Now that Les Parnas's testimony is a available, Mayor Giuliani and Trump will be further exposed. If the Senate votes to exclude witness testimony, they will be collectively betraying their oaths of office. If witnesses are allowed they will either have to ignore the evidence, therefore losing any integrity they have, or if they accept it they will have to rule against Trump.

Then we should hope the CIA isn't partisan.

It’s a Ukrainian company in Ukrainian jurisdiction. As for American government officials I think that’s up to the justice dept. The president was only asking the Ukrainian president to look into it

So Trump was vulnerable to accusations of political expediency.

I expect the CIA will be watching what politicians are up to in ex USSR states if they may gain presidential office in the near future. Surely they know what happened.

I’m not sure what they said.

My point being that it was the role of the CIA to do the investigation, rather than the president, because the president could be vulnerable to accusations of political expediency.

I believe he has done nothing wrong, and more, I think he was right and obligated, morally and as a public servant of the country, to look into possible corruption between US and Ukrainian officials. The notion that he shouldn’t do so because it might harm a Democrat’s political chances seems absolutely absurd to me and I feel I am living in Clown World for having to argue against it.

And what did the CIA have to say about Trump getting involved in the investigation of Biden? Or did Trump neglect to tell them. Presumably they were already aware of said corruption from their Ukrainian spies.

I think we should give Meghan some credit, I think she is moving to Canada to protect the kids from that kind of exposure and vilification that is going to be dedicated to her and them in the UK.
I would do that, although, I wouldn't have married him in the first place.

Regarding the permission point, yes, I am concerned about this. Because the BBC, which is a nationalised institution is regarded widely as only purveying the true reality, which can be trusted above all else. Indeed whatever and however any story is covered on radio 4 is gospel. Most of the population will take this as granting permission. Although to the BBC's credit, they did not indulge in the overt racism and were quite balanced on institutionalised racism and sexism. The issue I have with their coverage is their elevation of details of the family life of H and M to the level of important national news, on a par with politics. Indeed it easily pushes Johnson etc of the headline slot.

Going back to the salacious vilification purveyed by the papers, it acts as a dog whistle for the bigoted racist rump I mentioned before. Which over time seeps into general discourse.

I say they were # hacked off.

Yes. That's why I don't claim to have any direct knowledge about Enfernity. For my worldview, It's merely a baseline for everything else. It's the empty-set outside our Reality-set circle (the universe). For the purposes of "intellectual inquiry", it serves as Plato's realm of Ideal Forms.

Yes, I agree on Enfernity. I would have described the equivalent in my philosophy. For me it is rather like the asymptote you describe, I see it as an event horizon, or meniscus. A horizon where the forms regress to an equivalence of infinity. I appreciate your view of this as a baseline, although for me it is a threashold, or window beyond which are forms of absolute/eternal worlds and beings, rather like the Hindu cosmology.

I also contemplate this threashold present in myself, humanity, all the kingdoms in nature and individual cells for example. So amenable to communion.

Likewise it dovetails nicely into ideas reducing perception of our world to one point in time and space. And is useful in freeing oneself of human conditioning and nature for purposes of contemplation.

I was thinking of starting a thread on this myself. I think the video spells out the issue well. I would only reiterate the mention of the way the media operates in the UK. It has become normalised for the entire media to examine the lives of certain, chosen, Royals in minute detail and to turn any slightly interesting, or controversial developments, or circumstances into a media storm. This level of scrutiny is unprecedented anywhere else or against any other group of celebrities.

The press pack is lead by a group of competing newspapers known as the gutter press. The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday, The Daily Express, The Sun, The Daily Mirror. These rags blow up any tittle tattle, selacious gossip, juicy stories into media storms daily and once they latch on to a Royal story they just don't stop. Yesterday, as I walked past the newstand in my local Supermarket, every front page( including the serious papers) had large photos of the Queen, or Meghan, or Harry, pulling faces, or looking angry. This has been going on continuously since the story broke and won't stop for months.

This is followed by the mainstream TV repeating sanitised versions of the story's ad hominem, until everyone is sick of it.

More broadly and what is the base perspective of these rags is a toxic cocktail of sexism, misogyny and racism, which pervades a rump of the population who read these newspapers. Perhaps half a million to 2 million people. This then pervades a larger group, who will imbibe the vitriol almost subliminally, while not questioning it, or giving it much thought. This same rump were very vocally in favour of Brexit by the way.

A new word has been coined to describe the prejudice against Meghan, misogenior. A combination of misogyny and racism against black, or people of a West Indian heritage.

The majority of the population in the UK are broadly supportive of the Harry and Meghan, and are either appalled by what has happened, or simply don't see it as an important story at all.

If there is something that ought to fall, it is the Zionist agenda and the concept of Israel as a Jewish state that makes second rate citizens of non-Jewish Israelis. It's a racist country and Zionism is what informs that racism.

Yes I wholeheartedly agree, I was going to write the same thing, but hadn't got around to it.

I suggest folk go to google earth and zoom in on Gaza, you can see what amounts to little more than a concentration camp from space.

Could you say more?

Well, in essence mysticism includes an approach to knowledge which offers two other means of enquiry (there may be more). Other than the intellectual route to knowledge. An enquiry into the self and an enquiry into communion, or intuition with or aided by a real, or notional deity, of some kind.

During this inquiry insights may occur into other areas, or ideas, different, or even orthogonal to the intellectual route to knowledge.

For example I have realised that there is a form of knowledge, which is gathered, or achieved via acquaintance, or communion with aspects of the self, or other entities. A route in which the intellect is used only as a tool of interpretation of the experience which has become known, before the intellect became involved.

1) Mind-body dualism is a non sequitur.
2) Human substance (being) is a unity having two properties (i.e., body and mind).

I would agree with this, to an extent. The extent that a human entity can be regarded as a substance, however both body and mind are foundational to the conscious being therein. So perhaps one can describe the conscious being to be found in a human, fundamentally dualistic, due to the case that consciousness of the body and the consciousness of the mind, are foundational and both are necessary for that consciousness to occur.

I assume that Eternity-Infinity (timelessness and spacelessness) is the default state of BEING.

I'm not sure it is wise to use the word infinity there, I note that you qualify it with spacelessness, but squaring infinity with reality doesn't end well.

Timelessness and spacelessness, is a good default, or baseline. But it is a dead end when it comes to intellectual inquiry.

There's a news story going around that the Home Secretary of Britain, Priti Patel, has categorised the ideology of Extinction Rebellion as a terrorist ideology and cases of it can be referred to the Prevent Programme, which is the UK anti terrorism security force.

I quote,

"the rest is silence"

If you really want answers you will have to absorb a little mysticism, Shakespeare knew that when he wrote Hamlet.

The problem with humanity was when we developed intelligence. Up until that point we carried on within our evolutionary niche like other animals and plants. Thus playing a balanced role within the ecosystem. Once we became intelligent we began to exploit the ecosystem in new ways determined by what we thought was the right thing to do, or what we wanted to do. Unfortunately this determination was not thorough, or considerate enough of the implications of such action, to avert ever and ever greater exploitation of the ecosystem. Leading to the exploitation of geological deposits, which began to harm, poison, the ecosystem.

We have now caught up with what we have done intellectually and do now understand it and how to put it right. But we are in the predicament of having to great a population, which means we will be unable to make the necessary changes quickly, or efficiently enough to offset many of the consequences.

Yes, they have all fallen into line, there is talk of a bung 2 or 3 billion. Also the people in NI are demanding Stormont should sit, anything is better than Blojo.

the real issue that draining England.

Do you mean draining money from England?

You have misread the situation, I can only surmise that it is due to a cultural difference.

They have the misfortune to be born into the role, the're just making the best of a rum deal. I would'nt wish it on anyone.

Anyway back to Brexit, Stormont is back, I didn't see Johnson's speech, but I expect he will be encouraging them to rejoin Ireland, intentionally, or not.

The problem in Afghanistan is not that the US wants them to become a failed state, but any attempts they might have made to restore the country to something constructive always fail and would also fail in Iran. I know that the US was involved in the destruction of Afghanistan, but that was collateral damage, their purposes were to keep the commies out.

It's true that Trump's motives are all about re-election, but he does have the US legacy in the Middle East to attend to and I'm sure he would be happy to wash his hands of it and have the Middle East settle down into some kind of lasting peace. I know he's stupid and could well make things a whole lot worse over there, but this would not be his intention.

Forgive me, I didn't mean Trump would like to see a puppet installed, but rather a progressive democracy installed by the people. I know it may be a hopeless dream. But Trump is not a hawk, he doesn't want to waste time and money in escapades overseas. I am sure he would want Iran to stop being a problem for the region and US forces trying to get out of Iraq.

I don't think anyone can understand what it is like to be a Royal in the public eye unless you are born into it. Also Meghan did not know the extent of press scrutiny in the UK before she got married. She was perhaps a little naive, but no one's perfect.

It makes much more sense to stand with those protesting injustice and tyranny, and to let those privileged westerners protesting their feelings echo away in silence.

I am more charitable towards Trump in this than some. I realise that his vision for Iran is a liberated country returning to how it was before the 1979 revolution and that he would like to see the population rise up and restore the country. I think though that this can not be done by crippling sanctions and strategic strikes on their administration. I would think the education of the population to realise their plight and that they might rise up themselves in their own time. That the sanctions are going to push the country into a worse place, even into the hands of the Russians, which would not end well and be a strategic mistake.

Yes, the way I look at it is that the natural state in a world/realm of manifestation is for there to be one point in one moment, rather like a singularity. This is such that it is also extended in space and time, that it contains all the complexity found in our limited world and the nature of that particular manifestation. But those limited occurrences are natural expressions of the one point and may be, for example a 3, or 4, or 5th dimensional expression of a single point existing in a higher dimension, in which all extension is as one.

This sort of concept can be a tongue twister and philosophically mere speculation.

If one approaches the question from a spiritual perspective you can go a lot further and consider the absolute.

I wasn't expecting that bile from you. I didn't find much in your post which I can agree with. And I repeat the barrage of abuse she has received from the press is unbearable. Yes she may be a bit self obsessed and can't understand what Royal duties are about, but I am sure she would have made a success of it had the press attacks not been so overbearing.

Yes, I agree with every point except the one that they don't achieve anything. They do achieve a lot, certainly enough to justify their privelidge. Harry has for example created the Invictus games and the whole veteran rehabilitation programme around it. Also he has picked up the batton in campaigning against land mines started by Diana. There are many other good causes. I think we can only judge their privelidge in terms of monetary advantage, because the celebrity aspect of it is these days as much a curse as a privelidge, as it was in the past.

Take Prince Charles for example, the contribution he has personally made to the country would amount to a list more than a page in length.

With the ongoing Brexit apparently never coming to a conclusion, are we now also witnessing a Megxit in the British Isles? It looks like we can already give to Prince Harry the 2020 "cuck of the year" trophy!

Yes it's going to happen.
I don't know if you are aware of the nature of the British media. But Harry and Meghan have been hit by a tsunami of racist hatred and personal attacks from the right wing Zenophobic newspapers. Who have raised a campaign of hatred amongst their loyal readers, this has also spilled out occasionally onto the mainstream media.

The debate at the moment, is about the problem of hate news and persecution of royalty in the UK. A topic which rarely comes to the surface, as criticism of the media, is avoided by the media.

I'm responding to the post in the other thread.

Basically still after four years many of Trump's supporters pin hopes to him which won't happen. There was a similar (if totally different) hope when Obama got into power.

This seems to be the result of the populist developments going on. In the UK the people who bought the populism and pinned their hopes on the Brexit project, or Johnson, are going to be disappointed. Not that Brexit won't happen, but that it will improve their lives, or Britain.

They are going to have to rely on their hallucination now, as the unintended consequences role out. Or it becomes apparent that they were voting for a pipe dream.

Yes they are. Many more like e.g. Speaker Pelosi are needed ...

You're lucky, there aren't many here in the UK.

By refresh-rate, you are referring to the duration of a moment for a human, what we would describe as a few seconds. Or about a second with a fade in and out of a second each side, the past and future?
Also you are saying there are other reset periods, like day length determined by physical circumstances?

So, "I will be dead in the future" means the same as "I am dead" yes? That is, if I am dead in the future, I am now dead.

You can't be dead in the future, because there is no future, there is only conjecture. I know from empirical observation that I will cease to be a human being in the present, because I will be dead. Just that it is not this current moment, but another, future, moment, that I am dead.
Our language has developed with many words implying things happening, or being, in the future, or the past, I have written these words in italics. You are claiming that this narrative is false, because there isn't a past and there isn't a future? Well I agree.

Bartricks, seems to want people to agree on one simple point before moving on and has become frustrated that their not doing that. His argument seems to be that past, present and future are logically incompatible properties. I understand what he's saying, but there are subtleties which are missed. He is insisting that all events happen in the present, they logically can't happen in the past and nothing can happen in the future. So the property of something happening (being) in the past is nonsensical, there is no past for it to be in. Humanity has created a false narrative of things being in the past. Likewise there is no future, there is only the present.

These guys, or lady's are in short supply at the moment.

What then is the timeless universe like?

I go further than that, if one is to go to this place intellectually, surely extension, or space is in the same place at the same time. So we have all extension (space) and all time in one place and one time. And the extension and time we experience is some kind of progression (limited) through the all I just mentioned. Somehow we, as a limited person perceives a limited space and time. Or more specifically we experience a point in an apparently endless space and a point in an apparently endless time together as our point of existence, or experience, our being. If one views this from the perspective of a solipsist, it illustrates the point well. Really I think we should view all of humanity as essentially one being which has been extended into 7.5 billion parts, or individuals ( actually I would extend it to the entire biosphere).

So in this scenario we have one being (the human species), in one point of time and one place (the human world), which is somehow extended into 7.5 billion individual points in space. One could also say that this being is extended in time into all the different points of time (moments) experienced by humanity from their evolution a few million years ago, to the distant future (or not so distant).
But rather than place the moments along the linear time line, it makes sense to me to refer to 7billion individual moments, experienced by the 7.5 billion unique points in space, in this one moment of now that we all exist in.

All things that are extended are essentially the same, but apparent difference emerges when extension happens on a large scale. Until there is enough difference to be equivalent to the diversity we find in the world we find ourselves in.

Perhaps, instead of modern contemporary philosophy, try explaining it to the present modern you. If you can explain it to yourself, then it is philosophy.

Yes, this is no problem for me and I do after being on these sites for a few years now use a lot of the accepted terminology and process. But the difficulty arises when I attempt to convey mystical thinking, I use words and concepts which most philosophers find unintelligible.

Let me give you an example, key to my philosophy is the principle of self orientation. Now on first reading that doesn't sound to complex, or difficult a conception to grasp, but it is not that simple. For starters, I haven't come across anyone anywhere who uses or refers to the concept except in a body of work by an author, which I took inspiration from about 20 years ago.

Let's look at self orientation, what is being oriented and in which direction. Let's take what we agreed on, that all absolute beings are fully present with all limited beings at all times. If that limited being learns skills of orientation via communion with and guidance from those absolute beings, alignments of sorts can be established. This provides the opportunity for the limited being to develop alignments and communication with those absolute beings enabling aspects of growth in the development of the being, via control and mutual alignment with the absolute being through a process of growth/ development and greater alignment, thus a daily practice is developed leading to what could be described as spiritual growth, or walking the path. The limited being if so desired, or if they posses the appropriate faculties to align aspects of mind and intellect, so developing transcendent insight, for example. Can then develop intellectual understanding of what he/she is aligning with.

This is a simple introduction to the conception, which is I think easier to understand when applied to absolute beings, because they are greater, or further advanced than us, while easily understood through common understanding of deities.

I expect you will understand what I am saying, but I doubt many on this forum would give it much credence.

Quite, a lot of my explanation would be in relation to the self, being and life, following on a journey.

None of us are going to crack the code.

But I have cracked the code, for myself. But in a way that is almost unintelligible to others, except others who have followed a similar path to myself.

Also crack the code can be debated extensively and may be meaningless.

I will say though that I would answer you question in the OP with a yes. But if I were to explain this, it might come across as unintelligible to people coming from the perspective of western philosophy.

Well anyway, Trump is a showman, any stream of consciousness he appears to be performing is little more than a conjuring trick, like Billy Graham. I don't want to be disparaging to Billy Graham, but he new how to work a crowd.

The problem as I see it is the approach of academic philosophy. You can see it in the subject/object thread. These intelligent philosophers going around in circles chasing their tails, over the difference between the neumenon and the thing in itself, for example. I haven't delved all that far into metaphysics because it seems to be more of the same and trying to understand it is unnecessarily confusing.

I find myself coming to the forum already with a breadth of understanding of issues like what your OP is about, but from a different philosophical tradition, reluctant to broach many of the subjects because I just get shouted down by academic philosophers, especially the post modernists, as talking new age nonsense. Well if I'm spouting nonsense, what are the post modernists up to, I ask?