Gorth

Sorry @LittleArmadillo0 I removed the last post of yours. The profanity in the image featured a little too prominently to ignore

Reading that whole thread....

Oh, I'm such a bad subject of Her Majesty's I'm sure the outback is large enough to hide in. On a serious note, you know I couldn't care less about countries and nationalism. It's some perverted idea that was introduced in 1648 that you should die for a country. Ideas and values? Maybe. Nation states? Never.

Hehe... someone leaked memos from the UK Ambassador in Washington intended for London. He had some interesting things to say about Trump. No surprises though, more like stating the obvious: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48898231 "We don't really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction-riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept." He questioned whether this White House "will ever look competent". A bit rich from a government that haven't worked out how to exit the EU yet

I'm not a shrink, but I could easily imagine Trump on the podium at the Nuremberg Rally in 1933, enjoying the adulation of the masses, he would fit the profile like a hand in a glove. I dismissed his initial lies as the typical election lies that all politicians give the voters. Not sure anybody really believe election promises (although I'll make allowances for the Fox News audience, but I don't exactly hold them in high regard, unless you read/watch it for the giggles). What made me start thinking this guy has a serious problem with truth and the real world was the lies and exaggerations around his inauguration and the crowd sizes. Hence my comment above about his envy of totalitarian rulers, which can just order a sizeable crowd out on the streets. Edited for weird Friday afternoon spelling techniques applied

I always wondered if Trump suffers from some kind of small **** complex, envying people like Kim, Xi, Putin etc. for the power they wield over their subjects.

Hahaha, Ok. I just seemed to remember you had a fondness for Bourbon, not the specifics of the brands

My condolences @Guard Dog https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-48862621/jim-beam-warehouse-fire-destroys-45000-barrels-of-bourbon

I'm pretty sure too he can recommission some old Sherman M4's from somewhere. They can be sent to the Mexican border afterwards to help the locals against the invasion.

I remember years ago, going to Copenhagen and browse through the comics at Fantask was awesome. Wonder if it still exists...

Oh Ehh... Ooops? Apologies Hurlshot. Child abuse a subject I feel strongly about. Time to roll down the sleeves again

Even the old nethack didn't go that far... it deleted your save when you loaded it and created a new save when you exited the game. If you died while playing (and RNG could be brutal) it was back to rolling a new level 1 Edit: Spent the weekend with friends, enjoying food, drinks and live music. Locals in a small town, rural Victoria, but some of it was pretty good. All of them talented with good voices etc., just different levels of experience. Hard to not feel sorry for a duo that were obviously very shy and insecure, but the singer? She had a fantastic voice, just need to learn to let go of herself in front of an audience, even a small one

Ok, now I'm seriously curious. Exactly what am I manipulating here? As for scoring points, I know as well as the next even remotely sentient being, that there are no winners in internet debates, only losers. Some people just get a kick out of attention, I guess you call them "winners" if you pay them attention. But but yeah, to repeat the question, manipulating exactly what? On a tangent not related to the doings of the Cristian churches here, how would you, generic you, not Hurlshot you, measure most persecuted anyway? Number of individuals? Degree of persecution (i.e. being fed to lions or just not being allowed to stone women who get raped or by duration? In which case the Jews probably wins). Most persecution of Christians these days is done by other Christian denominations. Notable exceptions being places like Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt and Nigeria where the persecution is done by Muslims.

Maybe I should have been more specific and generalized a bit more The guy is just waste of oxygen, trying to blackmail a sports organization. That bit was more an observation of Australian society in general, that religious groups like the ACF not only exists, but wield as much power as they do. Christian churches here in general, seems to consider themselves above the law and don't have to answer to secular legislation, to the point of actively trying to dismantle or obstruct legislation that makes it illegal to cover up their crimes. The hypocrisy remark was aimed at the attitude, homosexuality is bad unless you're just raping little boys, in which case it's perfectly fine and nobody else business. Yeah, stop discriminating us indeed, just because we're "Christians" and so go pester someone else. That was also the point of my remark about maybe just allow the Muslims to enforce Shari'a law too, if heading down that pathway. Insert Monty Python skit with stoning of people he say 'Jehova' here.

I have a lot of faith in 'self-styled "Christian" groups' to be completely devoid of morals and ethics. It's the hypocrisy and lack of balls of the guy that bothers me. If he had been a Christian, he should have been familiar with the idea of do onto others what you wish them to do to you. You are a discriminating bigot, expect people to take offense at it. I doubt the guy is more Christian than my little toe though, and Zoraptor hit the nail in the head. It's all about money and how he could get out of his current arrangement with his wallet lined with a new shiny layer of dollar bills while looking for more profitable organizations. He just isn't man enough to say so and get off the Island, the sooner the better really.

Double posting... because the quote function is just being obnoxious, sorry guys. I got an email a few months ago on a yahoo mail address that I have, with an old password of mine in the subject line. Somebody claiming to have hacked my pc, huh, you recognize this password, right? rather smug sounding. We have had control of your pc and web cam for a while and filmed you and what you were doing while watching porn sites. Pay $1800 to this bit coin recipient (some info) or we'll share the videos with all your friends Yeah, laughing, because one, the password hadn't been used for 6-7 years and second, I don't really waste time on porn sites, so I knew right away it was all made up. Probably based on some probability stuff that x percent of the population does what they claim and somebody might feel it applied to them specifically. Email lasted for about 60 seconds while I pondered if it was worth handing out to the police, but I decided that would be a waste of both my time and their time (they would most likely just tell me to delete it and forget it). The scary bit is, I can see how someone could fall for a scammer like that in a moment of panic. Also worrying that some old website/webstore somewhere lost it's user data somehow (which is why I use disposable email addresses and passwords these days for stuff that is requiring an address to sign up).

Trying to catch up on some of all the links people share... An interesting bit of history in there... thanks

Nope, the church, the Catholic one in particular is very powerful in many aspects of society. Hence, the welcome to the 19th Century remark. That's also why the churches managed to cover up the rampant child molestation taking place for so long, it took a year long Royal Commission to uncover just the tip of the iceberg. We are talking about thousands of cases of rape of young boys by the priests, all of them covering each other and pulling strings to make sure even if caught, they don't/didn't get prosecuted. The whole child abuse thing is such a touchy subject that the Church leaders are trying to stop legislation making it mandatory to report it https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/23/catholic-church-opposes-expansion-of-child-sexual-abuse-reporting-in-wa Edit: From the wiki page for those unfamiliar with the term Royal Commission: A royal commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue in some monarchies. They have been held in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Saudi Arabia. A royal commission is similar in function to a commission of inquiry (or, less commonly, enquiry) found in other countries such as Ireland, South Africa, and regions such as Hong Kong. It has considerable powers, generally greater even than those of a judge but restricted to the terms of reference of the commission. Emphasis mine, part of the reason it scares those who are subject to their investigation, sometimes being both prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner in the same body. It was particularly delightful when they took on the big banks and aired their dirty laundry and shameless business practices, right down to exposing how they charged dead people for financial advice offered after their deaths, billing the relatives.

In case anyone wondered, Australia is an oddity. A country with a first world economy and a third world society. One of the more embarrassing cases: Rugby player gets sacked because of discrimination against the LGBT community. He now sues the Rugby organization because they are discriminating against his religion, because it (his religion) says it's his god given holy duty to make sure that gays suffers and burns in hell (which is what he was campaigning for in social media). I guess if they cave in and let him get away with it, next stop would be allow literal interpretation of Sharia Law for Muslims too? His first fundraiser campaign (run by a fundamentalist Christian group, that would make the Westboro church proud) got canned by the fundraising site (GoFundMe), they apparently didn't want that kind of person being supported through them, but the ACL (Australian Christian Lobby) doesn't give up that easily and will raise funds through other means. Their message seems to be "Stop discriminating against our discriminating other people!" /roll eyes Hypocrites much? Yeah. Much of Australia still seems to live in the 19th Century, despite some areas having electricity and even internet now. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48753566

Considering Trump's dislike of a free press, I'm sure he was privately celebrating the murder of one, even if it wasn't a US journalist

That didn't seem to be a major obstacle for them in Iraq which was what? 70% Shi'a (rough numbers)?

I'm sure Isis would love to get a new patch of land to call home (so many Shi'a Muslims to kill, don't even have to search for them), now that they have been evicted from Syria and Iraq, especially if this new territory was kindly sponsored by the US tax payers. I'm surprised that the Americans don't pass on a larger part of their military expenses to the Saudis than they currently do to be honest, since it's mostly their work they are doing for them.

I guess Monty Python would say here, now for something completely different... Help! We're too rich, we need to be taxed more! American billionaires are arguing for more taxes for the super rich: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48752927 " While the group did not back a particular candidate, it praised a proposal by Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Elizabeth Warren that would lift taxes on those with more than $50m, a measure that would affect the 75,000 wealthiest families. She estimated that it would raise $2.75tn over 10 years. " Numbers are of course all estimates by people with agendas, but even if missing the real figures by a mile, a few trillion dollars could always be used for something other than gathering dusts I guess Edit: "The letter pointed out that fellow billionaire Warren Buffett has said he is taxed at a lower rate than his secretary. "

No, the Americans have that market cornered in this region (USS Vincennes managed to shoot down an Airbus A300 with 290 people on board before it could release it's torpedoes against it, or whatever was the official Pentagon explanation at the time) As for the actual drone in question, the picture isn't particularly credible, because it just looks way too small to be the downed drone: "Global Hawks are massive surveillance platforms, in operation since 2001, with a wingspan of more than 130 feet and a maximum takeoff weight of more than 16 tons, equivalent to roughly seven shipping containers of cocaine. "

5 years of tanking on a PT and never got to do a nim ops with him. Shadow (thats the pub version of assassin) tanking almost feels like cheating