oromagi

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@bmdrocks21

I forgot to point out that Russia has kicked out at least 1.7 million people from the three provinces they invaded in 2014- more than half the population and all ethnic non-Russians- Germans, Poles, Turks, Roma, etc. Seven years later many of the men have illegally immigrated to Europe in search of work but there's still a huge population of women with children and old age pensioners living in tents and depending on UN assistance for food, heat in winter, etc. I certainly consider that a version of ethnic cleansing already well underway.

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@fauxlaw

-->@oromagi
Superb analysis

I'm guessing this a generational split and we are showing our age. I knew (& I'm guessing you did too) men and women who fought and sacrificed to stem the violent tides of fascism and Russian expansionism that threatened to overtake the world in the 20th century and who warned our generations not to let down our guards. Setting limits on dictators and having a no-tolerance policy for violations of national sovereignty is how you keep the bullies from becoming too big to fail.

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p@oromagi
Based on Russian rhetoric, the point of Russia invading seems to be to do another cleanse.
What rhetoric are you referring to?

On April 7th, Putin's Deputy Chief of Staff Dmitry Kozak, said that Russian forces could intervene to "defend Russian citizens".

"Everything depends on the scale of the fire," he said " If there is, as our president says, Srebrenica (Bosnian genocide of 8,000 Muslims) apparently we will have to step in"

He said Ukrainian officials were like “children playing with matches. I support the assessment that the start of military action - this would be the beginning of the end of Ukraine: not a shot in the leg, but in the face".
Amid a mounting chorus of anti-Ukrainian hysteria on Kremlin-controlled Russian TV, popular prime time host Dmitry Kiselyov [and Putin apparatchik] used his flagship current affairs show on April 11 to brand Ukraine a “Nazi state,” claiming that Russia may be forced to intervene militarily in order to “De-Nazify” the country.

"During its troop buildup on the border, the Kremlin produced new rounds of disinformation. Moscow’s propaganda ludicrously claimed that Kyiv was preparing an invasion of the Russian-occupied Donbas. It compared the situation of ethnic Russian speakers in the region to that of the victims of Bosnia’s Srebrenica massacre in 1995, when thousands of Muslim men were killed by Serb forces. The Russian media also put out misleading messages asserting that the United States was in full control of Kyiv’s actions and that the Kyiv government was Washington’s poodle. These narratives amplify longstanding disinformation themes that the Kremlin established in response to the Ukrainian prodemocracy uprising in 2014 that challenged Russia’s influence there. These proclaim that Ukraine is a puppet of the West, that there was a “civil war” in the country, that pro-Russian fighters in the east were “separatists,” and that Ukraine was either fascist and rabidly antisemitic or a failed state.

Russia covets Ukraine, and always will and Putin thinks delivering Ukraine again would make him the most popular Russian monarch since Peter I.
So as you say, there has been a historic special relationship between Russia and Ukraine. That would suggest that their attitudes toward Ukraine aren't going to translate into world domination.

But the fact that Russia has invaded Georgia twice, Chechnya twice, Abkhazia, Transnistria, North Ossetia, Tajikistan, Dagestan, the North Caucasus and Syria since the fall of the Soviet Empire would suggest that Putin won't stop at just Ukraine. Putin wants the empire of his youth restored.

An important defining characteristic of Putin's dictatorship is his definition of Russian sovereignty. When Putin took power in 2000, he made it clear that the border of Russia did not define Russian sovereignty- that he was the sovereign leader of ethnic Russians everywhere- Europe, Israel, the United States doesn't matter. If Putin doesn't like the way America is treating Russian immigrant in the US, Putin has made it clear that he considers Russia to have the right and responsibility to intervene- even if those immigrants are second generation US citizens. While foreign militaries might constrain his reach, he does not consider any other country's sovereignty to take priority over the well-being of ethnic Russians however he chooses to define that term.

Russia could quickly double the size of its economy
Russia's GDP is $1.7 T while Ukraine's is $153.8 B. And that doesn't include the infrastructure that would be destroyed in a war.

I agree quickly double is imprecise and not really knowable but keep in mind that with the Ukraine in hand, Russian outlays in the energy and agriculture sectors decline significantly. Like California, the Ukraine would be a major engine for economic growth.

The oft-repeated lesson of Russian history is that you can't invade Russia and once Russia takes Ukraine, Russia is very hard to stop. The Ghosts of Churchill and Napoleon and Gustav IV and Wilhelm II are looking us in the eye today and saying, "best nip that particularly thorny flower in the bud."
Maybe, but another good lesson from history is that involving yourself in everyone else's wars and policing the world destroys empires. It happened to Spain, France, and Britain. They overextended themselves and warred with everyone.

Strongly disagree. The Spanish, French, and British empires all failed from the civil disruption caused by racism and massive inequality. If Spain or England had simply swallowed their racism and offered full citizenship to their colonial subjects, either would still be the world's biggest superpower today. Same principle for the French Empire although perhaps to some degree less than superpower. England could have easily kept power in the US, Canada, India, coastal China, So. Africa, Egypt, Pakistan, Australia and so dominated the globe and prevented both world wars if they had simply given those colonies full citizenship, full representation in Parliament and the full legal and military protection of the United Kingdom.

England and France didn't lose power after the World Wars because they had overextended themselves. They lost power because they used their colonies hard for soldiers and raw materials in crisis but then refused to grant citizenship or even a sliver of the franchise in exchange to peoples who had made terrible sacrifices on their behalf- the exact same reason the US rebelled after the French and Indian Wars.

The lesson to the US is not to back down when bullies advance but rather to keep extending the freedom and prosperity of democracy until people everywhere control their own destinies. To that end, we should offer Puerto Rico, Washington DC, American Samoa, Guam, etc. full US citizenship immediately.

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@Wylted

@HistoryBuff

Did you know the FBI listed Ron Paul bumper stickers as a warning that somebody was a terrorist? Usually you don't tell people they are going to get rounded up. You build the list first and then make it a surprise so they have no time to react
1) please provide a source for that assertion. I'm guessing you got it from some idiot on the internet.
Nope, it was big news when it happened. It's literally the first Google result of "FBI to target Ron Paul supporters"

Of course, if Wylted provided a source, his assertion would be disproved.

In 2011, the Missouri Information Analysis Center wrote a report for the Missouri State Patrol about the increasing militarism and extremism of local militia groups, most specifically the increase in neo-Nazi identifications

So NOT the FBI
There was a lot of advice about how to identify militia affiliations including the fact that militias tend to support independent and outsider candidates and used Chuck Baldwin, Bob Barr, and Ron Paul as examples.

Let's recall some of the opinions that made Paul popular with the Nazis:

"We can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city [Washington DC] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."
"I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense... for the animals are coming"
"Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities."
"HIV-positive homosexuals enjoy the pity and attention that comes with being sick Sodomy=Death."
"Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for that pro-communist philanderer, Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day."

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@Wylted

Do you know america would be better off if either the far right or the far left took over?

The Founding Fathers' intent was to make sure that nobody took over from any one party, that at least every two years Americans had a chance to reverse any excessive domination. The idea is a constant tug-o-war, push and pull, dynamic tension and constant self-examination from which only the sturdiest and smartest ideas survive.

If one side "takes over" then democracy is dead.

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https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/6242-australia-is-now-a-police-state?page=1&post_number=13

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@Wylted

No, proven altruistic experts.

Like Putin, who has to prove his altruism by making it illegal for any of his subjects to say he is not altruistic

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@HistoryBuff

This item that Wylted brought to my attention yesterday show a pretty good example of what "defunded" police looks like. The Fixated Persons Investigation Unit are cops with a mental health specialization. They look for OCD stalkers, mass shooters, etc who are about to pop and try to come in with a mental health intervention before the situation explodes.

I'm seeing a huge number of police depts. in the US hiring mental health professionals and socials workers since George Floyd. Police are certainly trying harder to meet mental health crises with a trained and qualified response rather than throwing fairly law abiding people against the heavily armed front of a police emergency response. "Defund the Police" was always a stupid, deliberately provocative name for the idea that BLM endorsed (and has been promoted in academic CJ circles for 30 yrs) but we can see that the idea (minus the name) is being adopted right now with good results across the democratic world.

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@Wylted

Just to summarize your philosophy as laid out over the last few days:

COVID is a hoax
the vaccine is a hoax
American values are "shitty"
Jews control US foreign policy
Nazis are unjustly oppressed
Democracy in the US is a bad form of govt
Putin's dictatorship in Russia is a good form of govt

Trump for life

Is that about it?

I don't know what you're thinking about when you speak of false flags but I think its clear that it would be false for you to fly the American Stars and Stripes. While your philosophy does seem to qualify as mainstream Republicanism these days, I'm confident in saying that any Republican from even fifteen years ago would recognize these as the values of the enemy.

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@Wylted

Jesus LOL. Dude is not Hitler.

But as we've established, you aren't very well informed on just about every subject we discuss. You certainly don't know much history. You just believe whatever you read on twitter and infowars and a huge amount of that originates with Russia and China. Researchers estimate that 45% of all tweets about coronavirus came from bots, and most of those controlled by Russian or Chinese teams. You are literally taking Putin's propaganda to heart.

Hell, Putin is so sick of foreign policy experts and historians and Russian expatriates and world leaders and comedians and generals all agreeing that Putin is the next Hitler that he made the State Duma pass a law last month that

bans all comparisons between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany
bans any denial that the Soviet people were not the decisive factor in Hitler's defeat
and
bans any denial that the USSR's liberation of Europe was not an entirely humanitarian mission

"Our principled position is to put a legislative barrier to the explicit insults against our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, disgusting speculations about our Victory and allowing political capital to be earned for speaking ill of our ancestors"

Sounds like something, oh, I don't know, Hitler might do.

He is just somebody who is looking to allie with America for mutual benefit.

Yeah, we could call it Molotov-Ribbentrop II

He has really brought his country from 3rd world shithole to someplace tolerable to live and helped millions.

All for the low, low, price of democracy, liberty and equality. Yes, Russia is a little better able to feed itself now than 20 years ago but the whole Russian economy is pretty much pegged now to price of oil, which might be fine in the short term but spells disaster in the long term. All reports suggest that the pandemic is out of control in Russia- estimates are 40% infection rates in the big cities. Just grave counting by satellite images suggests that official estimates are less than 20% of reality and Russia has no democratic outlet or remedy or correction. As one Moscow demographer says about COVID statistics, "Putin is lying as if we are morons"

Liberals like me believe that democracy is the optimal form of governance and that nations aren't stable until they get and keep democracy for themselves. To any lover of freedom, Russia is at least one revolution shy of being a tolerable place to live.

Think of that famous what if- If you could go back and assassinate Hitler, would you? Well, Hitler is back and his name is Vlad and he only gets harder to kill from here on out.

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@Wylted

They usually just go to your door and have a conversation. You don't see them often cuffing people unless it is in an interrogation room.

You don't think plainclothes policemen arrest people?

You should try watching American television shows sometime, where that happens pretty much constantly.

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@Wylted

Putin seems very nice

That's the first they always say after the mass murderer shoots himself in the head, right- he seemed so nice. Everybody agrees that Hitler was super nice in person.

"Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." -George Santayana

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@Wylted

@oromagi
You thought it was suspicious that the u.s counterparts were not there for the Russian agents. I just wasn't sure why they would be there. Why would we need anyone other than a translator, and even that is much considering Putin is faking like he doesn't speak english

Trump exposed our friends secrets and got a bunch of our guys killed and gave Putin a huge PR win.

Having at least one person in the room that represented US interests might not have kept Trump from giving aid and comfort to the enemy but at least we wouldn't have had to first read about it in The Moscow Times and we'd have some record of what other top secrets Trump gave away. Notice how Biden was never alone with Putin today. Notice how Trump and Putin consistently sought alone time when they met. One president instills confidence in our friends by providing constant verifiability. The other elicits fear from our allies by whispering with the enemy in secret.

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@Wylted

@oromagi
They were not in uniform and were in a plain car. I figure we can refer to plain clothes law enforcement who take people away in unmarked cars as secret police.

Most homicide detectives in America wear plain clothes and drive unmarked cars. Are American homicide detectives all secret police in your estimation?

The Fixated Persons Investigation Unit is a subdivision of police with a lot of mental health training that specializes in stalkers, mass shooters, unibombers, etc. People who write manifestos on 8kun in tin foil hats. Obviously, plainclothes helps police to investigate these people without triggering anti-authority outbursts.

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Biden gave russia a list of our most sensitive targets for hacking

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@Wylted

?

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@Wylted

@bmdrocks21

->@fauxlaw

Why do I care if a relatively insignificant country is sovereign or not?

Are you one of those neocons that wants to spread democracy to the Middle East? I'm not trying to project things on you, just really getting those vibes......

-->@fauxlaw
Why give a shit if they take Ukraine by force?

Ukraine has the population of California but is about a third again as large in acreage. Russia has committed six ethnic cleansings in Ukraine over the past 200 years *four in the last hundred) while the Nazis did another. Each time, another generation of Russians moves in but slowly gets outnumbered by the remnant ethnic Poles, Turks, and Germans. Based on Russian rhetoric, the point of Russia invading seems to be to do another cleanse. Ukraine is next door to Russia but warmer and far more fertile with a good warm water ports- Ukraine has traditionally been the source of Russia's food whether independent or dependent- much the way California feeds America. Russia covets Ukraine, and always will and Putin thinks delivering Ukraine again would make him the most popular Russian monarch since Peter I. Russia could quickly double the size of its economy and historically, after Russia takes Ukraine they begin to contest with Germany over Poland and with Turkey over access out of the Black Sea.

The oft-repeated lesson of Russian history is that you can't invade Russia and once Russia takes Ukraine, Russia is very hard to stop. The Ghosts of Churchill and Napoleon and Gustav IV and Wilhelm II are looking us in the eye today and saying, "best nip that particularly thorny flower in the bud."

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@Wylted

->@oromagi
Sounds like he already crossed that line by attacking the meat and oil industry.

I could imagine the following scenario

Putin nukes us

Biden "nuke us one more time and we will retalite"

If he crossed the line punish him.

While those sorts of limits were of course, well established during the Bush and Obama administrations, Trump obliterated those norms when he invited Russia's top spies into the Oval Office while forbidding any US counterparts or security. In effect, Trump said to Russia, "I've unlocked the back door to the candy store and given the security guard the night off, boys.... enjoy!!!"

Therefore it was necessary for Biden to re-establish the previous expectations- "the door is locked again and any new trespassers will be shot."

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@Wylted

secret police?

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@Wylted

@oromagi
My impression from the few articles I read is that Barilo is very corrupt

I don't see any indication that Barilaro is particularly corrupt.

As the leader of the conservative party in a state containing the largest city in Australia, Barilaro fights for the farmers and rural constituents against the liberal behemoth that is Sydney- therefore he has always been quite unpopular with the Left.

On the flipside, Barilaro was very popular with the Right (running unopposed in 2016) until an internal investigation uncovered a secret coalition of neo-Nazis within the party. Barilaro forced 30 neo-nazis out of government including some fairly high ranking appointments, which likely saved his party's coalition from losing power but made him deeply unpopular with the Nazis and other white supremacist organizations. It is this faction to which freindlyjordies and Kristo Langker direct their particular form of racist humor, and the reason behind their current campaign of harassment. Barilaro's Italian heritage was fine with them when they voted for him in 2016 but now he's "Luigi" because he kicked the white supremacists out.

Now unpopular with all the Left and half of the Right, Barilaro probably doesn't have much of a political career left to him but we can admire his willingness to take a political loss in the name of preserving democracy in Australia.

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Biden gave russia a list of our most sensitive targets for hacking

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@Wylted

Biden gave a list of targets to russia and said these are off limits. A list of 16 hacking targets that would be the most damaging to the United States. I can sleep more comfortably not only knowing russia is apparently allowed to hack anything else, but that they have a list of the 16 targets that would harm us the most https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1405217452879925251?s=19

As ever, you seem willing to repeat any tweet you read without taking the time to research or even think.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was established by (Republican controlled) Congress and signed into law by Donald Trump in 2018. The 16 sectors of Critical Infrastructure were developed by that law and have been published online since inception.

Whatever your machine of perpetual misinformation might tell you, the list Biden gave Putin is well publicized, quite general, and intuitively sensible.

This is Biden giving Putin fair warning after Russia's recent attacks on our Energy and Agriculture Sectors- any Russian based cyberattack on American assets in these areas will be responded to as direct attacks on America by Russia- as if Russia blew up a dam or bombed one of our airbases. Too bad Trump never thought to establish such obvious limits with his chum Putin.

Critical Infrastructure Sectors

Chemical Sector
Commercial Facilities Sector
Communications Sector
Critical Manufacturing Sector
Dams Sector
Defense Industrial Base Sector
Emergency Services Sector
Energy Sector
Financial Services Sector
Food and Agriculture Sector
Government Facilities Sector
Healthcare and Public Health Sector
Information Technology Sector
Nuclear Reactors, Materials, and Waste Sector
Transportation Systems Sector
Water and Wastewater Systems Sector

Do you really suppose Putin is rubbing his hands together tonight saying, "Eureka, Biden just gave away the fact that they consider Nuclear Reactors important"?

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Wiki:

The belief in a curse was brought to many people's attention due to the deaths of a few members of Howard Carter's team and other prominent visitors to the tomb shortly thereafter. Carter's team opened the tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62) in 1923, launching the modern era of Egyptology.

The famous Egyptologist James Henry Breasted worked with Carter soon after the first opening of the tomb. He reported how Carter sent a messenger on an errand to his house. On approaching his home the messenger thought he heard a "faint, almost human cry". Upon reaching the entrance he saw the birdcage occupied by a cobra, the symbol of the Egyptian monarchy. Carter's canary had died in its mouth and this fueled local rumors of a curse. Arthur Weigall, a previous Inspector-General of Antiquities to the Egyptian Government, reported that this was interpreted as Carter's house being broken into by the Royal Cobra, the same as that worn on the King's head to strike enemies (see Uraeus), on the very day the King's tomb was being broken into. An account of the incident was reported by The New York Times on 22 December 1922.

The first of the deaths was that of Lord Carnarvon, who financed the excavation. He had been bitten by a mosquito, and later slashed the bite accidentally while shaving. It became infected and that resulted in blood poisoning. Two weeks before Carnarvon died, Marie Corelli wrote an imaginative letter that was published in the New York World magazine, in which she quoted an obscure book that confidently asserted that "dire punishment" would follow any intrusion into a sealed tomb. A media frenzy followed, with reports that a curse had been found in the King's tomb, though this was untrue. The superstitious Benito Mussolini, who had once accepted an Egyptian mummy as a gift, ordered its immediate removal from the Palazzo Chigi.

The death of Lord Carnarvon six weeks after the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb resulted in many curse stories in the press.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, suggested that Lord Carnarvon's death had been caused by "elementals" created by Tutankhamun's priests to guard the royal tomb, and this further fueled the media interest. Arthur Weigall reported that six weeks before Carnarvon's death, he had watched the Earl laughing and joking as he entered the King's tomb and said to a nearby reporter (H. V. Morton), "I give him six weeks to live." The first autopsy carried out on the body of Tutankhamun by Dr. Derry found a healed lesion on the left cheek, but as Carnarvon had been buried six months previously it was not possible to determine if the location of the wound on the King corresponded with the fatal mosquito bite on Carnarvon.

A study of documents and scholarly sources led The Lancet to conclude it unlikely that Carnarvon's death had anything to do with Tutankhamun's tomb, refuting another theory that exposure to toxic fungi (mycotoxins) had contributed to his demise. The report points out that the Earl was only one of many to enter the tomb, on several occasions and that none of the others were affected. The cause of Carnarvon's death was reported as "'pneumonia supervening on [facial] erysipelas,' (a streptococcal infection of the skin and underlying soft tissue). Pneumonia was thought to be only one of various complications, arising from the progressively invasive infection, that eventually resulted in multiorgan failure." The Earl had been "prone to frequent and severe lung infections" according to The Lancet and there had been a "general belief ... that one acute attack of bronchitis could have killed him. In such a debilitated state, the Earl's immune system was easily overwhelmed by erysipelas."

In 1925, the anthropologist Henry Field, accompanied by Breasted, visited the tomb and recalled the kindness and friendliness of Carter. He also reported how a paperweight given to Carter's friend Sir Bruce Ingram was composed of a mummified hand with its wrist adorned with a scarab bracelet marked with, "Cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water, and pestilence." Soon after receiving the gift, Ingram's house burned down, followed by a flood when it was rebuilt.

Howard Carter was entirely skeptical of such curses, dismissing them as 'tommy-rot' and commenting that "the sentiment of the Egyptologist ... is not one of fear, but of respect and awe ... entirely opposed to foolish superstitions". In May 1926 he reported in his diary a sighting of a jackal of the same type as Anubis, the guardian of the dead, for the first time in over thirty-five years of working in the desert, although he did not attribute this to supernatural causes.

Skeptics have pointed out that many others who visited the tomb or helped to discover it lived long and healthy lives. A study showed that of the 58 people who were present when the tomb and sarcophagus were opened, only eight died within a dozen years. All the others were still alive, including Howard Carter, who died of lymphoma in 1939 at the age of 64. The last survivors included Lady Evelyn Herbert, Lord Carnarvon's daughter who was among the first people to enter the tomb after its discovery in November 1922, who lived for a further 57 years and died in 1980,[24] and American archaeologist J.O. Kinnaman who died in 1961, 39 years after the event.

Deaths popularly attributed to Tutankhamun's curse

The tomb was opened on 29 November 1922.

George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, financial backer of the excavation who was present at the tomb's opening, died on 5 April 1923 after a mosquito bite became infected; he died 4 months and 7 days after the opening of the tomb.
George Jay Gould I, a visitor to the tomb, died in the French Riviera on 16 May 1923 after he developed a fever following his visit.
A. C. Mace, a member of Carter's excavation team, died in April 1928, having suffered from pleurisy and pneumonia in his final years.
Captain The Hon. Richard Bethell, Carter's secretary, died on 15 November 1929: died in bed in a Mayfair club, the victim of a suspected smothering.
Howard Carter opened the tomb on 16 February 1923, and died well over sixteen years later on 2 March 1939; however, some have still attributed his death to the curse.

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SNOPES:

Don’t be swayed by the number of names listed on screeds like this. Any public figure is bound to have a much wider circle of acquaintance than an ordinary citizen would. Moreover, the acquaintanceship is often one-sided: though many of the people enumerated on this list might properly claim to have “known” Clinton, he wouldn’t know or remember having met a great number of them.

“Body count” lists are not a new phenomenon. Lists documenting all the allegedly “suspicious” deaths of persons connected with the assassination of John F. Kennedy have been circulating for decades, and the same techniques used to create and spread the JFK lists have been employed in the Clinton version:

List every dead person with even the most tenuous of connections to your subject. It doesn’t matter how these people died, or how tangential they were to your subject’s life. The longer the list, the more impressive it looks and the less likely anyone will be to challenge it. By the time readers get to the bottom of the list, they’ll be too weary to wonder what could possibly be relevant about the death of people such as Bill Clinton’s mother’s chiropractor.
Play word games. Make sure every death is presented as “mysterious.” All accidental deaths are to be labelled “suspicious,” even though by definition accidents occur when something unexpected goes wrong. Every self-inflicted death discussed must include the phrase “ruled a suicide” to imply just the opposite. When an autopsy contradicts a “mysterious death” theory, dispute it; when none was performed because none was needed, claim that “no autopsy was allowed.” Make liberal use of words such as ‘allegedly’ and ‘supposedly’ to dismiss facts you can’t support or contradict with hard evidence.
Make sure every inconsistency or unexplained detail you can dredge up is offered as evidence of a conspiracy, no matter how insignificant or pointless it may be. If an obvious suicide is discovered wearing only one shoe, ignore the physical evidence of self-inflicted death and dwell on the missing shoe. You don’t have to establish an alternate theory of the death; just keep harping that the missing shoe “can’t be explained.”
If the data doesn’t fit your conclusion, ignore it. You don’t have to explain why the people who claimed to have the most damaging goods on Bill Clinton (e.g., Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky, Kenneth Starr), walked around unscathed while dozens of bit players were supposedly bumped off. It’s inconvenient for you, so don’t mention it.
Most important, don’t let facts and details stand in your way! If you can pass off a death by pneumonia as a “suicide,” do it! If a cause of death contradicts your conspiracy theory, claim it was “never determined.” If your chronology of events is impossible, who cares? It’s not like anybody is going to check up on this stuff …

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@bmdrocks21

But even then, we didn't get involved until the Japanese bombed us. If Germany took over Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia and then stopped there, I would say we shouldn't engage over that.

Of course, all of history disagrees with you.

If Alexander stopped at the Hellespont...

If Rome had stopped at Gaul....

If the Mongols stopped at China...

If Spain had stopped at Tenochtitlan....

If Napoleon had stopped at Italy....

when do conquerors stop? when conquerors are defeated.

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Congressman admits UFOs are real

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@Wylted

I don't know anybody who doesn't think that some flying objects are unidentified.

Burnett says "if it in fact is real, then it has to be something out of our galaxy"

Burnett fails to explain:

what it is or
how real is qualified or
why Burnett has excluded the possibility of aliens from within our galaxy

But saying IF is what falsifies Wylted's claim here. Burnett does not admit to anything.

"If pigs could fly" is not an admission that pigs do fly.

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@Wylted

We should probably note that NSW police are currently treating Langker's stalking problem as more a mental health issue than a criminal issue. The most likely outcome will be a court ordered mental health examination. I think Langker has the right to make all the racist YouTube videos he wants (and YouTube has the right to say "no thank you"), but there is a point where invading a public figure's life becomes a problem that needs to be addressed.

I'm not confident that line was crossed here.

Making videos from Barilaro's home bathtub,
insulting Barilaro's Italian heritage with a Luigi outfit while he's out at the pub with friends and family and
yelling questions to Barilaro while he's mourning at a funeral are individually borderline incidents but collectively might justify some kind of mental health intervention. I agree its a borderline case. Australia is certainly less tolerant of racism and verbal attacks than the US.

I can't say I find any of it funny. Pathetic and super creepy? yes. Funny? no.

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@bmdrocks21

Is any interest we have in Ukraine larger than the cost of a potential war with Russia or at the very least a deteriorated relationship with Russia?

I'd say probably not. So..... no.

Was there any US interest in Austria larger than the cost of potential war with Germany? no

Was there any US interest in Czechoslovakia larger than the the cost of a potential war with Germany? no

Was there any US interest in Poland larger than the cost of a potential war with Germany? no

Was there any US interest in Nanking larger than the cost of potential war with Japan? no

Was there any US interest in French Indochina larger than the the cost of a potential war with Japan? no

Was there any US interest in Hong Kong larger than the cost of a potential war with Japan? no

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The Mandalorian

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@janesix

I agree they were great. If you're not much of a movie watcher you might not have picked up on how much of the show was a loving homage to and retelling of classic US and Italian Westerns as well as the Japanese samurai movies of Akira Kurosawa. If you liked the Mandalorian try Ford's" The Searchers", Peckinpah's "Wild Bunch", Leone's "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" and above all Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" (possibly the most influential action movie of all time).

If you are looking for another good sci-fi series I highly recommend "The Expanse"

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4 years ago

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If Hillary Won

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@Wylted

Let's recall that Wylted said yesterday that he was not confident that the COVID virus was real and speculated that the govt. was deliberately mis-labeling death from flu and other causes to fake a pandemic that never happened. Let's also note that Wylted consistently opposes the vaccines that now represent the most essential preventative medicine against the virus which he may or may not believe is real. Now Wylted wants us to credit his opinion on how COVID spread through the US and the effectiveness of Trump's quarantine. Let's conclude that Wylted is only interested in propagating disinformation and unconcerned about maintaining any internal logic or rational consistency to that disinformation from day to day.

There is no way.

way, dude

Liberals were lashing out at trump as a racist when he stopped air travel from China.

Liberals have been taking note of Trump's racist practices and beliefs since at least the late 70's.

Hillary could not have sealed off the country either.

I don't think there's much doubt that Hillary would have followed the CDC's recommendations regarding quarantine in this and all other cases. China banned all travel in and out of Wuhan on Jan 23rd which pretty effectively stopped the spread of disease from there. The CDC recommended to Trump a travel ban plus mandatory 14-day quarantine for all travelers from China to the US on Jan 28th. Canada, for example, followed this advice on Jan 29th. Trump implement a travel ban on Feb 2nd but failed to implement a 14-day quarantine and did not ban or quarantine US citizens flying from China to the US. Of course, China does not encourage its citizens to travel internationally under the best of circumstances so 85-90% of all US-China air traffic is US citizens so the net impact on people flying home from China was pretty minimal. In any case, by the time Trump acted, little to no virus was escaping earlier and more stringent Chinese quarantines.

So while any accusation of racism specific to this ban may be questionable, we knew even then that COVID infections were not specific to any nationality and that an American could bring the disease into the US just as easily as a Chinese- so nationalism, exceptionalism, and plain old ignorance were certainly fair charges.

We can see now that the overwhelming majority of US cases came from Italy, not China, with patient 0 in New York arriving on Feb 20th. The CDC first recommended a level 4 quarantine for all international travelers on Feb 3rd (although the WHO strenuously opposed this) and by Feb 13th advised Trump that the pandemic's spread in the US was probably inevitable. Canada halted all air traffic from Europe on Feb 9th. Trump finally banned travel from Europe (with an ineffective voluntary 14 day quarantine) but not UK or Russia on Mar 12th, three weeks after patient 0 and more than a month after science told him to.

Here is why it is better everyone is infected fast. If everyone gets the immunities early on, than there is less chance for this to mutate into a super bug.

Obviously, this directly contradicts everything Wylted said above and obviously every new individual that get the bug is a new culture for mutations to arise so the more people infected directly correlates to more mutations. The US had the worst pandemic response under Trump in terms of per capita infections compared to any other nation and consequently the most unnecessary death. Biden's first day ramp up of vaccinations and international quarantines quickly tamped the virus' spread in the US which is now a world leader in numbers of immune people.

At this point it will stick around forever because it now has multiple strains.

Or it was never real to begin with- make up your mind.

There are many strains of measles, smallpox, polio yet the US successfully suppressed these disease decades ago. If we ignore the anti-vaxxers and invest in public heath, we have every reason to be optimistic about controlling COVID (and future inevitable SARS outbreaks).

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@Sum1hugme

->@oromagi
I can't prove it I guess, But I fear that, being an ex KGB agent, Putin wants to restore the former territorial holdings of the Soviet Union. Probably out of a sense of dishonor after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russian schoolchildren are taught that Russian history, language, and culture begins in the Ukraine. While this is true, Russia has consistently treated Ukraine as subject territory for the last few hundred years rather than a native Russian state. While Putin seems to realize that restoration of the old Soviet Union is impossible, he regularly asserts that there as natural Russian state of ethnic Russians that extends far into Eastern Europe and he characterizes himself as a liberator of those trapped and oppressed ethnic Russians- very similar to Stalin's justifications for dominating Eastern Europe in the 20th century.

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@Wylted

So, in spite of several requests, OP was unable to provide one piece of evidence to support his OP claim that Hillary murdered some guy last Saturday.

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https://youtu.be/R6jykDEkm-A

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@Sum1hugme

I believe Ukraine is trying to join NATO. If they get rejected, I fear Russia will see that as an invitation to annex the rest of the Ukraine.

agreed. Europe would be short-sighted to reject NATO for fear of Putin. Putin will take advantage of that fear and then Europe will have to confront him anyway. Better Churchill then Chamberlain.

What do you suppose will happen to occupied Crimea if Ukraine joined NATO? Do you think NATO would demand the reintegration of Crimea into the Ukraine?

It seems that the best advice is to let Crimea go but again I think that is weak. Putin is already invading the West- Brexit, 2016 Elections, Jan 6th., the oil and meat packing hacks, so the arguments for maintaining Russian stability are increasingly less persuasive as Putin keeps making moves. Personally, I think Putin is Russia's weakest link- travels a lot in the open, spends a lot of time vacationing far from Moscow, no natural successors and an increasingly restless populace. Putin has some tragic "accident" and during the ensuing power struggle NATO re-asserts Ukrainian sovereignty against a resistance without leadership Putin has got to demonstrate that he can be contained, satisfied with what he has or else he's just another Hitler. Or at least that is what I'd point out to Putin before requesting that he draw down at least 60,000 troops from the border before the end of summer.

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What Would You Ideally do if You Fell Into a Lion Inclosure From an Overview?

The secret is to join the pride

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What Would You Ideally do if You Fell Into a Lion Inclosure From an Overview?

https://youtu.be/Sju3kSTAzdI

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What Would You Ideally do if You Fell Into a Lion Inclosure From an Overview?

https://youtu.be/9WGFbD5bM9g

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Biden asks supporters to help report people for being rightwing

It's an established scientific fact that every time someone says "false flag" their perceived intelligence quotient drops an average of 1.6 points.

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If Russia expressed clear intent to fully annex the Ukraine, should America guarantee Ukrainian independence?

I don't think Russia would express clear intent. They've already invaded the Crimean Peninsula, Donetsk, & Luhansk without expressing any clear intent. I do think that Ukraine should join NATO which would bind many nations to protecting Ukrainian sovereignty. I think unilaterally guaranteeing another nation's independence is sort of beyond any nation's mandate but if Ukraine were a signatory to NATO then yes, I think the US should join all of Europe, Canada, Turkey, etc in a campaign to expel the invaders.

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What Would You Ideally do if You Fell Into a Lion Inclosure From an Overview?

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@Wylted

Give me your advice for fighting a lion then.

I already did.

The key is to slowly weave your hair into a little hat, you see.

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4 years ago

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If Hillary Won

If Hillary had won in 2016, American COVID deaths would be fewer than 100,000 but would have lost the 2020 election due to quarantine backlash. Ted Cruz would be President now in Geneva, giving Putin a rubdown and calling him his "macho role model."

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What Would You Ideally do if You Fell Into a Lion Inclosure From an Overview?

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@RationalMadman

or ask the nearest zookeeper to unlock the exit.

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What Would You Ideally do if You Fell Into a Lion Inclosure From an Overview?

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@RationalMadman

@oromagi

Give a better one vs lions unarmed

How could I top a slow hat? Maybe sculpt a faux antelope out of pee-mud and tree-bark?

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Conspiracy Theories you believe

What are some conspiracy theories you believe?

I believe that Donald Trump is Putin's creature- that some kompromat approximate to the pee tape exists and that Russian money kept Trump afloat for about ten years. I believe that if Russia launched missiles at the US while Trump was in charge, Trump would order the US Army to stand down.

That said, I think Putin wasted most of Russia's ICBM arsenal on during the Second Chechnyan War and has not rebuilt. That is, Russia's capacity for Global Thermonuclear is mostly or entirely maskarova.

From the same sources, I believe that China has surpassed the US in rocket technology and presently counts on that tech to keep the US Navy out of the Western Pacific in any near-term conflict.

I believe that George W Bush and Prince Bandar bin Sultan (at least) had some prior understanding regarding an attack by Al-Qaeda in Sept. 2001 and covered up that agreement after 9-11. Bush was not surprised to learn of an attack on 9-11 although he may well have been surprised by the actual targets or scales of the attack (even bin Laden didn't expect the towers to actually collapse) and was very likely surprised that Washington DC was targeted. Whatever the original plan, I believe that Bush anticipated that he'd have a causus belli against Iraq immediately following the event and was surprised that al-Qaeda and not Iraq was implicated in the aftermath.
I believe that Halliburton deliberately provoked Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait by slant drilling into Iraq in exchange for $7 billion and illegally sold dual-use drilling systems to Iraq as well as pulse neutron generators to Libya for the same purposes- those of creating false pretexts for potential US interventions.

Likewise, I believe that DIck Cheney was ultimately responsible for the Niger yellowcake forgeries used as false pretext for the 2003 intervention in Iraq.

I believe in the October Surprise- that GHW Bush flew to Paris to postpone the return of US hostages in exchange for covert military support in Iran's war vs Iraq (a US ally at the time).
Similarly, I believe that Richard Nixon treasonously blew up the 1968 Paris Peace accords, promising a better deal he had no intention of honoring and extending the Vietnam War by five more years.

What are some you don't believe, but wouldn't be surprised if they turned out to be true?

Roosevelt knew that the Pearl Harbor attack was imminent and resolved to take the hit.
The assassination of Olaf Palme was a fascist hit job
The McKinley administration never believed that USS Maine was blown up by a Cuban mine
Churchill's seizure of the Sultan Osman and the Reşadiye was not a decision of the moment but a deliberate provocation designed to force Turkey to join the Axis, thereby opening Gallipoli to attack which Churchill assumed would quickly fall and give the Allies a flank from the Black Sea as well as(and ultimately more importantly) giving the Allies cause to seize and exploit the oilfields of the Middle East
The Polk administration engineered the return of Santa Anna from Cuba in 1846, hoping to provoke the Mexican-American War
Capt. Silas Soule was murdered by his fellow cavalrymen or other agents of Col. John Chivington as payback for testifying truthfully regarding Chivington's conduct at the Sand Creek Massacre

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4 years ago

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What Would You Ideally do if You Fell Into a Lion Inclosure From an Overview?

make a makeshift hat, do this slowly

Best survival tip ever

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@Wylted

How many coincidences have to happen before you realize the Clinton's are not altruistic

I have never suggested that the Clintons are altruistic. Look at how absurdly concrete you are in your reasoning- either x is a murderer or x is altruistic- as if there aren't a million potential states of being between those poles.

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@Wylted

The aren't human they are politicians

In Abraham Lincoln's America- of, by, and for the people- everybody is a politician and therefore inhuman in your eyes. Lincoln the lizard king.

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@Wylted

The whole plan is stated to create a lightning rod in the middle east to draw terrorists towards american soldiers and away from Israel.

Perhaps israel lobby in Washington disagreed with the publicly stated opinion of Israel (which may have only happened to create plausible deniability).

We know america doesn't benefit from causing blowback like 9 11. Who benefits? I think the fact Netanyahu and mossad agents celebrating on 9 11, tell you who benefits

This remark strikes me as pretty ignorant of history and geopolitics.

Before the Holocaust, Zionism was mostly a dirty word and deeply unpopular among American Jews but just as the scale of the German and Russian genocides became apparent in 1945, Israel suddenly seemed like a popular solution to all parties.

The millions of surviving Jews in Europe and Russia wanted to come to the US as the first choice to join the largest surviving Jewish population in the world but even after the war, 77% of Americans polled opposed increasing the immigration limits on Europe and wanted no more than about 10,000 Jewish immigrant per year. UK citizens were similarly unwelcoming and at the time, a new Israeli state was seen viewed like a Sioux reservation, a patch of unwanted land in which to herd an unwanted population. Since Western apartheid neatly coincided with the Jewish sense of destiny, Zionism suddenly became popular. The USSR was the first state to recognize Israel, followed by Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Poland. They weren't celebrating Jewish destiny, they were exiling unwanted peoples to a far and desert land.

The US is 33 times the population and 53 times the economy of Israel. The US's annual defense budget is 37 times that of Israel's (and even then the US comps about 40% of Israel's defense bill). Israel serves as the US's favorite aircraft carrier and submarine in the Middle East, extending the American eyes and ears and airpower that made oil cheap and plentiful for a superpower addicted to the stuff. Israel was created because the US defied the UN (to the everlasting deficit of that organization) and ever since America is the only foreign nation who's opinion really counts in Israel. These facts were not lost on Osama bin-Laden when listing the grievances he thought justified 9-11.

"The expansion of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily.....reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and to end your support of the Indians in Kashmir, the Russians against the Chechens and to also cease supporting the Manila Government against the Muslims in Southern Philippines."

bin-Laden correctly credited the US for US military interventions against Muslims and not Israel but even subtracting Israel from the equation, al-Qaeda still had many more rationalizations for attack. Even so, many experts note that bin-Laden never showed much interest in Palestine and the relationship between al-Qaeda and Hamas was always antagonistic. Long before 9-11, Palestinians considered bin Laden just another in a long list of Arab leaders looking to exploit the name of Palestine but ignore that people's plight.

You state that the US is in the Middle East because of Israel's plan to deflect terrorism away from their borders but the history never supports that conclusion. For example, in 2003 the year the US re-invaded Iraq, Israel suffered 26 realized terrorist attacks (many more foiled) resulting in 142 deaths while the US survived 7 bombings in Iraq, three in Afghanistan with no American casualties (18 Italian soldiers were killed in one attack).

Historically, the US has done a lot more to save Muslims from the wrath of Israel than the other way around. The US works to protect Palestinians from Israeli incursions far more often than to protect Israel. Kissinger strongly intervened to keep Israel from destroying Egypt's Third Army (100,000 soldiers) trapped on the wrong side of the Red Sea at the end of the Yom Kippur War and Egypt's gratitude made the peace of Camp David possible. Kennedy opposed an Israeli nuclear program so vehemently that he threatened air strikes and it was only Kennedy's assassination that really made it possible to develop the bomb.

Many experts view Netanyahu as another likely pawn of Putin's, like Trump. In his youth, Jared Kushner used to have to give up his bed when Netanyahu was in town, their relationship was so close and Ivanka's marriage to Netanyahu's favorite American family is easily interpreted as an alliance between two of Russia's favorite politicians.

I consider Israel's treatment of Palestinians no better than the racist apartheids in the US or South Africa or in the case of Gaza, a kind of slow-motion ghetto genocide. I have long encouraged a non-violent opposition to Israeli policy along the lines of Mandela or MLK or Gandhi and consider Palestinian reliance on terrorist tactics the primary obstacle to liberation and peace.

Palestinians and Israelis share a common ancestry from ten thousand years ago and ultimately are more alike one another than either is like any other people. Palestinians are not Arabs- they are the Philistines that fought David and the Sea Peoples that fought Ramses II. They are the Phoenicians from which we derive our alphabet. They built the Palace of Minos on Crete, founded Carthage, and conquered the Spanish coast. Hannibal Barca was a Palestinian. Alongside those Palestinians, the Israelis share a most incredible story of endurance, survival, and relevance that traces back to the settlement of Jericho and the advent of Civilization itself.

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@Wylted

->@oromagi
Speculation. You are accusing real human beings of murder 72 hours ago. What evidence do you have? Or are you just bearing false witness for the trolls?
Why do their enemies keep getting suicides? These are very convenient deaths, and Epstein died just prior to being able to roll over on all the pedophiles who visited pedophile island?

Speculation. You are accusing real human beings of murder 72 hours ago. What evidence do you have? I think we've answered the question of whether or not you are merely trolling.

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