KlaxonCow]

[double post, due to server issues.]

[F-ZeroOne]

Regards Trumps UN speech and autism "cause" [1], I think I will just leave this quote from the man himself:

"It can only good happen".

[1] Those quotation marks are doing more heavy lifting than Atlas.

[KlaxonCow]

Trump is demanding an investigation into the "sinister" incidents that occurred at the UN:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3dr0zrr1kpo

Even though the escalator stopping is believed to have been caused by a cameraman, walking backwards, at the top of the escalator - trying to capture a good shot of the Orange King and his wife getting on the escalator - triggering the emergency safety mechanism.

The teleprompter has nothing to do with the UN, and it was brought in by the American delegation.

And audio issues are perfectly common in a room that's running so many headsets and translations simultaneously. Indeed, it's such a complicated system, it's a wonder it works at all.

Basically, standard "blame everyone else" narcissist behaviour, believing in conspiracy theories plotting against him, when, you know, it's almost certainly just "shit happens" and everyone has bad days.

Either that or maybe there are gods, after all, and they just despise the little shit.

[F-ZeroOne]

Its worth comparing Trumps escalator meltdown with President Macrons reaction when the road he wanted to cross was blocked by Trumps own motorcade:



The latest action from the Pettiness in Chief:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... al-gallery

And finally, a good comment (yes, it happens!) I read on another forum: US ICE agents do not seem to be too concerned about either the health risks of or not being able to breathe through face masks...

[tufty]

More good news from France, as Sarkozy is going to jail for corruption. And just like anyone else, he's not able to use an appeal to avoid going to prison in the meantime.

[zip accident]

On the other hand:

https://slashdot.org/story/25/09/26/235 ... ompetitive

Schmidt said China's tech sector operates on "996" schedules -- 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.

...

Google's Sergey Brin recently told Gemini team employees to work in-office weekdays, calling 60 hours weekly "the sweet spot of productivity."

[SuperMappy]

How is it that nobody is saying Make America Fat Again? It surely can't be that nobody thought it.

Sorry if this is a tad late, but a while ago I heard a conspiracy theory that the reason that America is fat is so that we can export our way of life, to the countries that matter, make them fat and lazy and then we can get back in shape again, here in America, and take over the world. If you know of the other things our government has tried, like gay bombs and spreading VD, this wouldn't surprise me.

[tufty]

gay bombs and spreading VD

And all that was done by electing Donald Trump!

[KlaxonCow]

How is it that nobody is saying Make America Fat Again? It surely can't be that nobody thought it.

Sorry if this is a tad late, but a while ago I heard a conspiracy theory that the reason that America is fat is so that we can export our way of life, to the countries that matter, make them fat and lazy and then we can get back in shape again, here in America, and take over the world. If you know of the other things our government has tried, like gay bombs and spreading VD, this wouldn't surprise me.

After the Tuskegee Syphillis Study and other high points of American Mengele-like racist medical experiments, I wouldn't remotely be surprised either.

But, you know, Occam's Razor. The human body craves sugar and fats because it's energy, and this can make such foods addictive. And that means you make much more money selling fast food "superstimulation" to the masses.

After all, if this was your plan then you'd stuff all the high fructose corn syrup into everyone else's Cokes around the world, not your own.

[KlaxonCow]

The petition against the introduction of digital IDs is already approaching 2.5 million signatures, and Keir barely announced it but two days ago:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194

Undoubtedly, it will not continue to rise at the rate of over a million signatures per day indefinitely, but these petitions run for 6 months (!) that the final total could be embarrassingly high for the government. It's already in the #2 position - just behind a "call a general election" petition of 3 million, but that's that petition's overall 6 month total and this one is almost there in two days. It's likely to sail right past that in a matter of days.

[Mayhem]

I will say I've had a hard time trying to explain to European friends of miune just what the resistence here to such a thing is, given many of them have been living perfectly fine with similar ID operations for decades. They don't "get" the suspicion and doubt.

[KlaxonCow]

As Keir rightly notes, it's time for Hamas to release the sausages.