Yes, I occasionally veer this way, but obviously I feel bad for those who voted for Remain who are going to feel that pain.

Likewise, also I am conflicted because I will qualify for a Scottish passport should Scotland leave the Union. So part of me looks for that as a way out.

You may be right there, but somehow I doubt by compromise he means any from the UK side. The lead negotiator David Frost threatened to resign the other day when the moderates started considering making real compromise to get a deal over the line, in Downing Street, following the Biden win. Frost is quite a hard Brexiter. There was definitely a stand off of some sort in Downing St, Cummings and Cain either jumped, or were pushed during the same episode.

Perhaps the moderates have won, it would put Frost in a difficult position.

Johnson is between a rock and a hard place. He would like to capitulate and reach a compromise with the EU, but he is hostage to the ERG and the perception that the amount of sovereignty that would need to be given away at the last minute to reach the paper thin deal, is to much to countenance. Better to cut free with a no deal and have pure untarnished sovereignty, no matter what the chaos that will ensue.

While there are a growing number who think that the Brexiters should be given their holy grail (clean break Brexit) and be made to own it. As that is the only way to lance the boil.

Implode is more appropriate and the ERG will attack the corpse like rabid dogs. In the meantime, a paper thin deal might, or might not be agreed.

Its scary, when I first heard that laugh, I was worried. Some people have gone down a deep rabbit hole. So deep they might even pull the rest of us down behind them.

Over the last few days when I see a right wing comment on Twitter, usually about how great Brexit is, or f**k the EU and I click on their profile, I see post after post from the anti-vax movement. It's really spreading now.

↪Where's the contradiction? There's a difference between targeting a legitimate target and accepting collateral damage and purposefully targeting civilians.

Perhaps it's an apparent contradiction, someone says there is little accuracy in the targeting of bombs and another says the bombs are only aimed at certain targets, which can't be done if there is little accuracy in the targeting of the bombs.

Again it's debatable whether Churchill can be labelled a war criminal. War is war, particular strategies in real time are complicated with many factors being considered. The real criminal in any war is usually the one who starts it, or insights it in the first place.

You've contradicted what the book review said about how inaccurate the targeting of the bombs was. In cities like Sheffield civilian areas were in amongst the industrial areas, it would have been impossible to target that accurately. Anyway I said that it wasn't helpful comparing who did or didn't do this or that. One would have to start getting history books out.

Rats leaving a sinking ship. He was the only brains in the whole outfit.

Which bit is a fairy tale, the destruction I pointed out, or the myths about Hitler?

the oligarchs are still around.

There are quite a few oligarchs in London, where they have infiltrated the social circles of the Conservative party, have made large donations and may even have compromised leading politicians. Some people think there may have been some involvement in Brexit. Indeed we have had a report into this which pointed the finger at Russian interference in the referendum and the Conservative party. Which was largely redacted by government representatives. And is regarded as a whitewash.

I don't think we're going to get very far trading bombing intensity, or targets. It was a complex situation. I'm not well read on the 2nd world war, but it is common knowledge in the UK that the Germans carpet bombed a number of city centres in the UK. Notable examples were Coventry and Sheffield along with a great deal of bombing in the centre of London. They took out the docks in London resulting in a massive firestorm. Also Hitler had singled out buildings of special architectural merit which were not to be bombed as they were to be important buildings for use by The Third Reich following the invasion. Hitler may have sought an alliance with the UK in the beginning, but he was clearly delusional and a megalomaniac by the time he got into power.

But it'd be a huge gamble, and massively destabilising to the country. So again they might not do anything other than sow doubts this time around.

Yes, he is a wacko though, so who knows.

Yes I see the points you make, but Olivier5 is right there is a large armed militia "standing by" amongst his base. Also most of those 70 million will go along with it because the've already drunk the coolaid and believe the rhetoric that the Democrats are literally steeling the election from under their noses. All that Trump requires is enough conflict somewhere in order to spin it into a national emergency and exercise emergency powers to postpone the transfer of powers indefinitely. He only needs to do that long enough that the integrity of the genuine election is cast in doubt and he can dismiss it as an aberration. Those 70 million would lap it up.

He's up to something, he's replaced most of the civilian leadership in the pentagon in the last 24 hrs. There are lots of rumours going around, my preference is to trigger emergency powers due to civil disobedience, insurgence, or war. So that he can claim that the transfer of powers is postponed indefinitely.

Unfortunately its human nature to become complacent when one is in a position of privelidge. This is what the political class did, they were complacent in the face of the global economic changes.

Yes, the same in the UK. Labour had to become Tory light to win power back in 1997. During the successful days of the 1980/90's capitalism was king, politics drifted to the right, thinking things could only get better.

Then globalisation started to bite.

Its the same in the UK and numerous other western countries have problems as a result of globalisation. It wasn't those elites you refer to who caused, or brought about this state of affairs and they certainty didn't want to. It's the combination of globalisation and free market capitalism. The political elites proved incapable of preventing it. The countries who faired better through this period are the more social democratic countries, where the wealth is circulated through the population more and exploitative capitalism is more difficult, or is regulated.

Electing figures like Trump and Boris Johnson isn't the answer and is a retrograde destructive step, like self harm. It allowed duplicitous populism to exploite the struggling populous. Neither side of the political divide can put it right without finding a wealthy alternative to the industries which were hollowed out by the globalisation.

The answer has been found now and Biden and Johnson can see it, green industries, the green economy. It could begin to turn things around in the US and might just give Johnson a life line out of the black hole he has dug for himself. (Many in the UK wish he would bury himself in that hole, metaphorically speaking)

Interesting article on how the political class failed to rescue the Brexit debacle. To the stent that we now have looney government with absolute power trashing the country. Good job we haven't got a Trump to make it worse. Oh hang on that's what we've got, UK Trump, Johnson.

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/who-killed-soft-brexit-eu-european-union-no-deal

Great speech from Biden today, who's already setting up his team to mitigate Covid. Meanwhile Trump announces a press conference in a car park located between a crematorium and a dildo shop so the world can watch Guliani ranting about dead people and a film of someone burning a piece of paper with lighter fuel is beamed around the world's news channels!

It's insane!

It rained here for the first time since April too

It has barely stopped raining here for two months, I can barely remember what sunshine is like. We do get lots of rainbows though. I've been at the end of one on more than one occasion recently.

Don't you get it, a Trump figure would only give us more of the swamp, on LSD. The thing you hate is about as good as it gets in human civilisation. There are a few more liberal countries who have done better in their own way. But as for the US, the only direction the country will go with destructive leaders like Trump is downhill like Turkey, or Belarus.

It looks as though Johnson is totally cornered, it's like checkmate, there's no where for him to turn, now that Biden is president elect. Either he takes the country down with him with a no deal Brexit and no US trade deal, but temporarily saves face with his party. Or he capitulates and begs for a closer trade deal with the EU and betrays the Brexiters, splitting his party, but saves the country and paves the way for Starmer.

Which is it?

Trump can't show his face, he's so naked in his failure. The next 70 days are going to be his worst nightmare come true, with the whole world literally watching him.

His only way out of the despair and to try to save face, is to try to make some sham of a legal challenge sound credible. Then when it fails in a few weeks time to grudgingly acknowledge the transfer of power and claim that he will be back in four years. He will need to save face with his base. The trouble is that this route will only dig a deeper hole as the US public hates a sore looser.

Do you mean beings living within us?

I don't know, it's speculation. My point was that there may be beings in the biosphere with knowledge of this existence, while we are in ignorance.

I think our cells are a sort of being that collectively create us.
Is this insight part of a school of thought, or is it your own construction?

It's Theosophy which is derived from Hinduism. Some of it is my own thinking, I've lost track of where one ends and the other begins.

Fox is calling Arizona for Biden, looks like they've dumped Trump.

When I say DNA, I really mean epigenetics, or cellular consciousness.

I can agree with that.

DNA seems to be the custodian of this.

I agree that DNA plays an important day to day role in cellular life.

You see the biosphere as the main organism, and humanity as one of its components?

Yes, also individual cells likewise.

What caused the biosphere ? How did it come to be?

Both questions are not answerable from our current position. I'm not saying the answers are beyond our understanding, but are not, perhaps within our area of knowledge. It's possible that someone has got a right answer, but how could this be verified? Also, there may be beings with us who know the answers but for some reason or circumstances are not telling us.

I agree with most of what you say, but my focus is on the imperative of removing Trump. Gridlock is fine while Trump is ushered off the stage and put back in his box. It's possible that he will rally his forces and return next time, but I doubt the party will submit to his mealy mouthed madness, he may even make them unelectable for a while. But the crisis of a second term of Trumpism has been averted.

My perspective is shaped by the UK Trump happening at the same time. Johnson is also a showman, not so much a snake oil salesman, as a clown. But he can do more damage than Trump because the UK Prime Minister has a great deal of power and is currently reaping havoc in my country and turning us into a laughing stock and rogue state, while trashing the economy. Now Trump has descended into a vindictive burbling man child, some of Johnson's gloss will have tarnished and we can start to reign him in and possibly topple him now.

Will Trumpism continue when he's been defrocked?

This would be a dualism, whereas I am a monist. Once the wave passes, so dose the pattern that formed it, I believe.

Its only dualism from a certain perspective, or in other words, where does one draw the line between monism and dualism. From where I'm looking it's monism.
In reality we can't answer this question as we are in a position of ignorance.

What is controlling what / who? What is the strategy?

The organism of the body, so as to protect and nurture the body within a social colony. Before we developed larger brains and intelligence, emotion was more important in controlling behaviour.

In biology we are the vehicles of DNA,

I don't attribute such importance to DNA, as it is the source of the encoding of the structure of the body, rather than the control of the organism during its day to day life, or in experience. Therefore DNA is not involved the strategic, or social behaviour.

We being nodes in a lineage of life.

Agreed. I see the biosphere as an organism, likewise humanity as an a organism. Organisms which are divided into seperate units, or individuals.

You are referring to experience, and the essential element of experience is emotion, which I would agree can not be described with intellect at all - it must be experienced - suggesting emotion is a force rather then a concept. To feel the force / emotion of ones body is the only way of knowing it. This is the hard problem of consciousness.

I wouldn't put to much emphasis on emotion myself, as it is a system within the vehicle of the body for the purposes of controlling behaviour, in a conditioned, or inherited and strategic way.

Likewise experience while being a fundamental property of being is also provided by the action of the body. If one is to distinguish the being from the vehicles through which it is hosted. One much identify the vehicles and their actions in this hosting and distinguish the spirit, or essence of being form the vehicle. Such knowing does require some practice, but as I have hinted, we do already know these things were we to but know it. To see the wood for the trees.

Agreed.

I sympathise with your ideas here, I have similar ideas. But we will need someone like Corbyn as Prime Minister to even start moving in the right direction. To think that right leaning conservative leaders might move in that direction is naive. You are aware I presume of the inequality in our society? In which a proportion of the population drains wealth away from the other less privelidged parts of the population. There are literally people who don't work, but live off the back of others working, often through what could be described as exploitation. There is a group who live off the wealth accrued from the increases in property values, again they don't work and that's not to mention the billionaires and criminals.

I think it's fine to get some of these people to pick vegetables, or work in the care sector for a good wage. But somehow I doubt that they would see it that way.

The only thing I don't define here is spirit (for want of a better word), because any attempt falls short. Remember what I said about a different kind of knowledge, one not requiring the intellect, which you agreed with. What I'm saying here is that each of us knows spirit (for want of a better word), but via being rather than intellectualising it.

Please do describe such things by another system, I am familiar with most of them. I will remind you though at some point that our current understanding of material and life is quite limited and that the reality of manifestation might be quite different from what we can deduce with science for example.

THERE DOESN'T HAVE TO BE ANY REASON WHY I, YOU, OR ENTITIES EXIST!!!!!

Yes, but there must be a mechanism by which they come to exist. Unless you wish to assert that this existing thing is the natural state, so there is no beginning ?

You don't know what you want. Neither do I.

That's not correct. I do know what I want, to be able to have a cup of tea and a biscuit when I want. Fortunately I am able to most of the time.

Yes, I agree that it's about providing the circumstances for experience. Although I wouldn't say it's consciousness which is having the experience, specifically. Rather consciousness is also a vehicle for experience, likewise the soul. Leaving spirit as what is enjoying the experience. I think it is best to leave spirit undefined, other than its being something we know because we are alive and have being. This fits the reference to the Upanishads you mentioned.

I don't personally look to deeply into the roles played by DNA, because the workings are not important and that the reality of the manifestation is probably more complex than we know, or we are in the dark to the reality.

I would be interested in your explanation?

That the material we find ourselves in is a construct, an artificial substrate, or vehicle enabling the appearance/experience of a being/s. Being artificial, their existence is artificial and when they cease to be, what ceases to be was not real, but a construct.
Likewise this is also the case for the soul (for want of a better word), but in a more subtle way. This is a simplified version of the idea.

According to the theory, you can not be destroyed because, as a pattern, you don't exist.

I can buy that, but my explanation is probably quite different to yours.

We do not experience extension. We are always here and now. This is well discussed by the physicist and mathematician Hermann Weyl in his writings on the continuum. Extension is a theory, not an experience.

Agreed. In our world extension is the flip side of experience (this does not mean it is in any way fundamental).

Thoughts on this?

The north is being used as a Petri dish.
The surge a month ago was fuelled by schools and universities going back, so now the increases will be reducing due to partial lockdowns. The trouble is that the infection rate is so high that test and trace has become ineffective as the numbers are unmanageable.