The Gaming Den

Well it worked out for Conservative in that it wiped NDP out, but that resulted in Liberals basically sweeping them across the board.

By the time the niqab issue cropped up, the three big parties were basically tied at 30% apiece (mostly on the strength of Trudeau's campaign and on the weakness of Mulcair's.)

Tactically speaking, Mulcair really should have dissembled on the niqab question. While I certainly respect the man for taking the principled stance, it was a dumb thing to do politically (and, I suspect, a lesson well-learned. Canada is still mostly rural as far as riding go and as long as we don't have proportional voting, urban attitudes will not get you elected.)

Also, strategically speaking, the NDP actually didn't do that badly. 2011 was an outlier year for the NDP. They did about as well as in 2008 once you factor in the increase in total ridings, but that's in the face of a Liberal resurgence fueled in part by ABC voting, and with a lackluster leader and weak campaign going up against a very strong campaign. It's a defeat, for sure, but it's not the crippling blow or collapse back to pre-Layton levels the French-CBC analysts were talking about.

(Plus, on an issues basis, the Liberals had to commit to a significantly leftier tack to get elected. We'll see how that turns out, but it's a clear ideological win for the left there.)

Fuck it, it's Godwin's Law time.

Anyone else getting a real Kristallnacht vibe from Israel lately? Like, Benjamin Netanyahu giving me douche chills is normal but both he and the political situation really feel sinister lately.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Fuck it, it's Godwin's Law time.

Anyone else getting a real Kristallnacht vibe from Israel lately? Like, Benjamin Netanyahu giving me douche chills is normal but both he and the political situation really feel sinister lately.

Didn't they lock all the filthy Arabs in ghettos and then start bombing the ghettos years ago? Decades ago? I mean, aside from the whole conquering Poland to find more ethnic/religious hybrid minorities to kill, don't they already have it down?

True, but it feels lately like the Israeli government is moving from apartheid + slow eliminationism to a, let's say more final solution.

I think it was Bibi's tweet that the Holocaust was inspired by some random Arab dude which did the trick.

How much does the "if you criticize Israel, you're an antisemite!" attitude in politics contribute to Israel being able to do whatever they want to Palestinians?

I'm just going to throw this prediction out there.

Some time during say, the US presidential election campaign (proper, not this "who is running against Hillary" bullshit), right on top of the election itself, or during the brief hand over period between presidents.

Expect Israel to do something big, bad, and bat shit.

PhoneLobster wrote:I'm just going to throw this prediction out there.

Some time during say, the US presidential election campaign (proper, not this "who is running against Hillary" bullshit), right on top of the election itself, or during the brief hand over period between presidents.

Expect Israel to do something big, bad, and bat shit.

Well, that period is around six months long, so that's really not much of a prediction.

TiaC wrote:Well, that period is around six months long, so that's really not much of a prediction.

Feel free to pick a different six months for yourself, but my prediction stands.

PhoneLobster wrote:

TiaC wrote:Well, that period is around six months long, so that's really not much of a prediction.

Feel free to pick a different six months for yourself, but my prediction stands.

That's rather my point. You could make that prediction for any six months and be nearly assured of it coming true.

TiaC wrote:That's rather my point. You could make that prediction for any six months and be nearly assured of it coming true.

Your point is stupid. The really big flare ups are more like every 3-4 years at most, not every 6 months, in the meantime it's just apartheid and genocide as usual.

Oh, you aren't counting apartheid and genocide as "big, bad, and bat shit"? There's our problem. They're always doing something, the media only reports it when it's been a while and they are doing something different. Your prediction is like saying that 3 years from now, Democrats and Republicans will be arguing over something in congress.

It's a terrible thing, but it has become normalised. Mainstream news doesn't report on it, indeed even things like Al-Jazeera don't treat the events as new, more keeping an update on all the progress that hasn't happened.

The crimes being committed by the state and military of Israel are certainly big, bad and batshit. But they're so par for course that in order to qualify as "big, bad and batshit" compared to the status quo there, you're basically talking "use of WMDs", "Nazi-style death camps" or "full armoured division flattening everything".

At some point there, they'll cross a line that not even the US can defend them and other countries will be able to intervene.

TiaC wrote:Oh, you aren't counting apartheid and genocide as "big, bad, and bat shit"? There's our problem. They're always doing something, the media only reports it when it's been a while and they are doing something different. Your prediction is like saying that 3 years from now, Democrats and Republicans will be arguing over something in congress.

You... either really don't follow this or you are going to fight this to the death because you can't take being wrong on the internet.

Not all badness is equal when it is convenient to you. Sometimes there are periodic bouts of worse badness, I know, it's shocking, but not all evil is equivalent. My prediction, which is, in the end, just a bit of worthless speculation by some guy on the internet, is that one of those "worse bad things" will happen in that period. You want to argue with why? You want to wait and point out when it very possibly turns out to be wrong? Sure, but WTF? "The Israel Palestine thing, it's and endless monotony of entirely equivalent evil with no stand out atrocities by the Israelis!" Who the fuck is dumb enough to make that argument?

Koumei wrote:At some point there, they'll cross a line that not even the US can defend them and other countries will be able to intervene.

They've already come close, but my baseless prediction is founded on speculation that they will deliberately push something to try and make it at least briefly a prominent US political issue in that time period. It's all about posturing for their local audiences, they need to make it look like they are throwing their weight around in the USA, either trying to influence the election or proving that they can ignore it's results. As posturing it doesn't need to make sense, or be a credible influence on US politics/diplomacy, it just needs to play like that for a conservative Israeli audience.

Meanwhile, the scale of whatever atrocity they commit will be... whatever it takes to make US politicians sweat. That means pretty damn bad.

PhoneLobster wrote:I'm just going to throw this prediction out there.

Some time during say, the US presidential election campaign (proper, not this "who is running against Hillary" bullshit), right on top of the election itself, or during the brief hand over period between presidents.

Expect Israel to do something big, bad, and bat shit.

To be clear, Phonelobster, shall we put you down for August 2016 to January 2017?

Game On,
fbmf

fbmf wrote:To be clear, Phonelobster, shall we put you down for August 2016 to January 2017?

That sounds sufficiently convincing as real dates, so close enough. I'd lean most strongly towards October though, but if that fails, then something even worse in January.

Now it's all apparently sufficiently settled can we just sit here in petulant silence waiting for my wild predictions to be true or not?

@PhoneLobster
http://www.timesofisrael.com/deputy-fm- ... ple-mount/

PhoneLobster wrote:

TiaC wrote:Oh, you aren't counting apartheid and genocide as "big, bad, and bat shit"? There's our problem. They're always doing something, the media only reports it when it's been a while and they are doing something different. Your prediction is like saying that 3 years from now, Democrats and Republicans will be arguing over something in congress.

You... either really don't follow this or you are going to fight this to the death because you can't take being wrong on the internet.

Not all badness is equal when it is convenient to you. Sometimes there are periodic bouts of worse badness, I know, it's shocking, but not all evil is equivalent. My prediction, which is, in the end, just a bit of worthless speculation by some guy on the internet, is that one of those "worse bad things" will happen in that period. You want to argue with why? You want to wait and point out when it very possibly turns out to be wrong? Sure, but WTF? "The Israel Palestine thing, it's and endless monotony of entirely equivalent evil with no stand out atrocities by the Israelis!" Who the fuck is dumb enough to make that argument?

But what would be the point of that? (other than "Likud is a genocidal party"). Despite the Rightist conspiratard constant cries about the Leftist Zionist Media!!!1 in the Real World the actual alliance seems to be mostly between Likud and the Republicans. Wouldn't Israel doing an extra dose of bad then just help the Democrats?

nockermensch wrote:

PhoneLobster wrote:

TiaC wrote:Oh, you aren't counting apartheid and genocide as "big, bad, and bat shit"? There's our problem. They're always doing something, the media only reports it when it's been a while and they are doing something different. Your prediction is like saying that 3 years from now, Democrats and Republicans will be arguing over something in congress.

You... either really don't follow this or you are going to fight this to the death because you can't take being wrong on the internet.

Not all badness is equal when it is convenient to you. Sometimes there are periodic bouts of worse badness, I know, it's shocking, but not all evil is equivalent. My prediction, which is, in the end, just a bit of worthless speculation by some guy on the internet, is that one of those "worse bad things" will happen in that period. You want to argue with why? You want to wait and point out when it very possibly turns out to be wrong? Sure, but WTF? "The Israel Palestine thing, it's and endless monotony of entirely equivalent evil with no stand out atrocities by the Israelis!" Who the fuck is dumb enough to make that argument?

But what would be the point of that? (other than "Likud is a genocidal party"). Despite the Rightist conspiratard constant cries about the Leftist Zionist Media!!!1 in the Real World the actual alliance seems to be mostly between Likud and the Republicans. Wouldn't Israel doing an extra dose of bad then just help the Democrats?

I'm pretty sure dems fall in line behind Israel too. Obama hasn't done much against them. Dems are less obedient sure but we are still supporting them pretty consistently as far as I can tell despite having a Dem as Pres.

Don't know if you lot noticed or not, but over here, they basically killed net neutrality on tuesday . .
And today, thursday, the biggest german ISP (telekom) already announced plans to ask start ups and internet companies for a % of their income to give them "special services" that will not be affected by bandwidth shortages for example . . but why limit oneself to this?! video streaming(hello google/youtube, we want your money!), voip(hello everybody else!), gaming/ping times!(big money with stock traders!) . . it's not like there was no warning about things like this happening . . but noo . . the politicians went right ahead and did it anyway . .

I read about that. I'm sorry.

Stahsteele, why did that happen? Could you give us the full story?