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#41

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by PJL - October 12, 2025, 02:42:37 PM

Law and justice mean nothing when the criminals and crimes are popular. Nothing ever happened to the politicians and crooked cops for all the terrible things they did during the Civil Rights era.

If that is the case, then the law is at fault, not the criminals. If people are okay with what they did, then it should be decriminalised. At the end of the day, the legal system is there to serve to the populace. It's why when the left celebrate legal victories in certain cases, it's more of a pyrrhic victory than they think they realise.

#42

Off the Record / Re: Israel-Hamas War 2023

Last post by Admiral Yi - October 12, 2025, 02:32:29 PM

Clearly Greta Thunberg needs to chant from the river to the sea some more.
Like the previous dozen times.
They obviously have to do it again.  Next time it'll definitely work and Hamas will stop killing Palestinians by sheer moral force.

#43

Off the Record / Re: Israel-Hamas War 2023

Last post by Josquius - October 12, 2025, 02:24:44 PM

Clearly Israel didn't bomb Gaza enough.
Just like the previous dozen times.
They obviously have to do it again. Next time it'll definitely work and they'll beat Hamas by levelling Gaza.

#44

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Valmy - October 12, 2025, 02:09:04 PM

Considering the outrage and accusations of corruption with the weak sauce shit we did to hold Trump and the Jan 6 criminals accountable, I am highly doubtful anything will be done to get justice for the crimes of the current regime.

Law and justice mean nothing when the criminals and crimes are popular. Nothing ever happened to the politicians and crooked cops for all the terrible things they did during the Civil Rights era.

#45

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Josquius - October 12, 2025, 01:54:20 PM

Another day, another story that under normal circumstances would be a massive scandal

https://newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-a-us-citizen-and-a-veteran-ice?utm_campaign=post

#46

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by Sheilbh - October 12, 2025, 12:27:41 PM

The China spy scandal keeps going with what sounds like basically corrupt pressure from the Treasury too.

Starring to feel a bit like the end of Johnson where the government is sending out ministers and putting out briefings that are then being almost immediately contested by former civil servants and intelligence figure who were involved. Can't help but feel this level of briefing against the government from prosecutors, ex civil servants and intelligence chiefs is because of serious unhappiness within those bodies that the prosecution has collapsed.

Edit: From what's coming out it increasingly sounds like the politicians (elected, democratically accountable) in the relevant departments, including the PM, had no idea what was going on. It was driven by Jonathan Powell (Starmer's "National Security Advisor") and the Treasury against literally everyone else - MoD, Home Office, prosecutors, MI5 and MI6. But ultimately the politicians are responsible and this is not the first time when someone Starmer has appointed causes problems (indeed, it seems like a pattern).

#47

Off the Record / Re: Israel-Hamas War 2023

Last post by Razgovory - October 12, 2025, 12:19:41 PM

So Hamas has come back out of their hidey holes and back to executing dissidents, I guess things are going back to normal.  https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/12/middleeast/gaza-hamas-security-war-intl

 

Hamas is reasserting control of parts of Gaza not occupied by Israeli forces as the ceasefire takes hold – amid continuing uncertainty about security in the territory if the group is disarmed.

Hamas' internal security forces were pictured on the streets of Gaza City on Saturday, and there have been multiple reports of clashes between the group and clans opposing it in recent days.

"A number of collaborators and informants were apprehended and arrested in Gaza City, after it was proven that they were involved in spying for the enemy," as well as "participating in the assassination of several resistance members," the Palestinian Home Front, a Telegram channel affiliated with Hamas, said Sunday.

"The security services and the resistance are conducting a wide-scale field campaign across all areas of the Gaza Strip, from north to south, to locate and arrest collaborators and informants," it said.

A video distributed by Hamas-affiliated Telegram channels on Saturday showed an alleged collaborator being beaten in an unknown location.

Other social media videos showed armed and masked Hamas personnel walking through a street market in Gaza City, and the Hamas-run interior ministry shared images of officers with rifles and baseball caps that read "police" in Gaza City interacting with locals.

Hamas has long held an iron grip over Gaza that continued even into the war. CNN has reported on Hamas executing and maiming alleged looters, a sign of the group's continuing power despite being weakened by Israel.

The Hamas-controlled interior ministry has declared a week-long amnesty to begin Monday for members of criminal gangs "not involved in bloodshed or killings."


But Hamas' control of Gaza has been challenged by several clans in recent months, especially in the south. Some of those groups have received protection from the Israeli military.

Social media channels affiliated with Hamas reported clashes in the Sabra area of Gaza City between a prominent family and security forces during which Muhammad Imad Aql, the son of a senior Hamas military commander, was killed.

Hamas forces surrounded the Dughmush family's neighborhood on Friday night. Sources told CNN that several members of the family had been killed, and a large number of masked, armed men had been deployed around the Jordanian hospital in Gaza City.

CNN was told Sunday that clashes continued in the area.

In southern Gaza, a group opposed to Hamas known as the Popular Forces has refused to lay down its arms.

The group has been involved in escorting aid shipments and has publicly challenged Hamas, which in turn has said it will confront what it called a criminal gang.

One of its commanders, Hussam al-Astal, posted on Facebook Saturday: "To all the Hamas rats, your tunnels are destroyed, your rights no longer exist. Repent before it's too late – there is no Hamas from today onward."


"We are trying to be an alternative to Hamas," al-Astal told Israeli network Channel 12. "They commit to psychological warfare... and they will use all their power to prove that there is no other option in the strip but them."

However, Popular Forces members are thought to have relocated behind what is known as the 'yellow line' inside southern Gaza, where Israeli forces are still present.

Unresolved questions
It is unclear how security and policing will work in Gaza in weeks and months to come.


Israel has long demanded that Hamas disarm but the group has resisted this.

US President Donald Trump's 20-point peace plan, published last week, says that "Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty."


It also says there will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza "under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning."

In the place of Hamas, according to the Trump plan, an International Stabilization Force (ISF) will immediately deploy to Gaza and "will train and provide support to vetted Palestinian police forces."

But critical details of the security force and a planned international oversight mechanism have yet to be worked out beyond the vague bullet points of the initial plan.

In the complex reality of Gaza's current situation, such a force could take months or longer to establish, especially amid a humanitarian crisis and massive damage to buildings and other infrastructure.


Deployment (of the ISF) in the required numbers will have to occur over some time, and will be a major logistical challenge," according to London-based think tank Chatham House.

"Issues of coordination, direction and control of an untested multinational venture of the scale required will also be formidable," it said last week.

Casualties among Gaza's police force during the two-year conflict have contributed to a deterioration in security, with looting of aid becoming commonplace.

Jordan and Egypt are expected to take the leading role in training and supervising the new police force. But it's unclear when that force will begin to patrol the streets of Gaza, and whether Hamas' internal security forces will disappear when it does.

#48

Gaming HQ / Re: The NEW New Boardgames Thr...

Last post by Valmy - October 12, 2025, 12:02:57 PM

Twilight struggle is a good call. And that covers important history that schools and Paradox games rarely get to despite all being in his grandparents lifetimes.

#49

Off the Record / Re: The Off Topic Topic

Last post by Crazy_Ivan80 - October 12, 2025, 12:02:28 PM

https://www.hln.be/mijn-geld/etienne-71-trouwde-met-zijn-schoondochter-anja-53-ik-vind-het-spijtig-dat-ik-mensen-zeer-heb-gedaan-maar-heb-geluisterd-naar-mijn-hart~ab74437c/

Indutch and behind a paywall but from the blurb: the guy married his daughter-in-law,  making her kids/his grandkids his kids...

That's some crusader kings level family treeing. 
As long as everyone is happy I guess

#50

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by crazy canuck - October 12, 2025, 11:03:25 AM

Concentrating power just concentrates power - you concentrate power in a few hands with no checks in balances to fight the rich and suddenly you have created your own enemy.

Checks and balances are annoying when your guy is being checked and balanced but the best system invented so far to maintain a democracy.

Where are the checks and balances to which you refer? Sounds great in theory - it's in practice that it starts crumbling.  Take the US as the most recent tragic example.

Sure but no matter what system you build (and this is in reply to Sheilbh as well), anything beyond sheer physical coercion requires the consent of the ruled and the powerful to accept the rules.

First stop is the ones in power agreeing implicitly not to use their power to diminish other branches of power. If they try those other branches should push back before it is too late. Failing that, the electorate should step in to stop those efforts.

Obviously if all those steps fail then the system fails but this is not something you can remedy except by giving up and just going straight for your preferred form of autocracy.

Again, that is a very American centric view if the world. A parliamentary system does have competing branches of government.  The flaw in the US system is it did create competing branches and hoped each branch would be a check on the others. 

The Parliament system encourages cooperation.  For a third time (because you keep ignoring this point) a non confidence vote, like a budget vote, means there is a new general election.  That tends to focus the mind on what compromises are possible.

It also gives a lot of power to back benchers if someone like Trump (or Vance) were to arise.