Starker on 21/3/2018 at 12:27
Okay, I'm going to need some help here. Is it normal in America for lawyers to appear on television and trash talk each other as if it was some kind of a boxing match? Cause I just watched this clip and I don't really know what to make of it (the "debate" starts at about 4:30):
[video=youtube;UNWqrAhaLhM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNWqrAhaLhM[/video]
PigLick on 21/3/2018 at 13:39
[video=youtube;rxyjA-CaPYY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxyjA-CaPYY[/video]
demagogue on 21/3/2018 at 14:23
Speaking of lawyers...
Trump is (
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/us/politics/trump-lawyers-mueller-russia-investigation.html) reshuffling his lawyer team with third rate lawyers, about which...
Quote:
“It's never a good idea to see legal teams change dramatically and for competent lawyers to be replaced by others,” said Roger Cossack, a longtime legal analyst. “It shows that there is chaos and that whoever the client is — in this case the president — is unhappy and is searching for the magic bullet. And it's never a great strategy to search for the magic bullet. The president clearly wants it to end and wants to put an end to it.”
Trump has started personal attacks on Mueller by name, which has his staff begging him not to fire him and even (
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/lindsey-graham-if-trump-tries-to-fire-robert-mueller-it-would-be-the-end-of-his-presidency/article/2647326) Republican congressmen coming out of the woodwork to let Trump know if he fires Mueller he's gone.
Then you have the ridiculous charade of Trump's lawyer Durshowitz saying Meuller should never have been appointed on Lou Dobbs, which he first said was coming from Trump, but then later claimed that wasn't coming from Trump but only his own personal opinion, but then later it was revealed that actually he did say that under Trump's direction and added the bit about it being from himself as a transparent CYA move.
Which led to Trump's dumb tweet about Durshowitz's claim as if he were some "independent" "legal expert" and not his own lawyer... (Can't find the op/ed on that just now, but it was great.)
Quote:
"'Special Council [sic] is told to find crimes, wether [sic] crimes exist or not. I was opposed the the [sic] selection of Mueller to be Special Council [sic], I still am opposed to it. I think President Trump was right when he said there never should have been a Special Council [sic] appointed because there was no probable cause of believing that there was any crime, collusion or otherwise, or obstruction of justice!' So stated by Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz"
Which led to Dershowitz's dumb (
http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/379372-trump-is-right-the-special-counsel-should-never-have-been-appointed) defense of it, throwing in some attacks against the integrity of the FBI while he's at it...
Quote:
In this case, the appointment of a special counsel has done more harm than good. It has politicized our justice system beyond repair. The FBI deputy director has been fired for leaking and lying.
(Leaking and lying about the case against Crooked Hillary. How much do you want to bet they're suddenly attacking the FBI for its unfair treatment of Hillary?)
Which opens up:
Quote:
What Alan Dershowitz doesn't disclose: he is counsel to Beny Steinmetz, listed by Forbes as the wealthiest man in Israel and now under criminal investigation in a half dozen countries and facing criminal trial in one. Steinmetz is accused of having taken under false pretenses a half billion dollars from the Brazilian mining company Vale. A very large chunk of that money seems to have wound up in the hands of Jared Kushner for investment in high-end residential properties in Manhattan. And that's something Dershowitz is quite determined to insure that the special counsel doesn't look into.
And just to top it off the (
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/us/politics/trump-mueller-russia.html) former director of the CIA:
Quote:
“When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history,” Mr. Brennan wrote.
It's a disgrace inside of a travesty inside of a shitshow. I swear.
PigLick on 21/3/2018 at 14:31
So what about your thoughts on the Rohingya crisis, fuck the US.
Aus gov is like "well sucks to be you guys, but hey what about these wealthy South African dudes, they seem ok"
Remember you americans always have your guns to fall back on
demagogue on 21/3/2018 at 14:38
Quote:
So what about your thoughts on the Rohingya crisis, fuck the US.
Oh good lord... don't get me started. Our NGO actually just sent a team to the refugee camps in Bangladesh to interview them, and we've been writing a lot of statements and reports about it. (
http://hrn.or.jp/eng/news/2018/03/13/hrc37-oral-statement-rohingya/) Here's the oral statement on the topic (which I wrote) we gave at the Human Rights Council session last week in Geneva if you want an idea of it.
PigLick on 21/3/2018 at 14:46
Oh i have an idea already, I live in one of the largest burmese immigrant areas in Australia, these people are amazing. None of them are ever thinking of returning to their homeland. Plus their curries are incredible
.
demagogue on 21/3/2018 at 15:02
Yeah, although if they're refugees in Aus they're probably not ethnically Burmese but one of the minority ethnic groups the Myanmar military slaps around (Kachin, Shan, Arakans...), that last group of which is actually the major group *cooperating* with the Myanmar military to carry out acts of genocide against Rohingya. I'm quite sure if you interviewed that group of immigrants in Aus you'd get something like 98% approval for the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya, although they might not use that wording. (I know because I polled all the Myanmar people I know about it, Burmese & minority groups, and got that kind of result... Even/especially the otherwise nice ones. Not counting those working for human rights groups or that lived abroad. Some deeply religious ones also maybe.) Those exceptions aside, the great majority of Myanmar people consider Rohingya illegal Bangladeshi migrants / all terrorists and want them out.
They (the other minority groups) don't see their own victimhood by the Myanmar military the same thing as the Rohingya's victimhood. It's a messed up situation. Basically we can blame the British for fucking up the entire region during the colonial period to begin with, purposefully moving groups around, forcing them to declare their identity along rigid ethnic/religious lines, and pitting them against one another to assert their control... And then vanilla ethno/Buddhist-nationalism can do the rest from then on.
Arakans have been kicked around so much -- they still lament 182X when the Brits decimated their kingdom -- and are now in such terrible dirt poverty, they have so much resentment, and all of that gets unleashed on to the South Asian-looking Rohingya "foreigners" in their midst (who have lived there for many generations, some of them for centuries), like dirt poor whites unleashed their resentment on to blacks in the Jim Crow South.
Edit: Should probably not continue this in this tread though, but break it off into a new thread if you want to continue.
PigLick on 21/3/2018 at 15:17
well, a lot of the people I know arent refugees as such, but are genuinely Burmese people who immigrated maybe 10-15 years ago. We arent taking refugees atm lol, go white australia
Thanks for the info though, its way more complicated than it seems on the surface.
eh, this trump thread has run its course at any rate, its late at night and Im tired.
Tomi on 21/3/2018 at 16:02
Quote Posted by PigLick
its late at night and Im tired.
it's also your birthday, just in case you didn't know. :p Have a good one!