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[smjjames]

He does read newspapers though, and things that are printed out for him, which led him to criticize the NYT for saying in the newspaper article that he hadn't spoken with the  Chinese President yet, but the digital version was updated with the correct facts.

[palsch]

I was being flippant, but I think the bigger worry is that this is the level of fact checking that is done before highly public statements are made at the highest level. I find it hard to believe that Obama would quote a blog post without reading the thing. Trump's priorities are all wrong, and that leads to actions being taken in ignorance.

Unrelated, elements of the Russia dossier have been corroborated.

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.

Meanwhile immigration raids are picking up.

Finally, Trump won't be appealing the stay on his immigration ban. This means it will remain unenforced until a full hearing can be held on the merits, and likely appealed up to the Supreme Court on that basis.

[smjjames]

I agree on Obama, but this is Trump we're talking about here.

It's also pretty obvious that he doesn't understand how digital news articles work and that you can update them on the fly.

Plus possibly not understanding how print works in this digital age.

And the fact that he doesn't ask to check if they've updated.

[Max™]

So, I assume some of you have played an MMORPG at some point in the last decade or so maybe, seems plausible enough, right?

Even those who haven't have probably heard of gold sellers/gil sellers/[insert currency here] sellers and so forth, people farm quests or monsters or whatnot with bots at times, real players at others, sell the items, get a bunch of in game cash and sell it for real cash.

One of the big companies doing this back in the early 2000's was IGE.

Around 2007 apparently they went through a rebranding and got a new name and a guy who had previously invested money in it (and earns royalties from Seinfeld?) was made CEO.

Why is this in the AmeriPol thread?

Well...

Billions of years of finite hardly matters. Alternatively, all civilization is useless because eventually the heat death of the universe will hit us. That is not a useful philosophy with which to manage an economy or a tax system.

So basically we need to become the Downstreamers?

Yeah, duh, but can't we become Xeelee instead? I want to be a Nightfighter dammit!

[chaoticag]

Well, clearly we need to get Simon for president if we wanna avoid the heatdeath of the universe. Spiral Energy will solve the energy crisis both domestically and in the far future. Believe in him who believes in you!

(Though anyone other than trump would be good. I'd even take bush the second again.)

[smjjames]

Heard of gold/monster/quest farming? Yes. Did the practice of it? No. At least not for real world profit.

Plenty guilty for doing it for exp and ingame materials though

[Frumple]

Heh. Same terminology, very different methodology. What most folks get up to when they farm doesn't really resemble what the dosh-focused ones do at all. To no little extent because what they're doing is often somewhat illegal

[Max™]

Yeah well, Bannon ended up as CEO after a lawsuit was brought against IGE, and I remembered the term: RMT, real money traders.

[muldrake]

The NYT critisizes Trump's plan to put the Muslim Brotherhood on the list of terrorist organistations.
His own advisors are debating with him over the matter, and intelligence agencies fear it will endanger the safety of the US.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/opinion/all-of-islam-isnt-the-enemy.html?ref=opinion

Hate to say this, but it kind of is a terrorist organization.

[Reelya]

IDK, the executive director of Human Rights Watch has said he disagrees with the label of them as a terrorist organization.

Labeling them as terrorist is similar to Bush's De-ba'athication that caused virtual all of educated civil society in Iraq to be declared outlaws. Since it was a one-party state, party membership was virtually a requirement of any sort of public service job. The secular administration was in fact purged, and replaced by islamists, often with direct US complicity:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Another estimate places the number at "100,000 civil servants, doctors, and teachers," were forcibly removed from the public sector due to low-level affiliation.

Basically they banned these people the secular administration because of nominal party membership, and the US instead effectively backed these guys who were ultra-Islamic zealots and Iran proxies to run the nation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Supreme_Council_of_Iraq

Its administration in Southern Iraq has been criticized as corrupt and as "theocracy mixed with thuggery"[11] According to a 2005 report by journalist Doug Ireland, the Badr Organization has been involved in many incidents of attacking and killing gays in Iraq.[12] According to the British television Channel 4, from 2005 through early 2006, SIIC's Badr Organization members working as commandos in the Ministry of the Interior (which Badr controls) "have been implicated in rounding up and killing thousands of ordinary Sunni civilians."

And just a "fun fact" the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior commandos were in fact trained and overseen by a retired US officer who previously trained the El Salvador Death Squads in the 1980s ... and many of the death squad tactics used by the Badr Commandos now resemble shit that happened in El Salvador under the same guys watch. Coincidence, i'm sure.
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2013/s3728215.htm

“The Ministry of Interior had 14-15 prisons - they were secret, never declared. But the American top brass and the Iraqi leadership knew all about these prisons. The things that went on there: drilling, murder, torture. The ugliest sorts of torture I’ve ever seen.” General Muntadher, former Iraqi army

The program profiles Colonel James Steele, a 58-year-old retired special forces veteran when he was picked by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to help organise the paramilitaries in an attempt to quell a violent Sunni insurgency.

In the 1980s Steele had been in charge of a US team of special military advisors who trained units of El Salvador’s security forces in counterinsurgency. The paramilitary squads committed serious human rights abuses, and allegations aired in this program implicate US advisors in similar abuses committed in Iraq.

Declaring Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization would have similar effects.

[misko27]

The NYT critisizes Trump's plan to put the Muslim Brotherhood on the list of terrorist organistations.
His own advisors are debating with him over the matter, and intelligence agencies fear it will endanger the safety of the US.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/opinion/all-of-islam-isnt-the-enemy.html?ref=opinion

Hate to say this, but it kind of is a terrorist organization.

Point of Order: whether or not it is a terrorist organization is not directly linked to whether we *label* them as a terrorist organization. They are whatever they are, and our words have no power over that. However, what we say they are has a lot of power, and if people are telling the Donald to not do it on the grounds of endangering the US, then that argument is still valid either way.

It's entirely political. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't matter.

[smjjames]

The problem is that the Muslim Brotherhood isn't a unified monolithic thing with the same goal everywhere like ISIS. There is a central leadership, sure, but the various branches and groups have wildly differing goals and activities.

Not sure what the closest analogy would be to it. Was going to say the Christian church, but not sure how well that actually works.

[Reelya]

The problem is that the Muslim Brotherhood isn't a unified monolithic thing with the same goal everywhere like ISIS. There is a central leadership, sure, but the various branches and groups have wildly differing goals and activities.

Not sure what the closest analogy would be to it. Was going to say the Christian church, but not sure how well that actually works.

More like a guild such as the Masons rather than a specific church.

[PTTG??]

Trump's bizzare insults continue to mount.

Something else. By focusing on election fraud, it seems to me that Trump is preparing for "regulating" 2020 elections with enforcers of his own. Of course, only time will tell...

[martinuzz]

Trump has started deporting Mexicans that had been granted pardon by Obama because they arrived in the US as a child.
36 year old Guadelupe Garcia de Rayos, who has lived in the US for 20 years and has 2 US-born children, admitted in 2009 that she used fake papers to get a job, because she did not have a work permit. In 2013 she was told she would be deported, but Obama's new policy allowed her to stay after all, when he decided that people who had entered the US without papers at a young age should not be deported.

Last week, the woman was present at a yearly routine talk at the immigration office, and was suddenly told that she needs to leave the country after all.

A group of protestors that gathered at the immigration office was arrested, and the lady put in a police van and dumped across the border in Nogales, Mexico.

In response, the Mexican government has issued an official warning to Mexican citizens living in the US to 'be extra vigilant'.
"Miss Garcia de Rayos' case illustrates the new reality for the Mexican community in the US, who now face the most extreme implementation of immigration control", the Mexican government wrote in their statement.
Mexicans in the US are advised to seek help with the consulates, and make emergency plans in case of abrupt and unexpected deportation to Mexico.

http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/mexico-waarschuwt-staatsburgers-in-vs-na-deportatie-vrouw~a4461265/

http://www.teenvogue.com/story/jackie-rayos-garcia-mother-deported-guadalupe-garcia-de-rayos

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/us/phoenix-guadalupe-garcia-de-rayos.html