What's in the News? 2.0

[Kitteredge]

It's amazing that they're going to lie us into another war. I mean, not even lie us into it, just do it. At least with Iraq, they went through great effort to produce a bullshit narrative that enough people were willing to swallow. This isn't even that.

But I don't know if Trump will do it. He's a coward at heart. It was cool dropping an incredibly expensive MOAB in the middle of an Afghan desert or blow up an empty Syrian airport, but engaging an actual enemy and seeing it through isn't something he does. He doesn't even fire people face to face, he has a lackey do it. He has no stomach for real conflict. His advisors do, but eventually, I hope, he wears them out with his weaselly scaredy-cat routine.

[TheGlyphstone]

It's another case where he's applying the only method of 'success' he's learned - brinksmanship and hard pressure to politics instead of business. If this was a business negotiation, it'd be right out of his 'Art of the Deal' playbook. He's unable to adapt to situations where he doesn't have the inherently stronger hand in a bluff, and when the consequences are larger than simply losing money.

[Kitteredge]

Yeah, his only play is to do a deal, suddenly pull out of a deal, suddenly make more demands to the accepted deal, bully and bludgeon until he gets his way, ultimately fail to live up to terms of the deal. Only there's no real play with Iran. He destroyed the historic multi-national deal with Iran and now there's nothing to do but bully and posture. There's no real goal, although it's clear the GOP/Trump are testing election-year wedge issues (straight pride, immigration, war).

[gaggedLouise]

It's amazing that they're going to lie us into another war. I mean, not even lie us into it, just do it. At least with Iraq, they went through great effort to produce a bullshit narrative that enough people were willing to swallow. This isn't even that.

But I don't know if Trump will do it. He's a coward at heart. It was cool dropping an incredibly expensive MOAB in the middle of an Afghan desert or blow up an empty Syrian airport, but engaging an actual enemy and seeing it through isn't something he does. He doesn't even fire people face to face, he has a lackey do it. He has no stomach for real conflict. His advisors do, but eventually, I hope, he wears them out with his weaselly scaredy-cat routine.

And to cap it off, Trump now says he held back when his generals told him that 150 people were going to get killed by the strikes...How credible is that? The man loves to pose as a tough guy, a real cowboy, he's been known to boast about nuking North Korea to get Kim Jong-un (before he became buddies with him) and he's called Iran an enemy of the civilized world. Surely he understands that military strikes like these are almost bound to claim hundreds of casualties, even some civilian casualties?    Or is he so naive he really believes in the talk about "surgical precision bombing" with minimal human casualties at all times?

[Markus]

And to cap it off, Trump now says he held back when his generals told him that 150 people were going to get killed by the strikes...How credible is that? The man loves to pose as a tough guy, a real cowboy, he's been known to boast about nuking North Korea to get Kim Jong-un (before he became buddies with him) and he's called Iran an enemy of the civilized world. Surely he understands that military strikes like these are almost bound to claim hundreds of casualties, even some civilian casualties?    Or is he so naive he really believes in the talk about "surgical precision bombing" with minimal human casualties at all times?

Trump says military was 'cocked and loaded' to retaliate

The expected casualty count is something you'd ask your generals at the beginning of the operation, not 10 minutes out right?

[gaggedLouise]

Trump says military was 'cocked and loaded' to retaliate

The expected casualty count is something you'd ask your generals at the beginning of the operation, not 10 minutes out right?

True, and the figures he should really be worrying about are the likely body count (on both sides) for even a contained war with Iran (one that doesn't pull in other major powers like Russia). Because if he had launched these strikes, they would so not have been the end of the story - just the beginning!

The "I couldn't take 150 dead Iranians, so I halted it" claim is just too dumb to accept.

[Mechelle]

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/20/uk/uk-mark-field-greenpeace-protester-intl-hnk/index.html

A UK politician is being investigated for slamming a protester against a pillar at a dinner event where she was unarmed and was walking past him. He grabbed her by the throat and forced her out of the venue. Surprisingly he has apologized and said while he did it out of fear for security reasons that he assaulted the woman and clearly used excessive force. She is from Greenpeace. It's honestly surprising to see an actual apology like that, people tend to just endlessly double down and deny these days. Various of his fellows before his apology came out defended his actions and said it's what anyone should do and that she was lucky he showed restraint.

Although Mark Field has apologised and been suspended as a minister by Theresa May (who is still Prime Minister) plenty of people on the right continue to leap to his defence, even though they are the ones who accuse the left of being "snowflakes" and are horrified when the likes of Nigel Farage are hit with a milkshake. You can say the same, but opposite, about people on the left of course. It's strange watching the coverage to see virtually everyone at the banquet remain motionless while the protest goes on and then while Field thrusts the protester against the wall.
The protester has said she won't press charges, but that is meaningless in English law, as charges can be brought by the Crown Prosecution Service regardless.

Elsewhere, a story is starting to emerge of the police being called to the home of Boris Johnson, Theresa May's likely successor, in the early hours to protect a vulnerable female. I am sure we will hear more of this...

[Tolvo]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/21/police-called-to-loud-altercation-at-boris-johnsons-home

Yeah I was just reading that. A strange story. At least seemingly it was more of a verbal fight with items being damaged over Boris and her ending up in a physical fight.

Milkshakes have proven to be rather effective political tools strangely enough.

[Skynet]

Milkshake dunking is effective because it puts reactionaries into a lose/lose situation. Although legally a form of assault, it is not exactly a deadly weapon and thus a violent response will look disproportionate. Like the Australian guy slamming Egg Boy to the ground.

If the reactionary does nothing to being dunked on, they instead look weak.

Finally, it's a good means of showing the right's true colors. Whether it's them justifying Heather Heyer dying of a heart attack in a failed attempt to exonerate her murderer, or Republicans passing legislation to allow people to drive over protesters, their overreaction to bigoted politicians' clothes being stained with food comes off as hypocritical, over-exaggerated outrage.

[Tolvo]

It's a more concealable and easy to throw version of throwing a pie. The milkshakings have honestly been surprising in efficiency.

[Skynet]

A good video on the subject:

[RedRose]

Can't say I've heard of throwing anything.

OT: 42% of the French believe a rapist's responsibility is lowered if the victim "behaved provocatively" in public, and that if a victim "really defends herself" she'll chase off the guy. Many people also claim to be annoyed about #metoo/not believe the high numbers. My uncle said it's about "women courted when they didn't want it" 

Someone on FB posted: "Articles relates about assumptions and stereotypes concerning victims of rape in France. I translated some parts of the article.

"For one out of six French people, women can enjoy being forced and they would think "yes" when they say "no" to sexual relations."

"Half of those interviewed believe that forcing someone to have sex is not rape, but sexual assault. "

"One third of French people (32%, compared to 29% in 2015) think that rape is a "misunderstanding".

""The rapist's responsibility is also attenuated for 42% of respondents if the victim has had a provocative attitude in public (compared to 40% in 2015), while 30% consider that a rape results from the victim taking a risk. "

Sexism and rape culture remain very prevalent in French society."

I want to be surprised about it, yet people suck. A school principal told me he couldn't hire me to teach teen boys, and wouldn't I be scared alone with them? I said no. He claimed it was for my own sake and he wouldn't even have interviewed me if he knew, but there was only a headshot on my CV so... (so he didn't know how I really looked).

[Tolvo]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/armed-militias-pledge-to-fight-for-fugitive-oregon-gop-lawmakers-at-any-cost

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/23/politics/oregon-gop-state-senators-legislative-session-climate/index.html

So uh, there is almost a sort of rebellion that could lead to open conflict going on in Oregon? As the state senate is Democrat majority to prevent the passing of legislation about climate change the Republicans of that senate have fled and gone into hiding. This isn't the only time that has happened. The strange thing is one senator openly stated he would shoot police that attempt to force him to attend the state senate, and militia groups have been gathering to fight for the Republican senators and have been gathering and threatening to fight and die against the state to defend the senators. There was a session cancelled because so many militia members gathered nearby armed and could have stormed the building and killed the Democratic senators and anyone there.

[Sara Nilsson]

https://kotaku.com/fortnite-streamer-raises-almost-1-million-for-charity-1835789022

GuardianCon, which began a few years back as a small Destiny con and has since grown into an all-weekend show held in July in Orlando, also runs a week-long charity stream. Which has just raised over $3 million for a children’s hospital in Memphis.

[Lustful Bride]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/armed-militias-pledge-to-fight-for-fugitive-oregon-gop-lawmakers-at-any-cost

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/23/politics/oregon-gop-state-senators-legislative-session-climate/index.html

So uh, there is almost a sort of rebellion that could lead to open conflict going on in Oregon? As the state senate is Democrat majority to prevent the passing of legislation about climate change the Republicans of that senate have fled and gone into hiding. This isn't the only time that has happened. The strange thing is one senator openly stated he would shoot police that attempt to force him to attend the state senate, and militia groups have been gathering to fight for the Republican senators and have been gathering and threatening to fight and die against the state to defend the senators. There was a session cancelled because so many militia members gathered nearby armed and could have stormed the building and killed the Democratic senators and anyone there.

This is the kind of things that the National Guard should be deployed for, but instead they get sent to the border to detain families. Jesus Christ I miss when things were at least relatively stable.

[Oniya]

I trust CNN a bit more than the Daily Beast, but that statement from Sen. Boquist in the CNN article was rather alarming.

[Tolvo]

That's why I included CNN as well rather than just DB.

[Mechelle]

The Boris Johnson/ Carrie Symonds (his new girlfriend) story, mentioned a few posts back is proving to be both very predictable and very depressing.

People have taken sides on the basis of prior political beliefs, with the neighbours who alerted the police being outed as liberal Remainers by the right wing press. However, Johnson is still refusing to take part in any debates and has been called a coward - obviously, not to his face, as he is avoiding him - by his leadership rival, Jeremy Hunt, who is gaining ground on his cowardly rival.

New pictures have appeared in the press, allegedly taken on Sunday, in the friendly press, showing Johnson and Symonds making up, but Johnson's hair is longer than it was on Saturday!

The most serious outcome of this tawdry affair, I think, is that someone who does suspect some domestic abuse is taking place will not contact the police in fear of all the grief they will get and somebody will come to serious harm.

[stormwyrm]

Yesterday starting at around 11am UTC, some of you might have noticed that a good part of the Internet didn't seem to be working. It was a rather serious outage that affected CloudFlare and AWS among others, and most noticeably for us here on E, Discord had been down. Here's why:

https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-verizon-and-a-bgp-optimizer-knocked-large-parts-of-the-internet-offline-today/

It seems some idiots over at Verizon did a major screw-up and wound up improperly propagating a misconfigured route from another smaller ISP they were peering with. That sent a good part of the Internet going through Verizon and the smaller ISP instead. There are standards in place to prevent exactly this kind of screw-up, and notably Verizon didn't have those in place on their systems.

t is unfortunate that while we tried both e-mail and phone calls to reach out to Verizon, at the time of writing this article (over 8 hours after the incident), we have not heard back from them, nor are we aware of them taking action to resolve the issue.

At Cloudflare, we wish that events like this never take place, but unfortunately the current state of the Internet does very little to prevent incidents such as this one from occurring. It's time for the industry to adopt better routing security through systems like RPKI. We hope that major providers will follow the lead of Cloudflare, Amazon, and AT&T and start validating routes. And, in particular, we're looking at you Verizon — and still waiting on your reply.

[Beguile's Mistress]

German residents buy up all of town's beer before white supremacists arrive for 'Shield and Sword Festival.

https://www.upworthy.com/german-residents-beer-nazi-festival?utm_source=The+Upworthiest&utm_campaign=f6d0ac679f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_06_21_02_06_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_78f827fba6-f6d0ac679f-237812037

[Tolvo]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/us/nra-nratv-ackerman-mcqueen.html

The NRA has shut down NRA TV and severed ties with the company behind it, Ackerman, and has cut ties with Dana Loesch amid various financial issues, controversies, divides within the NRA, and the overall damage it was doing to the NRA. Apparently a part of it is that while the NRA has been trying to be compliant with financial investigations also Ackerman has not and fittingly enough, won't disclose their finances and tax information.

[Regina Minx]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/us/nra-nratv-ackerman-mcqueen.html

The NRA has shut down NRA TV and severed ties with the company behind it, Ackerman, and has cut ties with Dana Loesch amid various financial issues, controversies, divides within the NRA, and the overall damage it was doing to the NRA. Apparently a part of it is that while the NRA has been trying to be compliant with financial investigations also Ackerman has not and fittingly enough, won't disclose their finances and tax information.

I’m sending the NRA my thoughts and prayers that they emerge from this difficult period.

[Tolvo]

I’m sending the NRA my thoughts and prayers that they emerge from this difficult period.

Let's not politicize this their wallets aren't even cold yet.

[Formless]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/saudi-arabia-announces-capture-of-islamic-state-leader-in-yemen-in-us-backed-raid-backed/2019/06/25/79734ca2-976a-11e9-9a16-dc551ea5a43b_story.html?utm_term=.5693c733433b

One of ISIS' leaders captured by Saudi forces.

[Sara Nilsson]

https://www.theroot.com/nypd-it-s-not-racist-when-a-cop-calls-you-the-n-word-1835885152

NYPD: No it isn't racist when we call someone the N-word or call LGBT+ people sluts. Totally fine. We investigated.

An official investigation into complaints of biased policing against the NYPD’s officers reveals, among other things, that the outfit doesn’t consider cops using racial slurs as evidence of bias; that the vast majority of people who accuse NYPD officers of racial profiling and bias are black; and, the almost unbelievable fact: that the NYPD has never disciplined an officer for racial profiling and biased policing.

See.. we are totes the good guys.

Some of the allegations of police bias and use of racial slurs against NYPD officers have included:

    A traffic stop where police questioned a black man parking a Bentley because the man had a handicap placard but police thought he “looked fine.” Police ticketed the man for littering because they saw a cigarette butt on the ground, but only after calling the man a “nigger.”
    Police arrested a store clerk while he was at work on suspicion of wielding a knife. Although they didn’t find a knife, they found a gram of marijuana and as they arrested him, asked: “Aren’t you supposed to be home today praying to your fucking God whoever he is, Allah?”
    A white woman alleged that cops stopped her and her Arab male friend and asked if “She was ok, felt scared, or if [the Arab male friend] was harming her.”

Apparently, none of that is considered racist.

Just good police work. Of course if you look at them the wrong way the will tase you (if you are lucky)