The traditional political parties in Germany have utterly failed the people.
🇩🇪 AfD is the only hope for Germany 🇩🇪
Do we really need hourly updates on that ?
It's also bizarre:
German people live longer than Americans, they're less likely to be murdered or medicated or depressed. They are far less likely to be homeless.
America is an amazing place to be rich. Germany is a much, much better place to be lower or middle income.
American statistics are heavily distorted by its demographics so it can be misleading to compare them directly with European countries. For example a *majority* of murder victims are black:
Now would you like to check out what the German murder rate is?
It's about 0.8 per 100,000 people.
The murder rate for white, non-Hispanic, in the US is more than 4. (Which is a hell of a lot better than the 30-32 for African Americans.)
But... even picking the lowest likelihood of getting murdered ethnic group, the US homicide rate is 5x the German rate.
So, the murder rate for African Americans in the US is nearly 40x the German rate? Bloody hell. That's incredible.
What's the murder rate for Jews in Germany?
Now? No idea. There has been a rise in anti Semitic attacks since Gaza started but I am not aware of how many involve murder.
What's your point? That the US is better that Nazi Germany?
Well, obviously, the much higher murder rate for Black people in the US, along with much else, is a sign of how the US has failed to deal with the legacies of slavery. This should be a stain upon that nation's conscience.
Since the comparison is between the US and Germany it's natural to think about how Germany has dealt with the Holocaust and its legacy. But then, of course, the Jewish population in Germany is no longer high enough to calculate a statistically meaningful murder rate. So Germany doesn't have to deal with the legacy of its history in as difficult a way as the US does.
So perhaps the US deserves to be cut some slack? What they are trying to do - in recovering from a monumental historical wrong like race-based slavery, without an external power forcing them to face up to it, and without the two sides separating into different polities - is really very difficult, and I don't think it has been achieved by any country before.
Maybe they've done quite well to get as far as they have?
I do cut the US some slack. Indeed, I love the US.
But what I take exception to is the absurd claims of Musk and others that Germany is some kind of hell hole that needs rescuing.
Based on similar reasoning you could have argued against the idea that communist Eastern Europe was some kind of hell hole that needed rescuing.
Or against the idea that Elon Musk is a "he'll heil" that we all need rescuing from.
Christopher Webb @cwebbonline · 16h Whew! A major Tesla investor, @GerberKawasaki Ross Gerber, holding over $100 million in Tesla stock, slams Elon Musk for backing a Neo-Nazi-linked party in Germany.
The traditional political parties in Germany have utterly failed the people.
🇩🇪 AfD is the only hope for Germany 🇩🇪
Do we really need hourly updates on that ?
It's also bizarre:
German people live longer than Americans, they're less likely to be murdered or medicated or depressed. They are far less likely to be homeless.
America is an amazing place to be rich. Germany is a much, much better place to be lower or middle income.
American statistics are heavily distorted by its demographics so it can be misleading to compare them directly with European countries. For example a *majority* of murder victims are black:
Now would you like to check out what the German murder rate is?
It's about 0.8 per 100,000 people.
The murder rate for white, non-Hispanic, in the US is more than 4. (Which is a hell of a lot better than the 30-32 for African Americans.)
But... even picking the lowest likelihood of getting murdered ethnic group, the US homicide rate is 5x the German rate.
So, the murder rate for African Americans in the US is nearly 40x the German rate? Bloody hell. That's incredible.
What's the murder rate for Jews in Germany?
Now? No idea. There has been a rise in anti Semitic attacks since Gaza started but I am not aware of how many involve murder.
What's your point? That the US is better that Nazi Germany?
Well, obviously, the much higher murder rate for Black people in the US, along with much else, is a sign of how the US has failed to deal with the legacies of slavery. This should be a stain upon that nation's conscience.
Since the comparison is between the US and Germany it's natural to think about how Germany has dealt with the Holocaust and its legacy. But then, of course, the Jewish population in Germany is no longer high enough to calculate a statistically meaningful murder rate. So Germany doesn't have to deal with the legacy of its history in as difficult a way as the US does.
So perhaps the US deserves to be cut some slack? What they are trying to do - in recovering from a monumental historical wrong like race-based slavery, without an external power forcing them to face up to it, and without the two sides separating into different polities - is really very difficult, and I don't think it has been achieved by any country before.
Maybe they've done quite well to get as far as they have?
I do cut the US some slack. Indeed, I love the US.
But what I take exception to is the absurd claims of Musk and others that Germany is some kind of hell hole that needs rescuing.
Based on similar reasoning you could have argued against the idea that communist Eastern Europe was some kind of hell hole that needed rescuing.
I think Rawl's Veil of Ignorance applies, don't you?
Assume you have no knowedge as to your race, intelligence, social stature; which country would you choose to be born in?
I think most people, given that choice right now, would go with Norway or Australia or Canada or New Zealand or Singapore or Denmark.
But would you really have chosen Eastern Europe in communist days over the US?
I certainly wouldn't.
Are you fully applying the veil of ignorance though or are you assuming you would be a 'cishet white male'? You might choose Denmark, but by a stroke of bad luck it turns out that you are a persecuted minority who is having their 'ghetto' bulldozed by the state.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention the superlative “Say Nothing” on here.
Along with “Shogun”, one of the shows of the year.
No love for the (formulaic but fun) Matlock?
I haven’t seen it, but I’m pretty wary of reboots.
Instead, I have introduced my 10 yo daughter to the delights of the original “Murder She Wrote”, which at a distance of 40 years is hilariously camp and kitsch.
I have this as a cushion cover :
Great fun show. Continued for such a long time too.
There were four TV movies afterward too - the last made in 2003. So 23 years from first to last if you count those.
The traditional political parties in Germany have utterly failed the people.
🇩🇪 AfD is the only hope for Germany 🇩🇪
Do we really need hourly updates on that ?
It's also bizarre:
German people live longer than Americans, they're less likely to be murdered or medicated or depressed. They are far less likely to be homeless.
America is an amazing place to be rich. Germany is a much, much better place to be lower or middle income.
American statistics are heavily distorted by its demographics so it can be misleading to compare them directly with European countries. For example a *majority* of murder victims are black:
Now would you like to check out what the German murder rate is?
It's about 0.8 per 100,000 people.
The murder rate for white, non-Hispanic, in the US is more than 4. (Which is a hell of a lot better than the 30-32 for African Americans.)
But... even picking the lowest likelihood of getting murdered ethnic group, the US homicide rate is 5x the German rate.
So, the murder rate for African Americans in the US is nearly 40x the German rate? Bloody hell. That's incredible.
What's the murder rate for Jews in Germany?
Now? No idea. There has been a rise in anti Semitic attacks since Gaza started but I am not aware of how many involve murder.
What's your point? That the US is better that Nazi Germany?
Well, obviously, the much higher murder rate for Black people in the US, along with much else, is a sign of how the US has failed to deal with the legacies of slavery. This should be a stain upon that nation's conscience.
Since the comparison is between the US and Germany it's natural to think about how Germany has dealt with the Holocaust and its legacy. But then, of course, the Jewish population in Germany is no longer high enough to calculate a statistically meaningful murder rate. So Germany doesn't have to deal with the legacy of its history in as difficult a way as the US does.
So perhaps the US deserves to be cut some slack? What they are trying to do - in recovering from a monumental historical wrong like race-based slavery, without an external power forcing them to face up to it, and without the two sides separating into different polities - is really very difficult, and I don't think it has been achieved by any country before.
Maybe they've done quite well to get as far as they have?
I do cut the US some slack. Indeed, I love the US.
But what I take exception to is the absurd claims of Musk and others that Germany is some kind of hell hole that needs rescuing.
Based on similar reasoning you could have argued against the idea that communist Eastern Europe was some kind of hell hole that needed rescuing.
I think Rawl's Veil of Ignorance applies, don't you?
Assume you have no knowedge as to your race, intelligence, social stature; which country would you choose to be born in?
I think most people, given that choice right now, would go with Norway or Australia or Canada or New Zealand or Singapore or Denmark.
But would you really have chosen Eastern Europe in communist days over the US?
I certainly wouldn't.
Are you fully applying the veil of ignorance though or are you assuming you would be a 'cishet white male'? You might choose Denmark, but by a stroke of bad luck it turns out that you are a persecuted minority who is having their 'ghetto' bulldozed by the state.
The whole point is that you don't know.
Precisely. Therefore aggregate statistics aren't decisive and you need to consider how minorities are treated. For better or worse that doesn't necessarily favour Europe.
An irony of the fear about Musk's agenda is that what he really wants to do is sell us loads of his ugly electric cars. The econutters amongst us should be ecstatic.
The traditional political parties in Germany have utterly failed the people.
🇩🇪 AfD is the only hope for Germany 🇩🇪
Do we really need hourly updates on that ?
It's also bizarre:
German people live longer than Americans, they're less likely to be murdered or medicated or depressed. They are far less likely to be homeless.
America is an amazing place to be rich. Germany is a much, much better place to be lower or middle income.
American statistics are heavily distorted by its demographics so it can be misleading to compare them directly with European countries. For example a *majority* of murder victims are black:
Now would you like to check out what the German murder rate is?
It's about 0.8 per 100,000 people.
The murder rate for white, non-Hispanic, in the US is more than 4. (Which is a hell of a lot better than the 30-32 for African Americans.)
But... even picking the lowest likelihood of getting murdered ethnic group, the US homicide rate is 5x the German rate.
So, the murder rate for African Americans in the US is nearly 40x the German rate? Bloody hell. That's incredible.
What's the murder rate for Jews in Germany?
Now? No idea. There has been a rise in anti Semitic attacks since Gaza started but I am not aware of how many involve murder.
What's your point? That the US is better that Nazi Germany?
Well, obviously, the much higher murder rate for Black people in the US, along with much else, is a sign of how the US has failed to deal with the legacies of slavery. This should be a stain upon that nation's conscience.
Since the comparison is between the US and Germany it's natural to think about how Germany has dealt with the Holocaust and its legacy. But then, of course, the Jewish population in Germany is no longer high enough to calculate a statistically meaningful murder rate. So Germany doesn't have to deal with the legacy of its history in as difficult a way as the US does.
So perhaps the US deserves to be cut some slack? What they are trying to do - in recovering from a monumental historical wrong like race-based slavery, without an external power forcing them to face up to it, and without the two sides separating into different polities - is really very difficult, and I don't think it has been achieved by any country before.
Maybe they've done quite well to get as far as they have?
I do cut the US some slack. Indeed, I love the US.
But what I take exception to is the absurd claims of Musk and others that Germany is some kind of hell hole that needs rescuing.
Based on similar reasoning you could have argued against the idea that communist Eastern Europe was some kind of hell hole that needed rescuing.
Or against the idea that Elon Musk is a "he'll heil" that we all need rescuing from.
1962 'Armchair Theatre' about German industrialists, journalists, priests, believing they can use Hitlers memory to their advantage. It comes to mind when I read about rich tech bro's dipping their toes into politics. Very worth looking out (ymmv with the video quality - but there are watchable copies around).
The traditional political parties in Germany have utterly failed the people.
🇩🇪 AfD is the only hope for Germany 🇩🇪
Do we really need hourly updates on that ?
It's also bizarre:
German people live longer than Americans, they're less likely to be murdered or medicated or depressed. They are far less likely to be homeless.
America is an amazing place to be rich. Germany is a much, much better place to be lower or middle income.
American statistics are heavily distorted by its demographics so it can be misleading to compare them directly with European countries. For example a *majority* of murder victims are black:
Now would you like to check out what the German murder rate is?
It's about 0.8 per 100,000 people.
The murder rate for white, non-Hispanic, in the US is more than 4. (Which is a hell of a lot better than the 30-32 for African Americans.)
But... even picking the lowest likelihood of getting murdered ethnic group, the US homicide rate is 5x the German rate.
So, the murder rate for African Americans in the US is nearly 40x the German rate? Bloody hell. That's incredible.
What's the murder rate for Jews in Germany?
Now? No idea. There has been a rise in anti Semitic attacks since Gaza started but I am not aware of how many involve murder.
What's your point? That the US is better that Nazi Germany?
Well, obviously, the much higher murder rate for Black people in the US, along with much else, is a sign of how the US has failed to deal with the legacies of slavery. This should be a stain upon that nation's conscience.
Since the comparison is between the US and Germany it's natural to think about how Germany has dealt with the Holocaust and its legacy. But then, of course, the Jewish population in Germany is no longer high enough to calculate a statistically meaningful murder rate. So Germany doesn't have to deal with the legacy of its history in as difficult a way as the US does.
So perhaps the US deserves to be cut some slack? What they are trying to do - in recovering from a monumental historical wrong like race-based slavery, without an external power forcing them to face up to it, and without the two sides separating into different polities - is really very difficult, and I don't think it has been achieved by any country before.
Maybe they've done quite well to get as far as they have?
I do cut the US some slack. Indeed, I love the US.
But what I take exception to is the absurd claims of Musk and others that Germany is some kind of hell hole that needs rescuing.
Based on similar reasoning you could have argued against the idea that communist Eastern Europe was some kind of hell hole that needed rescuing.
I think Rawl's Veil of Ignorance applies, don't you?
Assume you have no knowedge as to your race, intelligence, social stature; which country would you choose to be born in?
I think most people, given that choice right now, would go with Norway or Australia or Canada or New Zealand or Singapore or Denmark.
But would you really have chosen Eastern Europe in communist days over the US?
I certainly wouldn't.
Are you fully applying the veil of ignorance though or are you assuming you would be a 'cishet white male'? You might choose Denmark, but by a stroke of bad luck it turns out that you are a persecuted minority who is having their 'ghetto' bulldozed by the state.
The whole point is that you don't know.
Precisely. Therefore aggregate statistics aren't decisive and you need to consider how minorities are treated. For better or worse that doesn't necessarily favour Europe.
Nowhere is perfect William.
It's all a balance of pros and cons.
But I'd certainly choose Denmark over the US if I had no idea of who I would be born as. On the other hand, I'd choose the US over Hungary, Greece or Italy.
Christopher Webb @cwebbonline · 16h Whew! A major Tesla investor, @GerberKawasaki Ross Gerber, holding over $100 million in Tesla stock, slams Elon Musk for backing a Neo-Nazi-linked party in Germany.
I'd be critical of Musk's behavior if I was a Tesla shareholder because (a) Twitter and government work is distracting him from Tesla, and (b) he's pissing off a chunk of the existing Tesla customer base, without obviously expanding it with people who aren't inclined to buy electric vehicles.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention the superlative “Say Nothing” on here.
Along with “Shogun”, one of the shows of the year.
No love for the (formulaic but fun) Matlock?
I haven’t seen it, but I’m pretty wary of reboots.
Instead, I have introduced my 10 yo daughter to the delights of the original “Murder She Wrote”, which at a distance of 40 years is hilariously camp and kitsch.
I have this as a cushion cover :
Great fun show. Continued for such a long time too.
Yeah but it was pretty obvious that no one could ever happen upon so many murders. Greatest mass murderer in history. Clear as day.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention the superlative “Say Nothing” on here.
Along with “Shogun”, one of the shows of the year.
No love for the (formulaic but fun) Matlock?
I haven’t seen it, but I’m pretty wary of reboots.
Instead, I have introduced my 10 yo daughter to the delights of the original “Murder She Wrote”, which at a distance of 40 years is hilariously camp and kitsch.
Angela Lansbury used to shop at my local grocery store well into her 90s. Sadly she passed a few years ago.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention the superlative “Say Nothing” on here.
Along with “Shogun”, one of the shows of the year.
No love for the (formulaic but fun) Matlock?
I haven’t seen it, but I’m pretty wary of reboots.
Instead, I have introduced my 10 yo daughter to the delights of the original “Murder She Wrote”, which at a distance of 40 years is hilariously camp and kitsch.
I have this as a cushion cover :
Great fun show. Continued for such a long time too.
Yeah but it was pretty obvious that no one could ever happen upon so many murders. Greatest mass murderer in history. Clear as day.
Still quite watchable I think. The exception being the 'Irish' set ones with all the American actors doing their best cod-Oirish accents.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention the superlative “Say Nothing” on here.
Along with “Shogun”, one of the shows of the year.
No love for the (formulaic but fun) Matlock?
I haven’t seen it, but I’m pretty wary of reboots.
Instead, I have introduced my 10 yo daughter to the delights of the original “Murder She Wrote”, which at a distance of 40 years is hilariously camp and kitsch.
I have this as a cushion cover :
Great fun show. Continued for such a long time too.
Yeah but it was pretty obvious that no one could ever happen upon so many murders. Greatest mass murderer in history. Clear as day.
Still quite watchable I think. The exception being the 'Irish' set ones with all the American actors doing their best cod-Oirish accents.
Plus the wierd one where Lansbury plays a singer in London as well as herself. Actually, most of the episodes involving showpeople are a bit tiresome.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
It's great news for the other parties. Any time Farage says something, you just respond, "That's what Musk paid him to say."
I agree it's a challenge for Refuk. Nigel is a smartish cookie despite people portraying him as a buffoon. He doesn't really need Elon's money now, but equally he can't and shouldn't really piss him off by rejecting his offer of help. And may not be strong enough to reject an offer that would clearly set up RefUK for life, and make him an extremely wealthy man.
Indeed. Some of us were actually discussing which was the worst front in the Great War, as light relief/superior disdain for the grovelling in the gutters. Well, I mean, what?
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention the superlative “Say Nothing” on here.
Along with “Shogun”, one of the shows of the year.
No love for the (formulaic but fun) Matlock?
I haven’t seen it, but I’m pretty wary of reboots.
Instead, I have introduced my 10 yo daughter to the delights of the original “Murder She Wrote”, which at a distance of 40 years is hilariously camp and kitsch.
I have this as a cushion cover :
Great fun show. Continued for such a long time too.
Yeah but it was pretty obvious that no one could ever happen upon so many murders. Greatest mass murderer in history. Clear as day.
Still quite watchable I think. The exception being the 'Irish' set ones with all the American actors doing their best cod-Oirish accents.
Plus the wierd one where Lansbury plays a singer in London as well as herself. Actually, most of the episodes involving showpeople are a bit tiresome.
Yes. She of course was British and I guess couldn't resist slipping back into it.
Just imagine the kind of reaction on social media if that had happened in the U.K. I fear the usual suspects would be gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tension and cleiming conspiracies if challenged.
I hope Germany is spared that.
We’ve already got the usual suspects here gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tensions and claiming conspiracies if challenged. I’m absolutely sure there are German equivalents doing the same on German social media, sadly.
Yes, the convolutions have been remarkable. Last night the usual suspects assumed that the unhinged Saudi doctor carried out the atrocity in the name of jihad. But the narrative had to change slightly when it became reasonably clear that this was unlikely to be the case, and his apparent influences included AfD etc. Not to be defeated, it turns out that it was a double bluff, as he was obviously hiding his jidahism in other guises. Stunning. Like everybody else, I've no idea what his motives were at the moment.
If you’ve got no idea what his motives are, how come you nonetheless KNOW he’s not anyway influenced by jihadism?
Rather than jumping to conclusions here and on twitter and where ever else, which can and does stimulate reactions, some of which can be quite serious eg riot, arson, murder, etc why not just wait for the facts to become clear and then one can be justifiably outraged at whatever is the cause, whether that be jihadi, fascist or whatever tenancies.
At the end of the day it was a failure of the state to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence. Attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game.
You don't know that. You are also jumping to conclusions. He could be a jihadist, he could be a right wing zealot or as in many cases in the past it could simply be someone will mental problems. However rushing to conclusions of either the first two often starts riots, arson and even murder.
Yes I do know that, and so do you. You seem to be in denial.
In the very unlikely event I am ever tried for something I hope to god you are not on the jury. I like to rely on facts and not internet trolls.
My comment was that the state had failed to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence and that attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game. It's a fact that an act of inter-ethnic violence occured and it's a fact that the state failed to prevent it.
Again you can't know that. It might well be so. It only happened yesterday and you are just reading posts from people you have no idea you can rely on. The guy clearly has a conflicting background and actions. How do you know he isn't schizophrenic or suffering from some other mental issues?
You just don't know, yet we tolerate people stirring up potential racist violence who don't have the facts. Why can't people wait for the facts.
The only way in which it could not be true is if they've apprehended the wrong man, which seems highly unlikely. For whatever reason, this person developed a murderous rage against Germans - whether this was islamism, anti-islamism or mental issues doesn't change this fact. It also doesn't change the fact that the authorities were aware of it and failed to act.
In particular Twitter did nothing about his postings, which were in plain sight, and indeed still are.
Take this one from August this year, which seems very much not Islamist:
Indeed so far as I can understand his train of thought it is not that he wants to Islamise Germany, but that Germany is deporting Saudi asylum seekers, particularly women, back to Saudi to be imprisoned or killed.
It’s impossible to follow his train of thought. He’s made some comments in Arabic which directly contradict stuff he’s said in English. I think he might simply be a criminal nutter who PROBABLY faked apostasy to avoid extradition, and he has developed a bizarre, murderous grudge against Germany and Germans
If he was that anti-Islam or Saudi surely he would have attacked a mosque or an embassy
Instead he attacked a Christmas market?! He also did it on the anniversary - I think - of a known jihadi attack against a German Xmas market
Remember kids:
If a white Christian kills a bunch of people, it's because he's mentally ill.
If a brown Muslim does it, it's because he's motivated by Islam.
I am not sure why you find that dichotomy so strange. Christianity is a faith based around the central tenets of forgiveness and loving thine enemies. Killing is strictly prohibited in the faith. Christians have been warlike peoples but they are not commanded in the Bible to spread their faith at the point of the sword, and it has been many hundreds of years since there were wars to spread Christianity. There is no sect of Christianity that advocates the violent spreading of the faith. None of that is true of Islam.
The absolute state of this comment
Great riposte numnuts.
Superlative counter-swipe!
This is why we keep coming back to PB.
Did it deserve the time to write something better?
There was no attempt to engage or contradict the point. Just an expression of the initial post apparently being beyond the pale for unknown reasons.
At least Bondegoozoo took time to Google "list of violent passages from the Bible".
Well, surely numbnuts has a b in it, for a start.
OK, and?
I thought a certain pedantry was encouraged on this forum.
Your pendantry (and Taz's) is welcome.
Dipshits wasting my time and everyone elses with asinine wastes of typing time in response to reasonably argued lists of points I have to be in the mood for.
My pendantry is a well known in certain circles.
Indeed. They are hanging on every word.
HANGING ON EVERY WORD. "PENDANT". GEDDIT?
Hoist by his own pentard.
Unless one is in the modernised internationalised style RN, in which case it's pennant. PBpennantry?
Trump has said in a press conference that he would reverse the current administration’s decision to let Ukraine fire long-range missiles at Russia. I'm sure @williamglenn will be able to explain how this actually helps Ukraine.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention the superlative “Say Nothing” on here.
Along with “Shogun”, one of the shows of the year.
No love for the (formulaic but fun) Matlock?
I haven’t seen it, but I’m pretty wary of reboots.
Instead, I have introduced my 10 yo daughter to the delights of the original “Murder She Wrote”, which at a distance of 40 years is hilariously camp and kitsch.
Its not really a reboot. The principal and eponymous character uses the name to attract attention and give herself an introduction. No more than that really.
The traditional political parties in Germany have utterly failed the people.
🇩🇪 AfD is the only hope for Germany 🇩🇪
Do we really need hourly updates on that ?
It's also bizarre:
German people live longer than Americans, they're less likely to be murdered or medicated or depressed. They are far less likely to be homeless.
America is an amazing place to be rich. Germany is a much, much better place to be lower or middle income.
American statistics are heavily distorted by its demographics so it can be misleading to compare them directly with European countries. For example a *majority* of murder victims are black:
Trump has said in a press conference that he would reverse the current administration’s decision to let Ukraine fire long-range missiles at Russia. I'm sure @williamglenn will be able to explain how this actually helps Ukraine.
Just imagine the kind of reaction on social media if that had happened in the U.K. I fear the usual suspects would be gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tension and cleiming conspiracies if challenged.
I hope Germany is spared that.
We’ve already got the usual suspects here gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tensions and claiming conspiracies if challenged. I’m absolutely sure there are German equivalents doing the same on German social media, sadly.
Yes, the convolutions have been remarkable. Last night the usual suspects assumed that the unhinged Saudi doctor carried out the atrocity in the name of jihad. But the narrative had to change slightly when it became reasonably clear that this was unlikely to be the case, and his apparent influences included AfD etc. Not to be defeated, it turns out that it was a double bluff, as he was obviously hiding his jidahism in other guises. Stunning. Like everybody else, I've no idea what his motives were at the moment.
If you’ve got no idea what his motives are, how come you nonetheless KNOW he’s not anyway influenced by jihadism?
Rather than jumping to conclusions here and on twitter and where ever else, which can and does stimulate reactions, some of which can be quite serious eg riot, arson, murder, etc why not just wait for the facts to become clear and then one can be justifiably outraged at whatever is the cause, whether that be jihadi, fascist or whatever tenancies.
At the end of the day it was a failure of the state to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence. Attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game.
You don't know that. You are also jumping to conclusions. He could be a jihadist, he could be a right wing zealot or as in many cases in the past it could simply be someone will mental problems. However rushing to conclusions of either the first two often starts riots, arson and even murder.
Yes I do know that, and so do you. You seem to be in denial.
In the very unlikely event I am ever tried for something I hope to god you are not on the jury. I like to rely on facts and not internet trolls.
My comment was that the state had failed to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence and that attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game. It's a fact that an act of inter-ethnic violence occured and it's a fact that the state failed to prevent it.
Again you can't know that. It might well be so. It only happened yesterday and you are just reading posts from people you have no idea you can rely on. The guy clearly has a conflicting background and actions. How do you know he isn't schizophrenic or suffering from some other mental issues?
You just don't know, yet we tolerate people stirring up potential racist violence who don't have the facts. Why can't people wait for the facts.
The only way in which it could not be true is if they've apprehended the wrong man, which seems highly unlikely. For whatever reason, this person developed a murderous rage against Germans - whether this was islamism, anti-islamism or mental issues doesn't change this fact. It also doesn't change the fact that the authorities were aware of it and failed to act.
In particular Twitter did nothing about his postings, which were in plain sight, and indeed still are.
Take this one from August this year, which seems very much not Islamist:
Indeed so far as I can understand his train of thought it is not that he wants to Islamise Germany, but that Germany is deporting Saudi asylum seekers, particularly women, back to Saudi to be imprisoned or killed.
It’s impossible to follow his train of thought. He’s made some comments in Arabic which directly contradict stuff he’s said in English. I think he might simply be a criminal nutter who PROBABLY faked apostasy to avoid extradition, and he has developed a bizarre, murderous grudge against Germany and Germans
If he was that anti-Islam or Saudi surely he would have attacked a mosque or an embassy
Instead he attacked a Christmas market?! He also did it on the anniversary - I think - of a known jihadi attack against a German Xmas market
Remember kids:
If a white Christian kills a bunch of people, it's because he's mentally ill.
If a brown Muslim does it, it's because he's motivated by Islam.
I am not sure why you find that dichotomy so strange. Christianity is a faith based around the central tenets of forgiveness and loving thine enemies. Killing is strictly prohibited in the faith. Christians have been warlike peoples but they are not commanded in the Bible to spread their faith at the point of the sword, and it has been many hundreds of years since there were wars to spread Christianity. There is no sect of Christianity that advocates the violent spreading of the faith. None of that is true of Islam.
The absolute state of this comment
Great riposte numnuts.
Superlative counter-swipe!
This is why we keep coming back to PB.
Did it deserve the time to write something better?
There was no attempt to engage or contradict the point. Just an expression of the initial post apparently being beyond the pale for unknown reasons.
At least Bondegoozoo took time to Google "list of violent passages from the Bible".
Well, surely numbnuts has a b in it, for a start.
OK, and?
I thought a certain pedantry was encouraged on this forum.
Your pendantry (and Taz's) is welcome.
Dipshits wasting my time and everyone elses with asinine wastes of characters in response to reasonably argued lists of points I have to be in the mood for.
*two glasses of red wine at dinner - please excuse general illiteracy
Your comment was so ignorant on every possible level that it did not merit a response beyond what I posted. You are usually a reasonable a rational poster but that was simply xenophobic dross.
I'm sorry, but it is you who is showing ignorance. Christianity has frequently been critiqued for it's lack of 'killer instinct' - for example blamed for making the Romans lose their cruel edge when they converted. Criticised by Hitler for its namby pamby attitude. Yes there's some fire and brimstone, particularly in the OT, but the Gospels, which are the overridingly important part of the Bible, because Christ was the fulfillment of the Old Testmanent, espouses a doctrine of love and forgiveness, and of faith being an inner grace, which allows 'rendering unto ceasar' - not demanding the violent overthrow of non-Christian authority.
Islam was developed by someone familiar with Christianity and is a response to it and in many ways a rebellion against it. The spread of Islam by the sword is advocated within the faith. Also Islam (which means submission) is all about the outward observance of faith, not about it being an inner matter.
The two faiths are absolutely different in their philosphical attitude to force, and that is why I made the comment I did. If you want to come at me with an interpretation that contradicts what I said, that might teach me something, go for it. If all you've got is a casual dismissal based on your own utter ignorance and assumptions of a lazy politically-correct position, expect to be casually dismissed in return.
It's an interesting point. There have been any number of brutal Christians and people who were willing to spread Christianity by force.
But, you get people like Gibbon, condemning Christianity as weak, cowardly, and soft, undermining a society's ability to defend itself, a view that the Nazis entirely bought into. Hitler said it was a disaster that Charles Martel won the Battle of Tours. To Himmler, Islam was "a fine religion for a soldier."
Trump has said in a press conference that he would reverse the current administration’s decision to let Ukraine fire long-range missiles at Russia. I'm sure @williamglenn will be able to explain how this actually helps Ukraine.
Doesn't make sense. He has promised the American people he will end the war in 24 hours so why does it matter whether Ukr has permission to fire long range or not?
An irony of the fear about Musk's agenda is that what he really wants to do is sell us loads of his ugly electric cars. The econutters amongst us should be ecstatic.
Selling electric cars requires promoting far right politics in Germany?
Would you prefer the journalist provided their own sneering commentary?
No
I’d prefer it if the article wasn’t, essentially, a PR puff piece.
Just a silly comment. It’s just a straightforward account of Reeves’s comments. It’s not unfriendly, but nor is it “puffery”.
So you are simply moaning that of all places the Guardian should print an interview with of all people the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer.
But surely it's up to a journalist to ask difficult questions around how this stuff will be delivered. It's one thing to a bit off to be printing everything the chancellor says without even simple questions or even a tiny bit of pushback. Otherwise it's just a bit of PR for Rachel from customer service.
It is not necessarily a journalist’s job to ask difficult questions. The reporting seems to be on the Chancellor’s communication strategy and response to the rising threat of Nigel (“he doesn’t have a clue”).
The term “Rachel from Accounts”, by the way, is very boorish. Reed has grossly disappointed expectations so far, but there’s no obvious need to demean her private sector experience.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
No. You beat parties by cutting them off from their funding and from their ability to function. And then you kick them when they are down. What is this sudden attack of gallantry? You shouldn't be being nice to Musk, you should be turning up in his bedroom at 3am and telling them not to fuck with us. Honestly, stupid parties (shakes my head)
The traditional political parties in Germany have utterly failed the people.
🇩🇪 AfD is the only hope for Germany 🇩🇪
Do we really need hourly updates on that ?
It's also bizarre:
German people live longer than Americans, they're less likely to be murdered or medicated or depressed. They are far less likely to be homeless.
America is an amazing place to be rich. Germany is a much, much better place to be lower or middle income.
American statistics are heavily distorted by its demographics so it can be misleading to compare them directly with European countries. For example a *majority* of murder victims are black:
Now would you like to check out what the German murder rate is?
It's about 0.8 per 100,000 people.
The murder rate for white, non-Hispanic, in the US is more than 4. (Which is a hell of a lot better than the 30-32 for African Americans.)
But... even picking the lowest likelihood of getting murdered ethnic group, the US homicide rate is 5x the German rate.
So, the murder rate for African Americans in the US is nearly 40x the German rate? Bloody hell. That's incredible.
What's the murder rate for Jews in Germany?
Now? No idea. There has been a rise in anti Semitic attacks since Gaza started but I am not aware of how many involve murder.
What's your point? That the US is better that Nazi Germany?
Well, obviously, the much higher murder rate for Black people in the US, along with much else, is a sign of how the US has failed to deal with the legacies of slavery. This should be a stain upon that nation's conscience.
Since the comparison is between the US and Germany it's natural to think about how Germany has dealt with the Holocaust and its legacy. But then, of course, the Jewish population in Germany is no longer high enough to calculate a statistically meaningful murder rate. So Germany doesn't have to deal with the legacy of its history in as difficult a way as the US does.
So perhaps the US deserves to be cut some slack? What they are trying to do - in recovering from a monumental historical wrong like race-based slavery, without an external power forcing them to face up to it, and without the two sides separating into different polities - is really very difficult, and I don't think it has been achieved by any country before.
Maybe they've done quite well to get as far as they have?
Perhaps Brazil, is a potential comparison?
The USA was founded upon brutal conquest, and enslavement. But, it has also been a refuge for millions, underpinned the freedom of many countries, and generated an incredible standard of living for people of all races (even though there are big differences by race).
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
No. You beat parties by cutting them off from their funding and from their ability to function. And then you kick them when they are down. What is this sudden attack of gallantry? You shouldn't be being nice to Musk, you should be turning up in his bedroom at 3am and telling them not to fuck with us. Honestly, stupid parties (shakes my head)
Why stop there? Why not just arrest or shoot, supporters of Reform?
Our leaders consider it entirely acceptable for Sinn Fein to receive vast amounts of money from abroad. Why should Reform be treated differently?
Just imagine the kind of reaction on social media if that had happened in the U.K. I fear the usual suspects would be gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tension and cleiming conspiracies if challenged.
I hope Germany is spared that.
We’ve already got the usual suspects here gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tensions and claiming conspiracies if challenged. I’m absolutely sure there are German equivalents doing the same on German social media, sadly.
Yes, the convolutions have been remarkable. Last night the usual suspects assumed that the unhinged Saudi doctor carried out the atrocity in the name of jihad. But the narrative had to change slightly when it became reasonably clear that this was unlikely to be the case, and his apparent influences included AfD etc. Not to be defeated, it turns out that it was a double bluff, as he was obviously hiding his jidahism in other guises. Stunning. Like everybody else, I've no idea what his motives were at the moment.
If you’ve got no idea what his motives are, how come you nonetheless KNOW he’s not anyway influenced by jihadism?
That's a fair point.
Which could also be directed at your "I'm pretty sure that.." comment upthread.
No, because we have clear evidence from an informed source that he was on the run from Saudi criminal charges and “strategically” became an apostate. However this is still not certain, hence my “pretty sure”
Next
And @Northern_Al said 'reasonably clear' and 'unlikely' and 'apparent'. All equally not quite as definite as 'KNOW' which you accused @Northern_Al saying incorrectly and all pretty equivalent as a level of certainty as 'pretty sure'.
Bit of pot and kettle there as you exagerate @Northern_Al words.
How about if I quote your 'pretty sure' as 'KNOW' as you did to @Northern_Al.
Honestly for someone with such a command of the English language and a huge IQ this is pretty poor.
At least PB - after a painful, attenuated period of embarrasingly futile denial - is now acknowledging that I have a "huge IQ"
On a somewhat depressing day, that - I guess - is progress
So huge that you appear to need AI assistance to unpack your shopping.
What ARE you talking about? Are you actually outside my house? I know you are weirdly obsessed with me, and it verges on tragic, but actual stalking takes it to a new level
I have just done some shopping, as it happens, I'm not sure I now require robotic help
Simply reflecting back what you told us here, the other day. Maybe you were too drunk to remember.
You ARE obsessed with me, tho, aren't you? You and a few others. Even if I go away for a wihile, you will vent about me
It's quite pleasing. Especially as I never think about you, ever, apart from when we are directly chatting and I want to wind you up (not hard)
Not me. The level of discussion on this site elevates considerably during those periods when you are away from it.
Yeah. Sure. You’ve made about 726 comments about me to other PBers today alone. But whatever. I’ll just file it under “weirdo”
Save the filing until you've sobered up.
If I ever did quit PB you’d probably go into some weird spasm of mourning. I dominate your thoughts so much it would be, for you, like heartbreak or grief. I imagine you walking around ventnor, crying, as everyone in ventnor tries to avoid you even more than normal
It’s a bit of a burden, frankly. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now - travel, family, new flint projects - but now I have to keep posting on here just so you don’t tip over into psychosis
It's a very good joke, well done. There is, of course, no one even a fiftieth as obsessed with you, as you.
Er, that is surely true of every human that ever lived
We are all - at least 50x more obsessed with ourselves than anyone else around us is obsessed with us
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
No. You beat parties by cutting them off from their funding and from their ability to function. And then you kick them when they are down. What is this sudden attack of gallantry? You shouldn't be being nice to Musk, you should be turning up in his bedroom at 3am and telling them not to fuck with us. Honestly, stupid parties (shakes my head)
There is, as far as I know, currently no cap on party funding, so long as it comes from a British citizen, and is recorded.
However there are restrictions on how parties can spend the money.
A cross-party committee should be urgently considering both, in the age of Russian influencer, oligopoly money, and the rise of both social media and obviously partisan content pumpers like GB “News”.
The traditional political parties in Germany have utterly failed the people.
🇩🇪 AfD is the only hope for Germany 🇩🇪
Do we really need hourly updates on that ?
It's also bizarre:
German people live longer than Americans, they're less likely to be murdered or medicated or depressed. They are far less likely to be homeless.
America is an amazing place to be rich. Germany is a much, much better place to be lower or middle income.
American statistics are heavily distorted by its demographics so it can be misleading to compare them directly with European countries. For example a *majority* of murder victims are black:
Now would you like to check out what the German murder rate is?
It's about 0.8 per 100,000 people.
The murder rate for white, non-Hispanic, in the US is more than 4. (Which is a hell of a lot better than the 30-32 for African Americans.)
But... even picking the lowest likelihood of getting murdered ethnic group, the US homicide rate is 5x the German rate.
And in Japan it's 0.2 so maybe 0.8 should be regarded as unacceptably high.
But this discussion isn't about Germany vs Japan, it's about Germany vs the US.
Maybe some people see the US as a cautionary tale and don't want Europe to end up with similar problems.
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Offer now closed. May be re-opened at the management's discretions at a later date.
The traditional political parties in Germany have utterly failed the people.
🇩🇪 AfD is the only hope for Germany 🇩🇪
Do we really need hourly updates on that ?
It's also bizarre:
German people live longer than Americans, they're less likely to be murdered or medicated or depressed. They are far less likely to be homeless.
America is an amazing place to be rich. Germany is a much, much better place to be lower or middle income.
American statistics are heavily distorted by its demographics so it can be misleading to compare them directly with European countries. For example a *majority* of murder victims are black:
Yes and if you go out at night in America there isnt the agrro you find in much of the uk. Its actually more civilized.
Depends where you go, of course. In both countries, although I’ll admit there are a lot more places where there’s almost nobody about in the US than in GB.
An irony of the fear about Musk's agenda is that what he really wants to do is sell us loads of his ugly electric cars. The econutters amongst us should be ecstatic.
Selling electric cars requires promoting far right politics in Germany?
No, the theory would be that Elon has identified the political trend, and is ingratiating himself with the future rulers of the West (as he has done with Trump). It's very clever really. Otherwise his business interests might have been compromised severely. For example, the ban on petrol and diesel cars could be shitcanned.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
No. You beat parties by cutting them off from their funding and from their ability to function. And then you kick them when they are down. What is this sudden attack of gallantry? You shouldn't be being nice to Musk, you should be turning up in his bedroom at 3am and telling them not to fuck with us. Honestly, stupid parties (shakes my head)
I can see "but, we won the argument" being used by Labour cabinet ministers who have lost their seats in the Farage 2029 landslide.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
No. You beat parties by cutting them off from their funding and from their ability to function. And then you kick them when they are down. What is this sudden attack of gallantry? You shouldn't be being nice to Musk, you should be turning up in his bedroom at 3am and telling them not to fuck with us. Honestly, stupid parties (shakes my head)
There is, as far as I know, currently no cap on party funding, so long as it comes from a British citizen, and is recorded.
However there are restrictions on how parties can spend the money.
A cross-party committee should be urgently considering both, in the age of Russian influencer, oligopoly money, and the rise of both social media and obviously partisan content pumpers like GB “News”.
Starmer is clearly trusting that 75% of the British public will within 5 years see what Musk is doing and find it abhorrent.
All very gallant and noble.
The problem is that the opponent is an undiluted toxic narcissistic meglamoniac who gets more dangerous by the day.
We can only hope that Trump retains enough of his own cognitive ability to act and to solve his problem before it becomes a global problem
Trump created the monster to win the White House, he has to eradicate the problem before Musk takes the White House and turns it in to the Reichstag.
America has never been under greater threat, Europe has not been under this level of threat since 1939
After the Lost in Light exhibitions (genuinely beautiful, modern art at its best) we walked all the way through the City from Shoreditch to Monument, to a nice dinner at the Wolseley (the scampi are fantastic)
It it such a world away from anywhere else in the UK, or indeed Europe. It feels remarkably rich, swaggering, prosperous and unique. Skyscrapers are still climbing, the pubs were full, the streets were festive. No city in Europe matches it for this in-the-moment verve mixed with historicity and modernity, Paris isn't even close, I am not quite sure NYC has the buzz despite being wealthier and more powerful (because the City has the ancient meets now vibe, absent in NYC). The City does NOT feel like a place in decline, it feels like the financial capital of a massively confident world power
The challenge, as ever in the UK, is to spread that City of London buzz - or some of it - across the UK (or at least bits of it). How long have we been trying to do this?! So far we have failed. Perhaps it is impossible
Just imagine the kind of reaction on social media if that had happened in the U.K. I fear the usual suspects would be gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tension and cleiming conspiracies if challenged.
I hope Germany is spared that.
We’ve already got the usual suspects here gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tensions and claiming conspiracies if challenged. I’m absolutely sure there are German equivalents doing the same on German social media, sadly.
Yes, the convolutions have been remarkable. Last night the usual suspects assumed that the unhinged Saudi doctor carried out the atrocity in the name of jihad. But the narrative had to change slightly when it became reasonably clear that this was unlikely to be the case, and his apparent influences included AfD etc. Not to be defeated, it turns out that it was a double bluff, as he was obviously hiding his jidahism in other guises. Stunning. Like everybody else, I've no idea what his motives were at the moment.
If you’ve got no idea what his motives are, how come you nonetheless KNOW he’s not anyway influenced by jihadism?
Rather than jumping to conclusions here and on twitter and where ever else, which can and does stimulate reactions, some of which can be quite serious eg riot, arson, murder, etc why not just wait for the facts to become clear and then one can be justifiably outraged at whatever is the cause, whether that be jihadi, fascist or whatever tenancies.
At the end of the day it was a failure of the state to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence. Attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game.
You don't know that. You are also jumping to conclusions. He could be a jihadist, he could be a right wing zealot or as in many cases in the past it could simply be someone will mental problems. However rushing to conclusions of either the first two often starts riots, arson and even murder.
Yes I do know that, and so do you. You seem to be in denial.
In the very unlikely event I am ever tried for something I hope to god you are not on the jury. I like to rely on facts and not internet trolls.
My comment was that the state had failed to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence and that attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game. It's a fact that an act of inter-ethnic violence occured and it's a fact that the state failed to prevent it.
Again you can't know that. It might well be so. It only happened yesterday and you are just reading posts from people you have no idea you can rely on. The guy clearly has a conflicting background and actions. How do you know he isn't schizophrenic or suffering from some other mental issues?
You just don't know, yet we tolerate people stirring up potential racist violence who don't have the facts. Why can't people wait for the facts.
The only way in which it could not be true is if they've apprehended the wrong man, which seems highly unlikely. For whatever reason, this person developed a murderous rage against Germans - whether this was islamism, anti-islamism or mental issues doesn't change this fact. It also doesn't change the fact that the authorities were aware of it and failed to act.
In particular Twitter did nothing about his postings, which were in plain sight, and indeed still are.
Take this one from August this year, which seems very much not Islamist:
Indeed so far as I can understand his train of thought it is not that he wants to Islamise Germany, but that Germany is deporting Saudi asylum seekers, particularly women, back to Saudi to be imprisoned or killed.
It’s impossible to follow his train of thought. He’s made some comments in Arabic which directly contradict stuff he’s said in English. I think he might simply be a criminal nutter who PROBABLY faked apostasy to avoid extradition, and he has developed a bizarre, murderous grudge against Germany and Germans
If he was that anti-Islam or Saudi surely he would have attacked a mosque or an embassy
Instead he attacked a Christmas market?! He also did it on the anniversary - I think - of a known jihadi attack against a German Xmas market
Remember kids:
If a white Christian kills a bunch of people, it's because he's mentally ill.
If a brown Muslim does it, it's because he's motivated by Islam.
I am not sure why you find that dichotomy so strange. Christianity is a faith based around the central tenets of forgiveness and loving thine enemies. Killing is strictly prohibited in the faith. Christians have been warlike peoples but they are not commanded in the Bible to spread their faith at the point of the sword, and it has been many hundreds of years since there were wars to spread Christianity. There is no sect of Christianity that advocates the violent spreading of the faith. None of that is true of Islam.
The absolute state of this comment
Great riposte numnuts.
Superlative counter-swipe!
This is why we keep coming back to PB.
Did it deserve the time to write something better?
There was no attempt to engage or contradict the point. Just an expression of the initial post apparently being beyond the pale for unknown reasons.
At least Bondegoozoo took time to Google "list of violent passages from the Bible".
Well, surely numbnuts has a b in it, for a start.
OK, and?
I thought a certain pedantry was encouraged on this forum.
Your pendantry (and Taz's) is welcome.
Dipshits wasting my time and everyone elses with asinine wastes of characters in response to reasonably argued lists of points I have to be in the mood for.
*two glasses of red wine at dinner - please excuse general illiteracy
Your comment was so ignorant on every possible level that it did not merit a response beyond what I posted. You are usually a reasonable a rational poster but that was simply xenophobic dross.
I'm sorry, but it is you who is showing ignorance. Christianity has frequently been critiqued for it's lack of 'killer instinct' - for example blamed for making the Romans lose their cruel edge when they converted. Criticised by Hitler for its namby pamby attitude. Yes there's some fire and brimstone, particularly in the OT, but the Gospels, which are the overridingly important part of the Bible, because Christ was the fulfillment of the Old Testmanent, espouses a doctrine of love and forgiveness, and of faith being an inner grace, which allows 'rendering unto ceasar' - not demanding the violent overthrow of non-Christian authority.
Islam was developed by someone familiar with Christianity and is a response to it and in many ways a rebellion against it. The spread of Islam by the sword is advocated within the faith. Also Islam (which means submission) is all about the outward observance of faith, not about it being an inner matter.
The two faiths are absolutely different in their philosphical attitude to force, and that is why I made the comment I did. If you want to come at me with an interpretation that contradicts what I said, that might teach me something, go for it. If all you've got is a casual dismissal based on your own utter ignorance and assumptions of a lazy politically-correct position, expect to be casually dismissed in return.
It's an interesting point. There have been any number of brutal Christians and people who were willing to spread Christianity by force.
But, you get people like Gibbon, condemning Christianity as weak, cowardly, and soft, undermining a society's ability to defend itself, a view that the Nazis entirely bought into. Hitler said it was a disaster that Charles Martel won the Battle of Tours. To Himmler, Islam was "a fine religion for a soldier."
I don't think Christianity has been forcibly spread for a number of centuries. I feel the conquistadors, cowboys, colonists and various white people grabbing other peoples' lands pretty much used Christianity as a bit of philosophical presentation for what was simply a money-grab.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
No. You beat parties by cutting them off from their funding and from their ability to function. And then you kick them when they are down. What is this sudden attack of gallantry? You shouldn't be being nice to Musk, you should be turning up in his bedroom at 3am and telling them not to fuck with us. Honestly, stupid parties (shakes my head)
Why stop there? Why not just arrest or shoot, supporters of Reform?
Our leaders consider it entirely acceptable for Sinn Fein to receive vast amounts of money from abroad. Why should Reform be treated differently?
Next time Farage and Musk incite riots on the streets off Southport, Tamworth, Rotherham, Plymouth etc it might be wise for Starmer to call for other democratic parties to call a state of emergency and to attack these fascists with the kind of response they deserve.
Fire bombing a hotel with 400 men, women and children in it deserves life, not 3 years.
The instigators like Farage, Musk, Robinson, Oajshott and Co should be arrested and charged with Treason.
After the Lost in Light exhibitions (genuinely beautiful, modern art at its best) we walked all the way through the City from Shoreditch to Monument, to a nice dinner at the Wolseley (the scampi are fantastic)
It it such a world away from anywhere else in the UK, or indeed Europe. It feels remarkably rich, swaggering, prosperous and unique. Skyscrapers are still climbing, the pubs were full, the streets were festive. No city in Europe matches it for this in-the-moment verve mixed with historicity and modernity, Paris isn't even close, I am not quite sure NYC has the buzz despite being wealthier and more powerful (because the City has the ancient meets now vibe, absent in NYC). The City does NOT feel like a place in decline, it feels like the financial capital of a massively confident world power
The challenge, as ever in the UK, is to spread that City of London buzz - or some of it - across the UK (or at least bits of it). How long have we been trying to do this?! So far we have failed. Perhaps it is impossible
Seems a long time ago since, erm probably last week, when you said emphatically this country is finished and you are moving abroad.
Marvellous thing alcohol.
More seriously, why don't we have our Barcelona? We need more devolution.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
No. You beat parties by cutting them off from their funding and from their ability to function. And then you kick them when they are down. What is this sudden attack of gallantry? You shouldn't be being nice to Musk, you should be turning up in his bedroom at 3am and telling them not to fuck with us. Honestly, stupid parties (shakes my head)
Why stop there? Why not just arrest or shoot, supporters of Reform?
Our leaders consider it entirely acceptable for Sinn Fein to receive vast amounts of money from abroad. Why should Reform be treated differently?
Next time Farage and Musk incite riots on the streets off Southport, Tamworth, Rotherham, Plymouth etc it might be wise for Starmer to call for other democratic parties to call a state of emergency and to attack these fascists with the kind of response they deserve.
Fire bombing a hotel with 400 men, women and children in it deserves life, not 3 years.
The instigators like Farage, Musk, Robinson, Oajshott and Co should be arrested and charged with Treason.
How exactly could an American like Musk be charged with treason in the UK?
Just imagine the kind of reaction on social media if that had happened in the U.K. I fear the usual suspects would be gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tension and cleiming conspiracies if challenged.
I hope Germany is spared that.
We’ve already got the usual suspects here gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tensions and claiming conspiracies if challenged. I’m absolutely sure there are German equivalents doing the same on German social media, sadly.
Yes, the convolutions have been remarkable. Last night the usual suspects assumed that the unhinged Saudi doctor carried out the atrocity in the name of jihad. But the narrative had to change slightly when it became reasonably clear that this was unlikely to be the case, and his apparent influences included AfD etc. Not to be defeated, it turns out that it was a double bluff, as he was obviously hiding his jidahism in other guises. Stunning. Like everybody else, I've no idea what his motives were at the moment.
If you’ve got no idea what his motives are, how come you nonetheless KNOW he’s not anyway influenced by jihadism?
Rather than jumping to conclusions here and on twitter and where ever else, which can and does stimulate reactions, some of which can be quite serious eg riot, arson, murder, etc why not just wait for the facts to become clear and then one can be justifiably outraged at whatever is the cause, whether that be jihadi, fascist or whatever tenancies.
At the end of the day it was a failure of the state to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence. Attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game.
You don't know that. You are also jumping to conclusions. He could be a jihadist, he could be a right wing zealot or as in many cases in the past it could simply be someone will mental problems. However rushing to conclusions of either the first two often starts riots, arson and even murder.
Yes I do know that, and so do you. You seem to be in denial.
In the very unlikely event I am ever tried for something I hope to god you are not on the jury. I like to rely on facts and not internet trolls.
My comment was that the state had failed to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence and that attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game. It's a fact that an act of inter-ethnic violence occured and it's a fact that the state failed to prevent it.
Again you can't know that. It might well be so. It only happened yesterday and you are just reading posts from people you have no idea you can rely on. The guy clearly has a conflicting background and actions. How do you know he isn't schizophrenic or suffering from some other mental issues?
You just don't know, yet we tolerate people stirring up potential racist violence who don't have the facts. Why can't people wait for the facts.
The only way in which it could not be true is if they've apprehended the wrong man, which seems highly unlikely. For whatever reason, this person developed a murderous rage against Germans - whether this was islamism, anti-islamism or mental issues doesn't change this fact. It also doesn't change the fact that the authorities were aware of it and failed to act.
In particular Twitter did nothing about his postings, which were in plain sight, and indeed still are.
Take this one from August this year, which seems very much not Islamist:
Indeed so far as I can understand his train of thought it is not that he wants to Islamise Germany, but that Germany is deporting Saudi asylum seekers, particularly women, back to Saudi to be imprisoned or killed.
It’s impossible to follow his train of thought. He’s made some comments in Arabic which directly contradict stuff he’s said in English. I think he might simply be a criminal nutter who PROBABLY faked apostasy to avoid extradition, and he has developed a bizarre, murderous grudge against Germany and Germans
If he was that anti-Islam or Saudi surely he would have attacked a mosque or an embassy
Instead he attacked a Christmas market?! He also did it on the anniversary - I think - of a known jihadi attack against a German Xmas market
Remember kids:
If a white Christian kills a bunch of people, it's because he's mentally ill.
If a brown Muslim does it, it's because he's motivated by Islam.
I am not sure why you find that dichotomy so strange. Christianity is a faith based around the central tenets of forgiveness and loving thine enemies. Killing is strictly prohibited in the faith. Christians have been warlike peoples but they are not commanded in the Bible to spread their faith at the point of the sword, and it has been many hundreds of years since there were wars to spread Christianity. There is no sect of Christianity that advocates the violent spreading of the faith. None of that is true of Islam.
The absolute state of this comment
Great riposte numnuts.
Superlative counter-swipe!
This is why we keep coming back to PB.
Did it deserve the time to write something better?
There was no attempt to engage or contradict the point. Just an expression of the initial post apparently being beyond the pale for unknown reasons.
At least Bondegoozoo took time to Google "list of violent passages from the Bible".
Well, surely numbnuts has a b in it, for a start.
OK, and?
I thought a certain pedantry was encouraged on this forum.
Your pendantry (and Taz's) is welcome.
Dipshits wasting my time and everyone elses with asinine wastes of characters in response to reasonably argued lists of points I have to be in the mood for.
*two glasses of red wine at dinner - please excuse general illiteracy
Your comment was so ignorant on every possible level that it did not merit a response beyond what I posted. You are usually a reasonable a rational poster but that was simply xenophobic dross.
I'm sorry, but it is you who is showing ignorance. Christianity has frequently been critiqued for it's lack of 'killer instinct' - for example blamed for making the Romans lose their cruel edge when they converted. Criticised by Hitler for its namby pamby attitude. Yes there's some fire and brimstone, particularly in the OT, but the Gospels, which are the overridingly important part of the Bible, because Christ was the fulfillment of the Old Testmanent, espouses a doctrine of love and forgiveness, and of faith being an inner grace, which allows 'rendering unto ceasar' - not demanding the violent overthrow of non-Christian authority.
Islam was developed by someone familiar with Christianity and is a response to it and in many ways a rebellion against it. The spread of Islam by the sword is advocated within the faith. Also Islam (which means submission) is all about the outward observance of faith, not about it being an inner matter.
The two faiths are absolutely different in their philosphical attitude to force, and that is why I made the comment I did. If you want to come at me with an interpretation that contradicts what I said, that might teach me something, go for it. If all you've got is a casual dismissal based on your own utter ignorance and assumptions of a lazy politically-correct position, expect to be casually dismissed in return.
It's an interesting point. There have been any number of brutal Christians and people who were willing to spread Christianity by force.
But, you get people like Gibbon, condemning Christianity as weak, cowardly, and soft, undermining a society's ability to defend itself, a view that the Nazis entirely bought into. Hitler said it was a disaster that Charles Martel won the Battle of Tours. To Himmler, Islam was "a fine religion for a soldier."
I don't think Christianity has been forcibly spread for a number of centuries. I feel the conquistadors, cowboys, colonists and various white people grabbing other peoples' lands pretty much used Christianity as a bit of philosophical presentation for what was simply a money-grab.
You're largely right, don't let idiots bully you
Christianity DID have a long expansionist violent phase, sometimes hideously - the Crusader slaughter in Jerusalem stands, out amongst many - but in its core there is a pacific message, and this has essentially prevailed. If anything Christianity is too meek, these days. hence its expulsion from homelands like Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq
By contrast Islam has not renounced an iota of its fire-breathing ferocity, which has killed hundreds of millions of people. It is still the religion of the sword and of conquest, of "jihad" - this is indeed its essence. This is its DNA. Convert, kill or subjugate the unbelievers: this is the message Islam still sends out today which is why Islam everywhere is in conflict with the societies that host it or border it. And thus we have the unhappy fact that Europe has imported millions of people mentally or even physically hostile to our values, and many of them are willing to act on that hostility, in different ways
After the Lost in Light exhibitions (genuinely beautiful, modern art at its best) we walked all the way through the City from Shoreditch to Monument, to a nice dinner at the Wolseley (the scampi are fantastic)
It it such a world away from anywhere else in the UK, or indeed Europe. It feels remarkably rich, swaggering, prosperous and unique. Skyscrapers are still climbing, the pubs were full, the streets were festive. No city in Europe matches it for this in-the-moment verve mixed with historicity and modernity, Paris isn't even close, I am not quite sure NYC has the buzz despite being wealthier and more powerful (because the City has the ancient meets now vibe, absent in NYC). The City does NOT feel like a place in decline, it feels like the financial capital of a massively confident world power
The challenge, as ever in the UK, is to spread that City of London buzz - or some of it - across the UK (or at least bits of it). How long have we been trying to do this?! So far we have failed. Perhaps it is impossible
London gets to be like that because financial services are favoured above all else by the UK's rules, whereas everyone else's ways of making money (fishing, mining, shoemaking, weaving, carmaking, chemicals, construction, oil extraction, etc. etc. etc.) are under constant attack. It also doesn't hurt that is the seat of Government.
The provinces don't need lessons in cultural vibrancy; they need a return to the rules and taxes that enabled them to thrive in the first place.
An irony of the fear about Musk's agenda is that what he really wants to do is sell us loads of his ugly electric cars. The econutters amongst us should be ecstatic.
Selling electric cars requires promoting far right politics in Germany?
No, the theory would be that Elon has identified the political trend, and is ingratiating himself with the future rulers of the West (as he has done with Trump). It's very clever really. Otherwise his business interests might have been compromised severely. For example, the ban on petrol and diesel cars could be shitcanned.
Nah, I think he just gets high on the kicks of seeing what he can get away with next.
After the Lost in Light exhibitions (genuinely beautiful, modern art at its best) we walked all the way through the City from Shoreditch to Monument, to a nice dinner at the Wolseley (the scampi are fantastic)
It it such a world away from anywhere else in the UK, or indeed Europe. It feels remarkably rich, swaggering, prosperous and unique. Skyscrapers are still climbing, the pubs were full, the streets were festive. No city in Europe matches it for this in-the-moment verve mixed with historicity and modernity, Paris isn't even close, I am not quite sure NYC has the buzz despite being wealthier and more powerful (because the City has the ancient meets now vibe, absent in NYC). The City does NOT feel like a place in decline, it feels like the financial capital of a massively confident world power
The challenge, as ever in the UK, is to spread that City of London buzz - or some of it - across the UK (or at least bits of it). How long have we been trying to do this?! So far we have failed. Perhaps it is impossible
Seems a long time ago since, erm probably last week, when you said emphatically this country is finished and you are moving abroad.
Marvellous thing alcohol.
More seriously, why don't we have our Barcelona? We need more devolution.
Yep. Apparently Manchester is OK but I find it hard to believe it is a UK Barcelona
The UK desperately needs four or five regional cities with some of the buzz of the City of London: Bristol, Edinburgh or Glasgae, Brum, and maybe and especially some northern multi-city with integrated contactless transport: Liverpool, Salford, Manc, Leeds, Sheffield - this last cluster could be the Osaka of the UK. This is where the density of our population and the small size of the UKis a massive ADVANTAGE - we have the geographical clustering and the people
I thought Labour would do this. It was my big hope alongside massive NHS reform. But alas. Nada
An irony of the fear about Musk's agenda is that what he really wants to do is sell us loads of his ugly electric cars. The econutters amongst us should be ecstatic.
Selling electric cars requires promoting far right politics in Germany?
No, the theory would be that Elon has identified the political trend, and is ingratiating himself with the future rulers of the West (as he has done with Trump). It's very clever really. Otherwise his business interests might have been compromised severely. For example, the ban on petrol and diesel cars could be shitcanned.
Nah, I think he just gets high on the kicks of seeing what he can get away with next.
Move fast and break things is the mantra.
One thing Elon Musk is extremely good at is making money.
He was cleverer than 95% of commentators in getting in on a Trump victory, now he's the gatekeeper of the new President. He's doing the same with Europe's surging right.
The traditional political parties in Germany have utterly failed the people.
🇩🇪 AfD is the only hope for Germany 🇩🇪
Do we really need hourly updates on that ?
It's also bizarre:
German people live longer than Americans, they're less likely to be murdered or medicated or depressed. They are far less likely to be homeless.
America is an amazing place to be rich. Germany is a much, much better place to be lower or middle income.
American statistics are heavily distorted by its demographics so it can be misleading to compare them directly with European countries. For example a *majority* of murder victims are black:
Now would you like to check out what the German murder rate is?
It's about 0.8 per 100,000 people.
The murder rate for white, non-Hispanic, in the US is more than 4. (Which is a hell of a lot better than the 30-32 for African Americans.)
But... even picking the lowest likelihood of getting murdered ethnic group, the US homicide rate is 5x the German rate.
And in Japan it's 0.2 so maybe 0.8 should be regarded as unacceptably high.
But this discussion isn't about Germany vs Japan, it's about Germany vs the US.
Maybe some people see the US as a cautionary tale and don't want Europe to end up with similar problems.
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Offer now closed. May be re-opened at the management's discretions at a later date.
The offer of post-1960s America certainly wasn't open at the time that was written.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
No. You beat parties by cutting them off from their funding and from their ability to function. And then you kick them when they are down. What is this sudden attack of gallantry? You shouldn't be being nice to Musk, you should be turning up in his bedroom at 3am and telling them not to fuck with us. Honestly, stupid parties (shakes my head)
Why stop there? Why not just arrest or shoot, supporters of Reform?
Our leaders consider it entirely acceptable for Sinn Fein to receive vast amounts of money from abroad. Why should Reform be treated differently?
Next time Farage and Musk incite riots on the streets off Southport, Tamworth, Rotherham, Plymouth etc it might be wise for Starmer to call for other democratic parties to call a state of emergency and to attack these fascists with the kind of response they deserve.
Fire bombing a hotel with 400 men, women and children in it deserves life, not 3 years.
The instigators like Farage, Musk, Robinson, Oajshott and Co should be arrested and charged with Treason.
How exactly could an American like Musk be charged with treason in the UK?
Farage, Robinson Oakshott would do for starters...
Then let our covert operations experts loose on him. He's a verifiable threat to UK security.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
After the Lost in Light exhibitions (genuinely beautiful, modern art at its best) we walked all the way through the City from Shoreditch to Monument, to a nice dinner at the Wolseley (the scampi are fantastic)
It it such a world away from anywhere else in the UK, or indeed Europe. It feels remarkably rich, swaggering, prosperous and unique. Skyscrapers are still climbing, the pubs were full, the streets were festive. No city in Europe matches it for this in-the-moment verve mixed with historicity and modernity, Paris isn't even close, I am not quite sure NYC has the buzz despite being wealthier and more powerful (because the City has the ancient meets now vibe, absent in NYC). The City does NOT feel like a place in decline, it feels like the financial capital of a massively confident world power
The challenge, as ever in the UK, is to spread that City of London buzz - or some of it - across the UK (or at least bits of it). How long have we been trying to do this?! So far we have failed. Perhaps it is impossible
Which probably accounts for the complacency of our politicians. But bear in mind central london has always been its own little world and of course much of it is fuelled by foreign money.
After the Lost in Light exhibitions (genuinely beautiful, modern art at its best) we walked all the way through the City from Shoreditch to Monument, to a nice dinner at the Wolseley (the scampi are fantastic)
It it such a world away from anywhere else in the UK, or indeed Europe. It feels remarkably rich, swaggering, prosperous and unique. Skyscrapers are still climbing, the pubs were full, the streets were festive. No city in Europe matches it for this in-the-moment verve mixed with historicity and modernity, Paris isn't even close, I am not quite sure NYC has the buzz despite being wealthier and more powerful (because the City has the ancient meets now vibe, absent in NYC). The City does NOT feel like a place in decline, it feels like the financial capital of a massively confident world power
The challenge, as ever in the UK, is to spread that City of London buzz - or some of it - across the UK (or at least bits of it). How long have we been trying to do this?! So far we have failed. Perhaps it is impossible
Central London does feel rich but it is also expensive and unequal.
The buzz is great for those who want the buzz.
Other people want the other things other places can provide.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
No. You beat parties by cutting them off from their funding and from their ability to function. And then you kick them when they are down. What is this sudden attack of gallantry? You shouldn't be being nice to Musk, you should be turning up in his bedroom at 3am and telling them not to fuck with us. Honestly, stupid parties (shakes my head)
Why stop there? Why not just arrest or shoot, supporters of Reform?
Our leaders consider it entirely acceptable for Sinn Fein to receive vast amounts of money from abroad. Why should Reform be treated differently?
Next time Farage and Musk incite riots on the streets off Southport, Tamworth, Rotherham, Plymouth etc it might be wise for Starmer to call for other democratic parties to call a state of emergency and to attack these fascists with the kind of response they deserve.
Fire bombing a hotel with 400 men, women and children in it deserves life, not 3 years.
The instigators like Farage, Musk, Robinson, Oajshott and Co should be arrested and charged with Treason.
How exactly could an American like Musk be charged with treason in the UK?
Farage, Robinson Oakshott would do for starters...
Then let our covert operations experts loose on him. He's a verifiable threat to UK security.
What's good enough for Bin Laden and all that
The legal changes under New Labour are said to have made treason an effectively dead offence. IIRC it was suggested for some of the ISIS groupies, but that went nowhere.
After the Lost in Light exhibitions (genuinely beautiful, modern art at its best) we walked all the way through the City from Shoreditch to Monument, to a nice dinner at the Wolseley (the scampi are fantastic)
It it such a world away from anywhere else in the UK, or indeed Europe. It feels remarkably rich, swaggering, prosperous and unique. Skyscrapers are still climbing, the pubs were full, the streets were festive. No city in Europe matches it for this in-the-moment verve mixed with historicity and modernity, Paris isn't even close, I am not quite sure NYC has the buzz despite being wealthier and more powerful (because the City has the ancient meets now vibe, absent in NYC). The City does NOT feel like a place in decline, it feels like the financial capital of a massively confident world power
The challenge, as ever in the UK, is to spread that City of London buzz - or some of it - across the UK (or at least bits of it). How long have we been trying to do this?! So far we have failed. Perhaps it is impossible
Seems a long time ago since, erm probably last week, when you said emphatically this country is finished and you are moving abroad.
Marvellous thing alcohol.
More seriously, why don't we have our Barcelona? We need more devolution.
Yep. Apparently Manchester is OK but I find it hard to believe it is a UK Barcelona
The UK desperately needs four or five regional cities with some of the buzz of the City of London: Bristol, Edinburgh or Glasgae, Brum, and maybe and especially some northern multi-city with integrated contactless transport: Liverpool, Salford, Manc, Leeds, Sheffield - this last cluster could be the Osaka of the UK. This is where the density of our population and the small size of the UKis a massive ADVANTAGE - we have the geographical clustering and the people
I thought Labour would do this. It was my big hope alongside massive NHS reform. But alas. Nada
Reeves has allowed Labour government to be completely captured by Treasury mindset.
They have four years to break out of this thinking or one term is it.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
I think the rewilding is great idea tp get some fresh air and help the environment. I imagine she is planting trees and hedges, reintroducing wolves and culling deer.
On another note - I did a post on a subreddit the other day, and it was read by..... two million people
This is not so aberrant, either. I've had quite a few posts hit the 100,000s, even high 100,000s
This is not to blow my own trumpet, or even to get my own horn section into the recording studio, it's a measure of how powerful Reddit has become. We ignore it as we discuss, X, Facebook. Insta, and all the weirdo Woke creepy sandal-wearing pervs on Bluesky, and yet Reddit has quietly become intensely influential
It has been for ages, in 2016 it was r/thedonald which really helped Trump supporters organise and coordinate their messaging. Again while Hilary was doing traditional media Bernie and Trump were harnessing social media, Bernie almost did it too even with the whole Democratic establishment sabotaging his campaign and fixing it for Hilary. In retrospect it was such a huge error because Bernie probably would have beaten Trump.
It's worth noting that when /r/The_Donald began the whole point of it, as indicated by the naming, is that the people posting there thought he was a gigantic berk, correctly, and without a hope in hell of winning, and err, well they got that wrong. It was basically a lots of jokey posting, with a lot of overlap from 4chan, and talking about meme magic getting Trump through the primaries, to convention, nomination, and to the election, and even then they didn't expect him to win. Even at the time of the election at least 75% of the posting was still people joking around about Trump's obvious unfitness and terrible campaign.
After the election when the QAnon nonsense started, again ripping off 4chan, it started going down hill fast as people started to support Trump for reasons other than the hilarious absurdity of a total moron running America. By the time /r/The_Donald was shutdown it was full of alt-right nutters making threats and stirring up trouble.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
I think the rewilding is great idea tp get some fresh air and help the environment. I imagine she is planting trees and hedges, reintroducing wolves and culling deer.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
Like birch from delicensed grouse moor, finally free to fill her potential.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
I think the rewilding is great idea tp get some fresh air and help the environment. I imagine she is planting trees and hedges, reintroducing wolves and culling deer.
Eating them I hope. We hav e just had mallard duck breasts pan fried with shallots and home grown blackcurrants for dinner.
Just imagine the kind of reaction on social media if that had happened in the U.K. I fear the usual suspects would be gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tension and cleiming conspiracies if challenged.
I hope Germany is spared that.
We’ve already got the usual suspects here gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tensions and claiming conspiracies if challenged. I’m absolutely sure there are German equivalents doing the same on German social media, sadly.
Yes, the convolutions have been remarkable. Last night the usual suspects assumed that the unhinged Saudi doctor carried out the atrocity in the name of jihad. But the narrative had to change slightly when it became reasonably clear that this was unlikely to be the case, and his apparent influences included AfD etc. Not to be defeated, it turns out that it was a double bluff, as he was obviously hiding his jidahism in other guises. Stunning. Like everybody else, I've no idea what his motives were at the moment.
If you’ve got no idea what his motives are, how come you nonetheless KNOW he’s not anyway influenced by jihadism?
That's a fair point.
Which could also be directed at your "I'm pretty sure that.." comment upthread.
No, because we have clear evidence from an informed source that he was on the run from Saudi criminal charges and “strategically” became an apostate. However this is still not certain, hence my “pretty sure”
Next
And @Northern_Al said 'reasonably clear' and 'unlikely' and 'apparent'. All equally not quite as definite as 'KNOW' which you accused @Northern_Al saying incorrectly and all pretty equivalent as a level of certainty as 'pretty sure'.
Bit of pot and kettle there as you exagerate @Northern_Al words.
How about if I quote your 'pretty sure' as 'KNOW' as you did to @Northern_Al.
Honestly for someone with such a command of the English language and a huge IQ this is pretty poor.
At least PB - after a painful, attenuated period of embarrasingly futile denial - is now acknowledging that I have a "huge IQ"
On a somewhat depressing day, that - I guess - is progress
So huge that you appear to need AI assistance to unpack your shopping.
What ARE you talking about? Are you actually outside my house? I know you are weirdly obsessed with me, and it verges on tragic, but actual stalking takes it to a new level
I have just done some shopping, as it happens, I'm not sure I now require robotic help
Simply reflecting back what you told us here, the other day. Maybe you were too drunk to remember.
You ARE obsessed with me, tho, aren't you? You and a few others. Even if I go away for a wihile, you will vent about me
It's quite pleasing. Especially as I never think about you, ever, apart from when we are directly chatting and I want to wind you up (not hard)
Not me. The level of discussion on this site elevates considerably during those periods when you are away from it.
Yeah. Sure. You’ve made about 726 comments about me to other PBers today alone. But whatever. I’ll just file it under “weirdo”
Save the filing until you've sobered up.
If I ever did quit PB you’d probably go into some weird spasm of mourning. I dominate your thoughts so much it would be, for you, like heartbreak or grief. I imagine you walking around ventnor, crying, as everyone in ventnor tries to avoid you even more than normal
It’s a bit of a burden, frankly. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now - travel, family, new flint projects - but now I have to keep posting on here just so you don’t tip over into psychosis
It's a very good joke, well done. There is, of course, no one even a fiftieth as obsessed with you, as you.
While I stand by that, it does occur to me that if we're being fair to Leon, he is a travel writer, and therefore a character in his own writing.
A certain amount of self-obsession is professionally mandated.
Just imagine the kind of reaction on social media if that had happened in the U.K. I fear the usual suspects would be gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tension and cleiming conspiracies if challenged.
I hope Germany is spared that.
We’ve already got the usual suspects here gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tensions and claiming conspiracies if challenged. I’m absolutely sure there are German equivalents doing the same on German social media, sadly.
Yes, the convolutions have been remarkable. Last night the usual suspects assumed that the unhinged Saudi doctor carried out the atrocity in the name of jihad. But the narrative had to change slightly when it became reasonably clear that this was unlikely to be the case, and his apparent influences included AfD etc. Not to be defeated, it turns out that it was a double bluff, as he was obviously hiding his jidahism in other guises. Stunning. Like everybody else, I've no idea what his motives were at the moment.
If you’ve got no idea what his motives are, how come you nonetheless KNOW he’s not anyway influenced by jihadism?
Rather than jumping to conclusions here and on twitter and where ever else, which can and does stimulate reactions, some of which can be quite serious eg riot, arson, murder, etc why not just wait for the facts to become clear and then one can be justifiably outraged at whatever is the cause, whether that be jihadi, fascist or whatever tenancies.
At the end of the day it was a failure of the state to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence. Attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game.
You don't know that. You are also jumping to conclusions. He could be a jihadist, he could be a right wing zealot or as in many cases in the past it could simply be someone will mental problems. However rushing to conclusions of either the first two often starts riots, arson and even murder.
Yes I do know that, and so do you. You seem to be in denial.
In the very unlikely event I am ever tried for something I hope to god you are not on the jury. I like to rely on facts and not internet trolls.
My comment was that the state had failed to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence and that attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game. It's a fact that an act of inter-ethnic violence occured and it's a fact that the state failed to prevent it.
Again you can't know that. It might well be so. It only happened yesterday and you are just reading posts from people you have no idea you can rely on. The guy clearly has a conflicting background and actions. How do you know he isn't schizophrenic or suffering from some other mental issues?
You just don't know, yet we tolerate people stirring up potential racist violence who don't have the facts. Why can't people wait for the facts.
The only way in which it could not be true is if they've apprehended the wrong man, which seems highly unlikely. For whatever reason, this person developed a murderous rage against Germans - whether this was islamism, anti-islamism or mental issues doesn't change this fact. It also doesn't change the fact that the authorities were aware of it and failed to act.
In particular Twitter did nothing about his postings, which were in plain sight, and indeed still are.
Take this one from August this year, which seems very much not Islamist:
Indeed so far as I can understand his train of thought it is not that he wants to Islamise Germany, but that Germany is deporting Saudi asylum seekers, particularly women, back to Saudi to be imprisoned or killed.
It’s impossible to follow his train of thought. He’s made some comments in Arabic which directly contradict stuff he’s said in English. I think he might simply be a criminal nutter who PROBABLY faked apostasy to avoid extradition, and he has developed a bizarre, murderous grudge against Germany and Germans
If he was that anti-Islam or Saudi surely he would have attacked a mosque or an embassy
Instead he attacked a Christmas market?! He also did it on the anniversary - I think - of a known jihadi attack against a German Xmas market
Remember kids:
If a white Christian kills a bunch of people, it's because he's mentally ill.
If a brown Muslim does it, it's because he's motivated by Islam.
I am not sure why you find that dichotomy so strange. Christianity is a faith based around the central tenets of forgiveness and loving thine enemies. Killing is strictly prohibited in the faith. Christians have been warlike peoples but they are not commanded in the Bible to spread their faith at the point of the sword, and it has been many hundreds of years since there were wars to spread Christianity. There is no sect of Christianity that advocates the violent spreading of the faith. None of that is true of Islam.
The absolute state of this comment
Great riposte numnuts.
Superlative counter-swipe!
This is why we keep coming back to PB.
Did it deserve the time to write something better?
There was no attempt to engage or contradict the point. Just an expression of the initial post apparently being beyond the pale for unknown reasons.
At least Bondegoozoo took time to Google "list of violent passages from the Bible".
Well, surely numbnuts has a b in it, for a start.
OK, and?
I thought a certain pedantry was encouraged on this forum.
Your pendantry (and Taz's) is welcome.
Dipshits wasting my time and everyone elses with asinine wastes of characters in response to reasonably argued lists of points I have to be in the mood for.
*two glasses of red wine at dinner - please excuse general illiteracy
Your comment was so ignorant on every possible level that it did not merit a response beyond what I posted. You are usually a reasonable a rational poster but that was simply xenophobic dross.
I'm sorry, but it is you who is showing ignorance. Christianity has frequently been critiqued for it's lack of 'killer instinct' - for example blamed for making the Romans lose their cruel edge when they converted. Criticised by Hitler for its namby pamby attitude. Yes there's some fire and brimstone, particularly in the OT, but the Gospels, which are the overridingly important part of the Bible, because Christ was the fulfillment of the Old Testmanent, espouses a doctrine of love and forgiveness, and of faith being an inner grace, which allows 'rendering unto ceasar' - not demanding the violent overthrow of non-Christian authority.
Islam was developed by someone familiar with Christianity and is a response to it and in many ways a rebellion against it. The spread of Islam by the sword is advocated within the faith. Also Islam (which means submission) is all about the outward observance of faith, not about it being an inner matter.
The two faiths are absolutely different in their philosphical attitude to force, and that is why I made the comment I did. If you want to come at me with an interpretation that contradicts what I said, that might teach me something, go for it. If all you've got is a casual dismissal based on your own utter ignorance and assumptions of a lazy politically-correct position, expect to be casually dismissed in return.
It's an interesting point. There have been any number of brutal Christians and people who were willing to spread Christianity by force.
But, you get people like Gibbon, condemning Christianity as weak, cowardly, and soft, undermining a society's ability to defend itself, a view that the Nazis entirely bought into. Hitler said it was a disaster that Charles Martel won the Battle of Tours. To Himmler, Islam was "a fine religion for a soldier."
I don't think Christianity has been forcibly spread for a number of centuries. I feel the conquistadors, cowboys, colonists and various white people grabbing other peoples' lands pretty much used Christianity as a bit of philosophical presentation for what was simply a money-grab.
Empress Elizabeth of Russia was forcibly converting Muslims and Jews in the 18th century, so that’s 3 centuries ago.
Native Americans and slaves in the Americas were often forcibly converted to Christianity. There was forced conversion of slaves in the 19th century US. That’s only 2 centuries ago.
The Ustashe forcibly converted Orthodox believers to Catholicism in WW2, although that’s one Christian group to another.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
No. You beat parties by cutting them off from their funding and from their ability to function. And then you kick them when they are down. What is this sudden attack of gallantry? You shouldn't be being nice to Musk, you should be turning up in his bedroom at 3am and telling them not to fuck with us. Honestly, stupid parties (shakes my head)
Why stop there? Why not just arrest or shoot, supporters of Reform?
Our leaders consider it entirely acceptable for Sinn Fein to receive vast amounts of money from abroad. Why should Reform be treated differently?
Next time Farage and Musk incite riots on the streets off Southport, Tamworth, Rotherham, Plymouth etc it might be wise for Starmer to call for other democratic parties to call a state of emergency and to attack these fascists with the kind of response they deserve.
Fire bombing a hotel with 400 men, women and children in it deserves life, not 3 years.
The instigators like Farage, Musk, Robinson, Oajshott and Co should be arrested and charged with Treason.
Just imagine the kind of reaction on social media if that had happened in the U.K. I fear the usual suspects would be gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tension and cleiming conspiracies if challenged.
I hope Germany is spared that.
We’ve already got the usual suspects here gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tensions and claiming conspiracies if challenged. I’m absolutely sure there are German equivalents doing the same on German social media, sadly.
Yes, the convolutions have been remarkable. Last night the usual suspects assumed that the unhinged Saudi doctor carried out the atrocity in the name of jihad. But the narrative had to change slightly when it became reasonably clear that this was unlikely to be the case, and his apparent influences included AfD etc. Not to be defeated, it turns out that it was a double bluff, as he was obviously hiding his jidahism in other guises. Stunning. Like everybody else, I've no idea what his motives were at the moment.
If you’ve got no idea what his motives are, how come you nonetheless KNOW he’s not anyway influenced by jihadism?
Rather than jumping to conclusions here and on twitter and where ever else, which can and does stimulate reactions, some of which can be quite serious eg riot, arson, murder, etc why not just wait for the facts to become clear and then one can be justifiably outraged at whatever is the cause, whether that be jihadi, fascist or whatever tenancies.
At the end of the day it was a failure of the state to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence. Attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game.
You don't know that. You are also jumping to conclusions. He could be a jihadist, he could be a right wing zealot or as in many cases in the past it could simply be someone will mental problems. However rushing to conclusions of either the first two often starts riots, arson and even murder.
Yes I do know that, and so do you. You seem to be in denial.
In the very unlikely event I am ever tried for something I hope to god you are not on the jury. I like to rely on facts and not internet trolls.
My comment was that the state had failed to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence and that attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game. It's a fact that an act of inter-ethnic violence occured and it's a fact that the state failed to prevent it.
Again you can't know that. It might well be so. It only happened yesterday and you are just reading posts from people you have no idea you can rely on. The guy clearly has a conflicting background and actions. How do you know he isn't schizophrenic or suffering from some other mental issues?
You just don't know, yet we tolerate people stirring up potential racist violence who don't have the facts. Why can't people wait for the facts.
The only way in which it could not be true is if they've apprehended the wrong man, which seems highly unlikely. For whatever reason, this person developed a murderous rage against Germans - whether this was islamism, anti-islamism or mental issues doesn't change this fact. It also doesn't change the fact that the authorities were aware of it and failed to act.
In particular Twitter did nothing about his postings, which were in plain sight, and indeed still are.
Take this one from August this year, which seems very much not Islamist:
Indeed so far as I can understand his train of thought it is not that he wants to Islamise Germany, but that Germany is deporting Saudi asylum seekers, particularly women, back to Saudi to be imprisoned or killed.
It’s impossible to follow his train of thought. He’s made some comments in Arabic which directly contradict stuff he’s said in English. I think he might simply be a criminal nutter who PROBABLY faked apostasy to avoid extradition, and he has developed a bizarre, murderous grudge against Germany and Germans
If he was that anti-Islam or Saudi surely he would have attacked a mosque or an embassy
Instead he attacked a Christmas market?! He also did it on the anniversary - I think - of a known jihadi attack against a German Xmas market
Remember kids:
If a white Christian kills a bunch of people, it's because he's mentally ill.
If a brown Muslim does it, it's because he's motivated by Islam.
I am not sure why you find that dichotomy so strange. Christianity is a faith based around the central tenets of forgiveness and loving thine enemies. Killing is strictly prohibited in the faith. Christians have been warlike peoples but they are not commanded in the Bible to spread their faith at the point of the sword, and it has been many hundreds of years since there were wars to spread Christianity. There is no sect of Christianity that advocates the violent spreading of the faith. None of that is true of Islam.
The absolute state of this comment
Great riposte numnuts.
Superlative counter-swipe!
This is why we keep coming back to PB.
Did it deserve the time to write something better?
There was no attempt to engage or contradict the point. Just an expression of the initial post apparently being beyond the pale for unknown reasons.
At least Bondegoozoo took time to Google "list of violent passages from the Bible".
Well, surely numbnuts has a b in it, for a start.
OK, and?
I thought a certain pedantry was encouraged on this forum.
Your pendantry (and Taz's) is welcome.
Dipshits wasting my time and everyone elses with asinine wastes of characters in response to reasonably argued lists of points I have to be in the mood for.
*two glasses of red wine at dinner - please excuse general illiteracy
Your comment was so ignorant on every possible level that it did not merit a response beyond what I posted. You are usually a reasonable a rational poster but that was simply xenophobic dross.
I'm sorry, but it is you who is showing ignorance. Christianity has frequently been critiqued for it's lack of 'killer instinct' - for example blamed for making the Romans lose their cruel edge when they converted. Criticised by Hitler for its namby pamby attitude. Yes there's some fire and brimstone, particularly in the OT, but the Gospels, which are the overridingly important part of the Bible, because Christ was the fulfillment of the Old Testmanent, espouses a doctrine of love and forgiveness, and of faith being an inner grace, which allows 'rendering unto ceasar' - not demanding the violent overthrow of non-Christian authority.
Islam was developed by someone familiar with Christianity and is a response to it and in many ways a rebellion against it. The spread of Islam by the sword is advocated within the faith. Also Islam (which means submission) is all about the outward observance of faith, not about it being an inner matter.
The two faiths are absolutely different in their philosphical attitude to force, and that is why I made the comment I did. If you want to come at me with an interpretation that contradicts what I said, that might teach me something, go for it. If all you've got is a casual dismissal based on your own utter ignorance and assumptions of a lazy politically-correct position, expect to be casually dismissed in return.
It's an interesting point. There have been any number of brutal Christians and people who were willing to spread Christianity by force.
But, you get people like Gibbon, condemning Christianity as weak, cowardly, and soft, undermining a society's ability to defend itself, a view that the Nazis entirely bought into. Hitler said it was a disaster that Charles Martel won the Battle of Tours. To Himmler, Islam was "a fine religion for a soldier."
I don't think Christianity has been forcibly spread for a number of centuries. I feel the conquistadors, cowboys, colonists and various white people grabbing other peoples' lands pretty much used Christianity as a bit of philosophical presentation for what was simply a money-grab.
Empress Elizabeth of Russia was forcibly converting Muslims and Jews in the 18th century, so that’s 3 centuries ago.
Native Americans and slaves in the Americas were often forcibly converted to Christianity. There was forced conversion of slaves in the 19th century US. That’s only 2 centuries ago.
The Ustashe forcibly converted Orthodox believers to Catholicism in WW2, although that’s one Christian group to another.
Yes - I didn't say 'since the crusades', because the interplay between Russia and the Ottomans before the 19th century is an historical area I have virtually no knowledge on.
But really I think in the second two examples (and perhaps the first, don't know enough about the specifics) faith was incidental to what was really going on. Neither was a mission to spread Christendom by the sword.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 12m 🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
No. You beat parties by cutting them off from their funding and from their ability to function. And then you kick them when they are down. What is this sudden attack of gallantry? You shouldn't be being nice to Musk, you should be turning up in his bedroom at 3am and telling them not to fuck with us. Honestly, stupid parties (shakes my head)
Why stop there? Why not just arrest or shoot, supporters of Reform?
Our leaders consider it entirely acceptable for Sinn Fein to receive vast amounts of money from abroad. Why should Reform be treated differently?
Next time Farage and Musk incite riots on the streets off Southport, Tamworth, Rotherham, Plymouth etc it might be wise for Starmer to call for other democratic parties to call a state of emergency and to attack these fascists with the kind of response they deserve.
Fire bombing a hotel with 400 men, women and children in it deserves life, not 3 years.
The instigators like Farage, Musk, Robinson, Oajshott and Co should be arrested and charged with Treason.
How exactly could an American like Musk be charged with treason in the UK?
Farage, Robinson Oakshott would do for starters...
Then let our covert operations experts loose on him. He's a verifiable threat to UK security.
What's good enough for Bin Laden and all that
The legal changes under New Labour are said to have made treason an effectively dead offence. IIRC it was suggested for some of the ISIS groupies, but that went nowhere.
The right side of my brain has always believed that the offence of High Treason should never have been neutered.
Rarely used but when needed the ultimate deterrent to anyone threatening State Security.
Correct me if I'm wrong and I might be but I believe that the last offence to have the death penalty removed from was High Treason.
There have been occasions in the past 40 years when it may have been applicable.
I would suggest that when we have UK politicians openly afgitating for rioting on the streets and attacking the Police and people like Robinson being openly funded by overseas right wing groups it is time to bring it back.
Likewise we can and should be proscribing groups, companies and individuals as banned, like we have with extreme political and religious groups, irrespective of where they come from including the USA
After the Lost in Light exhibitions (genuinely beautiful, modern art at its best) we walked all the way through the City from Shoreditch to Monument, to a nice dinner at the Wolseley (the scampi are fantastic)
It it such a world away from anywhere else in the UK, or indeed Europe. It feels remarkably rich, swaggering, prosperous and unique. Skyscrapers are still climbing, the pubs were full, the streets were festive. No city in Europe matches it for this in-the-moment verve mixed with historicity and modernity, Paris isn't even close, I am not quite sure NYC has the buzz despite being wealthier and more powerful (because the City has the ancient meets now vibe, absent in NYC). The City does NOT feel like a place in decline, it feels like the financial capital of a massively confident world power
The challenge, as ever in the UK, is to spread that City of London buzz - or some of it - across the UK (or at least bits of it). How long have we been trying to do this?! So far we have failed. Perhaps it is impossible
Just imagine the kind of reaction on social media if that had happened in the U.K. I fear the usual suspects would be gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tension and cleiming conspiracies if challenged.
I hope Germany is spared that.
We’ve already got the usual suspects here gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tensions and claiming conspiracies if challenged. I’m absolutely sure there are German equivalents doing the same on German social media, sadly.
Yes, the convolutions have been remarkable. Last night the usual suspects assumed that the unhinged Saudi doctor carried out the atrocity in the name of jihad. But the narrative had to change slightly when it became reasonably clear that this was unlikely to be the case, and his apparent influences included AfD etc. Not to be defeated, it turns out that it was a double bluff, as he was obviously hiding his jidahism in other guises. Stunning. Like everybody else, I've no idea what his motives were at the moment.
If you’ve got no idea what his motives are, how come you nonetheless KNOW he’s not anyway influenced by jihadism?
Rather than jumping to conclusions here and on twitter and where ever else, which can and does stimulate reactions, some of which can be quite serious eg riot, arson, murder, etc why not just wait for the facts to become clear and then one can be justifiably outraged at whatever is the cause, whether that be jihadi, fascist or whatever tenancies.
At the end of the day it was a failure of the state to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence. Attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game.
You don't know that. You are also jumping to conclusions. He could be a jihadist, he could be a right wing zealot or as in many cases in the past it could simply be someone will mental problems. However rushing to conclusions of either the first two often starts riots, arson and even murder.
Yes I do know that, and so do you. You seem to be in denial.
In the very unlikely event I am ever tried for something I hope to god you are not on the jury. I like to rely on facts and not internet trolls.
My comment was that the state had failed to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence and that attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game. It's a fact that an act of inter-ethnic violence occured and it's a fact that the state failed to prevent it.
Again you can't know that. It might well be so. It only happened yesterday and you are just reading posts from people you have no idea you can rely on. The guy clearly has a conflicting background and actions. How do you know he isn't schizophrenic or suffering from some other mental issues?
You just don't know, yet we tolerate people stirring up potential racist violence who don't have the facts. Why can't people wait for the facts.
The only way in which it could not be true is if they've apprehended the wrong man, which seems highly unlikely. For whatever reason, this person developed a murderous rage against Germans - whether this was islamism, anti-islamism or mental issues doesn't change this fact. It also doesn't change the fact that the authorities were aware of it and failed to act.
In particular Twitter did nothing about his postings, which were in plain sight, and indeed still are.
Take this one from August this year, which seems very much not Islamist:
Indeed so far as I can understand his train of thought it is not that he wants to Islamise Germany, but that Germany is deporting Saudi asylum seekers, particularly women, back to Saudi to be imprisoned or killed.
It’s impossible to follow his train of thought. He’s made some comments in Arabic which directly contradict stuff he’s said in English. I think he might simply be a criminal nutter who PROBABLY faked apostasy to avoid extradition, and he has developed a bizarre, murderous grudge against Germany and Germans
If he was that anti-Islam or Saudi surely he would have attacked a mosque or an embassy
Instead he attacked a Christmas market?! He also did it on the anniversary - I think - of a known jihadi attack against a German Xmas market
Remember kids:
If a white Christian kills a bunch of people, it's because he's mentally ill.
If a brown Muslim does it, it's because he's motivated by Islam.
I am not sure why you find that dichotomy so strange. Christianity is a faith based around the central tenets of forgiveness and loving thine enemies. Killing is strictly prohibited in the faith. Christians have been warlike peoples but they are not commanded in the Bible to spread their faith at the point of the sword, and it has been many hundreds of years since there were wars to spread Christianity. There is no sect of Christianity that advocates the violent spreading of the faith. None of that is true of Islam.
The absolute state of this comment
Great riposte numnuts.
Superlative counter-swipe!
This is why we keep coming back to PB.
Did it deserve the time to write something better?
There was no attempt to engage or contradict the point. Just an expression of the initial post apparently being beyond the pale for unknown reasons.
At least Bondegoozoo took time to Google "list of violent passages from the Bible".
Well, surely numbnuts has a b in it, for a start.
OK, and?
I thought a certain pedantry was encouraged on this forum.
Your pendantry (and Taz's) is welcome.
Dipshits wasting my time and everyone elses with asinine wastes of characters in response to reasonably argued lists of points I have to be in the mood for.
*two glasses of red wine at dinner - please excuse general illiteracy
Your comment was so ignorant on every possible level that it did not merit a response beyond what I posted. You are usually a reasonable a rational poster but that was simply xenophobic dross.
I'm sorry, but it is you who is showing ignorance. Christianity has frequently been critiqued for it's lack of 'killer instinct' - for example blamed for making the Romans lose their cruel edge when they converted. Criticised by Hitler for its namby pamby attitude. Yes there's some fire and brimstone, particularly in the OT, but the Gospels, which are the overridingly important part of the Bible, because Christ was the fulfillment of the Old Testmanent, espouses a doctrine of love and forgiveness, and of faith being an inner grace, which allows 'rendering unto ceasar' - not demanding the violent overthrow of non-Christian authority.
Islam was developed by someone familiar with Christianity and is a response to it and in many ways a rebellion against it. The spread of Islam by the sword is advocated within the faith. Also Islam (which means submission) is all about the outward observance of faith, not about it being an inner matter.
The two faiths are absolutely different in their philosphical attitude to force, and that is why I made the comment I did. If you want to come at me with an interpretation that contradicts what I said, that might teach me something, go for it. If all you've got is a casual dismissal based on your own utter ignorance and assumptions of a lazy politically-correct position, expect to be casually dismissed in return.
It's an interesting point. There have been any number of brutal Christians and people who were willing to spread Christianity by force.
But, you get people like Gibbon, condemning Christianity as weak, cowardly, and soft, undermining a society's ability to defend itself, a view that the Nazis entirely bought into. Hitler said it was a disaster that Charles Martel won the Battle of Tours. To Himmler, Islam was "a fine religion for a soldier."
I don't think Christianity has been forcibly spread for a number of centuries. I feel the conquistadors, cowboys, colonists and various white people grabbing other peoples' lands pretty much used Christianity as a bit of philosophical presentation for what was simply a money-grab.
Empress Elizabeth of Russia was forcibly converting Muslims and Jews in the 18th century, so that’s 3 centuries ago.
Native Americans and slaves in the Americas were often forcibly converted to Christianity. There was forced conversion of slaves in the 19th century US. That’s only 2 centuries ago.
The Ustashe forcibly converted Orthodox believers to Catholicism in WW2, although that’s one Christian group to another.
Slave owners were generally hostile towards conversion. It was easier to justify enslavement of pagans than Christians.
But, it saved their descendants from being lynched. The willingness of Southern ex-slaves to forgive their ex-masters can only be explained by their intense Christianity.
Let me repeat a question from yesterday, since you had nearly gone to bed early.
What exactly is a decent, mid range restaurant chain in the UK? Can you name say 6 or 8 such chains? And how do you define the price point - in London and in the provinces?
Are we saying £20-30 per head for 3 (or perhaps 2) courses, or £40-50? (Without wine).
20 years when I was living off Chiswick High Road I would reach for names like Zizzi, iTs Italian, at a £13-20 price level, and several others at somewhat higher prices. And I would expect to get something more interesting at local independents if I knew the area.
Now I think the best mid-range attractive chain, according to me, I can come up with, is probably Bill's Restaurant. Otherwise, what about Carluccio or Gaucho? I'm tempted to add Wagamama, which is reliable but samey, and a place where you - or at least I - can suddenly spend an extra 50% before I notice.
I'd like to hear some more suggestions.
I see that we are still missing full stops ∴ here's an ellipsis ...
Cote - which is tremendous value, especially if you have their Prix Fixe.
Thank-you. I'll comment on these.
My closest Cote is 20 miles away in West Bridgford (nearly Leicestershire), then Solihull and York (both about 60 miles) .
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
It is very nice, she says. It certainly suits her. She's even going to pubs, and she has a lovely social life, so far
My God I was worried about her (and her sister) and yet suddenly they are both doing OK, indeed thriving, after some tough times. Ins;allah it continues for a while. Nothing continues forever
I saw an interview with Elton John the other day where he said "I don't give a fuck about my reputation as a musician or composer, I just want to be remembered as a good husband, and father"
Now, much of this must be taken in context. Elton knows his reputation as a musician is solid forever, he is almost without peer as a modern popstar, so he can afford to ignore that. Also, he's made seventy trillion quid
But nonetheless he speaks a truth, in the end perhaps the ultimate tests are: were you a decent lover, friend, spouse, parent? Did you make people happier than they would have been otherwise? Are your kids OK, or at least as OK as they can be despite your own flaws and failings? Do you make your friends laugh, and feel nicer?
That is largely it - ultimately. Those are the tests. You are given a hand to play and often it is a shit hand, but you can still play it in a way that makes people around you happier, and if you do that, you have played the game of life well
After the Lost in Light exhibitions (genuinely beautiful, modern art at its best) we walked all the way through the City from Shoreditch to Monument, to a nice dinner at the Wolseley (the scampi are fantastic)
It it such a world away from anywhere else in the UK, or indeed Europe. It feels remarkably rich, swaggering, prosperous and unique. Skyscrapers are still climbing, the pubs were full, the streets were festive. No city in Europe matches it for this in-the-moment verve mixed with historicity and modernity, Paris isn't even close, I am not quite sure NYC has the buzz despite being wealthier and more powerful (because the City has the ancient meets now vibe, absent in NYC). The City does NOT feel like a place in decline, it feels like the financial capital of a massively confident world power
The challenge, as ever in the UK, is to spread that City of London buzz - or some of it - across the UK (or at least bits of it). How long have we been trying to do this?! So far we have failed. Perhaps it is impossible
Do we have anywhere "cutting edge"? Wasn't there a plan for Cambridge and its environs, leveraging the university, to do something special in the science/tech sector? Is that a thing?
After the Lost in Light exhibitions (genuinely beautiful, modern art at its best) we walked all the way through the City from Shoreditch to Monument, to a nice dinner at the Wolseley (the scampi are fantastic)
It it such a world away from anywhere else in the UK, or indeed Europe. It feels remarkably rich, swaggering, prosperous and unique. Skyscrapers are still climbing, the pubs were full, the streets were festive. No city in Europe matches it for this in-the-moment verve mixed with historicity and modernity, Paris isn't even close, I am not quite sure NYC has the buzz despite being wealthier and more powerful (because the City has the ancient meets now vibe, absent in NYC). The City does NOT feel like a place in decline, it feels like the financial capital of a massively confident world power
The challenge, as ever in the UK, is to spread that City of London buzz - or some of it - across the UK (or at least bits of it). How long have we been trying to do this?! So far we have failed. Perhaps it is impossible
Have we ever actually tried ?
To be fair to Andy Burnham, he has done some good work in Manchester.
After the Lost in Light exhibitions (genuinely beautiful, modern art at its best) we walked all the way through the City from Shoreditch to Monument, to a nice dinner at the Wolseley (the scampi are fantastic)
It it such a world away from anywhere else in the UK, or indeed Europe. It feels remarkably rich, swaggering, prosperous and unique. Skyscrapers are still climbing, the pubs were full, the streets were festive. No city in Europe matches it for this in-the-moment verve mixed with historicity and modernity, Paris isn't even close, I am not quite sure NYC has the buzz despite being wealthier and more powerful (because the City has the ancient meets now vibe, absent in NYC). The City does NOT feel like a place in decline, it feels like the financial capital of a massively confident world power
The challenge, as ever in the UK, is to spread that City of London buzz - or some of it - across the UK (or at least bits of it). How long have we been trying to do this?! So far we have failed. Perhaps it is impossible
Let me repeat a question from yesterday, since you had nearly gone to bed early.
What exactly is a decent, mid range restaurant chain in the UK? Can you name say 6 or 8 such chains? And how do you define the price point - in London and in the provinces?
Are we saying £20-30 per head for 3 (or perhaps 2) courses, or £40-50? (Without wine).
20 years when I was living off Chiswick High Road I would reach for names like Zizzi, iTs Italian, at a £13-20 price level, and several others at somewhat higher prices. And I would expect to get something more interesting at local independents if I knew the area.
Now I think the best mid-range attractive chain, according to me, I can come up with, is probably Bill's Restaurant. Otherwise, what about Carluccio or Gaucho? I'm tempted to add Wagamama, which is reliable but samey, and a place where you - or at least I - can suddenly spend an extra 50% before I notice.
I'd like to hear some more suggestions.
I see that we are still missing full stops ∴ here's an ellipsis ...
Cote - which is tremendous value, especially if you have their Prix Fixe.
I like Cosy Club. The vegan burger, but with real cheese, is excellent. Plenty of other great options too.
For me, that's Nottingham / Derby / Sheffield. Thanks for the note.
Just imagine the kind of reaction on social media if that had happened in the U.K. I fear the usual suspects would be gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tension and cleiming conspiracies if challenged.
I hope Germany is spared that.
We’ve already got the usual suspects here gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tensions and claiming conspiracies if challenged. I’m absolutely sure there are German equivalents doing the same on German social media, sadly.
Yes, the convolutions have been remarkable. Last night the usual suspects assumed that the unhinged Saudi doctor carried out the atrocity in the name of jihad. But the narrative had to change slightly when it became reasonably clear that this was unlikely to be the case, and his apparent influences included AfD etc. Not to be defeated, it turns out that it was a double bluff, as he was obviously hiding his jidahism in other guises. Stunning. Like everybody else, I've no idea what his motives were at the moment.
If you’ve got no idea what his motives are, how come you nonetheless KNOW he’s not anyway influenced by jihadism?
Rather than jumping to conclusions here and on twitter and where ever else, which can and does stimulate reactions, some of which can be quite serious eg riot, arson, murder, etc why not just wait for the facts to become clear and then one can be justifiably outraged at whatever is the cause, whether that be jihadi, fascist or whatever tenancies.
At the end of the day it was a failure of the state to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence. Attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game.
You don't know that. You are also jumping to conclusions. He could be a jihadist, he could be a right wing zealot or as in many cases in the past it could simply be someone will mental problems. However rushing to conclusions of either the first two often starts riots, arson and even murder.
Yes I do know that, and so do you. You seem to be in denial.
In the very unlikely event I am ever tried for something I hope to god you are not on the jury. I like to rely on facts and not internet trolls.
My comment was that the state had failed to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence and that attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game. It's a fact that an act of inter-ethnic violence occured and it's a fact that the state failed to prevent it.
Again you can't know that. It might well be so. It only happened yesterday and you are just reading posts from people you have no idea you can rely on. The guy clearly has a conflicting background and actions. How do you know he isn't schizophrenic or suffering from some other mental issues?
You just don't know, yet we tolerate people stirring up potential racist violence who don't have the facts. Why can't people wait for the facts.
The only way in which it could not be true is if they've apprehended the wrong man, which seems highly unlikely. For whatever reason, this person developed a murderous rage against Germans - whether this was islamism, anti-islamism or mental issues doesn't change this fact. It also doesn't change the fact that the authorities were aware of it and failed to act.
In particular Twitter did nothing about his postings, which were in plain sight, and indeed still are.
Take this one from August this year, which seems very much not Islamist:
Indeed so far as I can understand his train of thought it is not that he wants to Islamise Germany, but that Germany is deporting Saudi asylum seekers, particularly women, back to Saudi to be imprisoned or killed.
It’s impossible to follow his train of thought. He’s made some comments in Arabic which directly contradict stuff he’s said in English. I think he might simply be a criminal nutter who PROBABLY faked apostasy to avoid extradition, and he has developed a bizarre, murderous grudge against Germany and Germans
If he was that anti-Islam or Saudi surely he would have attacked a mosque or an embassy
Instead he attacked a Christmas market?! He also did it on the anniversary - I think - of a known jihadi attack against a German Xmas market
Remember kids:
If a white Christian kills a bunch of people, it's because he's mentally ill.
If a brown Muslim does it, it's because he's motivated by Islam.
I am not sure why you find that dichotomy so strange. Christianity is a faith based around the central tenets of forgiveness and loving thine enemies. Killing is strictly prohibited in the faith. Christians have been warlike peoples but they are not commanded in the Bible to spread their faith at the point of the sword, and it has been many hundreds of years since there were wars to spread Christianity. There is no sect of Christianity that advocates the violent spreading of the faith. None of that is true of Islam.
The absolute state of this comment
Great riposte numnuts.
Superlative counter-swipe!
This is why we keep coming back to PB.
Did it deserve the time to write something better?
There was no attempt to engage or contradict the point. Just an expression of the initial post apparently being beyond the pale for unknown reasons.
At least Bondegoozoo took time to Google "list of violent passages from the Bible".
Well, surely numbnuts has a b in it, for a start.
OK, and?
I thought a certain pedantry was encouraged on this forum.
Your pendantry (and Taz's) is welcome.
Dipshits wasting my time and everyone elses with asinine wastes of characters in response to reasonably argued lists of points I have to be in the mood for.
*two glasses of red wine at dinner - please excuse general illiteracy
Your comment was so ignorant on every possible level that it did not merit a response beyond what I posted. You are usually a reasonable a rational poster but that was simply xenophobic dross.
I'm sorry, but it is you who is showing ignorance. Christianity has frequently been critiqued for it's lack of 'killer instinct' - for example blamed for making the Romans lose their cruel edge when they converted. Criticised by Hitler for its namby pamby attitude. Yes there's some fire and brimstone, particularly in the OT, but the Gospels, which are the overridingly important part of the Bible, because Christ was the fulfillment of the Old Testmanent, espouses a doctrine of love and forgiveness, and of faith being an inner grace, which allows 'rendering unto ceasar' - not demanding the violent overthrow of non-Christian authority.
Islam was developed by someone familiar with Christianity and is a response to it and in many ways a rebellion against it. The spread of Islam by the sword is advocated within the faith. Also Islam (which means submission) is all about the outward observance of faith, not about it being an inner matter.
The two faiths are absolutely different in their philosphical attitude to force, and that is why I made the comment I did. If you want to come at me with an interpretation that contradicts what I said, that might teach me something, go for it. If all you've got is a casual dismissal based on your own utter ignorance and assumptions of a lazy politically-correct position, expect to be casually dismissed in return.
It's an interesting point. There have been any number of brutal Christians and people who were willing to spread Christianity by force.
But, you get people like Gibbon, condemning Christianity as weak, cowardly, and soft, undermining a society's ability to defend itself, a view that the Nazis entirely bought into. Hitler said it was a disaster that Charles Martel won the Battle of Tours. To Himmler, Islam was "a fine religion for a soldier."
I don't think Christianity has been forcibly spread for a number of centuries. I feel the conquistadors, cowboys, colonists and various white people grabbing other peoples' lands pretty much used Christianity as a bit of philosophical presentation for what was simply a money-grab.
Empress Elizabeth of Russia was forcibly converting Muslims and Jews in the 18th century, so that’s 3 centuries ago.
Native Americans and slaves in the Americas were often forcibly converted to Christianity. There was forced conversion of slaves in the 19th century US. That’s only 2 centuries ago.
The Ustashe forcibly converted Orthodox believers to Catholicism in WW2, although that’s one Christian group to another.
One could look at the residential schools for Native Americans in Canada, which continued until 1969, within the lifetime of many here. These forced assimilation, including religious, on their pupils.
It depends what you mean, but I also note this century, there are “faith-based” programmes in US prisons that are coercive. Evangelicals in Nigeria have been accused of forcing homeless children to convert. Evangelicals in Lebanon have been accused of taking advantage of Muslim refugees from Syria.
Just imagine the kind of reaction on social media if that had happened in the U.K. I fear the usual suspects would be gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tension and cleiming conspiracies if challenged.
I hope Germany is spared that.
We’ve already got the usual suspects here gobbing off peddling their agendas, raising tensions and claiming conspiracies if challenged. I’m absolutely sure there are German equivalents doing the same on German social media, sadly.
Yes, the convolutions have been remarkable. Last night the usual suspects assumed that the unhinged Saudi doctor carried out the atrocity in the name of jihad. But the narrative had to change slightly when it became reasonably clear that this was unlikely to be the case, and his apparent influences included AfD etc. Not to be defeated, it turns out that it was a double bluff, as he was obviously hiding his jidahism in other guises. Stunning. Like everybody else, I've no idea what his motives were at the moment.
If you’ve got no idea what his motives are, how come you nonetheless KNOW he’s not anyway influenced by jihadism?
Rather than jumping to conclusions here and on twitter and where ever else, which can and does stimulate reactions, some of which can be quite serious eg riot, arson, murder, etc why not just wait for the facts to become clear and then one can be justifiably outraged at whatever is the cause, whether that be jihadi, fascist or whatever tenancies.
At the end of the day it was a failure of the state to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence. Attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game.
You don't know that. You are also jumping to conclusions. He could be a jihadist, he could be a right wing zealot or as in many cases in the past it could simply be someone will mental problems. However rushing to conclusions of either the first two often starts riots, arson and even murder.
Yes I do know that, and so do you. You seem to be in denial.
In the very unlikely event I am ever tried for something I hope to god you are not on the jury. I like to rely on facts and not internet trolls.
My comment was that the state had failed to protect its citizens from inter-ethnic violence and that attributing an ideological motivation to it is a fool's game. It's a fact that an act of inter-ethnic violence occured and it's a fact that the state failed to prevent it.
Again you can't know that. It might well be so. It only happened yesterday and you are just reading posts from people you have no idea you can rely on. The guy clearly has a conflicting background and actions. How do you know he isn't schizophrenic or suffering from some other mental issues?
You just don't know, yet we tolerate people stirring up potential racist violence who don't have the facts. Why can't people wait for the facts.
The only way in which it could not be true is if they've apprehended the wrong man, which seems highly unlikely. For whatever reason, this person developed a murderous rage against Germans - whether this was islamism, anti-islamism or mental issues doesn't change this fact. It also doesn't change the fact that the authorities were aware of it and failed to act.
In particular Twitter did nothing about his postings, which were in plain sight, and indeed still are.
Take this one from August this year, which seems very much not Islamist:
Indeed so far as I can understand his train of thought it is not that he wants to Islamise Germany, but that Germany is deporting Saudi asylum seekers, particularly women, back to Saudi to be imprisoned or killed.
It’s impossible to follow his train of thought. He’s made some comments in Arabic which directly contradict stuff he’s said in English. I think he might simply be a criminal nutter who PROBABLY faked apostasy to avoid extradition, and he has developed a bizarre, murderous grudge against Germany and Germans
If he was that anti-Islam or Saudi surely he would have attacked a mosque or an embassy
Instead he attacked a Christmas market?! He also did it on the anniversary - I think - of a known jihadi attack against a German Xmas market
Remember kids:
If a white Christian kills a bunch of people, it's because he's mentally ill.
If a brown Muslim does it, it's because he's motivated by Islam.
I am not sure why you find that dichotomy so strange. Christianity is a faith based around the central tenets of forgiveness and loving thine enemies. Killing is strictly prohibited in the faith. Christians have been warlike peoples but they are not commanded in the Bible to spread their faith at the point of the sword, and it has been many hundreds of years since there were wars to spread Christianity. There is no sect of Christianity that advocates the violent spreading of the faith. None of that is true of Islam.
The absolute state of this comment
Great riposte numnuts.
Superlative counter-swipe!
This is why we keep coming back to PB.
Did it deserve the time to write something better?
There was no attempt to engage or contradict the point. Just an expression of the initial post apparently being beyond the pale for unknown reasons.
At least Bondegoozoo took time to Google "list of violent passages from the Bible".
Well, surely numbnuts has a b in it, for a start.
OK, and?
I thought a certain pedantry was encouraged on this forum.
Your pendantry (and Taz's) is welcome.
Dipshits wasting my time and everyone elses with asinine wastes of characters in response to reasonably argued lists of points I have to be in the mood for.
*two glasses of red wine at dinner - please excuse general illiteracy
Your comment was so ignorant on every possible level that it did not merit a response beyond what I posted. You are usually a reasonable a rational poster but that was simply xenophobic dross.
I'm sorry, but it is you who is showing ignorance. Christianity has frequently been critiqued for it's lack of 'killer instinct' - for example blamed for making the Romans lose their cruel edge when they converted. Criticised by Hitler for its namby pamby attitude. Yes there's some fire and brimstone, particularly in the OT, but the Gospels, which are the overridingly important part of the Bible, because Christ was the fulfillment of the Old Testmanent, espouses a doctrine of love and forgiveness, and of faith being an inner grace, which allows 'rendering unto ceasar' - not demanding the violent overthrow of non-Christian authority.
Islam was developed by someone familiar with Christianity and is a response to it and in many ways a rebellion against it. The spread of Islam by the sword is advocated within the faith. Also Islam (which means submission) is all about the outward observance of faith, not about it being an inner matter.
The two faiths are absolutely different in their philosphical attitude to force, and that is why I made the comment I did. If you want to come at me with an interpretation that contradicts what I said, that might teach me something, go for it. If all you've got is a casual dismissal based on your own utter ignorance and assumptions of a lazy politically-correct position, expect to be casually dismissed in return.
It's an interesting point. There have been any number of brutal Christians and people who were willing to spread Christianity by force.
But, you get people like Gibbon, condemning Christianity as weak, cowardly, and soft, undermining a society's ability to defend itself, a view that the Nazis entirely bought into. Hitler said it was a disaster that Charles Martel won the Battle of Tours. To Himmler, Islam was "a fine religion for a soldier."
I don't think Christianity has been forcibly spread for a number of centuries. I feel the conquistadors, cowboys, colonists and various white people grabbing other peoples' lands pretty much used Christianity as a bit of philosophical presentation for what was simply a money-grab.
Empress Elizabeth of Russia was forcibly converting Muslims and Jews in the 18th century, so that’s 3 centuries ago.
Native Americans and slaves in the Americas were often forcibly converted to Christianity. There was forced conversion of slaves in the 19th century US. That’s only 2 centuries ago.
The Ustashe forcibly converted Orthodox believers to Catholicism in WW2, although that’s one Christian group to another.
Slave owners were generally hostile towards conversion. It was easier to justify enslavement of pagans than Christians.
But, it saved their descendants from being lynched. The willingness of Southern ex-slaves to forgive their ex-masters can only be explained by their intense Christianity.
Slave owners earlier on were hostile towards conversion, but the project to justify slavery had moved on in the US South in the nineteenth century. Instead, converting slaves became a moral mission, “evidence” that the slaves were being looked after.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
I think the rewilding is great idea tp get some fresh air and help the environment. I imagine she is planting trees and hedges, reintroducing wolves and culling deer.
Eating them I hope. We hav e just had mallard duck breasts pan fried with shallots and home grown blackcurrants for dinner.
We decided to have goose this year after Capon last time. I just bought the Christmas and Twixtmas food shop. First, 80 Euros for a goose and another 20 for “farce”. Farce indeed. But it was a local farm producer and I reasoned that this must be the price you pay for good lovingly raised foul.
Then the rest of it at Carrefour, including Christmas wines. €485. I gulped and the checkout lady looked nervous until the card went through. I was also nervous until the card went through.
I’ve never spent so much on a food shop before and I hope never to again.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
I think the rewilding is great idea tp get some fresh air and help the environment. I imagine she is planting trees and hedges, reintroducing wolves and culling deer.
Eating them I hope. We hav e just had mallard duck breasts pan fried with shallots and home grown blackcurrants for dinner.
We decided to have goose this year after Capon last time. I just bought the Christmas and Twixtmas food shop. First, 80 Euros for a goose and another 20 for “farce”. Farce indeed. But it was a local farm producer and I reasoned that this must be the price you pay for good lovingly raised foul.
Then the rest of it at Carrefour, including Christmas wines. €485. I gulped and the checkout lady looked nervous until the card went through. I was also nervous until the card went through.
I’ve never spent so much on a food shop before and I hope never to again.
I hope you'll be giving your pricey Christmas bird the full Fanny Craddock treatment.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
It's also a very good place for a rubber-fetishist to pick up a Royal. So I've heard.
Just been to the annual performance of the Messiah. It occurred to me that I've been going, on and off, for over half a century now. This was one of the best.
Any classical music enthusiasts should watch out for Hilary Cronin, who has an exceptional soprano voice. I can see why she won the London Handel competition a few years back.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
Going back to the earlier discussion on murder rates in the US, let me make three observations. (I should warn you that these facts, though well known, may offend some on the Left.)
Second, young men are far more likely to be victims -- and perpetrators -- if they are fatherless. (The same is true, to a lesser extent, of young women.
Third, some in our entertainment industry celebrate violence.
I can also report after today that my sometimes mega-shy older daughter, down from her first term at St Andrews, is apparently having a lovely time, has made a bunch of great friends, and goes "rewilding" every weekend (I've no idea what this entails)
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
St Andrews is a nice place for a shy kid. Nice crowd, nice pubs and cafes - not too big city-ish. It's a bit like Guildford-on-sea-in-Scotland. Rewilding at the weekend sounds shit though. Let's hope she grows out of it.
St Andrews is also way more handsome and historic than "Guildford"
I'd never been there until I dropped my eldest off for Uni in September. It's a rather magnificent little city, gritty yet alluring, superbly old, and with an impressive seaside location. I'm not sure there is an equivalent in England, or indeed anywhere in the world
It's certainly not as lovely as the best bits of Cambridge or Oxford, and its climate is much more cruel. But it also lacks the hideous "base and brackish" burbs of Oxford and the fenland sprawl of Cambridge
If anything I'd say it is a Nordic/Celtic Heidelberg
And - as others have noted- it is really small and friendly and a great place for a shy scholastic girl, who takes time to make friends but then makes very good friends
The traditional political parties in Germany have utterly failed the people.
🇩🇪 AfD is the only hope for Germany 🇩🇪
Do we really need hourly updates on that ?
It's also bizarre:
German people live longer than Americans, they're less likely to be murdered or medicated or depressed. They are far less likely to be homeless.
America is an amazing place to be rich. Germany is a much, much better place to be lower or middle income.
American statistics are heavily distorted by its demographics so it can be misleading to compare them directly with European countries. For example a *majority* of murder victims are black:
Now would you like to check out what the German murder rate is?
It's about 0.8 per 100,000 people.
The murder rate for white, non-Hispanic, in the US is more than 4. (Which is a hell of a lot better than the 30-32 for African Americans.)
But... even picking the lowest likelihood of getting murdered ethnic group, the US homicide rate is 5x the German rate.
So, the murder rate for African Americans in the US is nearly 40x the German rate? Bloody hell. That's incredible.
What's the murder rate for Jews in Germany?
Now? No idea. There has been a rise in anti Semitic attacks since Gaza started but I am not aware of how many involve murder.
What's your point? That the US is better that Nazi Germany?
Well, obviously, the much higher murder rate for Black people in the US, along with much else, is a sign of how the US has failed to deal with the legacies of slavery. This should be a stain upon that nation's conscience.
Since the comparison is between the US and Germany it's natural to think about how Germany has dealt with the Holocaust and its legacy. But then, of course, the Jewish population in Germany is no longer high enough to calculate a statistically meaningful murder rate. So Germany doesn't have to deal with the legacy of its history in as difficult a way as the US does.
So perhaps the US deserves to be cut some slack? What they are trying to do - in recovering from a monumental historical wrong like race-based slavery, without an external power forcing them to face up to it, and without the two sides separating into different polities - is really very difficult, and I don't think it has been achieved by any country before.
Maybe they've done quite well to get as far as they have?
I do cut the US some slack. Indeed, I love the US.
But what I take exception to is the absurd claims of Musk and others that Germany is some kind of hell hole that needs rescuing.
Based on similar reasoning you could have argued against the idea that communist Eastern Europe was some kind of hell hole that needed rescuing.
I think Rawl's Veil of Ignorance applies, don't you?
Assume you have no knowedge as to your race, intelligence, social stature; which country would you choose to be born in?
I think most people, given that choice right now, would go with Norway or Australia or Canada or New Zealand or Singapore or Denmark.
But would you really have chosen Eastern Europe in communist days over the US?
I certainly wouldn't.
Are you fully applying the veil of ignorance though or are you assuming you would be a 'cishet white male'? You might choose Denmark, but by a stroke of bad luck it turns out that you are a persecuted minority who is having their 'ghetto' bulldozed by the state.
The whole point is that you don't know.
Precisely. Therefore aggregate statistics aren't decisive and you need to consider how minorities are treated. For better or worse that doesn't necessarily favour Europe.
Can't call the fight. Fury will think he can overwhelm Usyk but Usyk's camp will know this so will adapt. I've backed the draw at 19.5 (bf).
Well after four rounds there’s very little between them.
Not sure that draws happen as often as we think they do though.
Yep. I think Usyk won because Fury didn't really do anything. Usyk came forward and the impression was that at least he was trying to win it. So I can see why he got the decision.
Comments
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216032/
1962 'Armchair Theatre' about German industrialists, journalists, priests, believing they can use Hitlers memory to their advantage. It comes to mind when I read about rich tech bro's dipping their toes into politics. Very worth looking out (ymmv with the video quality - but there are watchable copies around).
It's all a balance of pros and cons.
But I'd certainly choose Denmark over the US if I had no idea of who I would be born as. On the other hand, I'd choose the US over Hungary, Greece or Italy.
@PolitlcsUK
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12m
🚨 NEW: Ministers are resisting calls to stop Elon Musk donating to Nigel Farage over fears they'll use it to claim Reform is being sabotaged
"We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk"
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@guardian
]
Interesting times.
I doubt Musk will be anywhere near government by next winter solstice.
But, you get people like Gibbon, condemning Christianity as weak, cowardly, and soft, undermining a society's ability to defend itself, a view that the Nazis entirely bought into. Hitler said it was a disaster that Charles Martel won the Battle of Tours. To Himmler, Islam was "a fine religion for a soldier."
The term “Rachel from Accounts”, by the way, is very boorish. Reed has grossly disappointed expectations so far, but there’s no obvious need to demean her private sector experience.
The USA was founded upon brutal conquest, and enslavement. But, it has also been a refuge for millions, underpinned the freedom of many countries, and generated an incredible standard of living for people of all races (even though there are big differences by race).
Our leaders consider it entirely acceptable for Sinn Fein to receive vast amounts of money from abroad. Why should Reform be treated differently?
We are all - at least 50x more obsessed with ourselves than anyone else around us is obsessed with us
However there are restrictions on how parties can spend the money.
A cross-party committee should be urgently considering both, in the age of Russian influencer, oligopoly money, and the rise of both social media and obviously partisan content pumpers like GB “News”.
Offer now closed. May be re-opened at the management's discretions at a later date.
All very gallant and noble.
The problem is that the opponent is an undiluted toxic narcissistic meglamoniac who gets more dangerous by the day.
We can only hope that Trump retains enough of his own cognitive ability to act and to solve his problem before it becomes a global problem
Trump created the monster to win the White House, he has to eradicate the problem before Musk takes the White House and turns it in to the Reichstag.
America has never been under greater threat, Europe has not been under this level of threat since 1939
After the Lost in Light exhibitions (genuinely beautiful, modern art at its best) we walked all the way through the City from Shoreditch to Monument, to a nice dinner at the Wolseley (the scampi are fantastic)
It it such a world away from anywhere else in the UK, or indeed Europe. It feels remarkably rich, swaggering, prosperous and unique. Skyscrapers are still climbing, the pubs were full, the streets were festive. No city in Europe matches it for this in-the-moment verve mixed with historicity and modernity, Paris isn't even close, I am not quite sure NYC has the buzz despite being wealthier and more powerful (because the City has the ancient meets now vibe, absent in NYC). The City does NOT feel like a place in decline, it feels like the financial capital of a massively confident world power
The challenge, as ever in the UK, is to spread that City of London buzz - or some of it - across the UK (or at least bits of it). How long have we been trying to do this?! So far we have failed. Perhaps it is impossible
Fire bombing a hotel with 400 men, women and children in it deserves life, not 3 years.
The instigators like Farage, Musk, Robinson, Oajshott and Co should be arrested and charged with Treason.
Marvellous thing alcohol.
More seriously, why don't we have our Barcelona? We need more devolution.
Christianity DID have a long expansionist violent phase, sometimes hideously - the Crusader slaughter in Jerusalem stands, out amongst many - but in its core there is a pacific message, and this has essentially prevailed. If anything Christianity is too meek, these days. hence its expulsion from homelands like Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq
By contrast Islam has not renounced an iota of its fire-breathing ferocity, which has killed hundreds of millions of people. It is still the religion of the sword and of conquest, of "jihad" - this is indeed its essence. This is its DNA. Convert, kill or subjugate the unbelievers: this is the message Islam still sends out today which is why Islam everywhere is in conflict with the societies that host it or border it. And thus we have the unhappy fact that Europe has imported millions of people mentally or even physically hostile to our values, and many of them are willing to act on that hostility, in different ways
The provinces don't need lessons in cultural vibrancy; they need a return to the rules and taxes that enabled them to thrive in the first place.
Move fast and break things is the mantra.
The UK desperately needs four or five regional cities with some of the buzz of the City of London: Bristol, Edinburgh or Glasgae, Brum, and maybe and especially some northern multi-city with integrated contactless transport: Liverpool, Salford, Manc, Leeds, Sheffield - this last cluster could be the Osaka of the UK. This is where the density of our population and the small size of the UKis a massive ADVANTAGE - we have the geographical clustering and the people
I thought Labour would do this. It was my big hope alongside massive NHS reform. But alas. Nada
He was cleverer than 95% of commentators in getting in on a Trump victory, now he's the gatekeeper of the new President. He's doing the same with Europe's surging right.
Then let our covert operations experts loose on him. He's a verifiable threat to UK security.
What's good enough for Bin Laden and all that
So thankyou Scotland, you are showing my eldest a good time
And my younger daughter is also swooningly content and in love with a handsome Brazilian pianist and they are now shacked up together in Adelaide, where they play musical riffs in their tiny apartment - him piano, her guitar - when they aren't copping off
That's it, isn't it? That's the best present you can get as a parent. Happy, healthy children
Praise be to the Lord
The buzz is great for those who want the buzz.
Other people want the other things other places can provide.
Including affordable housing.
They have four years to break out of this thinking or one term is it.
After the election when the QAnon nonsense started, again ripping off 4chan, it started going down hill fast as people started to support Trump for reasons other than the hilarious absurdity of a total moron running America. By the time /r/The_Donald was shutdown it was full of alt-right nutters making threats and stirring up trouble.
A certain amount of self-obsession is professionally mandated.
Native Americans and slaves in the Americas were often forcibly converted to Christianity. There was forced conversion of slaves in the 19th century US. That’s only 2 centuries ago.
The Ustashe forcibly converted Orthodox believers to Catholicism in WW2, although that’s one Christian group to another.
But really I think in the second two examples (and perhaps the first, don't know enough about the specifics) faith was incidental to what was really going on. Neither was a mission to spread Christendom by the sword.
Rarely used but when needed the ultimate deterrent to anyone threatening State Security.
Correct me if I'm wrong and I might be but I believe that the last offence to have the death penalty removed from was High Treason.
There have been occasions in the past 40 years when it may have been applicable.
I would suggest that when we have UK politicians openly afgitating for rioting on the streets and attacking the Police and people like Robinson being openly funded by overseas right wing groups it is time to bring it back.
Likewise we can and should be proscribing groups, companies and individuals as banned, like we have with extreme political and religious groups, irrespective of where they come from including the USA
But, it saved their descendants from being lynched. The willingness of Southern ex-slaves to forgive their ex-masters can only be explained by their intense Christianity.
My closest Cote is 20 miles away in West Bridgford (nearly Leicestershire), then Solihull and York (both about 60 miles)
My God I was worried about her (and her sister) and yet suddenly they are both doing OK, indeed thriving, after some tough times. Ins;allah it continues for a while. Nothing continues forever
I saw an interview with Elton John the other day where he said "I don't give a fuck about my reputation as a musician or composer, I just want to be remembered as a good husband, and father"
Now, much of this must be taken in context. Elton knows his reputation as a musician is solid forever, he is almost without peer as a modern popstar, so he can afford to ignore that. Also, he's made seventy trillion quid
But nonetheless he speaks a truth, in the end perhaps the ultimate tests are: were you a decent lover, friend, spouse, parent? Did you make people happier than they would have been otherwise? Are your kids OK, or at least as OK as they can be despite your own flaws and failings? Do you make your friends laugh, and feel nicer?
That is largely it - ultimately. Those are the tests. You are given a hand to play and often it is a shit hand, but you can still play it in a way that makes people around you happier, and if you do that, you have played the game of life well
That said, if you fuck up another one, you will be reviled forever
It depends what you mean, but I also note this century, there are “faith-based” programmes in US prisons that are coercive. Evangelicals in Nigeria have been accused of forcing homeless children to convert. Evangelicals in Lebanon have been accused of taking advantage of Muslim refugees from Syria.
Then the rest of it at Carrefour, including Christmas wines. €485. I gulped and the checkout lady looked nervous until the card went through. I was also nervous until the card went through.
I’ve never spent so much on a food shop before and I hope never to again.
Not sure that draws happen as often as we think they do though.
https://youtu.be/kunuXThp51E?feature=shared
It occurred to me that I've been going, on and off, for over half a century now. This was one of the best.
Any classical music enthusiasts should watch out for Hilary Cronin, who has an exceptional soprano voice. I can see why she won the London Handel competition a few years back.
The panellists are Andy Twelves, and Dr Lisa MacKenzie.
Both are different types of anarchists.
Peculiar choice of guests with strange arguments.
Dr Lisa put forward a whole spiel failing to draw any distinction between UK and International political donations.
First, the variation across the US is extraordinary: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/homicide_mortality/homicide.htm
And that's just using the states; the variation within some states is even greater.
Second, young men are far more likely to be victims -- and perpetrators -- if they are fatherless. (The same is true, to a lesser extent, of young women.
Third, some in our entertainment industry celebrate violence.
I'd never been there until I dropped my eldest off for Uni in September. It's a rather magnificent little city, gritty yet alluring, superbly old, and with an impressive seaside location. I'm not sure there is an equivalent in England, or indeed anywhere in the world
It's certainly not as lovely as the best bits of Cambridge or Oxford, and its climate is much more cruel. But it also lacks the hideous "base and brackish" burbs of Oxford and the fenland sprawl of Cambridge
If anything I'd say it is a Nordic/Celtic Heidelberg
And - as others have noted- it is really small and friendly and a great place for a shy scholastic girl, who takes time to make friends but then makes very good friends
Third fight incoming.