Bay 12 Games Forum

Now, I wonder who the heck is going to be the top National Security advisor? I've seen Petraeus be mentioned once. CNN seems to be unsure who the acting NS advisor is :/

Among this we have casual chaos as Trump takes a serious briefing alongside an allied head of government at a candlelit dinner table surrounded by high paying guests of his resort. This photo has surfaced.

None of the newly learned information relates to the salacious allegations in the dossier. Rather it relates to conversations between foreign nationals. The dossier details about a dozen conversations between senior Russian officials and other Russian individuals. Sources would not confirm which specific conversations were intercepted or the content of those discussions due to the classified nature of US intelligence collection programs.
But the intercepts do confirm that some of the conversations described in the dossier took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier, according to the officials. CNN has not confirmed whether any content relates to then-candidate Trump.

US intelligence officials emphasize the conversations were solely between foreign nationals, including those in or tied to the Russian government, intercepted during routine intelligence gathering.
Some of the individuals involved in the intercepted communications were known to the US intelligence community as "heavily involved" in collecting information damaging to Hillary Clinton and helpful to Donald Trump, two of the officials tell CNN.

Yeah, as I and others have posted articles to, declaring the Muslim Brotherhood as a whole would be counterproductive because it's an umbrella organization. Basically, it's like any large mostly decentralized organization like say, Masons maybe, or the Greek Fraternities*. There are many branches and 'chapters', so, some of them will have bad reputations, but that doesn't neccesarily mean the entire organization is bad.

*I know the Greek Fraternity system is troubled, but it doesn't neccesarily mean 100% of them are bad.

At a global level, the Brotherhood is no Mafia. Nor is it a rigid and disciplined Stalinist-style Comintern. It most closely resembles today’s Socialist International: a tame framework for a group of loosely linked, ideologically similar movements that recognize each other, swap stories and experiences in occasional meetings, and happily subscribe to a formally international ideology without giving it much priority. There is every reason to be interested in the Brotherhood’s myriad (and surprisingly diverse) country branches, but there is no reason to fear it as a menacing global web.

The real problem with attacking Muslim Brotherhood, who are the biggest "mainstream" Sunni Islam islamic group is that they are a publicly announced group with politicians and the like. By taking them out, you just radicalize things more because you drive everyone underground - basically into the arms of ISIS. ISIS are a rival to the Muslim Brotherhood for the same eyes and ears. Taking them out is dumb.

The short answer is that the Brotherhood is not in a meaningful sense a single organization at all; elements of it can be designated and have been designated, and other elements certainly cannot be. As a whole, it is simply too diffuse and diverse to characterize. And it certainly cannot be said as a whole to engage in terrorism that threatens the United States.

Other Brotherhood chapters have not been so antagonistic toward their local rulers, especially in countries where they have been allowed to participate in electoral politics. Brotherhood parties have fielded candidates and hold seats in parliament in several countries, like Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, and Israel. The vice president of Iraq during the American occupation was also a Brotherhood member. And the Brotherhood-associated party in Morocco led the last government and is slated to lead the next one. As is true with Hizballah ministers and parliament members in Lebanon, an terrorist designation of the Brotherhood would thus forbid the U.S. government from engaging with foreign officials who hail from these parties; this could severely constrain U.S. government partnership with the Moroccan government, which is a major counterterrorism partner.

... that said, it again looks a lot like the UK was shafting their electorate a fair bit all their lonesome on that front, to say nothing about whatever extent they buggered up doing anything about problem points in treating with the EU itself. EU floor for non-necessities is 15% -- UK's government bumped that to 20% for the UK itself a few years back. Don't actually know where the money goes/what it's used for, but that does say that the UK's politicians took it upon themselves to fuck their nation at least a third as much as the EU did if you consider the VAT a proper rodgering.

The only VAT policy that UKIP wants to remove is making tampons exempt from the VAT.  Which evil law by the EU forces the British government to have a VAT on tampons?