Usa Thread

[Flashermac]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAIwgDI4B6E

[Coss]

Jeez I feel sorry for all the folks who are affected by the Hurricane Harvey flooding. Major problems and a long clean up period to come.

 

I watch a bit of MSNBC, these days, and they can best be described as Anti Trump, as Fox are Pro. If half of what MSNBC is reporting is even remotely true, Trump is F**ked.

 

Mueller has enlisted the help of a "Crack Team" of the IRS...

[cavanami]

What the lame stream media doesn't report because it doesn't fit their agenda...no one asked them, no one is paying them, but

Texans from west Texas loading up supplies to bring to the Houston area....and where is BLM and all the other azzclown groups?

 

[Coss]

Well I don't know if MSNBC is lame/main stream media, by your definition?

 

I did see them reporting on the huge number of volunteers who've been helping, not just neighbours, but going across town in boats etc to help each other out. Volunteers outnumbering officialdom by some 10:1.

 

The impression I got, was that Texans are good folk and help each other.

[Steve]

Human nature is to help. Its when humans are overwhelmed by whatever tragedy be it natural or otherwise it deteriorates into humans victimizing others. Not sure where BLM or others are expected to play a visible role. BLM has been co opted by parts of the media to be a coded reference. The NYC "infiltrated' and came away with nothing.

https://www.theguard...ance-undercover

 

“The documents uniformly show no crime occurring, but NYPD had undercovers inside the protests for months on end as if they were al-Qaida,†said David Thompson, an attorney of Stecklow & Thompson, who helped sue for the records.....“If they’re not talking about any crimes being committed, they’re going to have a difficult time defending this

 

BLM if anyone would care to research them is basically a black gay advocacy group co-opting black victimization for their own purposes. I would guess, 99 percent of those who watch Fox News and other right of center media, who label them as whatever has never been to their site and read their core beliefs and goals. Fact is EVERY black group in america was initially demonized no matter how peaceful they were. This includes MLK Jrs movement which is the poster child for non violence. The press at that time claimed they were a communist / marxist front. Its not told these days because he's pretty much gotten sainthood status but its what was said then. The NAACP, and every other black group were demonized and infiltrated and usually an attempt to either destroy or neutralize it. Every single one. Blacks are told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps until they actually organize to do it. lol. Are there some bad black groups? Sure. Just like there are bad white groups (KKK, neo Nazis...Republicans...hehehe...joking), Asian gangs, anti American latino groups. Anything that happens at any protest where blacks are is lazily labeled as Black Lives Matter as coded speak for any black person. There are blacks appearing on Fox in opposition to things I Know of and seen called BLM activist and were actually anti BLM. Fox knows this but their audience doesn't. The left does things as well, tons of things, scare tactics to get women, blacks, gays, etc. basically any non white straight protestant male to vote for them. Unreported widely but there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that undercover cops or nationalist grouops instigated things at the protest marches so the police could act. For sure this happened in Ferguson, Missouri.

 

 

Also, all large black protests are a combination of many groups. BLM is usually the smallest. Every city has its own groups, there are church groups even, just like Occupy Wall Street had all sorts of groups out there. No protest of size is one group, be it black, white, latino, asian, gay, etc. Black groups get labeled all as BLM for coded speech purposes. Ferguson had whites and latinos marching. How are they BLM? Finally, I litterally do not know any black person who self identifies themselves as being part of the group officially, None. The term has been used on their social media, sure, but not part of the group. The group and the term are two totally distinct and separate things. Its a catchy phrase. Its what it means to 99 percent of blacks.

 

Just wanted to put some perspective on it.

 

Finally, whether we believe what the Ferguson, Baltimore and other similar protests are valid, the fact is the protesters believe it is. The protesters believe unarmed blacks (and others) are routinely killed by cops and these cops are not being punished as anyone else would for the same 'crime'. Again, we can debate whether or not this is so, but the protesters believe it. So, from that context, the protesting is pretty darn calm. It becomes very, very hard to make an argument it isn't so when we have videos such as this:

or this and this is not unique...there are a ton of these sort of revelations out there, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/8/28/1693883/-OK-police-chief-ousted-after-revelations-he-s-listed-as-the-owner-of-a-white-supremacist-website

 

and a 2006 FBI report saying law enforcement across the country has been infiltrated by supremacists. and NOTHING has been done about it. not by Bush at the time and shockingly not by Obama for obvious reasons and certainly good ol boy Jeff Sessions AG is not going to.

https://www.dailykos...-Be-Assimilated

 

We have seen groups like the Bundy lands rights people have armed stances over water rights. Not human life, water rights. What would happen if any specific group of Americans believed to their core that the police, an arm of the government had been killing them occasionally for decades? And no amount of complaining, voting, etc, has been done to end it? Really? It would make Ferguson and Baltimore look like a Sunday school class. I am NOT justifying any wrongs done by protesters.

 

Anyway, the Asian sub continent had worse flooding and far more deaths, well over a 1,000 and no one seems to care. A larger question that I have read is how much of this is climate change? Its a somewhat weak argument since Houston and the Asian subcontinent has always had these occurring for hundreds of years. What is debatable is the frequency and severity. Climate change exasperates natural disasters. Its hard to know to what extent if at all.

[Coss]

>> A larger question that I have read is how much of this is climate change? Its a somewhat weak argument since Houston and the Asian subcontinent has always had these occurring for hundreds of years. What is debatable is the frequency and severity. Climate change exasperates natural disasters.>>

 

Whilst I think many board members know my stance on Anthropogenic climate change, I'll throw an interesting point in here.

 

I was stunned to find out that, circa 10,000 years ago there was no Great Barrier Reef in Australia, in fact many coral reefs around the world, did not exist. Why? because at the end of the last ice age the sea was some ~100 metres lower and the shelf that the Great Barrier Reef now sits on was dry. Scientists have postulated that when the water did come it came relatively quickly sometimes (depending on local geography) inundating some areas in weeks. This is supported by Aborigine mythology or story telling.

 

My point is that big changes in climate and environment happen, in spite of or in isolation from, Anthropogenic climate change. Global warming according to AL Gore was supposed to cause catastrophe by next Tuesday and result in areas like Texas and South Asia becoming drier and cooking, not wetter. Sea level at WikiWoo

 

Anyhoo.

_____

 

 

Vis "BLM" I feel angst, that the USA, which should be rightly held up as a shining light of equal rights and democracy, is mired in the wetlands of dis-unity.

 

​Even here in Middle Earth I often view some protestors as flawed individuals for whom protest, is something that they seek out and thrive on, for attention seeking benefit, whilst only subscribing to headline causes and not actually having the ability to rationally think through their stances.

[Steve]

I personally think protesting is a waste of time. The civil rights movement worked when it was targeting segregation economically. The Montgomery bus boycott broke the city financially. The potential economic fallout when half your population are women helped the women's movement.Single women spent more than single men. Wives and mothers spent the family dollar. Piss over half of the population off and you lose big. This was after the '60s movement so the government was loathe to have another major protest on again. The gay dollar is very powerful. I recall years ago, in Los Angeles, would mark their money to show the locals just how much money they generated. Organized money or votes gets shit done. Marching doesn't. All marching does is bring awareness to your cause, you need a plan post march. If you don't have a game plan in terms voting, economics and/or political, you can't make changes. You can't guilt trip or shame any government into making wholesale changes to society. Some may say that TV showing blacks, many of them women and youth, getting fire hosed and dogs biting them changed the hearts and minds of Americans. Well, it embarrassed America but there were international consequences that the US government had to address. The UN grew exponentially in the '60s, many, many former colonies got their independence in the '50s and '60s. Africa, the Carribean, Asia, Middle East and they had UN votes. They were also susceptible to the USSR and the USSR was tellling these new nations, why do you want to side with America when they are subjugating people that look just like you. See how we helped majority black Cuba? See how we are helping with other similar countries? We aren't bigoted. This is what the USSR was telling leaders of other countries. There was a growing anti American movement among the youth in England at the time asking questions of the government about why they are the strongest ally to a nation doing things like this. This was the external force that was forcing some sort of legislation to be done. Its not discussed in history books, but its what was happening at the time.

 

As for climate change, I have said this before. I am no scientist, I can't explain the science. However, I do know this. The fossil fuel industry have poured millions and millions into fighting climate change's existence. When has the oil, gas and coal industry ever been on the right side of any issue? Really? They fought every good change in society that deals with the use of fossil fuels. They fought the change to unleaded gas, they fought to use off shore drilling or drilling in ecologically sensitive areas. If climate change isn't real and we create cleaner energy, etc so what? What is the actual harm? Green jobs are growing at a good pace. Really, what are the consequences for making the world greener and climate change is a fallacy? But what if it is real. The consequences are far, far greater if the anti climate change group is wrong.

 

So, with that in mind, why take the chance. I'd rather go with the 'climate change is real' crowd until it can be proven without doubt, unequivocally that its a fallacy.

[Coss]

I don't think that it will be proved a fallacy, what I see is green energy making fossil fuel redundant. Not because it's right or wrong, but because: progress.

 

Re: the oil companies again, not about right or wrong, about money. Them and the banks they ride in on.

 

Vis the Civil Rights Movement, I've been fortunate in that I grew up here in NZ, not that rights and or race issues, were absent, but what we experienced was that the vast majority of folk accepted the rightness of the various issues and accepted them as part of our egalitarian ethos. We do have red necks, but no where near 30%, prolly more like 3%.

 

I'm politically atheist, I'm more likely to promote some of what the Laos government is doing, rather than delve into NZ's mind numbing mediocrity in this land of relative plenty.

[Flashermac]

Notice that "global warming" has turned into "climate change". I don't think anyone can argue with that, though some still try. I remember reading that the Aztec rulers had a tradition that they had come from a land far to the east that was now submerged. They called it Aztlan. The Mayans have the same tradition, with stories telling that they lived further east under lands now below sea level. Change is constant in our world.

 

p.s. CS, if only our politicians were as sensible and level headed as you'd, we'd all be so much better off. One comment of my own about the police: Far fewer these days are military veterans. The military teaches us that we are all equals and brothers. Combat experience reinforces that. Most folks who become law officers nowadays lack that background.

 

 

'Britain's Atlantis' found at bottom of North sea - a huge undersea world swallowed by the sea in 6500BC

 

 

 

http://www.dailymail...-years-ago.html

[Coss]

You could be referring to Zealandia: Earth’s Hidden Continent - http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/27/3/article/GSATG321A.1.htm

 

 

>>>>Notice that "global warming" has turned into "climate change".

 

Extremely good marketing move that. Very hard to argue warming when it's not warming very much, or warming when it's wetting.

 

>>>>> if only our politicians were as sensible and level headed

 

or if we could purge them a la the Romans. Politicians shouldn't be allowed to campaign, just be nominated and voted on. The one with the best reputation would win, Trump n Hilary woulda failed in the beginning.