Evil Penevil

One advantage of being the world's richest man with a net worth over U.S. $400 billion is that you don't have to care what other people think of you. https://www.forbes.com.au/news/billionaires/top-10-richest-people-in-the-world-january-2024/

Forget all the discussions about the age of consent in Thailand. They aren't relevant when it comes to prostitution. . The Prevention and Suppression of Prostitution Act, B.E. 2539 (1996) in Section 8 makes it illegal to pay for sex with any person under the age of 18. Penalties are even tougher if they are under 15. https://web.archive.org/web/20140228033956/http://www.thailaws.com/ Moreover, virtually all Western countries claim extraterritoriality when it comes to prostitution with under*ge partners. That means you can be prosecuted for acts committed abroad. Even if a foreigner is able to escape prison or get a light sentence in some countries through bribes, he can still get a heavy sentence when he returns home. Thinks of it this way, gentlemen: there's no country in the world where it is legal to pay for sex with a partner under 18. End of story.

The video of Musk's speech is like one of those optical illusion pictures in which the same image can be seen in two different forms, depending on the viewer. Which do you see, an old crone or young woman? When I saw the video, I thought he extended his arm in a gesture to reinforce and illustrate the words he was using, "My heart goes out to you," He began with his hand over his heart and flung his arm out at an angle. That's not at all the Nazi or fascist salute, in which the arm is initially held at the side of the body and then raised. Moreover, it would be extremely peculiar for Musk or anyone else to use a Nazi salute along with words of thanks. It just doesn't make sense. Musk has used the phrase "My heart goes out to you" before to convey thanks. Some sources say it's a bit of a catchphrase of his. When I saw it, I didn't think it was an awkward gesture but unwise one due to the possibility (likelihood?) of misinterpretation. Some people saw a Nazi salute because they wanted it to be a Nazi salute. If you want to see real fascist salutes from people who embrace a fascist-like ideology, take a look at these below. For @stevenl and any other BM who believes Musk gave the Nazi salute- Are these photos evidence "Nazism is back" in Palestine? Pro-Palestine protestors at the Paris Olympics who gave the Nazi salute and shouted "Heil Hitler" during the Israel-Paraguay football match. https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/video-shows-pro-palestinian-activists-heil-hitler-at-the-olympic-soccer-match/ar-BB1qQRCL Palestinian students give Nazi salute at a ceremony at Birzeit University in Palestine. https://www.cufi.org.uk/news/palestinian-students-photographed-performing-nazi-salute/ Palestinian scouts in Lebanon pledging allegiance to Palestine with Nazi salute: https://palwatch.org/page/23962 For good measure, a popular clothing store in Gaza named for the man the owner considered to be the "most anti-Jewish person." https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Name-of-shop-is-Hitler-and-I-like-him-because-he-was-the-most-anti-Jewish-person-432190

Not yet, but it will. Israel has been fighting for its survival as the homeland of world's Jews every single day since the State of Israel was proclaimed in 1948. Israel's history is a series of armed conflicts. But as long as Hamas and other Palestinian groups have the destruction of Israel and elimination of Israelis as their goal, there will be no end to the death and destruction. Israel has no choice but to defend itself and its citizens from constant attack. Here's a list of the major conflicts Israel has fought since 1948: 1948 Arab–Israeli War (November 1947 – July 1949) Palestinian Fedayeen insurgency (1950s–1960s) Suez Crisis (October 1956) Six-Day War (June 1967) War of Attrition (1967–1970) Yom Kippur War (October 1973) Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon (1971–1982) 1982 Lebanon War (1982) South Lebanon conflict (1982–2000) First Intifada (1987–1993) Second Intifada (2000–2005) Israel–Hezbollah War (2006) First Gaza War or Operation Cast Lead (December 2008 – January 2009) 2012 Gaza War or Operation Pillar of Defense (November 2012) 2014 Gaza War or Operation Protective Edge (July–August 2014) 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis or Operation Guardian of the Walls (May 2021) Israel–Hamas war or Operation Iron Swords (October 2023–present) 2024 Israel–Hezbollah war or Operation Northern Arrows (September 2024–present) In addition, the IDF has been involved in dozens of operations outside of major conflicts since 1948. These range from the airlifting of the Jewish populations of Arab countries and the rescue of victims of hijackings to assassinations of terrorist leaders and the bombing of nuclear facilities. Palestinians have faced a string of defeats since 1948 at huge cost to their population. As long as Hamas remains in power and keeps attemptsing to push the Jews into the sea, Palestinians will suffer. The day they throw out Hamas and recognize Israel's right to exist, life will improve enormously for the Palestinian people.

That is the key point. Starmer and some politicians in many Western countries, including the U.S., want to extend the exceptions to free speech to words that offend and hurt, not just words that cause actual harm. Freedom of speech and expression has always carried many exceptions: defamation; lying under oath; words crucial to the commission of a crime ("Give me all your money" by an armed robber); inciting to crime; and fraud, for example. In modern times, false advertising and revealing confidential medical, financial or trade informaion have been decided not to be protected by free speech. The common characteristic of all of the above exceptions is that they cause actual harm; people suffer measurable harm because of the publication or utterance of certain words in certain circumstances. The recent trend is to place words that offend or hurt under the same umbrella, often with the argument such words also causepsychological harm. It's a dangerous limitation on free speech because judgments as to the offense or hurt from words is always subjective and depends on an individual's reaction.

I wasn't claiming James Fenimore Cooper was a great writer, only that he was superior to Charles Reade. I know Mark Twain lampooned his style of writing as overly wordy, but Cooper was nevertheless the most profilic and widely read American author of the first half of the 19th century. Despite his shortcomings, he's been called by some, including the Britannica Web site, "the first major American novelist." https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Fenimore-Cooper Humanities, the magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities, had an article titled, "In Defense of Cooper." The suheading stated, "James Fenimore Cooper was a major literary innovator with fans such as Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad. Take that, Mark Twain." https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2007/septemberoctober/feature/in-defense-cooper The first paragraph of the article notes, "Almost single-handedly in the 1820s, Cooper invented the key forms of American fiction—the Western, the sea tale, the Revolutionary romance—forms that set a suggestive agenda for subsequent writers, even for Hollywood and television. In producing and shrewdly marketing fully 10 percent of all American novels in the 1820s, most of them best sellers, Cooper made it possible for other aspiring authors to earn a living by their writings. Cooper can be said to have invented not just an assortment of literary genres but the very career of the American writer." You can read more academic assessment and critical essays of Cooper at A Historical Guide to James Fenimore Cooper. https://academic.oup.com/book/48372?login=false Those academics don't regard his writing as a joke or laughingstock.

Your list of attributes of a historical novel is very subjective and not one that is universally accepted. It's almost impossible to argue objectively that Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth better fulfills the points you named than the works of Scott, Dickens or Fenimore Cooper, all of whom are generally regarded as superior writers to Reade. The one exception could be Reade's attention to historical detail, but that's not a "make-or-break" characteristic of a historical novel.

I don't know how strict a definition of "historical novel" you're using, but world and English literature have numerous historical novels published before 1861. The first English-language historical novel in modern form is considered by some to be Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley, which was published in 1814. https://www.britannica.com/art/historical-novel Rob Roy (1817) and Ivanhoe (1820) cemented Scott's fame as an author of historical fiction. U.S. author James Fennimore Cooper published his first historical novel in 1821 and his classic The Last of the Mohicans (set in 1757) came in 1826. The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a famous 19th-century American historical novel, one that is still read today. Charles Dickens published his novel set in the French Revolution , A Tale of Two Cities, in 1859. There are quite a few additional examples of historical novels in English before 1861. On the world scene, some classic Chinese historical novels date from the 1300's. La Princesse de Clèves is a French work from 1678 set against events in France more than 100 years earlier has all the characteristics of a historical novel. Again, examples abound of non-English-language historical novels before 1861.

Frankly, @GammaGlobulin, I don't give a damn. It true that polls rank GWTW as the most popular novel among U.S. readers and it is indeed better researched and written than most popular works of fiction, it is far from a great book.

@Deserted - There's plenty of "incopemetance" (sic) in your post.

To give some context to the clip from X posted above by @Bkk Brian: The chant heard in the clip is an antisemitic slogan coined by the founder of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin, in the 1980s. It refers to the Battle of Khaybar in 628 CE in which a Muslim army under Mohammad defeated and subjugated the large Jewish community of Khaybar in Saudi Arabia. Back then, what would become Saudi Arabia had several Jewish tribes. The words in Arabic are "Khaybar, Khaybar, ya yahud! Jaish Muhammad soufa yaʿoud!" In English, it becomes, "Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews! The army of Mohammad will return!" In the context of the Palestinian conflict, it means Muslims will conquer Israel and slaughter the Jews. https://extremismterms.adl.org/glossary/khaybar-khaybar-ya-yahud It is frequently heard at pro-Palestinian demonstrations all over the world.

You seem to have confused your Native American movie stereotypes. Pow wow is the word used in English to indicate a social gathering that features traditional Native American dance. In movies and TV shows, it erroneously came to mean any sort of meeting where discussion plays a central role. Pow wow has nothing to do with the war chant used by the Crow tribe that involved slapping the palm of the hand against the mouth while whooping. You may have been thinking about the "How" open palm greeting used by the Lakota tribes. "How" was the English approximation of the word Lakota men used to greet other men. The open palm up, like shaking hands in Western culture, indicated friendly intent because of the lack of a weapon. It became a widespread stereotype and symbol of Native American culture in U.S. westtern movies and TV shows, even though the use in real life had been limited to the Lakota.

It's impossible for Israel to negotiate a permanent peace with an enemy whose goal is the destruction of the state of Israel and the eradication of its citizens. If Hamas and all other Palestinian groups would recognize Israel's right to exist as the homeland of the world's Jews, a permanent solution to the conflict could be found. But as long as the avowed purpose of Hamas or any other Palestinian group is the elimination of Israel, then the Israeli government's only option is to destroy those groups. Hamas has sought a ceasefire not because it wants peace with Israel but to regroup and rebuild so it can fight another day. Netanyahu is well aware of this. The only advantage the current ceasefire agreement carries for Israel is the release of the hostages and even a hostage exchange is problematic. Israel gets back 33 people, children, women and old or sick. Hamas will get hundreds of very fit terrorists wo will in the future yet again kill Israelis. In 2011, Israel exchanged one IDF soldier, Gilatd Shalit, a hostage for five years, for 1,027 Palestinians. One of the Palestinians freed by the deal was Yahya Sinwar, who went on to plot the murder of 1,200 people on Oct. 7. Israel has engaged with prisoner-of-war or hostage exchanges with various enemies since 1948. In 1967, Israel exchanged about 5,250 Arab soldiers and 1,400 civilians for 15 IDF soldiers and the bodies of two more. In 1983, about 4,800 Palestinians and Lebanese were exchanged for six IDF members. Through the years, many such lopsized exchanges have taken place. Hundreds of Israelis subsequently fell victim to released terrorists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arab–Israeli_prisoner_exchanges

x Here's the link to the full report: Group-Based Offending Publication November 2024 I would agree it comes across as a whitewash that uses manipulation of statistics to downplay the role organized gangs of men of Pakistani origin have played in the exploitation and abuse of several thousand British girls. A excerpt from the report's Introduction sets the tone (my bold text): "Group based offending takes many forms and takes place in many different settings. Media coverage has tended to focus on specific communities and so-called grooming gangs. Whilst it is important that police and their partners respond robustly to offending of this type that shouldn’t distract us from the wider threat that occurs in many settings." That's the only time in the 28-page report the word "grooming" or phrase "grooming gangs" appears. The words "Muslim" and "Pakistani" are never used. It's clear those responsible for the report don't want the public to focus on Pakistani grooming gangs. Instead, they want the public to believe whites, the dominant group in the U.K., are responsible for most of the sexual abuse of children, which is true. For the sake of social harmony, academics and some government offficials are trying to claim Pakistanis are no worse than white British males when it comes to the exploitation and abuse of British girls. The sleight-of-hand with statistics comes on two fronts. First, the 83% figure doesn't refer to the TOTAL number of grooming gang perpetrators, but the number where the ethnicity of the perpetrators is known. The graphic in the report reveals that out of 4,790 total perpretrators, ethnicity is known for 2,266 perps, of which 1,884 , or 83%, are white. But what of the 2,524 perps whose ethnicity isn't known? If any of them are Pakistani, then the percentage of Pakistani perps will rise. For example, if half the unknown perps turn out to be Pakistani, that would mean 1,644 perps, or 34%, were Pakistani. Considering people born in Pakistan or in the U.K. of Pakistani ancestry amount to only 2.7% of the total U.K. population, Pakistanis are over-represented by any metric in grooming gang crimes. The second significant deception occurs because all of the 4,790 perps aren't suspected of committing grooming-related crimes. The report covers group-based child sexual exploitation, which includes several categories of crime. The report defines a group as two or more perps. It also notes:. "The victim may have been sexually exploited even if the sexual activity appears consensual. Child sexual exploitation does not always involve physical contact; it can also occur through the use of technology.” (Department for Education, 2017)." Same link as above. This definition means that if two 12-year-old white boys persuade a 12-year-old girl to give them handjobs or to send them nude photos via the Internet, those boys are counted in the same 4,790 total as members of Pakistani grooming gangs. By "diluting" the figures on grooming gangs by including less serious white offenders, the proportion of white offenders is increased. To be accurate, the comparison should be between the number of Pakistani groomers versus white Brits who commit the same sort of crime.

I know this question wasn't addressed to me, but I will answer it anyway. The Quran and Hadith can be interpretted in many ways and some groups within Islam view rape of non-believers as not only permissible but commendable. ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/world/middleeast/isis-enshrines-a-theology-of-rape.html) Claiming the Quran’s support, the Islamic State codifies sex slavery in conquered regions of Iraq and Syria and uses the practice as a recruiting tool. "QADIYA, Iraq — In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted." The Pakistani grooming gangs probably use a similar interpretation of Islamic scriptture. It's permitted to rape white British girls because they aren't Muslim. The Pakistani gangs never go after Muslim Pakistani girls, only non-believers. Remeber that Islamic doctrine explained by leading imams, Muslim scholars and Western professors of religion can be very different from "what's allowed and what isn't" followed by Pakistani immigrants or children of immigrants in the U.K.

To keep the record straight- The 186,000 figure did not come from a peer-reviewed article but from an analysis in a letter published in the correspondence section of The Lancet. The analysis was done by three acaemics, with the main author a professor at an institution on the West Bank. The 55,298–78,525 estimate does come from a peer-reveied article in The Lancet. However, peer-review does not validate the information in an article. It means that independent, anonymous experts have read the article prior to publication to make sure it's not a hoax and follows widely recognized scientific methodology. The 55.298-78,535 estimate is also speculation, but rests on a sounder base.

At keast that estimate is lower than an earlier one of 186,000 published in The Lancet on July 20, 2024, for the same time period as the article above. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext#

Yes, indeed it does. For about 1,500 years (100 CE to 1600 CE) religion had been the dominant issue in Europe and the Middle East. But the English Reformation under Henry VIII and the broader Protestant Reformation inspired by Martin Luther had broken the hold of the Catholic Church and established the supremacy of secular law and government over religious practice. The American and French Revolutions cemented the idea that religion had become a matter of individual conscience and not secular duty. The separation of church and state is what today distinguishes Western democracies from Muslim states. In the West, people can choose to make religion a central part of their lives, but they are not forced to. In Muslim states, Sharia law, based on the Quran and hadiths, still has a huge influence on secular law and daily life. What Islam needs is a sweeping reformation and modernization that makes secular law superior to religious scripture.

If you are referring to Benjamin Netanyahu, he was born in Tel Aviv in 1949, after the establsihment of the state of Israel. His mother had been born near Tel Aviv in 1912 when the area belonged to the Ottoman Empire. Some of his mother's relatives had lived in what would become Israel since the 1870s. His father had been born in Warsaw in 1910, but immigrated at the age of 10 with his family to Mandatory Palestine in1920. To call Netnyahu a "Polish Jew" is absurd. The Polish government wouldn't recognize him as a citizen. Under Polish law, Netanyahu is not entitled to Polish citizenship because his father was born in Warsaw over 100 years ago and lived there for 10 years as a child. @NorthernRyland Would you say former President Barack Obama is Kenyan because his father was born in Kenya? Was the most famous Palestian leader actually Egyptian because Yasser Arafat was born in Cairo?

Let me rephrase my question: do you (or any other BM) dispute that Shamsud Din Jabbar's attack in New Orleans is an example of what is meant with the slogan used by many pro-Palestian groups, "Globalize the Intifada?"

On the contrary. Jabbar does indeed seem to have "globalized the Intifada." His deadly attack on random individuals who were celebrating New Year's Eve is very similar to the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival on Oct. 7. What else can "globalize the Intifada" mean, since the Intifada is merely a series of terrorist attacks?

It will be highly interesting to see if Jabbar has any connection to one of the U.S. pro-Palestinian groups. Israeli diplomats: Ideology of NYC ‘intifada’ march connected to New Orleans attack "This is the grim reality of the 'globalization of the Intifada' they called for. It's terror, pure and simple." https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-835926

It's possible Young's announcement that he would skip Glastonbury was part of a bargaining strategy. He doesn't like his live performances to be broadcast and when he appeared at Glastonbury in 2009 , he only allowed the BBC to livestream five songs from a two-hourr set. From the BBC: Neil Young reverses his Glastonbury 'boycott' https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrwvgj0149o

No, it's a description of "distorting the truth by presenting Hamas' propaganda."

I'll flip the two final sentences back at you: this is clearly NOT genocide by any definition of the word. To argue otherwise means you don't understand what genocide actually involves. I wrote a lengthy reply on this issue in another thread (https://aseannow.com/topic/1345458-amnesty-international-its-a-genocide-in-gaza/page/6/#findComment-19464174), complete with sources and links. Short answer is it can't be genocide because: 1) the population of Gaza increased in 2023 and 2024, despite all the deaths from military action; 2) the number of deaths in the 15 months of the conflict represents 1% to 2% of the pre-conflict population of Gaza. The exact percentage depends on what figures are used for the population of Gaza and whether the death toll includes combatants as well as non-combatants. That percentage is far below the death toll in any other conflict accurately termed a genocide; and 3) Israel has no intent to eliminate the Palestinian people but only to defend Israelis against terrorist attacks. The number of casualties is inflated by Hamas combatants hiding among civilians and using civilian facilities such as schools, hospitals, aprtment buildings, etc. for military purposes. Through the years, Israel fought in several "conventional" wars, such as the Suez Crisis (October 1956); Six-Day War (June 1967); War of Attrition (1967–1970); and Yom Kippur War (October 1973). During these conflicts, the IDF inflicted very few casualties on civilians, Palestinians or othwerwise. Because the current conflict takes place in a densely populated urban environment, it's much more dificult for IDF to avoid civilian casualties.