Cory1848

2 hours ago, thasoss said:

yes indeed woksterism...emanating from the ivory towers of university professors with too much time on their hands,really sad.

As a book editor, this is something I have to deal with on a pretty regular basis, and pronouns are taken seriously by many, but I wouldn't expect the topic to be of much interest to the crowd at this forum!

14 minutes ago, zydeco said:

So, we spent trillions of dollars and thousands of lives for this???

Yup. And you're surprised by the result?

11 hours ago, Jingthing said:

True liberals are for free speech especially for COMEDIANS. 

Exactly. I actually thought the joke was kind of funny. Don’t see that Thunberg herself has responded to this; she might ignore it, or say something snarky, or agree that it was amusing (which was Pete Buttigieg’s response when Trump said that he resembled Mad Magazine’s mascot Alfred E. Neuman -- Buttigieg said that Trump’s insult was kind of funny, which was the best way of dismissing it).

The point is, (1) Thunberg has made herself into a public figure and to some degree is fair game; and (2) she’s so much bigger than a silly incident like this. I think she can handle it.

2 hours ago, Paul Henry said:

I would be happy to bet everything I own that Trump does not know the ten commandments and has never read them.He would have broken at least half the commandments and will probably cover the rest in the next few years. God will not bless him as he does not know how to repent or change his evil ways.

By my count he’s broken at least eight of them -- 80 percent. (Not sure if he’s murdered anyone; and I can’t say whether he “honors” his mother and father or not.) And some, he’s taken even further. For instance, not only does he covet his neighbor’s wife; he covets his own daughter.

3 hours ago, thequietman said:

Yeh, I know, but ....... they killed Jesus. ???? Merry Xmas. ????

And Happy Hanukkah! Cheers --

42 minutes ago, thequietman said:

They decided, and then Pilate had to follow the will of the people to keep the peace.

 

So, to answer your question ...... yes, they killed Jesus ( if he did exist that is) ????

 

Yes, even if Jesus existed, and even if the Jewish temple elders sanctioned his death -- which they probably did, given that the Romans considered it local matter and would not have acted without local approval -- some Jews then had a hand in killing Jesus. My response is, so what? Some other Jews were Jesus’s fervent followers. More important, he was a big-time troublemaker, and the Jewish elders in condemning him behaved no differently from other people in power, across all time and all cultures. These days, authorities might throw a Nelson Mandela or a Gandhi in jail for a while; how many years was Aung San Suu Kyi under gentle house arrest? In the first century AD, there were no such niceties; people who confronted authority were killed.

In short, Jews are surprisingly just like other humans, no better and no worse!

3 hours ago, Enoon said:

 

They used to be known as the "Philistines" and have been around as long as the "Israelites".

 

"The term is generally accepted to be a translation of the Biblical name Peleshet (פלשת Pəlésheth, usually transliterated as Philistia). The term and its derivates are used more than 250 times in Masoretic-derived versions of the Hebrew Bible, of which 10 uses are in the Torah, with undefined boundaries, and almost 200 of the remaining references are in the Book of Judges and the Books of Samuel."

It’s awfully hard to trace such lineages definitively, and the mixing of peoples over centuries often leaves no clear lines of ancestry. Some historians argue that Palestinian Arabs are largely the descendants of the Hebrew peasants who occupied the land in biblical times, then converted to Islam during the Arab invasions. Coupled with the theory that Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews, who make up most of Israel’s population, are descendants of the Khazars, a medieval Turkic people whose leadership adopted Judaism and whose central Asian khanate was ultimately absorbed by the expanding Russian state, and you have the rather delicious if absurd situation that the present conflict is between proto-Turks (present-day Israeli Jews) and ancient Hebrews (present-day Palestinian Arabs). (Unfortunately, the Khazar theory has been thoroughly debunked by genetic research.)

In any event, a modern-day Palestinian Arab identity has clearly developed over the past century that cannot be denied, certainly helped along by the conflict with the Israeli state, and this is simply part of the organic development and transformation of human societies/cultures, that’s happening all over the place, all the time.

1 hour ago, Becker said:

She is no doubt vastly more qualified and suitable than IMPOTUS and she would be even if she were dead.

Republican John Ashcroft famously lost a Senate election (in Missouri, 2000) to Mel Carnahan, who had died more than a month before the election. Unable to win an election against a dead man, Ashcroft nevertheless was selected by Bush II to serve as US attorney general.

11 minutes ago, alex8912 said:

For sure the oldest. She’s out purchasing 80 B day candles for her two cakes to hold in March. Hope she makes it! 

I'm sure she'll make it! And while she's elderly, she is still in her seventies (if barely) while there are plenty of geriatrics in Congress of both parties well into their eighties ...

1 hour ago, Kelsall said:

Ha!  Pelosi has learned her lesson from the fiasco of last year.  Could it be she is falling into line after the "impeachment" debacle?

 

Only time will tell.

 

Being contrite and inviting President and Commander-in-chief Donald J. Trump to give his State of the Union speech is a good sign. 

 

Looking forward to the President's speech!

Not to be contrary, but you may be misconstruing Pelosi’s intentions and her “contrition.” She is, after all, the smartest person in the room.

13 hours ago, sirineou said:

During armed conflict atrocities inevitably occur.nothing in the Greek side could even begin to approach what the turks have done in the area . Greeks are accused of having executer 13 people here and 10 people there, There is no equivalent to the hundreds of thousands the turks have killed.

trying to liberate the area from the invaders,and prevent genocide and ongoing Ethnic cleansing?

Those who were there for the past 300 years can stay those who were brought in by the turkish army to increase the numbers a bolster the claim must go. Half the turkish population of Northern Cyprus , Yes half" 

was brought in after the invasion. what do you think their purpose there is? do you think they are there because turkey run out of space for them? How would you feel if the Russians came into Estonia and started importing Russians  to displace you? And if the turks delay for a couple of generations as they seem to do , does that represent a defacto replacement? because where will they go now?  

   If Cyprus wants to reunite with Greece does it have the right to do so? or will it have to bow down to American, British and turkish geopolitical interests.

  By the way as an Estonian you would understand that history is not measured in decades and a hundred years .This isn't over , not by a long shot.  

 

 

And a Turk would have a different narrative, or at least a different slant. You say that the Turks who were relocated to northern Cyprus since 1974 “must go”; you say that “this isn’t over, not by a long shot.” And how would you have this “going” accomplished -- a shooting war? Who will fight it? How many people will die? How many villages burned to the ground, how many women raped? Your anger at all things Turkey is loud and clear; where does it all stop?

My point is as earlier -- suspended conflicts, if an equilibrium is established, are usually best left as they are. Perhaps at some later time, when regional leadership changes and attitudes evolve, a longer-term solution may present itself. Meantime, a Turkish Cypriot identity may continue to develop and even flourish. And as long as Greek Cypriots are able to continue pursuing their lives in peace, what’s wrong with that? People and places are in constant evolution; nothing ever stays the same. Königsberg and Breslau were centers of German culture for centuries; now these cities no longer exist as such.

I try to see things from the perspective of the powerless, who are also those who suffer the most during conflicts. I’m sure that most Turks in Cyprus (civilian Turks anyway) have no time to indulge in geopolitical tribalism, as they have to provide for their families first and foremost. Most Russians in northeastern Estonia are factory workers; they are too busy feeding their families to think much about what “country” they’re living in. I try to see them as individual human beings rather than, collectively, as some kind of enemy tribe.

1 hour ago, WalkingOrders said:

I recommend that you read the FBI IG dated 12092019. There you will find the truth about this subject. The story is not true.  It can be found online here. Link opens as PDF direct for United States Department of Justice website: https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf

Sorry man, I'm not going to read the report. My post was pure sarcasm; I could care less about the golden shower story. But I did deploy Trump's tactic of telling a bald lie, saying that "people are talking about it!," and watching the lie get shared a billion times in social media, where his fans lap it up.

1 hour ago, WalkingOrders said:

[...] a story about the President paying prostitutes to urinate for him on a bed previously used by the former President and First lady. This bothers me greatly.

Funny that you should mention this -- because of all the corruption Trump has been involved in throughout his pathetic life and into his presidency, this is the one thing that really doesn’t bother me in the least. Not saying that he did it, but, you know, the story’s out there, isn’t it. I mean, we all have little fetishes, and I’m not saying that getting peed on is one of mine, but I wouldn’t blame a chap for it. As long as the sex workers are not underage, and no one gets hurt or is forced to do something she doesn’t want to do, and as long as they are adequately compensated for their services and the facilities are properly cleaned up for the next guests, what’s the harm in it? Again, not saying that Trump did this, but a lot of people are talking that he did, and I don’t blame him a bit if it’s true.

23 hours ago, sirineou said:

I really don't need a lesson in Greek history being the son of Greek political   refugees to the US during the abdication of King Constantine in  1967 and the military junta.  

 Cyprus has being Greek for Thousands of years. the culture was Greek, the language was Greek the history was Greek, the people living there are genetically Greek. No historical revisionism will ever change that.

  The turks captured Cyprus in 1571 and occupied Cyprus antil 1914 when it was annexed by the British and occupied until 1955  when EOKA and George Grivas tried to reunify Cyprus with Greece, but was not allowed by the British and Americans, a little less  than 20 years later the Greek military junta that resulted to my Family having to flee to the US tried also tried to Unify Cyprus with Greece. 

   Turkey invaded the northern part of part Cyprus under the pretext of protecting the Turkish minority that had being there only a few hundred years and existed in the most part in harmony with the Greek majority.  But that happened after Macarios  courted the Russians for support , something the Americans would not allow.  When Turkey invaded Cyprus the American 6th fleet prevented the Greek navy from assisting.   

                      THERE WERE NO GREEK ATROCITIES , only turkish. There were no genocides commited  by the Greeks, only the turks, The greeks belong there, the turks do not.

                     THERE IS NO EQUIVALENCY BETWEEN THE TWO SIDES.  

 

 

With all due respect, I would suggest that close personal involvement in a conflict may unduly influence opinion toward one side or the other. And your shouting indicates that you indeed take this quite personally. I take that you weren’t actually in Cyprus in 1963. I wasn’t either, but from what I read from what I believe are objective sources, during the “Bloody Christmas” events of that year, for instance, there were atrocities on both sides. Earlier and elsewhere, even if the Turks burned down Smyrna and massacred that city’s Greek and Armenian population in 1922, what were Greek armies doing driving deep into Anatolia two years earlier? And so on.

You write that the Turks “don’t belong” on Cyprus. What do you mean by that, and where would you have them go? They’ve been there for 450 years and have no other home. Your statement has ramifications that go well beyond the scope of this topic.

I’m an Estonian; in 1945, Russian speakers made up less than 10 percent of Estonia’s population, and now, just seventy years later, they’re 25 percent, as a result of state-controlled population transfers during the Soviet period. Believe me, it’s hard for me to reconcile their presence there, and when I travel to northeastern Estonia and hear Russian spoken all around, I sometimes have to close my eyes and count to ten. But the truth is: except for the very elderly, those Russians were born there, in Estonia, and they have nowhere else to go. That is their home.

2 hours ago, Baerboxer said:

 

One of the reasons for that peace is the presence of British Military Forces.

 

Quite a few years ago, some young friends, male and female, from Scotland holidayed there. While out exploring they wandered either near to or crossed from the Greek to the Turkish part. They were challenged by several somewhat aggressive and rude Turkish soldiers. Thankfully a party of British soldiers appeared, also Scottish. They more or less told the Turks to <deleted> off which they quickly did. My friends said whilst it seemed a good 'travelers'tale" at the time they were scared stiff until the Scottish soldiers turned up.

 

Ergogan will never remove the Turkish forces; even if it prevents Turkey's much wanted EU membership.

Thanks for clarifying. The Brits might be there for a while, given all the bad blood between Greeks and Turks. A good friend of mine who’s Turkish even says that all the delicious food that Greeks say is Greek cuisine is actually Turkish cuisine that the Greeks stole. I told her that I could only take her statement with a “large grain of salt.”

4 hours ago, TopDeadSenter said:

I think you well know that Donald, myself and other rational thinkers are hamstrung and unable to speak freely, and so do our best to abide by political correctness. Suffice to say, if logic and sanity had prevailed, this latest islamic terror event would not have happened. Nor would the Pulse event, nor the Boston bombing. You get the drift.

I think what you’re tiptoeing around here is Trump’s campaign pledge to ban ALL Muslim travel to the United States “until we can figure out what’s going on.” Such a ban may indeed have prevented the Pensacola shooting, but it would no longer have been the United States of America we were protecting. The United States by definition does not allow discrimination or persecution based on religion.

And even such a comprehensive immigration ban would not have prevented the other incidents you mention: the Pulse nightclub shooting was done by a US citizen, Omar Mateen, who was born just outside of New York; and the Boston marathon bombing was done by two brothers, one of whom was a naturalized US citizen. Rigorous police work beforehand may have prevented these incidents, but you seem to imply something more: such as, some Trump advisers early on were throwing around ideas like forcing all Muslims to carry special ID cards. Perhaps “political correctness” prevented them from suggesting further steps, like having Muslims sew badges on their outer garments, and other “solutions.” Again, such a “United States of America” would no longer be a polity worth defending. At least in my thinking.

You’re perfectly able to “speak freely” here; don’t fret about political correctness!