Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
MOD OP EDIT: Please put general conversations about Trump here. Anything that is not exceptionally deserving of its own OP on this topic will be merged into this discussion. And let's keep things relatively polite. Thanks.
Comments (24161)
Unless that person was black, that would probably win him votes. :vomit:
I think that will be my new favourite emoticon.
Is this a shrine, then? The number of perfection and everything?
It's whatever you take it to be.
I think some people who claim Bowie or the Sex Pistols changed their lives in 1970's in fact continued to listen to Gilbert O'Sullivan, the Four Tops and Barbara Sreisand most of the time. Oh yes, and Gary Glitter. And Roberta Flack, Janis Ian and Jim Croce. That's Janis Ian, not Janis Joplin, btw. Go on, admit it. You know who you are.
?
Quoting Agustino
Sadly, I have a feeling you may be right.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/08/welcome-age-anger-brexit-trump?CMP=share_btn_fb
From last year, but worth second glance.
Again? Has he already won in 2020?
Also, is there any particular reason why you'd want Trump to win as opposed to some other Republican?
Did anyone hear the brilliant adaptation of Margaret Atwood's 'The Robber Bride' on BBC R4? I'm looking forward to and also dreading part 2.
The good thing about Trump, as opposed to many other Republicans, is that he's not afraid to be conflictual with Democrats when he must. For example, about the importance of God in American public discourse, etc.
Quoting Michael
Again because he won the Presidency in the past.
I'm sure there are plenty of other Republicans who will do that too.
'Twas a joke, trading on ambiguity. ;)
Oh, ok. I didn't even read my own OP. Welcome to the Donald Trump chat Cuthbert and enjoy talking about random stuff.
For sure, but if I look at the past 20 years or so I haven't seen any Republicans do that pretty much. Bush didn't. McCain didn't. Romney didn't. Etc.
Oh, please! Surely you are not counting on Donald Trump to restore God to some alleged central place in American public discourse? Give us a fucking collective break.
Not necessarily, but he's the first Republican to have adopted the right attitude when fighting the Democrats, and not give in to their presumptions, not fight the battle on their territory. That is important.
Also known as "ignoring the facts".
Sorry, couldn't resist.
https://soundcloud.com/historyworkshop/episode-4-the-roots-of-white-supremacy-part-1?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=facebook
A program claiming to explain the place of Trump titled "The Roots of White Supremacy" is propaganda, and ought not to be taken seriously. After losing the election, radical leftists seem to have jumped back on their "Nazi nazi nazi, white supremacist, white supremacist" cart, where everyone they dislike is automatically a nazi or a white supremacist. The tactic of throwing this kind of fake dirt at your opposition no longer works. We all know that the millions of Americans who voted for Trump were not white supremacists. Sure, maybe among the 62 million that voted for Trump, 1 million or so, let's say, were white supremacists. But that's not the majority. That's not even a significant portion of Trump voters.
Yup, Trump is a shining exemplar of Christian ethics. Just kidding. But hey, at least now we can say Merry Christmas again. Yay!
What is really terrible, is that Trump barely get's a mention, and then as merely the continuation of an historical process.
As if you couldn't before.
(Not directed at you but those who say such things for real).
I haven't listened to the thing, but I'm not tempted to after you've presented it as "explaining the place of Trump" when this place is associated with "white supremacy", something that I see as a fringe view since most of Trump supporters are not white supremacists. If you said here's a documentary about white supremacy that would have been interesting - but you didn't present it that way. The way you presented it is certainly propagandistic.
Quoting unenlightened
So... let's see. Trump barely gets mentioned, but this documentary is supposed to "explain the place of Trump".
So let's see. You dismiss as fake and propaganda a talk by a professor of History that you haven't heard, on the basis that it it is about white supremacy and mentions Trump. Now that is definitely making shit up to suit your prejudices, and frankly wilful ignorance that really ought to be beneath even your dignity.
I recommend you read this fantastic piece, @Agustino.
No, most of Trump's supporters are not 'white supremacists', but they were undeniably comfortable in voting for a man whose ideas and words and actions have overlapped with white supremacy.
It's fine. I was joking.
Just so you know, I reported your post which, in my honest opinion, ought to be deleted.
First of all, I never swore at you or was disrespectful, and yet, you start foaming at the mouth and calling me a bigot, you say "fuck off", your post is littered with all sorts of comments lacking any style ("beneath even your dignity", "making shit up", "wilful ignorance", and the like). So, shame on you.
Quoting unenlightened
Nope, that's not what I did. That's just more propaganda.
I said:
Quoting Agustino
That's how you portrayed the program:
Quoting unenlightened
I simply said that a program aiming to explain the place of Trump by appealing to White Supremacy is ridiculous and ought not to be taken seriously (why? well, as I said, Trump's supporters are not, in their vast majority, white supremacists).
Then I explained to you that I didn't listen to the program, and was basing what I said about it based on your description of it - the way you presented it. In fact, I clarified that what was clearly propagandistic wasn't the program as it was, but the way you presented it:
Quoting Agustino
And that is true, because it turns out, by your own comments, that the program barely mentions Trump.
Thanks, I will look into it!
But, at least, I am glad to have gotten an inside peek into how these people on the left think. I certainly would not want to live in a society filled by such resentful paranoiacs who insist on framing everything to be about race, gender, sexual orientation and religion. So glad Crooked Hillary didn't win - can you imagine how intense the discourse of these self-righteous leftists would have been had she won? They are already making such a big fuss now when their candidate lost.
We already live in a society where all races, both genders, all sexual orientations and religions are equal. That's how it should be. That's what eradicating racism, sexism, etc. means. It means that our discourse and our society no longer revolves around what skin color you have, because that no longer matters. It doesn't matter if you're black or white, etc.
I presented it as history. It presents a historical analysis that explains the roots of - amongst other current affairs the election of Trump. Being an historical analysis, it talks mainly about history. You have constructed all this nonsensical complaint yourself out of one sentence of mine, that you have used to justify what cannot be justified; a damning condemnation of something you have no knowledge of. And now you go whining to the moderators because I have called you out and exposed your baseless criticisms asblind prejudice.
Well, I really think that the left should abandon this form of identity politics. On the one hand, for ethical reasons: it simply is unethical because it is untrue. On the other hand, because it simply doesn't work anymore, people can see through it. It won't get the left anywhere.
I didn't whine to anyone, I just clicked flag on your post. And I didn't flag you because you disagree with me (or you "exposed" my baseless criticism and prejudice), I flagged you for your language which was violent and inappropriate.
It explains how the left is now literarily left behind - they no longer understand their environment, and keep trying to play by the old rules. They keep using the same old tactics - scream white supremacy, etc. - but those tactics no longer work because people see through it.
As I've told you before, the notion that the contemporary American "Left" is reducible to identity politics is false. It is as inane as reducing the contemporary American "Right" to white supremacy. If the goal of the Russian operatives was to foment discord and confusion, and further divide America politically, then they've certainly succeeded with you.
Sure, all I'm saying is that there is a heavy tendency to lean the way of identity politics on the left, which is not healthy (for the left).
Quoting Maw
With me? :s
The real truth though is that America was already super divided politically. Just that this was not known, since the Media and the Academia have been entirely left-leaning for many years already. So all that we had in public discourse was the leftist narrative - even politicians on the right (Bush, McCain, Romney, etc.) were playing based on this narrative.
Spoiler: He's the worst.
Of the 170 experts who voted, Democrats placed him last, Independents second to last (above Buchanan), and Republicans 5th from last (above Buchanan, Harrison, Pierce, and Johnson).
Although obviously he's only served 1 year so far. Plenty of time to fuck up some more and earn the bottom spot across the board.
It's also ironically creating and abetting the very thing they most loathe: white identity politics.
It is utterly ridiculous that you call:
Quoting Maw
Quoting Maw
Ignoramouses and put them in the same category with InfoWars. When you do something like that, you can't be taken seriously anymore, because you're obviously intellectually dishonest. InfoWars is a lunatic conspiracy "news" outlet, and the former two are credible intellectuals with a long track record.
Quoting Maw
I don't think the former two did. Their view is largely true. You can cover your ears and pretend you're not hearing, but it won't make it false.
During the Presidential elections, from the beginning, when I was saying exactly what Peterson is saying today, people were laughing at me. And I told everyone, you can think what you want, but this is the truth. This politically correct culture, with its obsession with identity politics, race, encouraging discrimination against white heterosexual males, etc. is a modern leftist propaganda and has nothing to do with the truth. At the time people laughed, now they can't laugh anymore, because events proved that I was right. You can ignore those things, but it doesn't mean that they aren't happening or that they are ahistorical.
Quoting Maw
And the funny thing is that I'm not far-right at all:
"Encouraging discrimination against white heterosexual males" is propaganda and false?
Can you give an example of this discrimination?
Except I didn't put them in the same category. I put them on a spectrum, ranging from Peterson and Shapiro on one end, to InfoWars on the other. You can protest endlessly, but they both pedal right-wing conspiracies, cherry-pick science, and rant about "The Left", albeit in differing degrees. Unsurprisingly your continued uncharitable readings (or lack of reading comprehension) and monomania make it impossible to have any meaningful intellectual conversation. In three years from now, I wouldn't be surprised if you joined the Flat-Earther Society.
How so?
I think he means that relative to Stalin & Mao, Hitler was a pussycat.
You seriously don’t think Trump is divisive?
Maybe more realistically, the party passed legislation that they’ve wanted for years, despite Trump’s obnoxiousness. Perhaps they could have accomplished more of their agenda with a competent leader, having both house and senate majority.
Quoting Hanover
Obama wasn’t a populist who intentionally divided the nation in order to gain power. He was an inspirational leader, though of course he didn’t lead in a direction everyone could follow.
Does this include wars?
It didn't say in the article; only reported the results. I'm guessing the experts weren't asked to explain each ranking.
Quoting Hanover
I was a bit too young to pay attention to politics (especially when not UK politics) during George W. Bush (although I was aware of him, just not the wider political climate), but were the Democrats that divided after his win? I know that there was some drama with the Florida votes, but aside from that?
His early approval ratings among Democrats mirror Obama's early approval ratings among Republicans. Whereas compare to Trump's. It seems that it's definitely something about him, and not just the fact that he's a Republican. Even the Republican experts in the poll I linked to had him fifth from bottom.
And you're an exemplar of what; non-partisan tactics? Convince me there's no "hyper" in your modus operandi.
Like when a black lesbian female is given the position of professor over a heterosexual white male simply because she is black, lesbian and female, even though she is less competent than her competition.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/04/white-professors-sue-alabama-state-discrimination/25302767/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/white-professor-was-fired-from-predominantly-black-university-due-to-colour-of-skin-court-rules-a7788171.html
Of course, if you listen to people like @unenlightened, if you're white, you don't have to worry about being picked on with regards to your skin color on the street... except if you happen to live in Pakistan, or you go through the wrong neighbourhood, etc.
The thing is though, Democrats pretty much control the Academia and the Media - I mean their narrative is the wider cultural narrative. So when they're in power, they feel that everyone is on their side, so they don't see America as divided. They choose not to listen to others with different views, and they dismiss them as lunatics who don't even deserve to be taken seriously - just like @Maw is trying to dismiss me in this thread.
But when Trump is President, then you have the Media and the Academia on one side, and then Trump and the establishment on the other - suddenly, now there is division, where previously they saw only unity, and Trump and others were dismissed as crackpots.
So there can't be decent right-wing views? Everything that is right-wing is therefore wrong? And you can parrot about the right-wing all day, but they're not allowed to talk about "The Left" because there is no such thing as "The Left". "The Left" just means all decent people who are right by default - actually, your favorite trick, there is no such unity amongst them to call them "The Left". Really, you've just bought into the mainstream propaganda.
Actual policies of "positive discrimination" would be a better example.
Right... that is not discrimination, because they are white and heterosexual on top, so they deserve being fired :confused:
I didn't say it wasn't discrimination. I said it wasn't a case of discrimination being encouraged. What they were doing was wrong, and they were punished for it.
So as I said, you need to find examples of actual policies of "positive discrimination" to support your claim that discrimination against white people is being encouraged.
Actually, in the first source it was a gay couple.
I think in the case of a parliament it should be representative of the populace.
No. It should be what is best for everyone - if one part of the population can take better decisions because, for whatever reasons, they are the most capable, then they should be the representatives.
Better for who? If the legislators are all tied to big business then they're going to do what's best for big business and not what's best for the lower class. Or if they're all Christian then they're going to do what's best for Christians and not what's best for the LGBT community.
Where did I say they should all be tied to big business?
You didn't, and I didn't say you did. I'm pointing out how useless it is to claim that they'll "do what's best". What's best for one group isn't what's best for another group. And whoever's in charge is, more often than not, going to choose to do what's best for the group they're in.
But not all groups are capable to determine what is best for themselves.
In particular social conservatists like you. Let's take away your ability to vote just to make you safe.
If you ever listened, you would not hear me say that white people never suffer discrimination. What you would hear me say is that there is a legacy from the past, from the colonisation of the Americas, Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand, by (white) Europeans, which was justified by an explicit doctrine of white supremacy. And this doctrine continued explicitly and implicitly through JimCrow laws for example in the US, Racist immigration policy and 'the stolen generation' policies in Australia, Apartheid in S. Africa, and so on and so on. These are things that I remember, they happened in my lifetime, as I remember my aunt and uncle adopting six mixed-race children (along with their own six white kids) because no one else wanted to look after such kids because they were tainted and shameful.
Now you may think that since we started letting black people sit at the front of the bus, all that history is over and done with, apart from a few oddities in pointy hats. But can only think that by covering your eyes and ears to the vast amount of evidence from the media from social scientists, that the attitudes persist, as one would expect them to if one understood the evolution of social attitudes at all.
And a really good example of this persistence is the way, in this very thread, one incident in what the article calls 'a historically black college', of alleged discrimination against whites is taken as of comparable weight to the discrimination against blacks. It is particularly ironic that the black colleges were explicitly set up to educate newly freed slaves who had previously been forbidden by law from being educated.
If you listened to me, you would hear me say that no one is immune from prejudice and partisanship, and anyone can suffer discrimination. But not uniquely, but to a unique extent and extreme, white people have a long long history of justifying invasion, oppression, exploitation, enslavement, and genocide on the grounds of their racial superiority. Probably every culture thinks it's the best, but take a look at the condition of the indigenous people of Australia, India, North and South America, Africa and the blacks in the US, and you see a pattern, and the pattern is not how badly treated and hard done by the white immigrants have been and are. Hey, but every now and then, a white guy gets a bad deal - outrage!
Never said that was the case, Agustino. There are certainly decent right-wing views, but they aren't well espoused by Peterson, Shapiro and other hacks. I've also never continuously homogenized "The Right", as you have the "The Left", in order to formulate a weltanschauung. Anyway, enjoy your crackpot theories and acolyte fidelity.
I'm also enjoying the fact that, within the last few hours, you've started to defend a concept that is essentially a "benevolent" dictatorship.
Quoting Noble Dust
Burden is on you, bud.
Your contention is that these two colleges are representative of the modern left? :ok:
Trump Administration Looking at Bankruptcy Options for Student Debt.
So he can do some good things.
That Trump got 30/30 on the cognitive test :razz:
That's this test. Being able to pass that just means you don't have Parkinson's or something, not that you're not an idiot and fit to be President.
Or is that all it takes? Being able to name some animals and draw a cube? ;)
:rofl: Thing is, people who are mentally impaired by an actual illness (like Alzheimer's, etc.) cannot do those regular tasks. That's precisely the point. People often confuse actual medical disorders with behaviour that is within normal bounds.
"Trump blames Obama for inaction over alleged Russia meddling".
The man who refused to accept that Russia meddled, who refused to enact Russia sanctions, and who hasn't directed the intelligence communities to do anything about Russian interference during the next election.
Hmmm okay, but wasn't it the technological superiority of the Western Europeans at that time that allowed them to subjugate the rest of the world? They may have justified it as white supremacy in some cases (though that depends, because with regards to Eastern Europeans & Russia, it couldn't be justified as White Supremacy). But it was technological superiority that really permitted it to happen.
My guess is that if any of the other races got ahold of technological superiority first and learned to exploit fossil fuels and other natural resources, they would have subjugated the rest of the world themselves, and would have justified it in similar ways. What do you reckon?
Quoting unenlightened
I agree that the attitudes persisted - they were there in the 60s, 70s, 80s - but those years are long gone now! I really think we have moved beyond that, especially with the internet and the ease of access people now have to others of different nationalities, skin colors, and to knowledge as well.
Quoting unenlightened
So a professor getting fired based on skin color isn't a serious case of racism?
President Obama quoted by Trump, and Trump's response:
This disagrees with your version of what happened.
That one. Clearly, Obama as he was quoted by Trump thought that it is laughable that someone could rig America's elections.
Obama was referring to Trump's persistent claim that there is systematic voter fraud. See this article that was written at the time:
And this doesn't undermine Biden's claim that McConnell blocked Obama from calling out the Russians. In fact, Biden's claim is supported by this article from June 23, about "Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault":
It also quite nicely explains the many (other) ways that Obama did try to do something in response. Here's an interesting part:
The claim now isn't that the election was rigged, it's that it was interfered with by a foreign government who influenced the outcome. A rigged election is one in which the outcome is inevitable based on interference.
Who knows, it's certainly possible, but China invented gunpowder, paper, and all kinds of stuff without feeling the need. It's obviously not a racial thing, but it is a cultural thing, and who knows where any culture might have gone if...?
Quoting Agustino
I do assure you those years have not gone, but continue. Even dinosaurs remain as fossils, and in the imagination, and in the way they influenced the development of the Earth, and that was a very long time ago, before even my time.
Quoting Agustino
Well it's obviously serious for the parties concerned in each case, but the question is in which direction the generality of cases lie. I'm not arguing for the moral superiority of any race or gender, but if you ask me if white people suffer a widespread disadvantage in the culture because of their skin colour, then the answer is that they do not and never have done.
Yeah, that is true - China also happened to be the world's largest economy for much of world history. But at the same time, they did not learn how to make use of natural resources on an industrial scale and in a scientific way in the manner, Western Europeans did during and before the Enlightenment. Why didn't they? What made this "scientific revolution" possible in Europe?
With regards to the cultural thing - I'm not sure if that's the answer. China has, in my opinion, a MUCH more developed culture in terms of political strategy, the art of manipulation, warfare, & ethical standards which are much more permissive than the Judaeo-Christian ones of Europeans. I can refer you here to the Three Kingdoms period at the end of the Han Dynastry, or to the earlier Warring States period. China was not externally expansionist (for some reasons - probably geographic), but locally they were as bad as it gets. In fact, the sort of political machinations you find in Chinese strategy manuals, and littered across Chinese history, make their European counterparts (ie, Peloponnesian War, Machiavelli's Prince, Cardinal Richelieu, etc.) seem children's play.
Quoting unenlightened
There might be remnants, but I don't particularly see the kinds of systemic racism where people are frequently fired from their jobs based on racism, and similar issues.
Quoting unenlightened
Right, well I agree that they don't suffer a widespread disadvantage because of skin color, at least not in the Western countries. But then, I don't think that other races suffer such a disadvantage based on skin color (there are some exceptions in certain areas, etc. - I'm talking just by and large) in the West.
British people never treated me very well because I was a foreigner (Eastern European thief in your minds :monkey: ), but, you know, I just take it that you people are very nationalistic and proud of your country. I wouldn't see that sort of thing as "racism" per say, unless you did things like make me sit at the back of the bus, make me use a different toilet, etc.
Also, I think there is a big difference on that between the British, and other Western Europeans. From my observations, the British are a lot more likely to be proud of their nationality and dismissive of others.
This handy timeline makes it clear that the slave trade predates the Enlightenment, and anything one can seriously call industry as we think of it. It can be more reasonably argued that it was slavery that produced the wealth that allowed the enlightenment and the industrial revolution to get going, and the industrial revolution in turn produced the ending of slavery, with machines that can be turned off when not needed becoming cheaper and more profitable than slaves.
Quoting Agustino
Well some of us might have other reasons for treating you badly, but let's try not to go there. :fire:
What were the slaves used for? What kind of work did they do? And why didn't earlier peoples, which were arguably a lot better organised than the European countries at that time (thinking now about the Roman Empire) make use of slaves and achieve a scientific revolution?
Quoting unenlightened
:rofl: But I thought you're the guy who was all about honest talk...
Agriculture, sugar, cotton mainly. I think the crucial developments were in navigation, boatbuilding and guns. I'd guess that the Romans were unable to get far enough away from their own influence to have that overwhelming advantage that enables a total subjugation, but this is another 'what if' question, that is pretty unanswerable except by imagination supported by prejudice.
There's a time for honesty, and a time for moderation; I believe in whichever suits me at the moment. :grimace:
I have trouble following what you mean here.
Quoting unenlightened
So... you are an authentic opportunist? :lol:
I mean that whatever innovations they made would spread to their potential conquests by osmosis, aka trade. Very different from Europeans with guns reaching cultures that did not have metal.
Anyway, some groups somehow feeling (and acting) superior to others sure has been, and is, common enough. At least we can address such crap when encountered.
U.S. hate groups proliferate in Trump's first year, watchdog says (Ian Simpson, Reuters, Feb 2018)
Nah.
"Come on", not "common".
Yes, that! :rofl: I'm sorry for being an uneducated foreigner! :lol:
Trump the genius. Let's put a rating system on video games and movies so that children don't see things they shouldn't see. :brow:
Top story as of typing: Exclusive: As Trump trashes NAFTA, Mexico turns to Brazilian corn (P J Huffstutter, Adriana Barrera, Reuters, Feb 2018)
How boring of you. Besides, the only way to stop a violent, punishing bad guy is with a violent, punishing good guy. Whatever. Just so long as they both have guns and are around children. But then, that sounds dangerous. Let's give the kids guns too just to be on the safe side.
Think you replied to the wrong person there.
Cheers. Best strawman ever.
That the USA is not capable of providing education and healthcare cuts right to the core of the issue. It's the lack of a common wealth, of an understanding that they are all in this together and hence need to look out for each other as well as themselves that put the USA in this hopeless, helpless position.
What? Trump thinks Nieto is obliged to honour a promise that Trump made? What is wrong with this man?
Dude I am the official provider of [s]hysterical[/s] historical perspective.
[Delete] @Baden
Very good management by Trump here :up: .
I like this quote of Trump's:
"I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida ... to go to court would have taken a long time.
...
Take the guns first, go through due process second.”
And Alex Jones' head explodes.
Quoting Agustino
Credit where credit is due. Would it be too much to ask that he follow up by kicking his sons' butts for this?
How many law-abiding gun owners would worry about background checks and registration? I mean really... The inherent falsehood of such statements is just appaling.
Instead of punishing law abiding citizens by checking their ID before giving them a beer all because of the acts of some deranged alcohol-loving teens we should do nothing because... money.
That would be good, but I think if Trump heard about it, he'd instead be like: "So they just killed a tiger in a shithole, right?" :rofl:
You seem to be a vocal supporter of communism and yet i noticed in one of your other posts you said you believe in God. Two points of view which i thought were antithetical. Did not Karl Marx say of religon that it is "the soul of the soulless conditions" and the "opium of the people". My understanding of what karl marx was getting at here was that it was religon which kept the working class subservient.
Futhermore has not everysingle communist state persecuted the religous while enforcing atheism. Some historians also claim that since communist states had no god they had no morality, which in turn justified some of the greatest mass murder in history. Death tolls ranging from 20mill to 70mill, i think it is more dispicable to call yourself a communist than a nazi. (Both being terrible).
Are you Polish? I very much doubt this. In most of the Eastern bloc religion thrived but only nominally. Like if you ask people on the street they will tell you they're religious, buuuuut - if you watch how they behave :lol: :rofl:
Hm? I'm saying that in Eastern European countries people call themselves religious, not atheists. But if you watch their behaviour, you see that that's not quite the case.
Ok, if that makes you happier, I don't understand it.
Quoting René Descartes
No, not necessarily.
Quoting René Descartes
Oh let's see - like cheating on their wives? Treating women like a sex toy? Corruption at all levels, starting from the local policeman to the President of the country. Greedy. Tax evasion. Uncaring. That's how many people are in Eastern Europe. Sure, they go to Church from time to time, wear crosses around their necks, receive the priest in their houses, etc. But to what end - the priest also takes bribes! :rofl:
Oh and I forgot about swearing - don't get me started on that one!
I don't think you know me, and no I'm not an atheist.
No - unless you do that every post in serious threads which aren't located in The Lounge.
Quoting René Descartes
No man, I'm serious, this stuff is quite frequent in Eastern Europe.
In Eastern Europe, if a President asks a female journalist to come have sex with him - his rating goes up! He's seen as a real man, strong :strong:
In Eastern Europe, if a man does NOT cheat on his wife, then we say he is not a man.
In Eastern Europe, if a man pays his taxes, then we say he is retard. That is why, when I first started in business and my father saw me paying me taxes, he said "What are you doing?! Are you making millions of dollars?! If not, then don't worry, nobody will come after you!". Ever since I actually paid my taxes, he has taken me to be a hopeless retard.
In Eastern Europe if you do not have sex with as many women as possible, then we say you are a homosexual. That is why Vladimir praised Berlusconi for shagging the prostitutes:
In Eastern Europe, if you do not accept bribe, we do not know what to say anymore!
:rofl:
Show me where you see something like this in the US.
Marx claimed that capitalism, socialism, and communism, all had pre-ordained historical roles to fulfill. How is that not a supernatural belief? Marx claimed that there was such a thing as a commodity's "value," which differed from its price and could not be empirically verified and measured. How is that not a supernatural belief?
Marxism is a religion, and an entirely supernatural one at that.
Lessons in cultural understanding 101 with Agu. Lol. :)
No man, what Trump did is kids play. Really - even Trump himself cannot and does not talk such things in public. He apologised for it when it came out.
Also look at how he shies from saying anything about having had sex with beauty contest contenders, etc.
You have not seen Trump and you will never see Trump - as President - asking a journalist publicly to have sex with him, saying on TV that his wife isn't watching so he can flirt with other women, having sex orgies with underage prostitutes at his house, pretending to have sex with a policewoman in the middle of the street where everyone can see etc.
Quoting René Descartes
Legally avoiding tax is different than illegally avoiding it.
Quoting René Descartes
No, probably quite the contrary.
Quoting René Descartes
In terms of culture, Italy is closer to countries like Greece than to the Western European nations (England, France, Germany, etc.).
With the rise of the internet-savy alt-right, Godwin's Law has a new challenger: one that uses Marx as a succedaneum for Hitler.
Capitalism is most definitely not a supernatural belief, it is part of reality. Marx's claim that Capitalism is carrying out some pre-ordained historical role, however, is pure nonsense and a superstitious belief if there ever was one.
If Muslims outlawed Hinduism, in the name of Islam, would anyone then conclude that Muslims must be secular-science-minded people because they were ridding their government of religion, i.e., Hinduism? No. They would recognize that what was taking place was the targeting of one religion by another. Yet, when Marxists do the same thing when they take over, we are supposed to believe that they are atheists and scientifically minded people despite Marxists long history of denying basic Mendelian genetics because it was considered to be too capitalistic?
By the way, before becoming Chancellor of Germany, Socialist Hitler held joint strikes with his communist allies. Stalin was also allied with Hitler at one point, and the Germans assisted Lenin in rising to power in Russia.
Firstly Where did you get this strange idea that Karl Marx was a jew?
Seccondal whats with this strange hero worship of Karl Marx, as if he was Jesus.
Karl marx and jesus and the antithesis of each other
1) jesus would never support the forceful seizure of property, by the state, from the rich or any man. It is true that jesus was critical of the rich however, he would have only have supported their volantarily donation of all they own. Why because jesus believes in individual freedom, unlike Marx.
2) jesus would never ever support world wide revolution. Why because he was a pacifist and would never kill anyone. Marx thinks its fine to kill the rich in the name of revolution.
3) Marx as far as i understand thought of Religon as the opressor of the poor, why? Because for the last thousand years religon kept the peasantry subservant, the upperclasses claimed divine right to rule and the uneducated peasants obeyed this claim. Just look at the indulgences and stuff like that. Now you might claim that religon should not operate like this, but in reality that is how religon work for thousand of years and marx was reacting agaisnt that reality.
He was ancestrally Jewish, his maternal grandfather was a Rabi. His dad converted to Lutherianism as a way to avoid persecution and to further his legal career. Perhaps Descartes got confused by that?
Depends on interpretation of the Halakhic law. Since both his parents converted to Lutherianism, he no longer has at least one Jewish parent. But then, his parents had him when they were both Jewish, so...
You have to admit, an ethnic Jewish person will likely raise a lot of eyebrows when he states he is both Jewish and Lutherian. As such, I've much more often seen Marx described as a German philosopher than a Jewish philosopher.
Quoting Maw
Ah c'mon! This Marx intermission is pretty much the best thing about this thread.
A major "Fuck you, Canada!" to compensate for the one from Boeing we just rebuked.
If Trumps wants to paint doing business with Canada as a serious national security threat, then we can exit NAFTA, start again dumping prices on wood, and even cancel the hydro contracts that powers a third of New England and New York!
You thought New Yorkers were dicks, wait until they've spent two weeks in February with no heat!
You underestimate the pain tolerance of New Yorkers.
This is BS. Marx advocates an immanent revolution within the world, driven by human beings. Marx believes humans can judge right and wrong accurately.
Jesus advocates a transcendent revolution, driven by the Divine, not by sinful human beings. These two are not the same at all. Neither is divine punishment the same as human punishment.
Trump is making his best effort to get the next economic slowdown to start.
Just in time for the 2018 elections.
After all, he's best at shooting himself in the foot and making things worse for him.
Nicholas Nassim Taleb writes this about Trump in his new book:
Reelection move. It gives him a helluva talking point in the Rust Belt which he must win.
So soon?
CNN
"the rich people are given a choice, but if they choose wrongly their reward is death,"
Nearly the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard. First of all, sorry to break the news to you but we ALL die one day, regardless of how rich, poor, good or bad we are. Secondly, I see more poor and innocent people die than rich, privileged and without moral conscience. So your theory doesn't hold water. And pleeeease don't give me that crap about heaven and hell. There is only one thing after death and that is eternal nothingness. Like, where exactly were you when someone by the name of Jesus was around convincing the naive and gullible masses that he was god? You did not exist then and you won't exist after you die. I know its a hard pill to swallow but I can't sugarcoat it for you. Wake up and smell the coffee!
Oh I agree with this one. After all, he just focuses on his base as he (perhaps correctly) understands he has absolutely no way to get new supporters. And it's only about the perception what his actions give, not the actual outcome to the economy.
Yet the problem is that people will vote for Republicans or Democrats (and later for him) depending on how the economy goes. The signs aren't so good for that. A trade war is the last thing the global economy needs.
No, those "who know more about the economy" are the leeches who make money by being money changers, speculators, etc. I have almost zero respect for such people. Whenever I see someone making a lot of money out of working a job actually - I don't respect that person, because they don't deserve the money, they don't take risk. The entrepreneurs, not the analysts and speculators, should run the economy.
No, I disagree. Local industries have to be protected, and access to finance needs to be made much easier than it is for local entrepreneurs. Banking should be nationalised, there should be no "for-profit" money changing. That is a monstrosity.
Lawyers and doctors need to have their salaries taxed at 90% above certain levels, which can still be quite high - say $150K in US.
Wall Street - taxed at 90% on profits.
Anyone who is a leech and not productive has to be thrown out. We have many leeches as it is in politics, in the banks, amongst lawyers, etc. - people who survive in the system because of their social relations, instead of merit & risk taking. Nobody who does not risk must be extraordinarily rewarded or accorded social status for that matter.
Well Agustino, entrepreneurs do run the economy.
But if companies are making fewer investments, people are spending less, that has an effect on what entrepreneurs do. The economic boom bust cycle still happens no matter what. Some actions what a President does can only influence the outcome a bit.
You can look for the culprits you want and accuse these or those people to be leeches or whatever and hate the monetary system we have, but that doesn't make it different. The economy is far more complex than those seeing one definite culprit (for all the negative aspects) think.
The fact is that protectionism can work... if the industry protected would use it to modernize itself to compete in the end at the World market. But except for perhaps Germany in the 19th Century, that doesn't typically happen. The industry typically just takes the tariffs/subsidies etc. as a given and doesn't do anything to improve it's situation. Why should it, if it's protected?
In the end, if you just want to pay more for having an uncompetitive industry that actually doesn't deliver, well, then why not.
No, they don't. Entrepreneurs are finding it harder and harder to take decisions on their own, and more and more they have to be at the mercy of boards of directors, investors, politicians etc. It would be good if the entrepreneurs actually ran the economy.
Quoting ssu
Well, people are usually driven to growing - that's what most entrepreneurs intend to do anyway. So even if it might not happen in the short-term, I see no reason not to expect it sooner or later.
Sure, after years of barely making an income, I think we can afford to let the entrepreneurs bank a little dough home for awhile. There are many entrepreneurs out there who are persistently, sometimes for many years, barely surviving, and some of them even run quite large companies.
You shouldn't increase taxes on the rich just because they're rich. That's also not fair, because some people deserve to be rich.
Quoting CuddlyHedgehog
He lost more than a billion dollars and remade it - he is an entrepreneur.
It is the similar to the actions that Bush and Obama took. Bush raised steel tariffs 30%
Both of these presidents were reelected to a second term.
That simply doesn't work. It has been proven again and again. And it basically goes against the whole idea of entrepreneurship. If you take a risk, you should get also bigger profit for it (if things go well) than not taking the risk. Money has to have a price. Heck, if I lend to the bank my money, I ought to get an interest on it.
The most idiotic idea ever is to think that you can replace the market mechanism with a government bureacrat. Because that is what you are saying. (Just as, well, the central banks do now for the money markets).
What the government should do is simply to look that theft, various kinds of rackets, and price fixing by large corporations doesn't happen. Basically not to make the economic boom bust cycle worse. What this means is to oversee that things defined by law to be criminal don't happen. What is as detrimental to economy as nationalization or socialization of the economy is, is also to leave the markets to "self-regulate" themselves. You simply cannot leave foxes in charge of the henhouse as it will leave the door open for reckless rackets that in the end blow up.
What I'm sick and tired of is the ludicrous idea that either the economy should totally be EITHER under government control or that there ought to be no government involvement in the markets whatsoever. And if those would be the only options.
Quoting Agustino
You don't understand my point. They do run the thing. It's they who create jobs, make new industries and are crucial to the health of the economy.
And entrepreneurs by definition are self employed, so they don't have board of directors above them. If you have perhaps something under 30 million entrepreneurs in the US, they surely would be heard and followed by any politician, if they could speak with one voice. But 30 million people don't speak with one voice, have similar ideas and views. You can gather around one table the ten biggest corporations in the country, but you cannot gather around in similar fashion 30 million people.
So the simple fact is that entrepreneurs cannot run the economy. The only way they have influence is that when enough people would be entrepreneurs, the politicians surely would listen to them. But they are a minority. There are for example in the US far more government employees and employees of large corporations or pensioners that don't have at all similar preferences as a self-employed or a small business owner would have.
No it hasn't. Only nationalising the whole economy doesn't work. I didn't recommend that we do that.
Quoting ssu
Yes, you should - but not as a sleazy banker who doesn't produce anything and just watches money pour in. That's not "risk-taking". When the bank offers you a loan on terms that 99% of possible scenarios they win - that's not right, that's theft.
Quoting ssu
In some cases that is already done - roads, the military, many natural resources etc. - doesn't seem to be a problem in those cases. Banking should be one of those industries, since making profits out of banking is ridiculous - nothing gets produced by bankers.
Quoting ssu
Sure, that's not what I suggested.
What is your reasoning?
Basic banking is a service just as anything: those who have savings will get an interest, the banker then chooses which people will he or she then lend money. And if those loans given out cannot be paid back by the people who took the loans, the banker ought to lose his job. Who the hell do I know to which barber or car mechanic can pay his loans or not?
Besides, when you nationalize banks, there is an evident temptation for the government to misuse the banks. Now if there is a banking crisis, for the government to step in is a good idea, but then the objective would be to get the sector healthy again.
The problem (which you likely know) is that that in the present systems the risks and rewards don't go hand in hand and hence you have had very reckless banks.
Trump can't be responsible for the condition the US is in today - he was barely President for one year. Blame your other ex-Presidents like Clinton, Bush, Obama - all of them terrible.
But Trump is responsible for the actions he takes and those he doesn't (as not doing anything does have consequences too) when in charge.
What the Trump presidency seems to be is rampant cronyism that is only restrained by the absolute ineptness of the President to be a leader as he has no leadership skills. I've now seen twice when Trump sits down in a bipartisan meeting how totally clueless he is and literally goes along with the idea that the last person speaking says.
1. Banking is not productive - bankers don't produce anything or add any value. Ideally, banking should facilitate the development of industries by providing access to capital. This shouldn't be done SOLELY with the profit motive - a business may not be able to earn great profits at first, but it may be, for social reasons for example, necessary - it should still get funding.
2. For-profit banking is the equivalent of making money out of thin-air, and it creates entire social classes which profit from this without doing much. They are given higher social status, and are set apart from others based on literarily no merit whatsoever.
Quoting ssu
Yeah, a service where the banker pretty much cannot lose.
Quoting ssu
If the loans can't be paid back, not a problem. Seize his house, seize his assets, why do you care? You may have some logistical issues selling those assets, so you just bunch them together, and sell them all at once at some discount and make your money back. No wonder - bankers usually make terrible administrators.
Quoting ssu
You don't need to know, because it's simply set up that you pretty much cannot lose. When you propose conditions for a mortgage for a property investment and give me a variable interest rate based on a reference rate + 1-2% - while that reference rate usually ends up somewhat higher than inflation anyway at least for the foreseeable future, AND force me to guarantee with the property, then you pretty much cannot lose. In fact, I calculated it for one such case - the scenarios in which the bank really loses are basically non-existent. Whereas I will be a slave to you for quite a few years if I fail to pay you the capital. Those aren't fair conditions, they are abusive, and discourage entrepreneurial activity.
I am not defending the bankers in any way, I think they're parasites and should not be rewarded the way they are, however, if the banks fail, say tomorrow, your savings are gone, your business is going down as people will have no money to buy your stuff and you will starve unless you have enough money stashed away under your mattress. The issue is much more complicated than you'd like to think and a simplistic "get rid of the banks and bankers" type of solution is unrealistic and frankly rather naive and juvenile.
You get very reckless banks precisely because the social classes I was talking about have already formed. They insulate themselves from the risks, while accumulating more and more rewards. They don't care about the risks - whatever happens, for the most part, they will manage. They just set out the game that way - and if things really go bad, go beg a little to politicians and they'll save you even then.
Banks must guarantee savings in their bank accounts under certain limits. In some EU countries this amount is like 100,000 EUR per account. So if you have say, $1 million, and spread it 100K/bank, you'll be fine. Even if you have it all in one account, you'll still get 100K EUR or the equivalent.
If the bank doesn't have liquidities, no worries. Then they should pay with asset transfers, or otherwise liquidate those assets to pay the guarantees and close the bank. Simple. Many people out there wouldn't mind owning one or two bank branch buildings.
Don't tell me banks don't have money - they own assets, in property alone, sometimes in the billions. This is disgusting.
And not only industries but ordinary people. Why people in the Third World countries remain poor is because they cannot get a loan to buy their own home and hence have to live on a rent. Hence they don't have the ability to gain wealth. Getting a loan for a home with low interest and for a longer time is something that a functioning banking sector can provide. Having real estate has been one of the most simple ways how people in the West have become more wealthier. With that wealth they then become consumers, which then creates a market and hence creates growth.
What a nationalized or government controlled banking sector does it that hinders the competition between banks and the end result is that less people can get loans. Simple as that.
Hence banking has a crucial role in the economy and that when it functions well people can get a loan with reasonable rates is something that obviously adds value.
And when do they become producers? Never?
Quoting ssu
LOL! Banking in Third World countries is the problem, not the solution. They even take charges for taking money out of the ATM :lol: - in fact, the poorer the country is, the more these thieves will try to rob them. There will be a crisis in some 5-10 years in Eastern European countries - lots of young people are taking huge loans from banks to buy property, loans that they will never be able to pay back because rates will keep going up, while salaries are still very low. The bank will get the property and some of the interest too! I pity a lot of young people who have taken 30 year-long mortgages from the bank to buy property - they really have no clue what they're getting themselves into.
Quoting ssu
Why do you think so? Owning real estate is not a way to become wealthier - unless you rent it out. Owning real estate is otherwise an expense. Whether you pay rent or you pay the bank monthly payments on your mortgage - same thing, except that paying the bank has the potential to suddenly increase your interest rates. Bankers aren't dumb - especially in third-world countries they've rigged the system and are MORE oppressive than in the Western world, and MORE entitled. A cohort of banks dominate the banking system in third world countries and collude with each other to set the terms. There is no competition, who are you kidding? Or if there is competition, there is within certain bounds, that they themselves set.
Quoting ssu
There should be no competition - banking shouldn't be solely for profit.
Quoting ssu
Less people get loans as things are now - or if they get them, they get them as terrible deals, that aren't even worth getting. In countries where the average wage is $300-600/month, you have banking directors making $10,000+/month. Why? What service is the bank director doing that he deserves that kind of payment relative to others? And not just the bank director, but everyone under him. They are all thieves, from the highest ranks to the lowest. It is utterly ridiculous that anyone believes banks are good, or multinational corporations are good, etc. - these are just a class of people who are profiting from this theft of national property and the abuse of entire nations and their fellow citizens by rackateering money-changers.
No,
People avoided jail (in the US) simply because of political connections and the unwillingness of the Bush and Obama governments to implement the existing laws. During the S & L crisis earlier in the US, a lot of bankers went to jail. During the last financial crisis, not anyone except a few people including a Ponzi-schemer that willingly gave himself up went to jail.
It's not anything about a class. That's just provoking hatred against "the rich". It's simply about the government doing it's job or not and having the balls to have very rich people loose their money. The US government didn't have the balls. When my country had it's housing bubble and banking crisis, the local government performed far better... even if not many people went to jail, the owners of the banks lost money and the banking sector was totally reformed (only a few smaller banks continued with the big banks being merged/broken up).
No, these aren't "the rich". These are "the thieves" - they don't deserve that wealth. There is nothing wrong with Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos, etc. having a fortune of $100+ billion. But there is something wrong with retards who have never taken any real risk in their lives, holding a prestigious piece of paper and nothing else apart from maybe family connections, to earn that kind of money while doing effectively nothing. That is a disgrace.
Quoting ssu
Riiiight - screw everyone else, do not be worried, you won't go to jail, and you will keep your big mansion too - you'll just give up your job. That sounds like a terrible deal for the government.
Quoting ssu
The government doesn't do it's job because it too is formed of a class of leeches, very similar to the bankers, who make a lot of money while doing nothing and taking no risks.
Are you reading what I write?
I said that banking is exactly the problem because ordinary people cannot get a loan with a reasonable interest rate. That's the indicator when a banking sector is healthy: ordinary people with ordinary wage can get a long time loan for a decent house on a decent interest rate. In the Third World it isn't so. Nothing you say contradicts that.
And it's not so obvious that the bank getting the real estate will fix their problems. If a housing bubble bursts, the banks will make a loss with the housing when the debt is larger than the selling price of the house. Only when the housing market is going up bad loans aren't a problem: the person owning the house can simply sell the house for profit and pay the loan back.
Quoting Agustino
When there is no competition, there is also no incentive to give loans for new customers. The banker just give the loans his or her quota defines. I've seen it earlier in my country, works very lousily and keeps people living in far smaller apartments than today.
If you would look at ANY goddam market sector and take out the competition aspect: have just ONE supermarket chain, guess how much everything would cost and lousy the service would be? You can have a chain that "mimics" competition and looks after improve it's services, but still. Hence for there to be competition is crucial. The government has only to watch that no bank becomes too reckless.
And solely? Well, the reason for many services and production of goods to have profit is the objective. Of course a lot of people are genuinely happy when their customers are happy. That doesn't make the profit agenda any less important.
And you suggest that (better) banking is the solution? Nope.
Quoting ssu
A loss in accounting terms maybe. Based on money they could have gotten. No loss in real terms. Remember -> loss = final capital < inflation*initial capital (+ whatever small minute amount would go towards paying whatever employees were involved in the process). Those are the real terms - I'm not talking about "fictive" on-paper accounting losses relative to what they could have made.
Quoting ssu
+ the interest rate.
Quoting ssu
We have one military, that's not a problem. We have one ministry of government building roads - not a problem, etc.
In some industries, lack of competition is bad. In some industries, the profit motive is important. Not in all.
Quoting ssu
Nope. The profit-motive isn't good in all circumstances and industries. I agree entrepreneurship should be for-profit - entrepreneurship doesn't include banking though, which is monopolistic and heavily in bed with the state everywhere anyhows. Let's nationalise them and eliminate the profit-motive from banking, that will stop the accumulation of capital to banks.
Ok, this is just humbug.
In real life banks can go insolvent through bad debt. I have no idea what you are talking about.
Sure, in very unlikely circumstances.
Say someone takes a 30-year loan. There is a crisis coming 6 years down the road and you don't know about it (you're quite sure though that no near-term crisis is at hand). Fine. Until the crisis the value of the property increases, by, say, 3-5% per annum - roughly a 20% increase going with the lower bound here. He has paid more than 20% of the original value of the property in those 6 years (6/30 - actually more than that cause you pay progressively less - bankers are smart, not stupid, but for the sake of being as harsh as possible on the banker, we'll assume just 20%). How much does the crisis knock the value of the property off? Let's say at first -60% and then appreciates to somewhere 40-30%. So how much is that compared to original value? 1.2*0.6 = 72% - so a loss of 28%. But the person has already paid 20% of the original value. So the loss is really just 8%. Now he can't pay anymore. You take the property, you wait a couple of months till the price gets to higher than -40% compared to pre-crisis levels and sell the property. You're a winner. It's easy to be a banker.
Quoting ssu
Not humbug. The bank's making an investment. The only thing they need to cover is to make sure that their capital grows faster than inflation. Simple.
What, a person making $150K ought to be taxed 90%? So their take home pay is $15K? That wouldn't even pay rent.
No. Read what I wrote. "ABOVE CERTAIN LEVELS". $150K is taxed normally, above that taxed at 90%.
Right, so income of $150,001 leaves one with about $15,000 in take home pay.
Nope. *facepalm*
160K income. On 150K normal tax. On 10K 90%.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax
I did.
Quoting Agustino
I saw no indication that what was really meant was "part" of the salary ought to be taxed at 90%.
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It's self-evident. For two reasons, one pragmatic and one grammatical. Pragmatically, I'm not a retard, and I would not suggest that someone like a lawyer live off 15K a year, obviously. Grammatically, I said the tax is applied to the salary above certain levels. If your total salary is 160K, what's the salary above the 150K level?
The modifier "above certain levels" is right there in front of you. It's a prepositional phrase acting as an adverbial modifying the verb "taxed" in conjunction with the other prepositional phrase "at 90%" pointing to the fact that there are two important qualifiers on the action of taxing; firstly, that it be at a rate of 90%; and secondly, that it apply above a certain level. That level is then conveniently specified as being $150k. There is a way to confuse yourself about all this if you really try as I said, but it's too taxing to go into now.
The new conspiracy will be that Agustino and Baden are the same person :rofl:
The new conspiracy will be that Agustino and Baden are the same person :rofl:
Quoting Agustino
No, you said:
"Lawyers and doctors need to have their salaries taxed at 90% above certain levels, which can still be quite high - say $150K in US."
Clearly you state that a salary above a certain level, say $150K ought to be taxed at 90%
Quoting Agustino
You mostly demonstrate otherwise . Why would I expect this to be an exception?
Quoting Baden
Right, the statement says that salaries above a certain level ought to be taxed at 90%. Where's the indication that what is meant is that only a part of that salary should be taxed?
Quoting Baden
The statement clearly indicates that the salary is what is to be taxed at 90%. And, "above certain levels" qualifies the salary. The fact is, that Agustino did not say what Agustino meant. You understood what Agustino meant, because you did not take Agustino to be an idiot, and knew that what was meant must be other than what was stated. I simply took Agustino to be an idiot. And why shouldn't I, when Agustino has proven so many other times that this is the way to be taken?
:kiss: lovely boy.
It's all in good fun. I love you Agustino
@CuddlyHedgehog
With all due respect, Wtf is this shit man. Irrespective of wheter you believe in God or not, this pathology is Wrong. It is the same pathology that justified the murder of millions of people under communist rule. Shame on You. Shame on You.
And seccondly this is the weirdest interpretation of christianity ive ever heard. I personally base my understanding on Tolstoys works, "the Kingdom of god is within you", and "My Confession". Tolstoy was a pacifist who influenced Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr he thought the fundametal foundation of Christianity was to love thy neighbor. In your interpretation of christianity what happen to the golden rule which was "LOVE your neighbor as yourself" that includes you rich neighbor, or are the rich for some reason allowed to be killed?
I think the murder of millions of people is wrong. I wish i could be a pacifist akin to tolstoy in his later life. But alas that is not the case. And finally
:rofl:
Quoting CuddlyHedgehog
No, the banks will mostly guarantee it with the extensive assets that they have. They may have no liquidity, and therefore declare bankruptcy, though that doesn't mean that they aren't rich.
That sounded like Marx and Jesus all rolled into one. :up:
South Korea. Also proof that governments can run businesses.
Edit: and Singapore. And really most European countries protected their industries, letting them mature before opening up their domestic markets for foreign companies. It's really quite common. That said, it doesn't make a lot of sense for the USA.
This old dinosaur is very probably going to get back to power :rofl:
He started "with a small loan" secured by his father who worked for the bank - to build one of Milan's prime real estate projects Milan Due, at the age of 25 (3500 apartments). It's good to be a hard-working "entrepreneur" :naughty:
It's not about benefiting the voter. He controls the political infrastructure, so things are simply arranged such that he wins - not to mention like 80% of Italian media.
A friend of mine mentioned to me that usually female feminists are ugly women physically - and that's true to a certain extent, in that there is probably no doubt that some women who feel resentment towards other women may channel that resentment towards fighting against the objectification of women just so they can "get back" at women who can use their physical beauty to their advantage. Not all of them, obviously, but I have no doubt that some of them fall in this category.
The activists are usually those who do not benefit from the establishment. If you get to be a minister after you sleep with Berlusconi, you're not gonna want him gone! He was your ticket to power, and it was so easy and so quick! In fact, he promotes beautiful young women, that's what many women on the streets would also say.
So it is a strange relationship, where the victim and the oppressor end up sharing some sort of benefit together that would be lost if the relationship is dissolved. The victim in turn becomes an oppressor, and in that they are co-opted to sustain those who have oppressed them in the first place.
No man, Trump is infinitely better, there's no comparison. Trump really is a gentleman compared to Berlusconi :rofl: , and that's saying something, cause by normal standards Trump is definitely not a gentleman.
And the usual responsibility-aborting cliche "a friend of mine mentioned that..." Why don't you just admit you are a chauvinistic pig (I hope pigs will forgive me), already? The only thing I agree with you on is that men are (evidently, based on your argument) useable and disposable. Having said that, I wouldn't screw an ugly imbecile for all the money and power in the world, especially when I can get those through outsmarting the idiot. This post might get deleted but it's off my chest now, so there!.
No wonder you are a Trump's admirer, btw. His motto is "..grab 'em by the p*ssy.."
Has it ever crossed your mind, even remotely, that they might be fighting against the objectification of women because it's wrong and they do not want to become objectified themselves? Or is it a privilege and an achievement for a woman to become objectified, as you put it, in your demented little mind?
I seem to remember a controversial article a while ago, talking about Kant, and objectification. There might have been a thread on here about it, ill see if i can find it.
Anyway as far as i can remember the point of the article was to say that all sexual attraction is more or less objectification. Which i think i agree with. I know that women objectify men just as much as men objectify women but no one seems to care about that, (not that i do). I think we evolved to objectify one another so it seems pretty unsolvable to me, and i dont see a whole lot wrong about it.
Objectification is not sexual attraction, I'd reply.
Objectification might be how a person specifically relates to sexuality, but that's a particular mode. Objectification can also be related to other facets of human existence, such as labour. And it need not be presented as a defective hermenetics ; Baudrillard, in le système des objets, suggests in a quip that perhaps the only real liberation humanity has ever experienced is the partial and gradual liberation of labour objectification (the power of an individual to define himself in terms of labour power) that we have experienced in the last century or so.
There are very few aspects of the feminist critic of female objectificaton by males which I might agree to file under the heading of "meh, that's instinctual and natural", such as perhaps some points about male gaze (gaze, being to a point an involontary reaction to stimulus, an individual's gaze is not necessarily something he controls, but most of the time, male gaze refers to something else entirely), but certainly not that instinct and natural drives explains away the tendency to value women mostly according to objective sexual factors.
Hmm is that why I've said stuff like:
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
Quoting CuddlyHedgehog
Because I don't think I am a chauvinistic pig, though you obviously enjoy calling me that. I simply said the truth, that's what one of my friends said, who does happen to be somewhat chauvinistic as you say. He thinks that most female feminists are like that. I don't - I simply said that some are no doubt like that, and that's something that should be criticised. We shouldn't close our eyes to our allies' faults merely because they are on the same side as us.
If a woman acts out of resentment for other women who are more beautiful than her, then that's wrong, regardless of whether her actions otherwise have positive consequences.
Quoting CuddlyHedgehog
Well, this is sexist now, because it actually is a blanket statement about men in general. No doubt that there are women who treat men that way, just like there are men who treat women that way. In fact, quite a lot of the men that I've met treat women as disposable, unfortunately.
Quoting CuddlyHedgehog
Except that you can't get money & power without having sex with him - at least not as easily and as quickly. For example, a prostitute who had sex with him once got a $10,000 necklace. Also, just because you wouldn't have sex with him for money & power doesn't mean that other women wouldn't.
Quoting CuddlyHedgehog
Ok, well, hopefully, you at least feel better, though I actually happen to be on the same side of the fence as you are. But you seem to have an aversion to confronting the problem as it exists - I was merely outlining what the problem is. You can't solve a problem if you're not aware of what it is.
There is an unholy alliance between some beautiful women and sexist men which is precisely why for 20+ years sexism is still thriving in Italy and cannot be eradicated.
Quoting CuddlyHedgehog
Sure. That's why I said:
Quoting Agustino
Quoting CuddlyHedgehog
Well, some women would consider this as a privilege. In a sexist culture, some of the beautiful women get their sense of self-esteem precisely by being able to make these rich and powerful men desire them and want to have sex with them (unlike the ugly women who can't). That is their own way of dominating these men, despite their wealth and power.
Objectively, I would say this is a humiliation, not an achievement, for both the man and the woman in question. But then for me, sexual morality is very important, so I am against all forms of cheating, sexual promiscuity, etc.
What’s your point? Are you saying she slept with someone to get to where she is? Is it possible that her own credentials and qualifications got her there? Just because she is beautiful, it doesn’t mean she has prostituded herself to get the job.
P.S. To be fair, it probably helps when your grandfather founded the Party you work for, so not a great deal of meritocracy required.
All right-wing politicians are adept at that. It’s how they compensate for bad judgment and lack of reasoning.
Our brains have greatly evolved since the Stone Age. No excuse to cherry-pick prehistoric ancestral traits. Quoting René Descartes
We are very different to animals.
:brow: :chin:
You're certainly are a strange one. I said she is a charismatic politician. Can I know what that has to do with sleeping with someone? Can I know what that has to do with having or lacking credentials? Can I know what that has to do with being beautiful? :chin:
:razz: ummm no.
oh, excuse me! Did not realise you had changed the subject. I may be strange to you but you certainly have very short attention span.
Ummm yes.
What makes you think that the Le Pen post was addressed to you? :brow:
Exactly the same thing that made you think all my previous posts, that you replied to, were addressed to you.
Well, you had quoted me in those posts as far as I remember.
Not always as far as I remember. And are we only meant to reply to posts that are addressed directly to us? Oh, I must have misunderstood the forum rules.
How good is your memory?
Quoting CuddlyHedgehog
No, obviously not. However, you can't treat a post not addressed specifically to you as a continuation of the previous discussion that was with you.
Quoting Agustino
Yes, you can if it’s on the same thread and following a long string of replies on the same subject.
He seems doing well in terms of getting things done???
Ummm... one year and what has he done?
Nominated a judge to the Supreme Court and a tax cut that puts US deficits to the trillion level from here onward.
That's your definition of "doing well" when his goddam party has majority in both houses?
The most rational Pro-Trump reasoning ever that I've heard was a voter that said he wanted Trump because a) with Hillary the media would be a total lapdog and with Trump they would do their job and b) the less a President does, the better.
Now his dreams were fulfilled. Because Trump is so incompetent that not much has actually in the end happened.
Why should we think liberal democracy is the best or only way of organising our societies politically? :confused: Just because that's the current status quo? I thought philosophers prized themselves on opposing the status quo - that's how it was in the past. But today philosophers prize themselves on defending the status quo... On being leeches and gadflies on the status quo, in cahoots with it.
Uh, no. Philosophers aren't just rebels.
No. It's the current status quo because it's believed to be the best way.
Then why is it that Descartes, Spinoza, etc. all feared persecution and were very careful about what they said? Was it not because, in many ways, they opposed the status quo and the common ways of thinking?
Or do you reckon that philosophers have always merely expounded the prevailing spirit of the times?
Indeed. But history shows us that all forms of political organisation change. Today democracy, tomorrow monarchy. What is the problem? The problem is that there is always a danger to side with what is currently believed to be the best way - you have the whole supporting culture behind you, it is an easy position to defend, and therefore likely to be wrong.
What I meant was that they're not essentially rebels. They don't oppose the status quo for the sake of opposing the status quo. If the status quo is believed to be contrary to the facts then the philosopher will oppose it, but if it agrees with the facts then he will support it.
Non sequitur.
Yes - I find it absurd and extremely arrogant to think that the status quo of today is in accordance with the facts. That's what all cultures until ours have also thought, and look, they seem to have been wrong.
This is questionable. I can get you to speak to a lot of people in Eastern Europe who much preferred communism to democracy. In addition, quantifying "well-being" is also not easy, and we never ran experiments on this, except, of course, experiments run while liberal democracies ruled our society.
Quoting Maw
Yeah, probably I can agree to that in most regards.
Quoting Maw
No, definitely not. I think democracy is one of the most corrupt systems of government, where the rulers have no long-term responsibilities because all that matters is staying in power and the next election.
Quoting Maw
Why are greater economic opportunities a good thing outside capitalism? Taking greater economic opportunities as a positive is already to presuppose the validity of our current economic system which has so shaped our way of life.
I see what you did there!
Just stumbled across this.
It's also that Western countries have developed a fetish for democracies. This doesn't exist in other regions of the world. China and Russia, for example, have, pretty much, for all their history been ruled by single rulers. Russians love Vladimir - they want a Father to take care of them. Russia probably cannot even be governed democratically. It is a mistake to assume that what works or worked for America and the West will work for other areas of the world with different histories, etc.
Quoting Maw
Again, international studies carried out by democratic countries no? What else could they say? The study will simply be structured so as to produce these results. Many people in the West have also developed a fetish for "studies" - but the truth is that scientific studies can be performed to give any results that one wants, especially in fields that are not the hard sciences. For example:
There are many thinkers who have started to understand this - for example Taleb (picking an example that I know you know). One does not gain wisdom and understanding by reading more and more of those studies - the information overload is an overload of mostly false facts.
Quoting Maw
I will also question that well-being can be measured through scientific studies. I think this is something that we simply cannot quantify. And even if we can, we quantify it based on our own assumptions of what is good (which must also be questioned). For example, we decide having access to economic opportunities is a necessity, and therefore places which offer greater access are better.
Quoting Maw
This is just naive. If only the corrupt run, then there is no real choice. If the constituents are dumb, then they can be manipulated (and more often than not, they are). Look at countries like the US or Italy, etc. Democracy is a crass failure, because it promotes the mediocre, just as Plato clarified in The Republic. It also attracts men who have to focus on keeping power, instead of on doing administration work.
Quoting Maw
What stops the media from getting in cahoots with politicians?
Quoting Maw
What does "more transparent" mean? Does it mean that you don't openly steal from public funds, but instead you do it through Panama funds, Clinton foundations, Obama foundations, etc.? If that's "transparency", then yeah, obviously democratic regimes are more transparent.
Quoting Maw
I agree because I favour capitalism and am an entrepreneur myself, however, we must remember that unless one accepts the assumptions of capitalism, then one could arrive at different conclusions, where economic opportunities are not as relevant.
It's also curious how selective you can be in regarding published scientific studies. You gleefully cite examples of studies that presumably show biological gender determinism, when defending Peterson, but you suddenly become a hard skeptic when studies exist that doesn't conform to your worldview.
I wasn't thinking of authoritarianism, I was thinking more along the lines of constitutional monarchies. In any case, a system different from democracy - doesn't have to be authoritarianism. I was merely questioning what I see as your Western fetish for democracy. Democracy & Authoritarianism do not exhaust the political possibilities, despite what many democrats would want you to believe.
Quoting Maw
No, I've probably never cited a study actually, even with regards to Peterson. In fact, in our discussion about the lobsters, I even told you that the lobster study is irrelevant - the underlying point that Peterson was making, however, is relevant. I don't believe in the usefulness & generality you seem to accord to studies because I know they can be made to say whatever they need to.
Quoting Agustino
I do not base my life on shifting grounds. So I cannot base my life on scientific findings which exist today, but tomorrow could turn out to be wrong. I use science pragmatically. That is another reason why I don't like scientific studies. Science is ever-changing. Today we think this and that about lobsters, tomorrow we'll think differently. What am I supposed to do, move from fad to fad?
Yeah, far more prudent to base it on unscientific gobbledygook.
LOL :rofl: , funny, but there are other ways to gain knowledge in life. Science is useful, don't get me wrong, in its limited field of application. But I would not resort to science in telling me who to marry, who to trust, how to negotiate, how to love, etc. Just like I wouldn't resort to astrology in those matters. I resort to critical thinking combined with life experience.
Resorting to science in those matters is no different than resorting to astrology in fact!
Which part of your anatomy are you pulling these ideas out of?
:lol:
I don't see any intellectual cowardice on Benkei's part. It's just short-hand reference to Marx's lack of belief in a god.
[quote=Marx, Critique of Philosophy of Right]Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.[/quote]
You can see some atheist humanism in him, at least in this Critique. He speaks interestingly frankly in criticism about secular humanist (roughly, atheist socialism 'fraternity of man' style thing) ideals and about communism raised to the status of divinity in a letter to Ruge, usually given the title "The Relentless Criticism of All That Exists":
[quote=Relentless Criticism... Marx]Therefore I am not in favour of raising any dogmatic banner. On the contrary, we must try to help the dogmatists to clarify their propositions for themselves. Thus, communism, in particular, is a dogmatic abstraction; in which connection, however, I am not thinking of some imaginary and possible communism, but actually existing communism as taught by Cabet, Dézamy, Weitling, etc. This communism is itself only a special expression of the humanistic principle, an expression which is still infected by its antithesis – the private system. Hence the abolition of private property and communism are by no means identical, and it is not accidental but inevitable that communism has seen other socialist doctrines – such as those of Fourier, Proudhon, etc. – arising to confront it because it is itself only a special, one-sided realisation of the socialist principle.
And the whole socialist principle in its turn is only one aspect that concerns the reality of the true human being. But we have to pay just as much attention to the other aspect, to the theoretical existence of man, and therefore to make religion, science, etc., the object of our criticism. In addition, we want to influence our contemporaries, particularly our German contemporaries. The question arises: how are we to set about it? There are two kinds of facts which are undeniable. In the first place religion, and next to it, politics, are the subjects which form the main interest of Germany today. We must take these, in whatever form they exist, as our point of departure, and not confront them with some ready-made system such as, for example, the Voyage en Icarie.[/quote]
Mary and John were spending a lot of time together. They often went to the movies together and went out for dinner. My younger sister asked why, since John is a *shock horror* boy. I told her "that's cause they're in love". She nodded knowingly.
Tim overheard and proceeded to ask "what do you mean by love?"
I told him that's clear from the context.
Tim says that only tells him I adopted an idea about love for my own purposes.
I hope you enjoyed that story.
You'd probably get quite a lot out of reading Volume 1 of Das Kapital. Not necessarily for the economics, anthropology or social commentary, but his methods of reasoning are very instructive of another way of doing things. David Harvey has an excellent lecture series on the topic and puts a lot of effort in portraying the way Marx reasons.
One of the distinguishing features of philosophy is that part of its conceptual apparatus is in coming up with and clarifying concepts while also refining them in response to questions. Moreover, the questions can help you refine the concepts, and the concepts can help you refine the questions. The interplay between the two can give rise to an organic development of your understanding as you read along or try to express your own positions. When done well, philosophy chases a theme to its roots and provides an atlas of a conceptual landscape. When done poorly, it focusses more on the classification of problems into pre-developed categories which explicate nothing insightful about the chosen theme. Exposition over imposition, always.
If beginning with definitions is required, rather than beginning with problems and orienting our thoughts towards them, this produces a tyranny on philosophical discourse. The fungibility of close-but-inequivalent words; how meaning rolls from letter to word to sentence to passage to the text as a whole; is necessary for the coalescence of refined concepts relevant to their problematics in the first place. Philosophy takes place on the interstice of ambiguity and clarity, it loses most of its content when circumscribed fully in either of those domains.
This was a great rally!
Trump in a nutshell.
[quote=The Economist]Reports released by Mr Trump’s commerce department on February 16th found that Section 232 could be used to restrict steel and aluminium imports because America’s armed forces and “critical industries” need a domestic supply of steel which imports are putting at risk. This is bunkum. Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think-tank, notes that the administration’s aim of having domestic steelmakers working at 80% or more of their capacity has nothing to do with how much speciality steel is actually used by the defence department: the report was “totally cooked”.
Jennifer Hillman of Georgetown University, who has been both a commissioner on the United States International Trade Commission and a judge on the WTO’s appellate body, finds the national-security justification particularly questionable given that most of the steel imports come from Canada, the European Union (EU), Mexico and South Korea. The steel tariffs will barely scrape China, the Trump administration’s greatest trading—and putative military—foe. Adding to the sense that the national-security argument is a sham is the fact that the tariffs on aluminium—where imports from Russia and China matter more—are less than half what they are on the steel made by allies.
There is, though, a snag. Article XXI of the WTO treaty allows a member to raise any tariffs “it considers necessary for the protection of its essential security interests” even if there is no evidence that imports are surging, subsidised or sold below cost. Invoking Article XXI allows you to do anything you like, and thus endangers the whole system—which is why, given that the system is one which members have chosen to join and which they value, it is very rarely invoked. It is a nuclear option.
You could see this as tactically astute. But it sets a terrible precedent. If a country of America’s heft gets away with justifying protection on blatantly spurious national-security grounds, what is to stop members like India or China doing the same? Bad behaviour has spread in the past. In 1956 America had its agricultural sector exempted from rules limiting state support—only to see the European Community, as the EU then was, using the same exception a few years later to create its common agricultural policy, a grotesquely distorting system of subsidies that American negotiators went on to spend decades trying to curb.
What does that mean for jobs? An analysis by the Trade Partnership, a consultancy, predicts that increases in the price of steel and aluminium under these tariffs will, in the short-term, create 33,000 metal-making jobs and destroy 179,000 metal-dependent ones. Mr Trump is thus screwing over two Rose Bowls of people for the sake of one Fenway Park.[/quote]
He was so happy with taking McCabe's pensions and soon he won't have anybody to say no to him.
Hoping for that day to come. Will have popcorn ready for that farce...
At least some people are telling the obvious:
(retired general Barry McCaffrey)
(retired CIA-director John Brennan tweeting Trump)
And this, of course, will make Trump-worshippers living in their La-la-land of alternative reality convinced that there is a vast evil conspiracy against their God-Emperor Trump!
2:00 PM - Mar 17, 2018
All that, plus at least one porn star being paid off and sued by our president?
...
"Nero fiddled while Rome burned."
Maybe be, but if so it will set off a shit storm like we have not seen since the 60's I think. Both the DEMs and the GOP are warning him not to fire Muller.
Why would you want to see that? And is seeing that really worth the political consequences of the firing?
If you're being honest, then I think this is part of the problem facing politics today. Too many people see it as just a game and either don't understand or don't care about the real world effects it has.
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, fired by Jeff Sessions, was leading probe into Sessions
And then McCabe fired for lack of candor.
One thing is how this bizarre show of a Presidency will end. That will be interesting indeed.
The other interesting thing is the post-Trump backlash that will happen. Because after a few years people will state the obvious: a Presidential candidate had gotten himself entangled with a hostile foreign power, either unwillingly or in this case, possibly willingly, which created a truly historical event in the annals of espionage. The Trump saga will be treated as it is, not spoken with caution as now.
The backlash of that will come. Because later the one question is going to be asked a lot: how could this happen? Likely presidential candidates will be screened and given background checks by the parties themselves. And every firing that Trump will do in the Justice Department will be remembered.
What is certain that the truth will come out. Perhaps not everything, but so much that we do know what happened. Just like how the obvious lies that lead to the war in Iraq aren't anymore disputed by anyone (even the white lie of the President simply getting bad intel from the Intelligence Community is shown false as the role of the Vice President and his team is in the open).
Already happened with Doug Jones winning in Alabama (R+14, Trump+28) and Conor Lamb winning in Pennsylvania's 18th (R+11, Trump+20).
Will we stop Trump before it’s too late?
Madeliene Albright
Quoting ssu
Perhaps, but I wouldn't bet too much on it. His core supporters seem unfazed by whatever his administration does, either defending his more execrable actions and statements (often using logic so tortured that waterboarding looks tame by comparison), or sweeping them under the rug with the "fake news" mantra. And as long as he has the support of the Republican base, Congress will likely continue to tow the Trump line (however grudgingly).
The Republicans will likely take some hits in the midterms in November, but that usually happens to the party in power, anyway: I'm not sure how credibly that outcome (assuming it even happens in the first place) could be attributed specifically to a Trump backlash.
True, he is probably less likely to start WWIII than Trump, but I don't think even Trump is likely to start WWIII (if only because his ego won't let him go down in history as the President that did it and because pretty much any other nation would likely be on the losing side of that conflict when fought against the U.S., and so would probably back down before the bombs started flying).
Pence is a hardline theocrat, though, which is even less desirable to me in many ways than Trump's policies. We had 8 years of evangelicals running the White House with GW Bush, and eight is enough (which, incidentally, is the name of an old sitcom).
You presume he knows what he's doing.
Also, we here in Australia all despised W. But compared to Trump, W was a knight in shining armour.
Not at all. I just presume that he doesn't want to be the President who ended civilization.
But that presumes he knows what he's doing. If he doesn't know what he's doing, his not wanting something doesn't mean he won't do it. "I was just trying to get a good deal, honest."
I don't think Trump would accidentally order a nuclear strike, no. But, I don't presume that he knows what he's doing with regard to possessing expertise or knowledge on any substantive area pertaining to foreign relations, foreign or domestic policy, geopolitics, or diplomacy.
This is one of the main problems with the left and the MSM. It's what I would call the boy who cried wolf syndrome. Just look at how the word "white supremacy" has now been normalized as a means of slander. Once all the meaning of "racism" was beaten out of word, they had to find another word with which to hurl ad hominems at their political opponents.
Trump is a brash New York liberal, nothing more.
A bit of an overstatement. Trump and Putin are not exactly best buds lately. Did Putin tell the Trump administration to impose sanctions on Russian citizens?
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/06/politics/russia-sanctions-oligarchs/index.html
I see. Good luck with all that.
I heard a commentator say the US is locked in an ideological conflict with Russia. When did that happen?
You'd have to ask him, I suppose. It's not anything I said. I don't think Trump and Putin are even that different ideologically: I think that Putin (or perhaps Putin-lite) is someone Trump would resemble were he not constrained by the checks and balances of American democracy, such as they are (for now, anyway).
Luck has nothing to do with it. It's getting to be a pretty stable fact within the European union. But the US still just sniggers at it.
The inept Trump who basically wants to be the classic playboy and Putin are quite different.
First, Trump has no true ideological otherwise that he would want everybody to like him and be as great as he says he is. Ideologies don't matter to this basically stupid and most ignorant person.
Putin's trauma is the collapse of the Soviet Union. This has been the objective behind all of his policies: stop Russia from plunging into chaos something like during the Time of Troubles and get Russia to be a Great Power. I assume that Putin has hoarded his wealth in order to be able to fight any oligarchs that have independent agendas of their own concering political power in Russia.
When you just listen to the speeches of the leaders, Putin has understanding and objectives, Trump is just an ignorant idiot.
I don't know about that. Classic playboys don't generally seek to be the leader of the free world. Trump clearly had larger plans. He has been vocal about politics for some time.
If referring to Trump's "ideology" imputes too much intellectual credit to the man for your liking, then feel free to substitute something else ("mindset," or "worldview," perhaps). I find it doubtful that historians will ever refer to the "Trump Doctrine," in discussing foreign policy.
My point was that I think that Trump has authoritarian tendencies and inclinations, as does Putin, and that, were Trump unconstrained by the checks and balances of American democracy, he would govern much more in the style of a Putin (though perhaps not quite as odious as that) more than in the style of a small-d democrat or classic liberal.
In barely more than one year in office, Trump has already waged war on the free press, dismissing inconvenient facts as "fake news" (a rhetorical tact subsequently adopted by other strongmen or abusive regimes), expressed admiration for authoritarian rulers such as Rodrigo Duterte and Abdel el-Sisi, flirted with the idea of taking away broadcast networks' operating licenses when their news divisions push stories he doesn't like, "joked" that lawmakers who show him insufficient adulation at State of the Union addresses might possibly be branded as treasonous, has taken steps to militarize the southern border, has openly threatened nuclear war with North Korea, has personally demonized judges whose rulings displease him, and on and on. Not to mention that, as a candidate, he encouraged the violent removal of protesters from at least one of his rallies.
But he's given huge tax breaks to the rich, tried to destroy Obamacare, deruglated business, is trying to gut environmental regulations, has banned transgender people from the military, and is doing his best to build a wall along the border. How more liberal can you get?
Yeah, he contradicts himself all the time, but he strikes me as a typical liberal of the kind you would expect to find from someone with his background. I don't fall for the ever leftward moving Overton window that paints him as some kind of proto-fascist. One thing he is not is a conservative, and to the extent that he shares some views with some people thought of as right wing, still, that doesn't not make him a liberal either.
Trump called it an " attack on our country"
A judge authorized the Federal Warrants, which means that even if Trump axes Muller, the NY State Federal District Attorney can keep the action rolling in courts at Trump. Axing Muller will infuriate a lot of people.
Michael Cohen is also the Deputy National Finance Chairperson of the RNC.
Make no mistake - I think there was definite Russian meddling in the US Presidential election. It might have even been decisive. But Trump himself has never shown any comprehension of what the issue was - it was never that he, personally, colluded with Putin to rig the result. It's only tangentially about what Trump did or knew - which means, as it's not about him, he's got no real interest in it.
So the upshot is, this morning's raid just plays right into Trump's narrative of a deep-state conspiracy designed solely to undermine his legitimacy. I don't believe that it is, but it's not at all difficult to spin it that way.
You mean at Cohen.
It has nothing to do with Trump sleeping with a porn star. It's to do with Cohen potentially breaking campaign finance laws by paying her hush money. Also bank fraud and wire fraud.
And, yes, the remit is pretty wide: "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation [into Russia collusion]". In this case, however, Mueller and Rosenstein simply referred the matter to New York. They're obviously not just going to ignore evidence of a crime because it doesn't have anything to do with Russia. That would be ridiculous.
:lol:
And Fox News are cheering him on. Asking with a straight face "Is it time to fire Mueller?". So, you have a MSM outlet now essential advocating a President act like a tin-pot dictator. Sad times for democracy.
You've established your credentials as someone who loathes Trump, and understandably so I might add. That being said, the idea that Trump is an unethical self-serving jackass does not preclude the possibility that certain elements within the U.S. government may be corrupt. Ruling out the latter possibility a priori just because you can't stand anything about Trump is the wrong move imo. This has been my basic position all along.
I think this new tentative position of yours, if I'm understanding it correctly, speaks to your non-partisan integrity.
‘Australia Sucks’
To which someone later added:
‘New Zealand NIL’ :grin:
Quoting Erik
Why thank you. ‘Impartiality’, let’s say.
And also the nagging feeling that the Yanks ought not to need anything particular to sack Trump beyond his obvious incompetence and venality.
probably that graffiti was Wallaby wishful thinking :shade:
Wall tampering - typical!
There is something very unnerving about the lawyer/client privilege being infringed on
The warrants were handled by the office of US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, a recent Trump appointee. Berman is also the former law partner of Rudolph Giuliani, one of Trump's early supporters and advisers. The judge thought that sufficient probable cause exists or he would not have issued the warrants.
"The FBI and Justice Department use lawyers and investigators walled off from the primary investigation to sift through the documents to prepare a "privilege log" for later submission to the court. At least in theory these "taint" teams remove any legitimately privileged items from examination by the primary investigators putting the case together. Or at least that is how it is supposed to work, though some of us who are criminal defense lawyers may be skeptical." CNN
If attorney/client conspired to break the law, attorney client privilege does not hold. Also if the FBI and Justice Department don't handle the information they seized impartially they are subject to sanction and the case being dismissed.
But the information is not within the scope of the investigation if it happened while Trump was a private citizen.
But he's innocent and never did anything wrong, ever, either before or after he became president; and they have found and will find nothing as he keeps telling us. Therefore, everything is hunky dory. All this investigation will do is prove how pure and misunderstood a soul he is and we'll all end up eating humble pie and go back to loving him. What could be better than that?
Muller's office apparently came up with information during its investigation that as you state does not relate to his investigation but since he is required by law to present any suspected crime to the appropriate authorities, his office recommended it the FBI's NY office. My understanding is that the NY Office is investigating Cohen for bank, and election fraud.
You ought to recognize, that nothing, unless it's left unspoken, is truly private. And maybe the neuroscientists can extract it right out of your mind. Also be aware of anything marked "pentothal".
Quoting Cavacava
The raids were likely well expected by Trump and Cohen. I wonder how well they hid everything.
Biden 2020.
Sure, all I'm pointing to is the common psychological phenomenon of fuelling a moralizing attitude with energy garnered from an emotional response to knowledge of a reality that undercuts the rationale for that very attitude. It's not just Trump supporters that do that either. This just seems to be a good example of it.
Drrrree-yala-tea. Sniff.
I know Maw, I was just wondering how lawyer/client privilege would ever stand sacred as it is supposed to be.
If by "sacred" you mean something like "inviolable", then it's not and never has been, and honestly shouldn't be. There is a high burden of justification needed, which was clearly met given that a magistrate judge and the Rosentein signed off on it.
also this pretty scathing analysis in the Daily Beast.
[quote=Washington Post]It’s just like everybody wakes up every morning and does whatever is right in front of them,” said one West Wing aide... “Oh, my God, Trump Tower is on fire. Oh, my God, they raided Michael Cohen’s office. Oh, my God, we’re going to bomb Syria. Whatever is there is what people respond to, and there is no proactive strategic thinking.”[/quote]
Just one damn thing after another. I’m reminded of the classic quote from the book about the last days of Enron. ‘It’s like your hair’s on fire, and the only thing you have to put it out with is a hammer’.
As to winning the war, someone should point out to Assad that he has nearly won and that after he has finally won everyone will settle down nicely and no more violence or gassing will be necessary. Syrians will sit outside coffee shops reading the Arabic edition of The Guardian and playing Angry Birds on their smartphones. Perhaps we could give that job to Blair?
Electorate: ‘So, what’s the problem?’
The world really needs America to be better than this.
I think they are... If it happened to Old Bill who was quite popular, it can surely happen to the scandal sluice box that is President Trump (though I think Trump will proclaim glorious resignation).
What actually happened to Clinton again? (quasi-impeachment?)
In any case, I've been saying it all along: a circus can only go on for so long before it becomes nauseating and dark... One of these hooks will catch...
Impeached by the House for perjury and obstruction, acquitted by the Senate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Bill_Clinton
Article I charged that Clinton lied to the grand jury concerning:
Article III charged Clinton with attempting to obstruct justice in the Jones case by:
"why I NEVER!".
There shouldn't be different rules for the President (same for obstruction).
Well it's not like he's lied under oath... Yet... If Mueller actually subpoenas Trump it wouldn't be surprising to see him talk his way into trouble. I'm not sure on what basis this alleged subpoena would get stamped though (the scope of Mueller's investigation seems very broad). The firing of Comey amidst the Russian investigations or the somehow related Stormy storm? Time will tell...
Quoting Michael
I can see the argument for making an exception. Ousting a president because he's not principled enough to obey the oath when only his reputation is at stake. At the same time, setting any precedent that lying under oath, especially the president, is sometimes O.K seems to grease an obvious slope. The president lying under oath seems to controvert the American constitutional principal of self-governance and transparent democracy
It's not about ousting a President for not being principled; it's about ousting a President for committing a crime. Perjury, and particularly obstruction, are serious charges.
I'm just talking about Clinton's impeachment.
I agree, but some purgers are worse than others. Give and inch of rope to the white house and they'll instantly stretch it into a mile though. Obstruction charges are more serious in general (purgery IS a kind of obstruction i suppose), but here too some obstructions are worse than others. The main grievance I would have is that the leader of America should be the first person held to the high standards of the law, not the exception. It was founded on the rejection of unequal justice, and it's not hard to see that setting the precedent that the president can lie under oath (or obstruct justice) in some situations is dangerous to say the least.
Indeed. Though I'm not fully clear on how the Clinton impeachment went down (was 10 at the time), I'm eager as ever to draw comparisons to previous impeachments and the situation Trump now finds himself in.
Trump derangement syndrome.
But why did the Democrats rig their own primary process to nominate a corrupt, warmongering corporatist, and total political incompetent like Hillary Clinton? I'm curious. Does your hate of Trump allow you to see that the Democrats bear significant responsibility for his election? I can trace the corruption and fall of the Democratic party directly to Hillary's impassioned speech on the floor of the Senate in favor of the Iraq war; and the New York Times lying about Saddam's WMDs in order to promote that same war.
And before Trump ran for president, he was friends with the Clintons. He was Bubba's golfing buddy. What do you think Trump and Bubba talked about? Women's rights? Or pussy? What do you think?
The corruption of the Democrats made Trump inevitable. And what did the DNC do this week?Passed an anti-Bernie bill that requires a candidate for the Dem nomination to be an official member of the party. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/09/bid-to-block-bernie-sanders-dnc-adopts-rule-change-wants-only-avowed-democrats-to-run.html
If Trump is uniquely evil, what are the Democrats?
I love how the party of "personal responsibility" will point fingers at nearly everyone but themselves as the reason for "How We Got Trump". Conservatives vigorously accuse 'Social Justice Warriors', the 'miasma' of Political Correctness, or the wild idea that labeling someone a Nazi or Fascist or Racist, will transform them into a Nazi/Fascist/Racist. As a far left progressive, I'm not a big proponent of the centrists Democrats or Hillary Clinton, but I'd greatly prefer them to the Republicans, whose 40+ years modus operandi have, much more than the Democrats, is responsible for the nomination of Trump, his Presidential win, and the incomprehensible fact that he enjoys a 85%+ approval rating by self-described Republicans.
Trudeau (or one of his sherpas, actually) said that it would be 'insulting toward the memory of our fallen soldiers on various battlefield for U.S. to claim that Canada was a national threat.' The term "insulting" was lifted from a communique from last year where apparently Trump had himself said the very same thing, promising there wouldn't be any tariffs.
Apparently, Donnie can call just about anyone a liar, a cheater or a danger for the U.S. security, but he takes offense to someone saying "hey, that's a bit insulting, you know".
Anyways, doesn't matter, everyone knows Ivanka totally thirsts for Justin, and in the end I trust that love will prevails over all.
Can't answer for Tim, but up here, Trump is literally trying to force me to drink more pus.
US dairy's quality is a lot lower than ours. Dead cells particulates per litter is a lot higher, which is quite literally pus.
Imo, trying to make people drink more pus is quite objectionable on its own. Even if they aren't Murrikans.
I missed that in my local paper. 'Splain me please?
A good part of the trade war issue rest on the fact that Canada runs dairies according to a supply chain management system. That allows dairy farmers to know exactly how much they can expect to produce without devaluating the product. Which in turns means that the farmer's jobs are a metric crapton more secure than in the US, where a single too good year can kill a farm. That's nuts.
So Trump wants us to kill our dairy management system, so that US farms can dump their overproduction on our market. Like I said in the Shoutbox yesterday, this is absolutely insane, as Wisconscin alone produces more dairy than Canada does or need. And the vast majority of our production is aimed at our own consumption too.
The other big problem with this is that US milk is of considerably worse quality than Canada's. They simply do not have the level of regulation we have concerning filtration. As raw milk contains (living) white blood cells, what you drink, when you pour it in a glass, contains dead leukocytes, i.e. pus.
Do you want me to drink more pus? Then Trump is your candidate! :worry:
I'll have to plead ignorance. I'm appalled that Trump has picked a fight with Canada but I haven't followed the details regarding milk.
Meh. Seems like it is his favourite negociation strategy. I imagine he thinks being unpredictable is a good thing.
The trade war is a show that will likely benefit both our baboons. The one thing to takeaway here is that one of the political Seven Seals was broken. If you can claim protective measures against a "Close Allie" because that close allie is a National security threat, then anyone can protect anything, anytime. as much as I'd like them to, the OMC can't do squat about it.
Milk is not our problem. Its the billions in tariff Trump decided to impose on us because we actually got our milk shit figured out instead of the bovine bordello you guys are intent on running down there.
What has the centrist consensus gotten us? A dozen illegal semi-covert wars, torture camps, and $20T in debt [ok well the GOP are making that a lot worse], attacks on free speech from the left and the right. The American public chose to blow up the system rather than continue business as usual. That's what Trump is doing. We'll have to give it a few years to see the actual results. Meanwhile I regard the thesis that "Trump is Hitler" as irrational hysteria with zero basis in fact.
So just for my info, since I really haven't followed this story ... I do put a splash of milk in my morning coffee. Do I need to worry about something?
Fishfry said nothing in his post to indicate that he was a Republican. On the contrary, his points were all in line with a far-left critique of the democratic party. So I find it concerning that you jump straight into attacking republicans, thus misrepresenting his points straight off as some sort of republican projection, rather than substantively engaging with someone who is offering a much needed critique of the democratic party's behavior. I find it concerning because I don't feel that we on the left are engaging in anything like the soul-searching we need, and the left seems to simply attack anyone who offers the types of complaints that ought to be the basis of this much needed soul-searching.
Quoting Maw
Indeed, I think that every left-leaning person agrees that the democrats are currently much better than the Republicans. And the Republicans are responsible for Trump. But this still doesn't absolve the democratic party and far-left movements of responsibility. The left needs to ask how we got to this place, and what level of responsibility we have for the current situation.
I think the concern which fishfry raises - if I read him correctly - is that the far left is not in any meaningful sense an alternative to a corrupt democratic party. It's possible, for example, to be a hedge fund manager and a feminist. So the democratic party is currently catering to the far left by playing social justice games which are more about enabling certain opponents within a corrupt power struggle internal to the rich and powerful. Social justice as crony-capitalist window dressing. I'm reminded of something I saw on MSNBC a few months ago. Chuck Todd said: Sure, Gina Haspel is a craven torturer, but it's a refreshing sign of progress that we have broken the glass ceiling and will - for the first time ever! - have a female director of the CIA. Personally I don't want to live in a world where torture becomes "progressive".
Thanks much. This is the second time in two days that @Maw did the same thing, which is why I didn't bother to reply. Yes, my disgust with the state of modern liberalism comes from decades of having considered myself a liberal. I understand why Trump got elected. I don't necessarily endorse his policies. And the Dems don't appear to even have policies anymore, just anti-Trump rhetoric. That's the problem. Trump calls MS-13 "animals," Pelosi defends MS-13. Is this not insanity?
I really appreciate that at least one person here understands exactly where I'm coming from.
Not I.
It's just that Trump is not the main story.
The way I see it, accelerationism is just whataboutism rebranded for the Trump era.
Breakneck speed serves one purpose : breaking one's neck. It's not how we leaves our problems in the dust.
Ah, sorry.
More than one. I agree with pretty much everything you've posted on the issue.
For what it's worth, I think this is the correct response to what he has done to each of us *personally*. I had been away from the US for four years before going back for a few weeks earlier this year and the difference was absolutely astonishing. People have become very noticeably more selfish, resentful, disrespectful, etc. in all kinds of small ways it's hard to characterize. I'm not sure if Americans have noticed this or if it's a bit of a frog-in-boiling-water situation. And Republicans have to be staggeringly credulous to believe that this general atmosphere of resentment is unrelated to a sitting president who constantly insults millions of citizens.
Beyond that, I find it sort of perplexing that so many people are being duped by such an obviously repugnant, mean-spirited, narcissistic, truly ugly human-being. My best guess is that it's because the politics of team sport and hate the other side has consumed people's psyche. People would rather heap adoration on a cheap huckster than admit those they hate have decent points to make.
Quoting tim wood
To 's point, I think his response to you is emblematic of those of us - I hope he'll allow me to lump him in here - who are as disgusted by Trump, and everything he does and represents, as humanly possible, yet worry that the left has become engulfed with an attitude of resentment and hate which is far less bad than the Republicans but still deeply troubling and certainly compounds matters.
(Sorry, couple small edits for fear I might be misconstrued.)
And Hillary was a dangerously bad woman. We could do this all day. I've said my piece and one person understood me, which is one more than usual in these political discussions. There's an election in November, we'll all find out at the same time what the American people think. Or as Churchill said, the greatest argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.
The only point I'm attacking is the only point that was explicitly offered:the hypoxic conservative analysis that we "Got Trump" because of liberals, whether it's due through the Democratic Party, or the concept of "Social Justice Warriors", or left-wing intellectual elitism, etc. Insofar as this is, roughly, @fishfry's claim ("The corruption of the Democrats made Trump inevitable"), this is an absurdity that requires - demands - countering and correcting. And it is unequivocally not a critique in harmony with the Far Left. I know of no one on the Far Left who would claim that " the Democrats bear significant responsibility for his election", as if the Right is somehow absolved of agency.
I agree that the Democratic Party is in need of stronger, better articulated policies (although Bernie Sanders, undeniably, had an unambiguous popular message, and was far closer to winning the nomination than your critique of the Democratic Party accepts). Clinton's message was amorphous, her policies a convoluted mosaic. But liberal self-flagellation will only embolden the Republican Party even more. Not only is it a mistaken interpretation, but it is dangerous.
"Soul-Searching" is fine, but the hesitation that comes with it should not be prioritized over the very real damage and degradation that Trump, his administration, his party, and his acolytes commit on a quotidian basis.
Quoting fishfry
Last time I responded to you was actually five days ago, not two, and you provided the asinine claim that the Left are destroying free speech and the first amendment. Multiple members, not just me, asked you to provide examples of this and you didn't. As far as I'm aware, these are the only times I've engaged your posts on this forum. Twice now you simply refuse to reply to me when I take you to task.
See you DO understand. You're just in denial. The day Hillary stood up on the floor of the US Senate and spoke passionately in favor of the Iraq war; the day Pelosi was briefed on torture and signed off; those are the datapoints on the road to Trump. And it's funny, because you clearly DO get it. You just don't want to face it.
Quoting Maw
It's boring to have to read people the news.
Quoting Maw
Some people call that introspection.
Quoting Maw
I consider my entire thesis demolished.
Well, not that they are much worthy of notice, but that's the general rhetoric you'll find easily on wsws.org.
Not that it's a valid critique from the start.
I wonder. Would President Hillary have ridiculed our closest allies? Would she have passed a massive tax cut which overwhelmingly favors the rich and corporations over the poor and middle class? Would she have tried to destroy the ACA? Would she gut coverage for preexisting conditions as Trump and his administration are trying to do now? Would she implement a no-tolerance policy on illegal immigration, formally splitting families apart when they attempt to cross the border (illegally and legally)? Would she embolden ICE to detain immigrants who have lived in this country for years, if not decades, if not most of their lives? Would her election embolden white supremacists and Neo-Nazi's to conduct parades, or run for office in America and across the world? Would she elect a climate change denier to the EPA? Would she deny Russian involvement in the USA election? This list goes on, and I can "do this all day", because attempting to commensurate Hillary with Trump is simply wrong.
Quoting fishfry
Ah, so nearly 16 years ago Hillary gave a speech in favor of the Iraq War, and fatalistically, this has lead to Trump winning the presidency. This is vacuous, and coddles the Republicans by refusing to provide them with an iota of agency.
And "face" what? I was twelve when Hillary gave that speech. Am I complicit in something the Democratic party did six years before I could vote?
It's not conservative analysis. We as members of the far left are asking: How did we lose? What did we do wrong? Why were we on the left not capable of preventing the real threat of authoritarian from winning power? What can we do to make sure that in the future, when the next right-wing cabal with authoritarian intent and an actually smart figurehead attempts to take power, we're able to defeat them from the start? Your response appears to be to demean us as not *real* leftists by virtue of the fact that we ask these questions.
Moreover, for some reason, you put this sort of soul-searching in opposition to anti-Trump action. As though thoughtless resistance to Trump is the solution. Trump is the symptom of an intellectual-institutional nexus of practices that run very deep and there's nothing progressive about refusing a discussion right now, precisely when it's most urgent, about what we need to do to counter these practices, and how we might be surreptitiously furthering them.
Quoting Maw
Well, obviously you do, because you're conversing with members of the far left who make that claim. So it would seem that you are suggesting that we're not allowed to be members of the far left if we're brazen enough to actually wonder aloud why the left has so far been institutionally and intellectually weak in preventing the rise of authoritarianism. You also seem to think of responsibility as an all-or-nothing game, which strikes me as simplistic and dangerous, because it shirks all personal responsibility. It's why so many on the left continue to feel entitled to not give any reasons to vote democratic. Why bother questioning our own strategies and beliefs if others are to blame and nothing is our fault.
You'd need a party to represent you to be able to have done anything wrong and you live in the wrong country for that. If you're under the illusion the US has a leftist party, then you need to travel abroad more.
Well, you lost by never running, that's the point. There's never been a single far left presidential candidate. You weren't even anywhere close to the marathon.
Shit, even the Greens have more political clout than the wsws.org nutjobs who keep calling everyone else Pseudo-Left.
Well, I've been living in Europe for the past four years. But that's immaterial because the rise of right wing authoritarian thought and practice is a global problem.
Quoting Akanthinos
Huh. Interesting that Maw critiqued me for not giving Sanders near-win enough credit and you critique me for espousing beliefs that were nowhere close to the marathon.
But I am certainly misunderstood if you think that I am a nutjob who is calling everyone pseudo-left. I mean, I thought I was arguing against being accused as pseudo-left by Maw, so maybe I should just retire since it's 3:30 in the morning and this whole conversation is going in circles.
I remember listening to an interview with Joni Mitchell way back during the US occupation of Iraq, where she was asked about the humiliating pictures of Iraqi prisoners stacked naked in a pyramid with US soldiers smiling and giving a thumbs up for the camera. The official military response was the standard boilerplate "these soldiers are exceptions to the overwhelming majority who conduct themselves with honor and integrity," but she wasn't buying it. How do you expect young people to act, she asked, when they've been raised in a materialistic and hedonistic world which doesn't value things like compassion and sincerity (things that don't sell)? which finds the humiliation of other human beings to be be funny?
Anyhow it's the culture that needs to be changed IMO. As far as I can see, there haven't been too many candidates on either side who've challenged the guiding assumptions at work in our society.
That's hogshit. Ever been on a farm? Hogshit's way worst than bullshit.
Everyone was already morally suspect the second they decided to go into modern politics. You don't get to Trump by breaking the Seven Seals of Liberal Apocalypse, one at a time, like a roadmap.
You get to Trump because your educational and cultural system has failed at least 40 to 60 % of your population. There's no cathartic realizations beyond that. You just got a shitty society.
First, no where did I say or suggest that asking such questions: how did we lose, where did we go wrong etc. are invalid or wrong questions to ask. Undoubtedly, those are vital questions, and have been asked since Sanders lost the nomination to Hillary Clinton, despite exceeding everyone's expectations. What my criticism is, however, is the asinine notion that the answer to the question: How did Trump become President? centers chiefly, or exclusively, around the Democratic party, or Black Lives Matter, or other liberal movements or concepts. Again, I don't know of many Far Left liberals who deny Republican culpability in Trump's election.
Quoting Maw
Quoting John Doe
Then it's not that you are not a member of the Far Left. It's just that you are an idiot.
Well that's needlessly personal. I'm a graduate student in philosophy who recently joined this forum, I am largely sympathetic with your political beliefs, and am openly discussing my concerns with your position as best I can while trying to articulate my own position clearly. I have at no point directly insulted you.
I'm genuinely surprised by you, and pretty disappointed that discourse on a philosophy forum is so terribly Reddit-like. If you can't discuss matters with me before reverting to personal insults within three posts, then I truly despair for the state of politics in the US.
Because you've essentially accepted that The Right is absolved of agency, or that the preponderance of fault lies in the Democratic party, or liberals ideas including, but not limited to: Black Lives Matter, Political Correctness, Social Justice, etc. I have not claimed that the Democratic Party bares no responsibility whatsoever (recall that I denounced Clinton's mosaic message). I have stated - multiple times - that suggesting that the bulk of responsibility lies with the Left in whatever myriad manifestations is stupid and dangerous. It is a frequent Right Wing talking point. Take for example Ben Shapiro an immensely popular and influential Right-Wing pundit who in March 2016 said
And who now, two years later on Twitter, rants how it's now liberal movements, no matter how innocuous, that lead to Trump.
I dislike Reddit immensely, but I call a spade a spade, and this idea that the Right has no agency in the ascendancy of Trump is ahistorical, ignores his continued support among Republicans, and is over all immensely stupid and dangerous.
There's something I find very intriguing about what Professor Chomsky had to say in that video that I would like to ask other members about.
He claims that the stock market does not represent the workings or true nature of the economy but of the elite and super rich.
Is that true? (This is coming from someone who studied economics at college for a brief while). Perhaps @andrewk would be able to elucidate such an important insight.
No I have not. And I have explained why this accusation is wrong. I accept that democratic politics is about winning elections and making institutions and practices more just. The right wing authoritarians are seizing power and people are voting for them. And this all happens while a vile right wing ideology develops and feels more and more emboldened. So let me say it again. Responsibility is not a zero-sum game. Human action is complex. If there are a rash of burglaries in a neighborhood, it is appropriate to ask about police procedures and the local practice of leaving the front door open, and this does not absolve the burglars of agency or culpability. Yet you continue to claim erroneously that this is my position, or what my position amounts to, while ignoring that your accusation is baseless. You have then twice now pivoted and used this baseless accusation to call me an idiot.
Quoting Maw
See, this is what I do not understand. You call me an idiot. Then you double down -- calling me an idiot is like calling a spade a spade (viz. because you are an idiot) -- and you again and again come to this notion that it's because I have "accepted that The Right is absolved of agency" or you claim that I think "the Right has no agency". Yet all my claim amounts to is that those of us involved in leftist politics - in whatever intellectual and/or institutional capacity - need to understand our own responsibility for the state of politics. So, for example, when you decry --
Quoting Maw
-- well, yes you do, because you refuse to acknowledge any responsibility for the rise of right-wing authoritarianism by purposefully misinterpreting my call to do so as "absolving the right of agency".
Dude, I literally wrote:
To which you directly responded with:
You conveniently dropped off the part the continuation of my sentence, "or that the preponderance of fault lies in the Democratic party, or liberals ideas," which suggests offloading Republican responsibility.
There is nothing "baseless" about this accusation. Otherwise, you've done a terrible job of articulating your position in this matter, despite having written that I've been "conversing with members of the far left who make that claim".
But it certainly is. That's quite exactly the meaning of responsibility. I doubt you could find a concept which is more of a zero sum game.
Sanders does come to mind, though. Talk about socialism is no longer a taboo in America, I'm speaking about the newer generations arriving on the scene.
This might explain...
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/12/12/2016/socialism-rich-capitalism-poor-interview-noam-chomsky
That's true about Sanders, at least to a certain extent, but in my experience socialists are often just as beholden to the values/ideals driving capitalism as their economic conservative opponents. They focus their attention on admirable things, like a more just distribution of goods and opportunities, but they don't always, or even typically, tie that in with the type of ontological critique I'm thinking about.
The difference, as I see it, would be like that between, say, someone who wants to socialize advanced education as a means of leveling the playing field for all people in their quest for financial security and material comfort - regardless of race or sex or current socioeconomic class - and another who rejects the very notion that acquiring knowledge and skills to make money is, or should be, the sole (or even the primary) purpose of education; between a person who says that universal healthcare is desirable because it serves the needs of the nation's economy, and another who rejects the idea that all human ends - such as taking care of the sick and poor - should be subordinated to the demands of the economy; between the outlook of a Cornel West and a Ta-Nahisi Coates; etc.
This position doesn't amount to a rejection of economic activity, but rather a massive reprioritizing of the ends for which the economy and the political system should serve. I know it sounds "hippie-ish", but that hypothetical shift in priorities, in the way we relate to our world, would lead to situation in which Donald Trump would no longer be considered a success but rather an embarrassment. So ultimately it's not Donald Trump who's the main problem, it's the "world" which significantly predated and gave rise to him. Those horizons shift historically and there's no reason to think they won't again at some point in the future.
I know the New Left of the 1960's - obviously not so new anymore - latched onto the importance of supplementing economic critiques of capitalism with criticisms of the larger cultural framework in which commercialism and consumerism and militarism hold sway; but today's Left seems to have largely fallen away from that stance in favor of one which adopts the discourse of an economic interpretation of life (for lack of a better description). Shifting money away from militaristic endeavors and towards education and other such things are positive first steps, of course, but I don't think they go far enough if they don't also include a much more significant desire to transform our collective way of being - and importantly beyond that which is envisioned by the current political Left and Right.
While I agree that right wing xenophobic parties have been more widely accepted in Europe, it's more of a polarisation here. Former centric parties moved to the right (mostly) to keep a voter base at the same time socialist or social democratic parties have seen explosive growth as well.
Ok, read it and re-read it; but, the question remains as to how to discern the working of the real economy* (not that run by the top one tenth of one percent more or less) from that of the false illusion being propagated in the media and elsewhere that times are great because the economy is booming.
If such a picture can be presented to the general public in some coherent and plain and simple manner, then the pendulum might swing to the left again.
*When I say, "real economy" I mean that which is not presented by the very economists running it. Is that possible?
OK, so the issue is in regards to getting the right and accurate picture of the working of the economy then, as I understand it, which I bring up in my post towards Banno.
Quoting Erik
Well, most people don't even know what the word "ontological" even means. So, we kind of have to dumb down the talk somewhat.
Quoting Erik
This I get and have a pretty good grasp of. Yet, most people don't understand that it would be a non-net-deadweight loss to have subsidized healthcare than the current alternative. It's a type of broken window fallacy.
Quoting Erik
Trying to be pragmatic, here; but, this is heavily idealistic and, well, to be blunt will likely never come to pass. So, the alternative is just to appeal to voters interests as usual, which lands us back at the same starting point.
Quoting Erik
Yes, so it essentially comes down to education and what values we instill in new generations, correct? Talk about being idealistic, on my part.
Typical Trump cherry picked bull crap.
Yes, admittedly idealistic/unrealistic in the short-term, but there are practical steps people can take if they so desire, right here and now, to implement a different set of values into their lives. That's the primary purpose of philosophy IMO dating back to the ancients. We're not mindless automatons totally incapable of escaping from the dominant consumerist paradigm. So at the very least those with philosophical interests can lead the charge.
I would also say, however, that I think there are lots of people - even average, non-philosophically-inclined folk - who feel "deep down" that our society does not currently meet important needs, be they communal or "spiritual" or a combination of these or whatever. Something's off-balance. So I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the long-term prospects for significant change in the direction I'm talking about, although it would likely take place in gradual, piecemeal fashion if it comes at all. That's actually how I'd prefer the sort of change I'm referring to anyway: at the grassroots level of people and communities instead of through top-down government enforcement (which will never happen without significant pressure from below).
Shifting public opinion "one person at a time" is key, and once a critical mass is reached there could be a proper political/institutional response. It's not that complex, either: work a bit less and spend more time with your family and friends, turn off the television and computer and read books, buy less and go for hikes, enjoy conversations, etc., etc. This proposed shift needn't get bogged down in arcane philosophical jargon.
You gotta think big picture here. By way of analogy, and as someone who's been involved in management for a bit, I've noticed that people generally want to feel like they're part of some larger endeavor, some ambitious collective goal. That's not just management BS either: employees who tie their own self-interest and long-term prospects in with the larger interests of the company they work for tend to perform much better than those who don't. Once you've established that sort of culture then the morale receives a significant boost, and work becomes less tedious and more enjoyable for everyone.
But you have to provide people with that compelling vision, and if you don't, then yeah, they'll just work for a paycheck and be ready to bail out when a better offer comes along. This ability to create a narrative in which personal and collective interests are aligned ( a "common good") is rare, unfortunately, and it requires more than paying lip service to certain values and ideals: you have to actually live them. Politicians are good at the former but not so good at the latter, and the result is an understandable cynicism.
And yes, I'd wager that it largely comes down to the aims and methods of education. Plato's Republic sort of thing. But wait, didn't I just say that I preferred these changes to happen organically? Yeah, we're fucked.
Thanks for sharing your sane and awesome thoughts on the matter, Erik. I would be highly interested in a thread about your thoughts and experiences with the education system in the US, if you ever care to share your thoughts about that. I figure we have a decent amount of teachers and educated people on this forum to be able to entertain a quality discussion on that topic.
My pleasure. Thanks for the encouragement.
To get my fair share of abuse
[/i]
-- The Rolling Stones
So, what do y'all think of Robert De Niro saying FUCK TRUMP at the Tony awards? Do people here think this will (a) increase; or (b) decrease the Dems' chances in November? Do you think this is a sign of strength, or a sign of weakness as an argumentation tactic? If you and I are having a conversation about the multiverse, or the nature of mathematical inconsistency, or US politics, and I say, "Well, FUCK YOU!", do you regard that as a strong debating point or a weak one?
@tim wood What do you think?
Although, despite having taken place the day prior, "Fuck You" is a pretty apt response.
That's my question. Do you think this will have a positive or negative effect on the votes of middle America in November?
He just made peace with freaking North Korea. That war's been going on as long as my lifetime. Now I wish he'd made human rights a condition of the deal. I'm disappointed about that. But don't you give this guy ANYTHING?
As far as ordinary people stomaching Trump, how about all the working class people with jobs, the people whose 401k is booming (hey it may all crash tomorrow but at the moment it hasn't crashed yet), the people who actually LIKE his cultural rhetoric (those are the deplorables, whom I deplore for the record. I've always been a social liberal with a libertarian streak).
But can't you see that
a) Trump has done SOME good stuff, like NK; and
b) Some people are very happy with him.
You don't have to like the guy, but can you see either or both of these points? Can't you see that SOME people, a LOT of people in fact, CAN stomach Trump just fine?
November will be interesting. I don't know if there will be big turnout. There's never big turnout in midterms and millennials may skew liberal but do millennials show up for midterms?
I hate these radical leftists saying "Nazi" or "white supremacy" or "Ultranationalism" or some exaggerated propaganda whenever things happen against their desire.
Secondly nobody should forget that Kim Jong Un, instead of cruising around Singapore night-spots, ought to be hauled in front of the world court for crimes against humanity, then either executed or jailed for life. Not going to happen, of course, but important to remember.
Quoting fishfry
That continually baffles me. I mean, a lot of the kinds of things that the electorate was outraged about, when it came to Clinton or Obama, Trump does all the time, in spades, and 'the Trump supporters' seem to think it's all just fine and dandy.
For instance, the 'crimes' that Hillary Clinton was accused of in respect of the insecure mail-server, amount to nothing - zip - while people involved in Trump's campaign team have been indicted on federal crimes verging on treason.
To say nothing of the continual barrage of lies, half-truths, misinformation and exaggerations, the pathological narcissism and vanity....the list is endless.
So - what is the matter with these people? Trump himself said it - he could stand on Fifth Avenue in New York City and shoot someone dead, and they'd still vote for him. It doesn't matter if he trashes the Western Alliance, destroys the environment, and subverts the constitution - they'll vote for him anyway. That's why it's scary.
Not really, but for this discussion I take no position at all. Else I fall into the trap of defending Donald Trump. Why bother? I regarded him on election day as the second most awful candidate in the race. I still prefer him to the thought of Hillary being president. But past that I won't go. If I said a word in defense of Trump I could be legitimately characterized as a Trump defender and that is not the position I'm taking in this thread. Or in general for that matter. I'm a Trump explainer, but liberals these days simply can't hear that distinction. It's not just you.
You made the statement, How can any American not hate his guts. I hope that's a fair paraphrase, I didn't bother to scroll back for the exact wording.
And I said, well first, the deplorables (whom I agree are deplorable) still love him.
Second, anti-war independents such as myself do appreciate what he's doing in NK. Is that an accident? I see it as the direct result of his real estate hustler negotiating style. He deliberately keeps everyone off balance.
And the stock market's up, the labor market is tight as hell, and consumer confidence is at record highs. There are Americans enjoying those effects. When Bill Maher says he hopes the economy will crash to make Trump look bad, a lot of Americans think Maher is a teeny bit lacking in empathy for human beings. Which is somewhat of a liberal specialty these days.
So my question was not, "Do you think Trump sucks." I know how you feel. I am only asking you if your worldview allows you to acknowledge that MANY Americans are in favor of his presidency at the moment. His approval ratings are pretty decent, higher than what Obama had at this point in his presidency as I believe I read recently.
Can you see that many Americans approve of Trump at the moment at the very same time that the see his many faults? Can't you understand that?
Trudeau hasn't tortured and killed enough of his own citizens for Donald to consider him a Goodfella.
Use 'hide" in square brackets. Anyway, yes, left Hanover in Singapore where he was advising the Don on some new real estate opportunities.
Good job, H!
What is possible? Our getting access to 5,000 of our military family that we will never leave behind, if there is any chance of bringing them home, no matter how much time may pass.
A dialogue between multiple countries including the United States on how to gracefully handle the changes of the future without further damage to any country.
The very contemplation of ending our war games, downsizing our children's presence in the DMZ and the waters of Japan is music to so many families ears here in the USA, mine included.
My God in Heaven, to hear that the Korean War is over?
Damned be the haters and the naysayers.
Peace is the goal and it is only in the absence of hate that it can grow.
You've got nothing but same ol', same ol' yet. North Korea has broken every commitment to denuclearisation it ever made. And its delaying tactics are legendary. So surprise, surprise, there's not even a timetable in this agreement. Actually there is nothing new at all on their side. It's just fluff. About the only thing that's new is Trump committing America to ending military maneuvres and Kim, a vicious dictator, being given the type of respectability on the world stage normally only accorded to democratic heads of major powers. Of course, it's not just Trump's fault. It goes back at least as far as Clinton if not beyond. I don't actually blame him as much as his predecessors and China who it suited to have a bulwark against western influence on their border. So, he's trying in his own naive and stupid way to do something (even if it is most likely mostly for his own glory that he's doing it, or maybe the possibility of a condo on a previously militarized beach). Anyway, nothing here yet except pomp and ceremony.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Blessed be the critical of thought for they shall inherit reality rather than have it brutally imposed on them.
Send a boy to do a man's work... :fire:
And here's the blow by blow analysis.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/12/trump-nuclear-north-korea-kim-jong-un?CMP=fb_gu
"If Obama had done this, I would be crushing him today."
"But for now, this is only a historic breakthrough for the Kim dynasty, whose rule over an enslaved nation has been given a huge boost. They will be celebrating. For the rest of us, it is further cause to grieve that the world’s most powerful nation is in such incapable hands."
Yes. But I'm sure Sean Hannity will put a positive spin on this and that's all that matters really.
No he didn't.
I'm with @ArguingWAristotleTiff on this. I don't know if this will work out in the end, but it's something. North Korea is not trustworthy, but we have to keep trying. They're too dangerous and a war would be disastrous. I don't like Trump, but let's see what happens.
We all hope it will work out, and we all agree we need to keep trying, and we all agree the DPRK is dangerous, and war would be a disaster. The point of disagreement is over whether the summit achieved anything substantial and whether it was therefore a success. It didn't and wasn't because Trump went unprepared, got all squishy when the supreme sociopath smiled at him, and gave away a huge concession on military exercises as well as legitimizing and strengthening Kim's position in a way no orther foreign leader could have managed. For nothing. I repeat, for absolutely nothing except some warm fuzzy words that the North Koreans have said before. Make no mistake, they are laughing in Pyongyang now at the US administration and their wacky president who wants to put his condos on their beaches.
Oh, and this:
Anyway, it may work out. Who knows. But this is not a good start. The US is in a strategically far weaker position (with China, for example, now calling for a lifting of sanctions) than it was before the summit. That's undeniable.
We are just a few hours into this agreement, whatever it ultimately entails, and the greatest danger to the Democrats is that it effectively eliminates the nuclear threat currently posed by North Korea. That a brash blow hard was able to eliminate arguably the world's greatest threat through a few hours of conversation will make the liberal's world view crumble, which is one that posits that Trump, and all like him, are incapable of real success and positive change. It will also cost the Democrats the election next term. That is undeniable.
I don't know (and don't much care) what effect it will have on the Democrats though I doubt that alone would cost them an election. Anyway, you agree with my analysis or not?
So you were similarly critical of Obama's Iran deal?
LOL. Of course not.
The Iran deal is a 110 page document with a detailed process for verification in place. Are you seriously comparing that to the two page piece of pixie dust Trump got from the DPRK? That's insane.
This is what Trump got :
1) The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity. [Fluff]
2) The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. [Fluff]
3) Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.[Repeated fluff]
4) The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.[Minor humanitarian concession]
That's it. Roughly zilch. And then afterwards he gives away military exercises for nothing without even telling the South Koreans, reportedly. Because they are "too expensive". (Not to mention all those impending sanctions he just canceled).
Now go read the 110 page Iran deal.
It's amazing how this is what passes for argumentation on a philosophy forum. Trump derangement syndrome. You can't see past your violent emotions. Compare with Obama's Iran deal, which the liberal media celebrated like crazy.
There is no comparison. One is a comprehensive deal, the other is a joint statement of zero substance. Have you even read what's written above? Are you willing to engage in even a basic level of analysis?
The fact that anyone even cares about the office of president has dumbfounded me since I was young. This man only holds 1/3 of the power of governance, a bit too much for my tastes, but he doesn't run the country or anything. There are due processes, the rule of law, all strategically positioned to make sure this man stays within his boundaries, and for the most part it seems to work. Even the big man himself, Donald J. Trump, can't just do anything he wants.
I suppose that was a bit of an introduction to my view on the topic. I don't like to be seen as a liberal or conservative. I believe that the only way to improve is to view the world objectively, to address fallacy, and adjust accordingly. However, do not mistake me as a centrist. Doing nothing is worse than being wrong.
America claims to be a democracy, but it is actually more of an oligarchic-republic hybrid. The people hold no real power. You can elect a representative, but politicians are infamous for their ability to lie. The power of the government does not come from the consent of the governed, it comes from the pacification of the governed. No one consented to increased tariffs on canadian goods, but no one is going to stand up and actually do something about it, so why should Mr. Trump care?
I believe we are in an era of a sort of "messing with the bull" politics. A modern war would cause major devastation, likely across multiple continents and cause a few billion deaths. Small countries would be obliterated. The balance of power would shift. That is undesirable because stability is predictable. Mr. Trump likes predictability, he is a businessman after all. So, the question is, how do you get what you want, without seeking trades that hurt you in the long run, or starting a war you might not make it out of? The answer is simple - if the enemy gives you an inch, take a foot. You took more than was offered, but it isn't so big a deal that your enemy will care. Kim Jong-un is a perfect example of this diplomacy. He fires off a few test nukes, the west gets scared, he opens up negotiations, gets some western wealth in return for promises to stop, rinse and repeat. The evils that take place behind Kim's borders are funded by the west's weakness and short sightedness. Kim will never nuke the west, or the east, because he would never survive that war. Trump, and Putin for that matter, engage in this kind of diplomacy often. Its a sort of "put the money in the bag and no one gets hurt" sort of scenario.
A lot of liberal articles I see like to mock Trump as incompetent or stupid, but I don't see it that way. Recently he has been mocked for being rather difficult at the G7 summit, but I believe they are missing the point. Before I make this next claim, let it be known that Mr. Trump is a businessman. Even if you truly believe he is incompetent, he does have a plan, and I believe that plan is to "switch sides" per say. One wouldn't need to stretch to claim that since the 50's, the world has had two sides, the west, and the east. The west is republican, relatively liberal, and likes to stress equality. The east is authoritarian, relatively conservative, and likes to brush the treatment of their people under the rug most of the time. Mr. Trump sees the G7 summit as a congregation of "losers" as he would say. These countries can not defend themselves, rely heavily on the US for economic help, and tend to be the pioneers of policies the US may eventually take, (such as banning firearms, universal healthcare, etc.). Trump wants to be with winners. Countries that can take care of themselves. It is no coincidence that he has warmed up to Russia and China. He wants business partners, not liabilities, which is understandable.
The above is not to say that abandoning the west is a good thing. It may not be sustainable, but all people have unalienable rights, yes? And what about Trumps other policies, his anti environmental views? All of this is to appeal to those who elected him. Trump chose the Republican party because it was stable. The democratic party was in shambles long before the election. Obama was an ok president, but he sure didn't sell the democratic party on anyone who didn't already support it. The Clintons (among others) were essentially using it as a cash cow. Politics had become business. Trump saw potential to run his competition out of business. Trump has never actually cared about the issues. Most politicians don't really. They just want the money and power.
The stage is set for the defining moment in human history. Democracy has been betrayed, its flaws have been revealed, the people lied to, the system rigged, and the nations of the world are almost done choosing sides. The next 50 years are going to be the most important in all of human history, if it doesn't end before then. Two sides are gearing up for war, and america seems to be the missing piece for both once again. The only hope for the individuals, the philosophers, the artists, and the scientists, is to ban together. We must value reason and let our children be free. Knowledge is the key to our salvation my friends, and no matter how you feel about Mr. Trump, let it be known that we can lead humanity down a path of salvation and truth. We just have to take action.
https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/world/full-text-of-the-iran-nuclear-deal/1651/
Sorry not 110 pages, 160 pages. That's what an actual deal looks like. Again comparing that to a vague joint statement like the one above is ridiculous. Really.
(Make no mistake, if Trump can get a deal as comprehensive and secure as that out of the DPRK, I'll absolutely applaud him and so should we all.)
Last thing, is Ben Shapiro a liberal with "Trump derangement syndrome"?
Ben Shapiro:""If Obama had done this, I would be crushing him today."
Because the comparisons are beyond ludicrous, and if you can't comprehend that then you are clearly talking out of your ass. Trump and Kim's joint-statement is, as Baden noted, merely two-pages of vague, and therefore hollow "guarantees", created by two parties which are notoriously known for capriciously walking back on deals. We have nearly three decades of past statements from North Korea, using similarly vague language, which they've unsurprisingly reneged and ignored repeatedly. North Korea has not formally declared that they will begin nuclear disarmament, and they likely never well. It's their strongest leverage they have for any negotiations.
The irony of your accusation, by the way, is that you charge me of poor arguing, yet you've provided no justification for the Iran/Korea comparison, and have repeatedly ignored Baden's posts.
Matter of fact, apart from a short contribution by Hanover, there's been no analysis at all from the opposing side to suggest this meeting was a success. Just some vague assertions. Kind of like the joint statement itself, fittingly enough.
Anyway, waiting for something substantial...
To my mind, a likely scenario will be that the joint-statement "agreement" will collapse because it was nothing more than for short-term show. Bolton the War Hawk will then leverage this to argue that any diplomacy and negotiations are worthless, and press for stronger military action.
I'm continually impressed by your ability to frame a logical argument. Not.
I'm continually impressed by your inability to justify anything you say.
I can't speak to your concerns, but there is a tremendous amount of political clout riding on this. If Trump denuclearizes North Korea, Trump moves from just being plain crazy to being crazy like a fox, something that will be crushing to the left. Considering the President is arguably the most powerful man in the world, that matters, even if it's off your radar. It can decide who gets the reigns to the world next election.
Regarding the final outcome of this deal, it's Day 1 in a very fluid world, so it's a bit early to say anything about it. Is the world a worse or more dangerous place than it was last week? No, I don't think so, but I do think there's is some hope for a better tomorrow at least to the extent the issue is being addressed. The absurdity I see is that the left is arguing against giving peace a chance, calling the right naïve negotiators, and claiming righteous indignation at negotiating with the forces of evil. It's all so very partisan. I won't pretend to have any objectivity left, largely because I have so little trust in either side, but much less so in the left.
I find Trump amusing. I love the way that he can so casually offend people. His North Korean counterpart too gives the impression of being a parody of sorts. That this summit has created such a 'stir' is hilarious, no? A bit of mummery and some filthy lucre changing hands in the shadows and everybody lives happily after, eh? Life as we know it...
The serious domestic problem we have is that the parties are actually short sighted enough to root for the other's failure, as if we're not all ultimately aligned.
It's akin to a CEO raising the value of a company in the short term by slashing future-based programs for profits today. Then, based on the good figures, the lauded CEO finds a better paying job and leaves his successor to be blamed for the subsequent problems by a board in need of a scapegoat. Trump is helping to accelerate and worsen a crash that was probably coming anyway.
The Singapore summit looks like a sideshow to distract from Trump's recent claim of absolute power and legal impunity. I still want him to produce his tax records for audit and separate his business interests from office to a degree expected by CEOs.
Logically, NK aren't going to bomb anyone because their strength lies in the threat. Kim and co know well that if they actually nuke another nation, then their country as they know it will be destroyed. While they dangle the threat they can "punch above their weight" on the world stage, which is what they are doing.
I'm being critical but not unfair. This has nothing to do with not giving peace a chance, it has to do with the realities of the situation, what could reasonably have been expected and what actually occurred. You can gloss over the failure here by saying it might turn out to be a success in the end, but it's still a failure now. I don't know if it will be a success in the end. Obviously, I hope it will be. And I don't speak for the left as a whole but the idea that it wants failure, which ultimately suggests that it would prefer a nuclear war, which would result in millions of dead, rather then see Trump get a foreign policy victory is hardly fair. The left are not made up of foaming-at-the-mouth sociopaths. And it's the right, when Obama actually succeeded in reigning in Iran's nuclear program, that sabotaged what was actually a solid deal, with Trump the ultimate culprit. That may yet lead to an unwanted nuclear war. So, his record as stands is ambiguous at the very best.
Quoting Hanover
It's more of a missed opportunity than an active harm. If it works out, all's well, but right now, as things stand, what Trump got (i.e. nothing), with all his bluster about being a great deal maker is an embarrassment.
(Of course if Kim is being completely disengenuous, which is a significant possibility given past behaviour, the active harm is as I've specified before: that his position is strengthened having made no concrete concessions while avoiding new sanctions, seeing important military maneuvres on the other side stopped, having his personal cult elevated, his regime strengthened, and getting China back on side.)
It's disappointing that you can't defend your position despite being repeatedly invited to do so. It's a philosophy forum. Drive-by one liners aren't going to cut it here.
I've written many lengthy posts explaining my position. It's a waste of fucking time. I really dislike the insult culture on this forum.
Yeah, I've noticed it too, though I've learned to ignore it and not address such posts. People don't like having their ideas, beliefs, and assumptions challenged, so the easy way out are ad hominems and straw manning. But, that's inevitable in some sense, given the imperfect nature hereabouts.
Not on this issue you haven't. And you haven't responded to the substance of even one thing I said. Notice in my conversation with Hanover there were no insults btw. Because he actually replied in good faith. All you've done is write a few combative one-liners and run away. Your concerns for the forum and for philosophical argumentation ring very hollow here.
If you agree with Trump's recklessly destructive approach to the environment then we have no common ground and I wish you a good life.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/06/12/bernie-sanders-tulsi-gabbard-break-with-pelosi-on-trump-kim-summit-important-first-step-towards-peace/
Again no analysis from you. Anyway, if we're going to look at outside commentary, here's another conservative voice that says it's a total failure (the idea that this is a partisan liberal attack is nonsense and itself just a partisan attack...on liberals) :
"Kim Jong Un got it all for actually doing nothing. Plus, he got a promise for a regime...that tortures and murders its own citizens...and a leader that commits crimes against humanity."
1) Mass murder and torture
2) Humiliating his adversaries
Richard Nixon opened up diplomatic relationships with China and the Soviet Union in the early 1970's, both ideological foes and human rights violators, and in hindsight I don't think many people would deny that detente was a much better strategy than overt aggression.
Is the argument against the easing of hostilities based on the fact that Kim is a brutal dictator? Is it more about protecting the interests of the USA in the region? Perhaps some combination of these along with additional things? For me the initial goal should be the modest one of lessening hostilities by opening up dialogue. It's a positive first step; nothing more and nothing less.
But I'm trying to inform myself of the history and specific details right now, and this being so I'm very much receptive to more-informed opinions.
There's no argument against overall rapprochement and no argument against easing hostilities as far as I know, Erik (not-unless it's entirely one-way at least). Not from me anyway. If you read through my posts my criticism is of Trump's strategy re this summit and the result that came from it.
I want to re-emphasize too that the blame for what so far is a fiasco should not be laid primarily at his feet. In an important sense he's been painted into a corner by his predecessors and China (who have been two-faced re NK from the beginning).
Ok, but there are levels, and Kim is well beyond Trump or any other democratic leader in the murder/cruelty stakes.
I think the following video btw conveys Trump's childlike mentality well and why the kind of strategic diplomacy he's been called upon to carry out lately is so beyond his capability. He played this for Kim at the summit. It is utterly moronic and I'm sure that fact wasn't lost on the North Korean leader.
That's what I figured. Just wanted to make sure that those criticizing Trump at least agree in principle that a de-escalation of tensions in the region is a good thing. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to acknowledge that many people do in fact hope he fails in the endeavor, despite their protestations to the contrary, just as those who hated Obama so much were pained at the thought of him succeeding in any way as president.
That's the world we live in today, unfortunately, and it can be hard to disentangle things once those emotional associations are made: whatever Trump does is ipso facto bad for one side and good for the other. But whether Trump is going about things in the most effective way re: North Korea is an entirely different matter.
Quoting Baden
Trump's "brilliance" is to be so childish that it's distracting. I mean, this video is just so desperately screaming at cable news "look over here I'm presidenting!" I don't know. For me, every media moment that's spent ignoring the transnational cabal of corrupt authoritarian capitalists who have successfully subverted our democratic system -- and how to learn from our mistakes in 2016 and take back congress these midterms, and how to heal our state department, justice department, and department of education from two years of manic neoliberal gutting -- is a waste.
Yes, which puts honest criticism in a difficult position. As I intimated in the Shoutbox earlier, just because the one who said said you failed doesn't like you doesn't mean you succeeded. You don't get to take that magic carpet ride out of every predicament you get yourself into. Presidents should be held to high standards and maps out of crises drawn from fuzzy and warm aspirations alone are just as likely to lead to perdition as to salvation. Anyhow, we're still in limbo at the moment, so it could be worse.
You may be right. It could well just be more Trump porn.
Out of curiosity, do you also have a problem with the history of the US meddling in the affairs of others around the globe?
I'm not trying to justify Russia's belligerence, but I do want to see if there's a consistent principle being followed in the condemnation; or if perhaps you think that our projection of global power and influence is a positive thing since we're superior, morally or otherwise, to undemocratic nations.
I don't see how one could have it both ways. Leaders of nations will conceal the hypocrisy and injustices, of course, but we who study these things a bit shouldn't be so easily fooled.
I consider any and all election meddling an affront to basic human dignity, be it committed by foreigners playing power politics, racist sheriffs playing the whip master, or Affrikaners playing colonial thug.
Good point. Something about the way the mind typically works seems to make rooting for someone you hate virtually impossible, even if they're involved in something that may benefit you personally. I feel like political strategists understand this tendency very well and exploit it to their side's advantage to the fullest.
Republicans in the past have been able to get poor white people to vote against their economic interests by cultivating resentments and pandering to their lowest (racial, nationalistic, etc.) instincts. Seems like Dems have taken note and now seek to simplify the narrative and demonize certain groups in ways I like to think they used to avoid.
Bill Maher admitted the other day that he's hoping for a recession since that will increase the likelihood of a Trump defeat at the next election. It makes sense but it's also a sad commentary on how incredibly polarized our political situation is. Trump has obviously done nothing to assuage the mutual hatred, so I don't sympathize with him much.
:up:
Yes, which puts Trump haters between a rock and a hard place as rooting for a nuclear war is also virtually impossible. :) I wouldn't call myself a Trump-hater though. It's more contempt. What I hate is unqualified people taking on important work, the failure of which will affect us all, and then being unable to put their ego aside enough to take a back seat even if that taking a back seat is done subtly and will result in a better outcome.
Trump could have let his advisers take the lead on this summit seeing as he didn't prepare for it himself (by his own public admission) instead he insisted on going by "feel" and publicly announcing that beforehand, which made him a sitting duck for manipulation. Knowing him, he did this so that if the meeting was a success he could take all the glory, and prove himself the Master of the Art of the Deal, or whatever. And the result of this is there is no clear result. We have to rely on the bare hope NK are sincere (and, as they never have been before, that's a big ask).
Having said all that, I guarantee you if Trump comes up with a comprehensive Iran-style nuclear deal with the DPRK at the end of this process, and that's certainly a possibility given that there are advantages to Kim re-engaging with the international community, then I will be the first to laud him for that. Just as likely though is that NK are cementing their presence as a nuclear power on the world stage and continuing to work in the background at making themselves an unassailable deterrent (possibly with China's covert collusion).
Last thing, "Love your enemies" is all well and dandy as a principle when your enemies are relatively harmless, but is potentially disastrous when they are as dangerous and duplicitous as the likes of Kim. And "Love your enemies but hate your friends", which seems to be what Trump is going for is as close to willful self-destruction as I can imagine as a foreign policy. So, 'crazy like a fox' or 'dumb as an ox'. Take your pick as things stand. The ball is in Kim's court and it's his serve.
An fairly objective analysis of the summit: https://www.jpost.com/International/Analysis-US-North-Korea-Summit-decoded-559766
My analysis is this: Kim and Trump both got promises. They promised to denuclearize. We promised to let them be. The details are unclear on the how and when. There's a "whenever, whatever, however" feel to the whole thing.
Will we really pull our troups from they region, forever cease war games, end all sanctions? Will they really do as they say? With the vague promises in place, who knows what will happen. I don't read this agreement as imposing any obligations, but it just being a general understanding. It just seems like from what I see is that the world is the same today as yesterday except for two nations having discussed issues they previously didn't. I don't see a fiasco, a blown opportunity, or an embarrassment, just step 1 of 1000 more that will likely derail somewhere
I would agree with your general gist except for a few very important specifics:
1) A commitment (if not a timetable, which at this stage would have been an unrealistic demand) to CVI (Complete, Verifiable, and Irreversible) denuclearisation from North Korea was expected to be and should have been a red line demand from the US coming into the summit.
2) There was no need to make a concession on military exercises as it wasn't in the joint statement, wasn't (apparently) expected by the South Koreans, and was (apparently) granted by Trump on a whim (First rule of negotiation: Never give anything away for free).
3) The excessive praise of Kim was unnecessary and will only embolden autocratic tyrants around the world (not to mention Kim himself).
4) Ending upcoming sanctions I would have agreed with if 1) and 2) had been different. But they weren't. So, another giveaway.
Any country coming into any negotiation, even a preliminary one, must have goals with regard to the outcome and can only be judged in terms of their success on the basis of those goals. I'm sure you'd agree with that. So unless the goal of the US was to get nothing here and give several things away, they failed. Simple as that. That doesn't mean the whole thing will be a failure. It's not over yet, obviously.
And the article seems fair. I'd be a bit harsher on Trump but I don't have an editor to worry about.
This is something that I've been thinking about. Someone mentioned earlier that Trump is a bad man, and that bad men are incapable of doing good things. I'm not so sure about that, however, and here's why: What if Trump's massive ego and competitive nature drive him to aspire to great things?
He's not doing them for their own sake, or because he genuinely cares about the people he serves, but only because if successful they lead to personal glory and further self-aggrandizement. You know he wants to go down in the history books as a better president than Obama, maybe even the best president of all time (as absurd as that sounds I bet it's true, albeit delusional).
Anyhow just something I was thinking about. Not sure if the two things - bad man and good president - are necessarily incompatible. It's a Hail Mary of sorts but it's the best we can hope for concerning Trump's motivations.
Not necessarily. Concessions are important to make, and a freely made concession will sometimes elicit a concession from the other side as well - or at least will put greater pressure for one... ie, I did this for you, now when I ask for a favor, you better do it for me.
Quoting Baden
I think from a negotiation point of view that praise was great. It showed Kim that Trump is willing to accept him on the world stage if he obeys, which is exactly what the North Koreans have wanted for so long. That's why they got nukes in the first place, they wanted to sit down at the table with the big boys and play (that didn't work out very well).
Quoting Baden
Agreed.
Quoting Baden
My feeling is it's a failed incentive structure. Trump -- who is engaging in unilateral diplomacy on behalf of the entire United States -- has the goal of a few wins he can market to fox news viewers and low-information independent voters. He's willing to concede everything that doesn't affect him personally in order to get these wins. This then allows him to maintain power while he pockets $300mil in a Rosneft deal with Russia, sells trade policy to China in exchange for $500mil loans to his company, and forces more and more rounds of diplomatic horse-trading that go through his hotel in D.C. My problem with this is moral: even if the whole thing ends up not being a failure it's by mere chance, and only to the extent that short-term personal profit coincides with the common good of Americans and the world.
Come on man, that's pocket change at that level... Talk about a couple billion dollars, and I might believe you.
Not really, unless you believe a man who has spent most of his life in serious debt is a billionaire.
I anticipated this objection, so you really did do this for me, and as a favor to you, I'll elaborate :) : Claiming that you shouldn't give anything away for free in a negotiation is not really the same as saying you should never consider making a calculated concession, which I agree with you could be a good idea given the right circumstances (even though it's always a risky strategy in proportion especially to the size of the concession). So, a calculated concession is not really giving something for free as it only succeeds when it's reciprocated, i.e. the concession reduces either to a surreptitious trade or it fails. So, here there's no evidence the military exercises concession was calculated to put pressure on NK, no evidence that they gave anything in return, and no evidence that it puts any pressure on them to do so. Further, Trump mentioned money when he spoke about it, which, if that is part of the motivation, is an absurd consideration at this point in the chess game. So, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
Quoting Agustino
That's one way of looking at it. Although it seems to me Trump was doing most of the obeying. I'm not going to argue the toss much more except to repeat that the optics were terrible. Kim, morally speaking, is hardly above Hitler, Stalin, or Saddam Hussein in terms of his brutality (if not the damage he's managed to exact with it). Praising him, if that were the only way to get him to do something, might be acceptable. But again, was this a calculated concession or a simple giveaway to him and every other tyrant the world over? I'd bet on the latter. It's simply that Trump respects, likes, and to a certain degree wishes to emulate strongmen. It's part of his political character.
Quoting Agustino
Calculated concession?? :gasp: ;)
Yup. And people who have a lot of debt very often leverage positions of influence for financial gain.
It's an interesting angle because the whole presidential bid was, according to some commentators, just a promotional effort, and he never expected to win, So, yes, it wouldn't surprise me although like most people in the public eye there's a danger of reducing him to cartoon-character simplicity (which I need to be careful of myself). I'd guess there's a complicated mix of motivations in there but with self-interest in whatever form coming out on top in the end.
Now you're learning :joke:
Quoting Baden
The thing to consider is how negatively you will be affected if your concession is not reciprocated. In that case, in this situation, you just lose a little bit of face, but other than that, nothing is lost. NK is just too weak to be able to do anything - sure, they may deceive with the nuclear program for awhile, but that's it. The moment the U.S. gets angry, it will be over for them, and the concession will be taken back, at literarily no loss. Who cares that dictators around the world are happy? Feeling happy does not change their fate, nor does it make them stronger. It may impact our culture to one extent or another, but that's it. And the impact will be, imo, overall positive, since it's part of the deconstruction of the politically correct status quo which is much needed in order to allow free thinking to flourish and help the West escape from the impasse we find ourselves in.
Quoting Baden
I agree. :eyes:
Quoting Baden
Sure, but in that case it's irrelevant. Kim doesn't actually become any stronger unless he will have Trump's continued support, and that will require that he play his part too. So what exactly is the giveaway from America's point of view? That tyrants around the world get a moment of joy? That's literarily nothing in the chess game.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/13/trump-nafta-g7-sunset-clause-trade-agreement?CMP=fb_gu
That's the grand prize, not a prerequisite to begin the talks. If Trump demanded denuclearization just to sit down at the table, then why even go to the table, considering that's all he wanted to begin with.Quoting Baden
He put that on the table, but it hardly means the exercises won't occur if there's not compliance by the North Koreans. Your position that it was given on a whim is speculation based upon your being convinced Trump is reckless and impulsive. I'm not suggesting he's an infallible genius, but I think you greatly underestimate him. A reckless and impulsive person doesn't win the presidency. Actually, if you think he did just that, you're the one attributing to him an almost mystical intuitive sixth sense of knowing instinctively what to do. My point is that I think he plans a whole lot more than you think.
Quoting Baden
If the point of the summit was to denounce Kim as evil personified in the fashion of typical American diplomacy, then it was a failure. Trump is clearly not approaching this from a moralistic perspective where he feels the need to declare that American ideals will be enforced the world over. He's a pragmatist who wants to land a deal that denuclearizes North Korea and he's doing that the way he knows that works, through promises of material gain. And really, the promises of a North Korean Hilton on the unspoiled beaches might be more enticing than you realize.Quoting Baden
Nothing has been given away. Everything said can be rescinded. We're on the first few feet of the marathon.
I've been ambiguous about Trump from the start partly for that reason. Or to put it this way: First of all the admonishment 'bad' or 'evil' is pretty useless in any discussion of almost any politician. Without qualification, it's just too reductive. So, bad or evil how? We need to be specific. And this is especially important with Trump because the way he's 'bad' as a politician differs so much from the way other politicians are 'bad'. Even his dishonesty is of a different class.
And that's the segueway into my second point, it's not only the difference, it's the opposition—almost everything that's 'bad' about Trump is also 'good' in some other way when looked at from a different perspective relative to a standard politician. I don't mean this in terms of degree—I'm not proposing a balancing equivalence just highlighting how Trump functions politically as an obverse to a standard that illuminates characteristics of the standard which might otherwise remain obscure.
So, zooming out on Trump as a political function you might judge him, despite already identifying almost everything specific he has done as negative, as overall actually a positive. And I think this not only applies to his presidency as a whole but to specific tasks / goals of his presidency which can be individuated into smaller micro-tasks. As in, he might fail many micro-tasks, e.g. this summit, and yet succeed at the macro-task, nuclear disarmament of the DPRK and peace in the region. The whole is not necessarily the sum of its parts with Trump whereas for other politicians it is to a more predictable extent.
So then, zooming out further you might say this very situation where standard politics is problematized by the arrival of an interesting if unstable alternative is itself good. Maybe it opens up the conceptual space for imagining a type of politician who is the obverse of the obverses, so to speak. Who's good where Trump is bad and also good where a standard politician is bad.
Or there'll be a nuclear holocaust in Korea followed by WWIII and we all die. Who knows with Trump? :)
That's just wrong. The commitment would be basic progress on what they've said before. What they said in the text they've been saying since 1992! It's a nothing-burger. The grand prize would be actual disarmament and preceding that concrete steps towards that goal.
Quoting Hanover
He didn't put it on the table. He gave it to them after they left the table. There's a big difference. And he can't take it back so easily. These things are planned way in advance. You can't just cancel a huge military exercise and then a couple of days before it had been scheduled put it on again. Doesn't work that way.
Quoting Hanover
So, it was a robot that won and the real Donald Trump is locked up in the boot of a car somewhere? :) Look, it's about degree. Me saying that Trump was impulsive and somewhat reckless in this instance does not mean I impute a level of impulsiveness or recklessness to him that would have made it impossible or even unlikely for him to win the presidency. That's just a bad argument.
Quoting Hanover
You failed to notice that space in there between excessive praise and excessive denunciation. I'm arguing a neutral and dignified approach would have been better. That you shouldn't hand out love candy to sociopathic murderers in a political context is not to say you need to hit them over the head with a big stick every time you meet them.
Quoting Hanover
That you can rescind stuff doesn't mean you didn't give it away. In fact, unless you're rescinding it from yourself, which isn't logical, it's a condition of being able to rescind something that you actually did give it away. But semantics aside, sure, the position is (mostly) not irreversible, only he's made things harder for himself, that's all I'm saying.
Quoting Hanover
Time for a strategic concession, methinks. Agreed!
I think at this point we're not much in disagreement over the basic facts but more over the likely outcome and therefore the justifiability of the route there. You're seeing the glass fuller than I am.
That's a fair point. I didn't watch the stickman psychos video yet, but I soon will in order to understand everything about you. :joke: :fire:
1985: North Korea signs Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty
1992: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program! (#1)
1994: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program! (#2)
1999: North Korea signs historic agreement to end missile tests
2000: North Korea signs historic agreement to reunify Korea! Nobel Peace Prize is awarded
2005: North Korea declares support for "denuclearization" of Korean peninsula
2005: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program and "denuclearize"! (#3)
2006: North Korea declares support for "denuclearization" of Korean peninsula
2006: North Korea again support for "denuclearization" of Korean peninsula
2007: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program! (#4)
2007: N&S Korea sign agreement on reunification
2010: North Korea commits to ending Korean War
2010: North Korea announces commitment to "denuclearize"
2010: North Korea again announces commitment to "denuclearize"
2011: North Korea announces plan to halt nuclear and missile tests
2012: North Korea announces halt to nuclear program
2015: North Korea offers to halt nuclear tests
2016: North Korea again announces support for "denuclearization
2018: NORTH KOREA SIGNS A VAGUE DOCUMENT ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF DENUCLEARIZATION..... AND THIS TIME GETS ALL THAT THEY WANT.
:100: :fire:
Phase I
1956: The Soviet Union begins training North Korean scientists and engineers, giving them "basic knowledge" to initiate a nuclear program.
1959: North Korea and the USSR sign a nuclear cooperation agreement.
1962: The Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center opens.
1965: The Yongbyon IRT-2000 research reactor reaches a power rating of 2 MW.
1974: The Yongbyon IRT-2000 research reactor reaches a power rating of 4 MW.
Between the late 1970s and early 1980s North Korea begins uranium mining operations at various locations near Sunchon and Pyongsan.
Phase II
1980–1985: North Korea builds a factory at Yongbyon to refine yellowcake and produce fuel for reactors.
1984: The DPRK completes construction of a "Radiochemical laboratory", which is actually a reprocessing plant used to separate plutonium from spent nuclear fuel at the Yongbyon site.
1984–1986: North Korea completes construction on a 5 MWe gas-cooled, graphite-moderated nuclear reactor for plutonium production. North Korea also commences with the construction of a second 50 MWe nuclear reactor.
1987: The Yongbyon IRT-2000 research reactor reaches a power rating of 8 MW.
Through satellite photos, the U.S. learns of new construction at a nuclear complex near the North Korean town of Yongbyon. U.S. intelligence analysts suspect that North Korea, which had signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1985 but had not yet allowed inspections of its nuclear facilities, is in the early stages of building a nuclear bomb.
In response, the U.S. pursues a strategy in which North Korea's full compliance with the NPT would lead to progress on other diplomatic issues, such as the normalization of relations.
December 1990: North Korea conducts 70–80 high-explosives tests at its Yongbyon facility.
1992: In May, for the first time, North Korea allows a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The Agency inspection finds inconsistencies with North Korea declarations. Hans Blix, head of the IAEA, and the U.S. suspect that North Korea is secretly using its five-megawatt reactor and reprocessing facility at Yongbyon to turn spent fuel into weapons-grade plutonium. Before leaving, Blix arranges for fully equipped inspection teams to follow.
The inspections do not go well. Over the next several months, the North Koreans repeatedly block inspectors from visiting two of Yongbyon's suspected nuclear waste sites, and IAEA inspectors find evidence that the country is not revealing the full extent of its plutonium production.
1993: In March, North Korea threatens to withdraw from the NPT. Facing heavy domestic pressure from Republicans who oppose negotiations with North Korea, President Bill Clinton appoints Robert Gallucci to start a new round of negotiations. After 89 days, North Korea announces it has suspended its withdrawal. (The NPT requires three months notice before a country can withdraw.)
In December, IAEA Director-General Blix announces that the agency can no longer provide "any meaningful assurances" that North Korea is not producing nuclear weapons.
12 October 1994: the United States and North Korea signed the "Agreed Framework": North Korea agreed to freeze its plutonium production program in exchange for fuel oil, economic cooperation, and the construction of two modern light-water nuclear power plants. Eventually, North Korea's existing nuclear facilities were to be dismantled, and the spent reactor fuel taken out of the country.
26 October 1994: IAEA Chairman Hans Blix tells the British House of Commons' Foreign Affairs Select Committee the IAEA is "not very happy" with the Agreed Framework because it gives North Korea too much time to begin complying with the inspections regime.
Phase III
18 March 1996: Hans Blix tells the IAEA's Board of Governors North Korea has still not made its initial declaration of the amount of plutonium they possess, as required under the Agreed Framework, and warned that without the declaration IAEA would lose the ability to verify North Korea was not using its plutonium to develop weapons.
October 1997: spent nuclear fuel rods were encased in steel containers, under IAEA inspection.
31 August 1998: North Korea launched a Paektusan-1 space launch vehicle in a launch attempt of its Kwangmy?ngs?ng-1 satellite. U.S. military analysts suspect satellite launch is a ruse for the testing of an ICBM. This missile flew over Japan causing the Japanese government to retract 1 billion in aid for two civilian light-water reactors.
2002
3–5 October: On a visit to the North Korean capital Pyongyang, US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly presses the North on suspicions that it is continuing to pursue a nuclear energy and missiles programme. Mr Kelly says he has evidence of a secret uranium-enriching program carried out in defiance of the 1994 Agreed Framework. Under this deal, North Korea agreed to forsake nuclear ambitions in return for the construction of two safer light water nuclear power reactors and oil shipments from the US.
16 October: The US announces that North Korea admitted in their talks to a "clandestine nuclear-weapons" program.
17 October: Initially the North appears conciliatory. Leader Kim Jong-il says he will allow international weapons inspectors to check that nuclear facilities are out of use.
20 October: North-South Korea talks in Pyongyang are undermined by the North's nuclear program "admission". US Secretary of State Colin Powell says further US aid to North Korea is now in doubt. The North adopts a mercurial stance, at one moment defiantly defending its "right" to weapons development and at the next offering to halt nuclear program in return for aid and the signing of a non-aggression pact with the US. It argues that the US has not kept to its side of the Agreed Framework, as the construction of the light water reactors—due to be completed in 2003—is now years behind schedule.
14 November: US President George W Bush declares November oil shipments to the North will be the last if the North does not agree to put a halt to its weapons ambitions.
18 November: Confusion clouds a statement by North Korea in which it initially appears to acknowledge having nuclear weapons. A key Korean phrase understood to mean the North does have nuclear weapons could have been mistaken for the phrase "entitled to have", Seoul says.
4 December: The North rejects a call to open its nuclear facilities to inspection.
12 December: The North pledges to reactivate nuclear facilities for energy generation, saying the Americans' decision to halt oil shipments leaves it with no choice. It claims the US wrecked the 1994 pact.
13 December: North Korea asks the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to remove seals and surveillance equipment – the IAEA's "eyes and ears" on the North's nuclear status—from its Yongbyon power plant.
22 December: The North begins removing monitoring devices from the Yongbyon plant.
24 December: North Korea begins repairs at the Yongbyon plant. North-South Korea talks over reopening road and rail border links, which have been struggling on despite the increased tension, finally stall.
25 December: It emerges that North Korea had begun shipping fuel rods to the Yongbyon plant which could be used to produce plutonium.
26 December: The IAEA expresses concern in the light of UN confirmation that 1,000 fuel rods have been moved to the Yongbyon reactor.
27 December: North Korea says it is expelling the two IAEA nuclear inspectors from the country. It also says it is planning to reopen a reprocessing plant, which could start producing weapons grade plutonium within months.
Phase IV
2003
10 January: North Korea announces it will withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
5 February: North Korea says it has reactivated its nuclear facilities and their operations are now going ahead "on a normal footing".
12 February: The IAEA finds North Korea in breach of nuclear safeguards and refers the matter to the UN security council.
24 February: North Korea fires a missile into the sea between South Korea and Japan.
10 March: North Korea fires a second missile into the sea between South Korea and Japan in as many weeks.
12 April: In a surprise move, North Korea signals it may be ready to end its insistence on direct talks with the US, announcing that "if the US is ready to make a bold switchover in its Korea policy for a settlement of the nuclear issue, [North Korea] will not stick to any particular dialogue format".
18 April: North Korea announces that it has started reprocessing its spent fuel rods. The statement is later amended to read that Pyongyang has been "successfully going forward to reprocess" the rods.
24 April: American officials say Pyongyang has told them that it now has nuclear weapons, after the first direct talks for months between the US and North Korea in Beijing end a day early.
[i]28 April: US Secretary of State Colin Powell says North Korea made an offer to US officials, during the talks in Beijing, to scrap its nuclear programme in exchange for major concessions from the United States. He does not specify what those concessions are, but reports say that Pyongyang wants normalised relations with the US and economic assistance. Mr Powell says Washington is studying the offer.
5 May: North Korea demands the US respond to what it terms the "bold proposal" it made during the Beijing talks.[/i] sound familiar?
12 May: North Korea says it is scrapping a 1992 agreement with the South to keep the peninsula free from nuclear weapons – Pyongyang's last remaining international agreement on non-proliferation.
9 June: North Korea says publicly that it will build a nuclear deterrent, "unless the US gives up its hostile policy".
13 June: South Korea's Yonhap News Agency says North Korean officials told the US on 30 June that it had completed reprocessing the fuel rods.
18 June: North Korea says it will "put further spurs to increasing its nuclear deterrent force for self-defence".
9 July: South Korea's spy agency says North Korea has started reprocessing a "small number" of the 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods at Yongbyon.
2 October: North Korea announces publicly it has reprocessed the spent fuel rods.
16 October: North Korea says it will "physically display" its nuclear deterrent.
9 December: North Korea offers to "freeze" its nuclear programme in return for a list of concessions from the US. It says that unless Washington agrees, it will not take part in further talks. The US rejects North Korea's offer. President George W Bush says Pyongyang must dismantle the programme altogether.
2004
2 January: South Korea confirms that the North has agreed to allow a group of US experts, including a top nuclear scientist, visit Yongbyon nuclear facility.
10 January: The unofficial US team visits the North's "nuclear deterrent" facility at Yongbyon.
22 January: US nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker tells Congress that the delegates visiting Yongbyon were shown what appeared to be weapons-grade plutonium, but he did not see any evidence of a nuclear bomb.
3 February: North Korea reports that the next round of six-party talks on the nuclear crisis will be held on 25 February.
25 February: Second round of six nation talks end without breakthrough in Beijing.
23 May: The UN atomic agency is reported to be investigating allegations that North Korea secretly sent uranium to Libya when Tripoli was trying to develop nuclear weapons.
23 June: Third round of six nation talks held in Beijing, with the US making a new offer to allow North Korea fuel aid if it freezes then dismantles its nuclear programmes.
2 July: US Secretary of State Colin Powell meets the North Korean Foreign Minister, Paek Nam-sun, in the highest-level talks between the two countries since the crisis erupted.
24 July: North Korea rejects US suggestions that it follow Libya's lead and give up its nuclear ambitions, calling the US proposal a daydream.
3 August: North Korea is in the process of developing a new missile system for ships or submarines, according to a report in Jane's Defence Weekly.
23 August: North Korea describes US President George W Bush as an "imbecile" and a "tyrant that puts Hitler in the shade", in response to comments President Bush made describing the North's Kim Jong-il as a "tyrant".
12 September: Clinton Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admits North Korean "cheating" on the Agreed Framework occurred during the "Clinton Watch."
28 September: North Korea says it has turned plutonium from 8,000 spent fuel rods into nuclear weapons. Speaking at the UN General Assembly, Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su-hon said the weapons were needed for "self-defence" against "US nuclear threat".
2005
14 January: North Korea says it is willing to restart stalled talks on its nuclear programme, according to the official KCNA news agency. The statement says North Korea "would not stand against the US but respect and treat it as a friend unless the latter slanders the former's system and interferes in its internal affairs".
19 January: Condoleezza Rice, President George W Bush's nominee as secretary of state, identifies North Korea as one of six "outposts of tyranny" where the US must help bring freedom.
10 February: North Korea says it is suspending its participation in the talks over its nuclear programme for an "indefinite period", blaming the Bush administration's intention to "antagonise, isolate and stifle it at any cost". The statement also repeats North Korea's assertion to have built nuclear weapons for self-defence.
18 April: South Korea says North Korea has shut down its Yongbyon reactor, a move which could allow it to extract more fuel for nuclear weapons.
1 May: North Korea fires a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan (East Sea of Korea), on the eve of a meeting of members of the international Non-Proliferation Treaty.
11 May: North Korea says it has completed extraction of spent fuel rods from Yongbyon, as part of plans to "increase its nuclear arsenal".
16 May: North and South Korea hold their first talks in 10 months, with the North seeking fertilizer for its troubled agriculture sector.
25 May: The US suspends efforts to recover the remains of missing US servicemen in North Korea, saying restrictions placed on its work were too great.
7 June: China's envoy to the UN says he expects North Korea to rejoin the six-nation talks "in the next few weeks".
22 June: North Korea requests more food aid from the South during ministerial talks in Seoul, the first for a year.
9 July: North Korea says it will rejoin nuclear talks, as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice begins a tour of the region.
12 July: South Korea offers the North huge amounts of electricity as an incentive to end its nuclear weapons programme.
25 July: Fourth round of six-nation talks begins in Beijing.
7 August: The talks reach deadlock and a recess is called.
13 September: Talks resume. North Korea requests the building of the light-water reactors promised in the Agreed Framework, but the U.S. refuses, prompting warnings of a "standoff" between the parties.
19 September: In what is initially hailed as an historic joint statement, North Korea agrees to give up all its nuclear activities and rejoin the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while the US says it had no intention of attacking.
20 September: North Korea says it will not scrap its nuclear programme until it is given a civilian nuclear reactor, undermining the joint statement and throwing further talks into doubt.
7 December: A senior US diplomat brands North Korea a "criminal regime" involved in arms sales, drug trafficking and currency forgery.
20 December: North Korea says it intends to resume building nuclear reactors, because the US had pulled out of a key deal to build it two new reactors.
2006
Main article: 2006 North Korean nuclear test
12 April: A two-day meeting aimed at persuading North Korea to return to talks on its nuclear program fails to resolve the deadlock.
26 June: A report by the Institute for Science and International Security estimates that current North Korea plutonium stockpiles is sufficient for four to thirteen nuclear weapons.
3 July: Washington dismisses a threat by North Korea that it will launch a nuclear strike against the US in the event of an American attack, as a White House spokesman described the threat as "deeply hypothetical".
4 July: North Korea test-fires at least six missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2, despite repeated warnings from the international community.
5 July: North Korea test-fires a seventh missile, despite international condemnation of its earlier launches.
6 July: North Korea announces it would continue to launch missiles, as well as "stronger steps", if other countries were to apply additional pressure as a result of the latest missile launches, claiming it to be their sovereign right to carry out these tests. A US television network also reports that they have quoted intelligence sources in saying that North Korea is readying another Taepodong-2 long-range missile for launch.
3 October: North Korea announces plans to test a nuclear weapon in the future, blaming "hostile US policy". Their full text can be read at BBC News.
5 October: A US envoy directly threatens North Korea as to the upcoming test, stating "It (North Korea) can have a future or it can have these (nuclear) weapons, it cannot have them both." The envoy also mentions that any attempt to test a nuclear device would be seen as a "highly provocative act".
6 October: The United Nations Security Council issues a statement declaring, "The Security Council urges the DPRK not to undertake such a test and to refrain from any action that might aggravate tension, to work on the resolution of non-proliferation concerns and to facilitate a peaceful and comprehensive solution through political and diplomatic efforts. Later in the day, there are unconfirmed reports of the North Korean government successfully testing a nuclear bomb."
9 October: North Korea announces that it has performed its first-ever nuclear weapon test. The country's official Korean Central News Agency said the test was performed successfully, and there was no radioactive leakage from the site. South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the test was conducted at 10:36 a.m. (01:36 GMT) in Hwaderi near Kilju city, citing defense officials. The USGS detected an earthquake with a preliminary estimated magnitude of 4.2 at 41.311°N, 129.114°E . The USGS coordinate indicates that the location in much north of Hwaderi, near the upper stream of Oran-chon, 17 km NNW of Punggye-Yok, according to analysts reports. In an interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, former Secretary of State James Baker let it slip that North Korea “... had a rudimentary nuclear weapon way back in the days when I was Secretary of State, but now this is a more advanced one evidently.” He was Secretary of State between 1989 and 1992.
10 October: Some western scientists had doubts as to whether the nuclear weapon test that took place on 9 October 2006 was in fact successful. The scientists cite that the measurements recorded only showed an explosion equivalent to 500 metric tons of TNT, as compared to the 1998 nuclear tests that India and Pakistan conducted which were 24–50 times more powerful. This could indicate that the test resulted in a fizzle. Some also speculated that the test may be a ruse using conventional explosives and nuclear material.
14 October: The United Nations Security Council passed U.N. Resolution 1718, imposing sanctions on North Korea for its announced nuclear test on 9 October 2006 that include largely symbolic steps to hit the North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, a reiteration of financial sanctions that were already in place, as well as keeping luxury goods away from its leaders, for example French wines and spirits or jet skis. However, the sanctions do not have the full support of China and Russia. The resolution was pushed in large part by the administration of George W. Bush, whose party at the time was engaged in an important mid-term election.
27 October: Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki, based upon U.S. intelligence, announces, "We reached the conclusion that the probability that North Korea conducted a nuclear test is extremely high." He continued on to admit that Japanese aircraft could not confirm the U.S. and South Korean reports.
18 December: The six-party talks resume in what is known as the fifth round, second phase. After a week of negotiations, the parties managed to reaffirm the 19 September declaration, as well as reiterate their parties' stances. For more information, see six-party talks.
2007
13 January: North Korean official Song Il-ho was reported to have told his Japanese counterpart Taku Yamasaki that whether the North Koreans conduct a second nuclear test depends on "US actions in the future".
16 January: In-between-round talks between North Korea and the US are held in Berlin, Germany. Certain areas of agreement have been reached, as confirmed by both sides. North Korea claims these were bilateral negotiations; the US claims these "set the groundwork for the next round of six-party talks".
26 January: On 26 January 2007, Russian chief negotiator Alexander Losyukov told reporters that the third phase was most likely to take place in late January or early February 2007, most likely 5–8 February 2007, before the Lunar New Year.
10 February: Reports emanating from Washington suggest that the CIA reports in 2002 that North Korea was developing uranium enrichment technology overstated or misread the intelligence. U.S. officials are no longer making this a major issue in the six-party talks.
13 February: The fifth round of the six-party talks conclude with an agreement. Pyongyang promises to shut down the Yongbyon reactor in exchange for 50,000 metric tons of fuel aid, with more to follow upon verification that the site has been permanently disabled. IAEA inspectors will be re-admitted, and the United States will begin the process of normalizing relations with North Korea.
19 March: The sixth round of six-party talks commences in Beijing.
25 June: North Korea announces resolution of the banking dispute regarding US$25 million in DPRK assets in Macau's Banco Delta Asia.
14 July: North Korea announces it is shutting down the Yongbyon reactor after receiving 6,200 tons in South Korean fuel oil aid.
17 July: A 10-person team of IAEA inspectors confirms that North Korea has shut down its Yongbyon reactor, a step IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said was "a good step in the right direction". On the same day, a second shipment of 7,500 tons of oil aid was dispatched from South Korea for the North Korea city of Nampo, part of the 50,000 tons North Korea is due to receive in exchange for shutting down the reactor, according to the February 13 agreement.
11–13 September: Inspectors from the United States, China and Russia conduct a site visit at Yongbyon reactor to determine ways to permanently disable the reactor. U.S. delegation leader, Sung Kim, declared they "saw everything they had asked to see," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.[56]
2008
25 February: CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour toured North Korea's nuclear plant. CNN was one of only two U.S. news organizations at the facility.
10 May: Sung Kim, the U.S. State Department's top Korea specialist, returned to South Korea by land across the heavily fortified border after collecting approximately 18,000 secret papers of Yongbyon nuclear reactor activities during a three-day visit to Pyongyang.
26 June: North Korea hands over 60 pages of documents detailing its capabilities in nuclear power and nuclear weapons
27 June: North Korea destroys a cooling tower at Yongbyon's main atomic reactor.
11 October: The US removes North Korea from its State Sponsors of Terrorism list.
2009
5 April: North Korea's launch of its Kwangmy?ngs?ng-2 satellite, intended to broadcast "immortal revolutionary songs," ends in failure.
14 April: Following a UN resolution denouncing its missile launch, North Korea says that it "will never again take part in such [six party] talks and will not be bound by any agreement reached at the talks." North Korea expelled nuclear inspectors from the country and also informed the IAEA that they would resume their nuclear weapons program.
25 April: North Korea says it has reactivated its nuclear facilities.
25 May: North Korea tests its second nuclear device.
2012
April: North Korea prepares to test its third nuclear device.
13 April: North Korea's launch of its Kwangmy?ngs?ng-3 satellite which fails shortly after launch. It is intended to mark the centenary of Kim Il Sung's 100th birthday and the satellite will estimate crop yields and collect weather data as well as assess the country's forest coverage and natural resources.
12 December: North Korea's launch of its Kwangmy?ngs?ng-3 Unit 2 satellite that is meant to replace the failed Kwangmy?ngs?ng-3 satellite, and became the 10th space power that is capable of putting satellites in orbit using its own launch vehicles. The launch came during the period when the DPRK was commemorating the first anniversary of the death of former leader Kim Jong-il and just before the first South Korean domestic launch of a satellite and the South Korean presidential election on 19 December 2012.
2013
5 February: South Korea's President warned that North Korea could be planning "multiple nuclear tests at two places or more".
12 February: North Korea tests its third nuclear device.
March–April: North Korea crisis (2013)
2015
20 May: North Korea claims to have nuclear weapons capable of hitting the United States.
December: In early December, North Korea leader Kim Jong-un claimed that the country was prepared to detonate a hydrogen bomb, however significant doubts surround the claim.
2016
6 January: North Korea conducts its fourth nuclear test. Although the government claims it to be its first hydrogen bomb, the claim was met with significant skepticism.
6 July: A high-level DPRK Government spokesman’s statement was made defining a more precise meaning of "denuclearization", as covering the whole Korean peninsula and its vicinity, signalling a willingness to continue negotiations on the topic.
9 September: North Korea conducts its fifth underground nuclear test. With an estimate yield of over 10kt, it would make it the most powerful North Korean nuclear test thus far.
26 October: United States Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said during a speech that persuading North Korea to abandon its program is "probably a lost cause" since, to North Korea, it was "their ticket to survival" and any discussions about ending their nuclear ambitions would be a "non-starter".
2017
6 March: North Korea launched four ballistic missiles, three of which landed 200 miles off Japan’s coastline. Supreme leader Kim Jong-un promised that the country will eventually have nuclear-armed, intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach the continental United States, thus challenging the Trump Administration of the United States to review its policy options, including preemptive strikes or further isolation of the North Korean economy.
15 April: at the yearly major public holiday Day of the Sun, North Korea staged a massive military parade to commemorate the 105th birth anniversary of Kim Il-sung, the country’s founder and grandfather of current leader, Kim Jong-un. The parade took place amid hot speculation in the United States, Japan, and South Korea that the country would look to also potentially test a sixth nuclear device, which it did not do.
3 September: At 3:31 AM UTC, the United States Geological Survey reported that it had detected a magnitude 6.3 earthquake in North Korea near the Punggye-ri test site.[82] Given the shallow depth of the quake and its proximity to North Korea's primary nuclear weapons testing facility, experts concluded that the country had conducted a sixth nuclear weapon test (2017 North Korean nuclear test). North Korea claimed that they had tested a hydrogen bomb capable of being mounted on an ICBM. The independent seismic monitoring agency NORSAR initially estimated that the blast had a yield of around 120 kilotons but subsequently revised to 250 kilotons of TNT (1,000 TJ) based on a tremor of 6.1M
Goodness. The British Board of Trade is sensing some injustice.
:lol:
Insightful analysis. I think you're on to something here.
Define what is "all they want". What have they got at this point and is it everything they have ever wanted?
You've made what appears to be a simplified conclusion so I presume your answer will be straight forward.
The thing is, this whole cycle of escalation/deescalation is pretty much entirely driven by NK. They ramp up the tensions, then when things almost seem to come to a head, they relent and say "let's talk." Ceremonial talks, handshakes, smiles, speeches with vague promises follow. Everybody sighs in relief: hostilities avoided! NK goes home with some tangible rewards without giving anything in return (other than deescalation of tensions, which it manufactured in the first place.) It's basically behaving like an enfant terrible that nobody knows what to do with. And there's the problem: is there anything better that can be done?
Oh it was just a stolen quote from facebook, not a philosophical thesis. It has already been alluded to, that what they want is largely a matter of status, where status confers power.
"Status" isn't providing any detail. Certainly not to qualify as "all they want".
And who is "they" in this context? I presume you mean NK's leader?
I would have thought every leader requires a recognition of status AS the leader from other leaders.
Kim is the current leader of NK, is he not?
What would be the point, with regard to negotiations, to make a show of not recognizing he is NK's leader?
I would have thought that recognizing him as leader would have to be the first step to talking with him.
What's the alternative to not talking? Just blowing them all up?
So giving them "all they want" effectively only really equates to setting up talks and then talking.
I'm not going to talk to you about it any more.
I'll help.
Quoting raza
Yes.
Absolutely absurd how what is clearly a fairly common practice was used exclusively against Clinton as a decisive factor in determining the election.
Could be. But look what the swing voters swung toward. Clinton just seemed less trustworthy than Trump. They should have run Bernie. I believe Clinton is gearing up to run again. *facepalm*
Trump uses a non-protected smartphone as a matter of routine when engaged in conversations about classified matters, and refuses to take advice on not doing it. Of course, according to Trump supporters, when Trump does it, it's OK, but if someone else were to do it - like, a Democrat candidate - then it would be completely beyond the pale. Not that they’re hypocritical about such things.
Quoting Baden
Obviously a ‘great negotiator’, as he got Trump to cancel the military exercises that have been held every year since the end of the Korean War in return for a vague commitment. Indeed the general consensus is that the Reality TV Summit was a big win for Kim Jong Un.
His reaction to the Inspector General’s report is likewise completely mistaken, wildly mis-informed. He can’t even read and interpret a report, instead lashing out at the FBI as ‘a den of thieves’ and ‘scum’. It’s truly a disgraceful spectacle. Every day, with Trump, seems like the final straw, the last straw, surely someone has to act to bring this to an end. But no.
So what do you make of this txt exchange prior to election between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page?
“[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page texted Strzok.
“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok responded.
With regard to this.
I suspect it will become a "big deal" along with everything else the FBI leadership were up to.
Keep watching.
We will see who wins.
By the way, Manafort is not charged with anything related to Trump campaign.
Also, he has not been tried.
For Trump, it's nothing more than a money grab. He says, we're doing it because we have to, but it's more like we're doing it because we can. Of course it's the American consumer who pays. And he'll use that money to build a wall of some sort.
Civility vs incivility was the issue there.
Universities make rules, or not, for control of conduct within their auditoriums during such events. It is not against the 1st amendment for those institutions to control student behavior.
No different to a teacher or lecturer expecting not to be screamed at incessantly while doing their job
All schools have always had their rules.
It is when:
These are kids that do not know anything trying to stop other kids from learning from visiting speakers of counter views to the things they don't really know much about in the first instance.
Those events are for invited speakers to be heard. Plain and simple, although not for the emotionally retarded.
GOLDWATER INSTITUTE
The model legislation presented and explained in this brief does several things:
* It creates an official university policy that strongly affirms the importance of free expression,
nullifying any existing restrictive speech codes in the process.
* It prevents administrators from disinviting speakers, no matter how controversial, whom members
of the campus community wish to hear from.
* It establishes a system of disciplinary sanctions for students and anyone else who interferes
with the free-speech rights of others.
* It allows persons whose free-speech rights have been improperly infringed by the university
to recover court costs and attorney’s fees.
* It reaffirms the principle that universities, at the official institutional level, ought to remain
neutral on issues of public controversy to encourage the widest possible range of opinion
and dialogue within the university itself.
* It ensures that students will be informed of the official policy on free expression.
* It authorizes a special subcommittee of the university board of trustees to issue a yearly
report to the public, the trustees, the governor, and the legislature on the administrative
handling of free-speech issues.
Taken together, these provisions create a system of interlocking incentives designed to encourage
students and administrators to respect and protect the free expression of others.
Yes I certainly find some of these (vague) planks objectionable, particularly given that they are from an Institute named after Barry Goldwater, which receives millions of dollars from Republican donors including the Mercer family, and the Kochs.
Millions of dollars goes in all directions FROM all directions all the time.
So which "vague planks" specifically do you find objectionable and why?
If I wanted to hear another vacuous complaint regarding Leftist "intolerance" of campus free speech, then I could just pop on over to the NYT's op-ed section. More importantly, would you like to provide your thoughts on the Trump administration's policy of separating immigrant families?
So how would these, you have listed above, impinge upon, say, a so-defined left leaning speaker?
Is it not the same for any invited speaker from anywhere? Is that not an example equality? Same rules for everyone?
Although, to correct you, not "immigrant" families. Immigrants do not cross borders illegally.
Apparently this was an Obama policy that has yet to be altered which democrats have been invited to meet with the current administration in order to improve it.
Apparently celebrity democrat supporters also tweeted photos of cage-like areas holding undocumented border jumpers, but deleted their tweets once it was pointed out that the photos were taken in 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhpK--yMRhg
NY Times.
In other words, James Comey is criticised in the report, in relation to the decisions that he made concerning the 'Clinton email server' matter. There is nothing in it which exonerates, or accuses, Trump of anything. It's not even about that. But even though the report explicitly says that it made no finding of FBI political interference with the Campaign, Trump and his lawyer are saying that it shows that there was FBI political interference with the campaign. Even though the report has nothing to do with the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the campaign, Trump and his lawyer says that it discredits the Mueller investigation.
I call your analysis very, very naive.
The extent of Trump's legal advisory team will be somewhat astronomical for his team not to understand.
(and yes, of course he has a team. It's what got him there)
Trump himself is not a dummy.
If he was a dummy he wouldn't be the threat his opponents are treating him as.
I think it suits him to let all this play out and die by it's own sword because although he has the authority to end it, that would not look good politically.
He will leave it up to lawyers and courts which will, I suspect, bring all sorts of matters up because, if anything goes to court, 'discovery' provisions come into play and his opponents know this.
That is why his opponents, such as Muller and co, are playing politics in the hope things stay buried until the next election in the hope that negative publicity, using the anti trump media, will convince voters that "Russia, Russia, Russia" was real.
There’s your problem in a nutshell. His own advisors have been pleading with him not say anything about it. He ignores them, and they leave. Anyway, Raza, I’m just sounding off here, because it is both saddening and sickening to see Trump trashing the office of the Presidency and jeopardising the political stability of the world so please don’t bother to try and set me straight. Try reading some actual news sources and educating yourself on what’s happening.
My "problem" is I disagree with you. So effectively I appear to be your problem.
An example of passive aggression (which is why I responded in kind previously but it appears I was censored).
The President of a company has the authority to fire anyone but can still be guilty of wrongful termination. Trump has the authority to end the investigation but can still be guilty of obstruction of justice.
Quoting raza
Mueller is only Trump’s “opponent” if Trump is guilty of some crime under Mueller’s remit.
Law officers do, from time to time, corrupt their offices whether they are cops on the street or the higher ups.
The higher ups are not angels just because they have ascended to those positions.
This should be hardly profound news.
Law officers do, from time to time, corrupt their offices whether they are cops on the street or the higher ups.
The higher ups are not angels just because they have ascended to those positions.
This should be hardly profound news.
(Just reorganizing my response to include what I was responding to, for communication clarity)
So that’s all we need to defend our accusations? Then I suppose I could just say that I perceive Trump firing Comey because of “the Russia thing” as obstruction of justice and perceive the meeting with the lawyer at Trump Tower as at least an intent to coordinate with the Russian government.
Trump, as you know, has not even been charged with anything relating to Russia yet alone had to defend anything in court about it.
Yes it is true that I am free to accuse Mueller of corruption because I have become aware of his history and his alliances.
I think that maybe you are merely holding on to some hope as a consequence of a side you chose not winning that election.
OK, then I’m free to accuse Trump of obstruction of justice and members of his campaign of conspiring with the Russian government to violate election law because I have become aware of the things they’ve said and done.
And I think that maybe your views about Mueller are clouded by bias.
Indeed you are.
Hardly deniable that you are, is it?
But that's politics.
Ii don't deny bias but I have bias for a reason.
Bias is no different to choice. That is all bias really means.
If the investigation itself wasn't so clouded by political bias then I would have little to feel biased about.
Is it? Or is it just the media and politicians (on both sides) who are biased in their talking of it? What bias has Mueller shown?
Quoting Michael
You tell me how often the word "bias" comes up in the text below. I didn't write it.
>>>>>>Though Horowitz suggests these texts, among one that says, “We’ll stop [Trump from becoming president],” are indicative of bias and “a willingness to take official action to impact a presidential candidate’s electoral prospects,” his conclusion is that their views did not affect the investigation.
“We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative actions we reviewed,” the report reads.
Strzok’s lawyer released statements regarding the report, calling it “critically flawed” for saying that it could not rule out, with confidence, that Strzok’s potential biases “may have been a cause of the FBI’s failure.”<<<<<<<<
Quoting Michael
Should I emphasize it for you?
>>>>>>Strzok’s lawyer released statements regarding the report, calling it “critically flawed” for saying that it could not rule out, with confidence, that Strzok’s potential biases “may have been a cause of the FBI’s failure.”<<<<<<<<
Now why would this FBI's lawyer be worried that his client's "POTENTIAL BIASES" was not ruled out BY THE IG REPORT as maybe being a "cause of the FBI's failure?
The investigation is tainted.
Also, the investigation has SO FAR not included in any report of Russia/Trump campaign collusion.
The games continue.....
That's called a strawman. Look it up. You might learn something about...philosophy. But I doubt you will, so I'll explain it to you. I didn't say Mueller was the messiah. I didn't even mention Mueller in my comment. Understand? Or would you like me to perhaps write it on the back of your MAGA hat for easy reference?
Oooo, big boy. I don't wear hats. Messes with my toupee.
I don't know whether it is or not, originally. There are other crimes being discovered though, so I'm not going to complain if some corrupt people get punished for them. Are you?
Maybe it's a straw hat.
Generally don't like any politician.
If the best you have is some off the wall strawman speculation, then you have nothing.
Also the arugment you are emphasizing is demanding proof a negative. Something else you should look up.
Let us take Manafort, for example.
1. The opposition already know there is no Russia conspiracy. It is their "insurance policy" if Trump won.
2. Russia conspiracy publicly and legally fails because political links between Clinton campaign and Steele composed dossier, along with Steele's Russian/Ukraine accomplices, exposed.
3. Investigate anybody involved with Trump campaign.....so Manafort.
4. Find Manafort has done possibly illegal things in the past, which is not related to Trump campaign.
How to try to use this against Trump.
5. Put legal pressures on Manafort to hopefully arrange a plea deal confession. Essentially get him to lie about Trump to get himself, Manafort, off of his own possible crimes.
Trump's possible response.
Protect Manafort from being forced to lie, may have to do deals with Mueller to let some FBI conspirators off. Maybe even back off from Clinton's crimes.
This is all Mafioso stuff. Dirty, dirty, dirty.
The truth is Trump's supporters have placed their king above America, above the law and above justice. This is not how we MAGA, and as joyful as they are now, I know that this country is full of people who understand all the sacrifices we have made to make it to where we are, and they are not about to throw all that away to simply shine in the popular politician flavor of the day. Some of us love this country and not the figure heads elected to leadership, and long after Trump is dead, these people and their children will still be pushing America down the correct path.
Do you even have any clue why Manafort is in trouble? Go on, I'll wait while you Google it.
That policy was in affect during the Obama administration as well. When we have people seeking political asylum, in the numbers that we are, what do you expect? For us to leave them out in the sweltering heat? Have you seen what the temps are here in the desert? Have you seen the Wal*Mart Super centers that these kids are residing in? Do you really equate the two?
You do know that these people presenting themselves for political asylum KNOW that they might be separated and are coached repeatedly throughout their journey? There are volunteer lawyers who are on the Mexico side explaining the way it works, the possible separation and many still choose to go through. I have a hard time seeing that as being on the same level as "the worst US atrocity since the War in Iraq". But please, do expand your correlation.
The children are not breaking the law so they cannot be detained and given a court date to appear before a judge to claim political asylum, however their parent or parents are old enough and are given a court date and detained (30 days max) before they are being held for an unreasonable amount of time and are set free. While the parents are detained for their court date, they are incarcerated and that is when the children are separated from their parents. It is against the law to house men and women together, regardless if they are married seeking asylum. There was a time when we would try to keep the mothers and the kids together and separating the men but there is simply no more room to do so AND it is a deterrent.
True it is a policy that Trump could change with the stroke of a pen but until he does that, we are stuck with what we are and for me? Someone who lives in the desert? I say do what it takes to get those seeking asylum out of the elements and the rest can be sorted out later. It is the same thing I would be saying in the bitter winters of Chicago. It won't do any good to refuse these people shelter of any kind. Included in these children centers are: three meals a day, snacks, bathrooms, AC, organized games, X-Boxes on BIG screen TV's, showers, hair cuts and I could go on but just for a moment think about this:
Imagine being a border guard or an Army reservist, who has been charged to care for these kids instead of walking the border fence, which might seem like a posh job until that guard goes home. He goes home to his own school age child who is the same age as the kids in the detainment center, yet can barely put enough food on the table for his own. His kid goes without an X-Box or an adult on duty all day, like the kids in the detainment center have.
It's a less than ideal situation but are there crimes against humanity happening?
Are there images of people ripping off their clothes in 115* heat, in an effort to "cool off" and promptly dying, coming across on your news source?
Are there pictures of Turkey Vultures circling overhead outside of the USA/Mexico border because the USA is acting in an inhumane manner?
Tiff, this has nothing to do with the bloody weather. You don't have to baste the kids in honey and strap them to a pole on the middle of the desert in order not to rip them from their parents. It's crude and cruel and the Trump admin owns it fully. They didn't have to interpret the law this way and previous admins didn't. Besides, they said they chose to do this as a deterrent. Now imagine it was you getting a young child of yours taken from you. Please do that just for a second before you come out with this partisan clap-trap. This goes way beyond dems vs. Republicans. It's a simple matter of empathy.
You can try and candy coat a turd but a big steaming pile of crap is still a load.
The policy was and is for criminal cases, not civil cases. Trump and his goons are the ones that decided to treat these crossing as a criminal offense instead of a civil case. Furthermore, the Republicans control the House, the Senate, the Presidency and the Office of the Attorney General. They have all the power to stop this right now, just as easy as they started it.
The truth of the matter is that Trump is abusing children and destroying families to try and push his political agenda. He created this situation and now he is using these children as hostages. It is monstrous to anyone with a human soul.
I'm actually horrified knowing that you are an empathetic person in general that you'd defend this scummy policy.
Worth repeating.
It doesn't have anything to do with the weather like living doesn't require air. The weather in Arizona is SURELY a factor (despite what you might think) but as I said it is not the ONLY factor. It is being used as a deterrent as decided by Jeff Sessions and there isn't squat anyone can do, empathy or not, until the message comes from the top.
It is entirely possible that Trump and Sessions are playing 'good cop, bad cop' but it does not change the simple logistics of the border. There is a border necessary and if it is not respected, what is the point of having a border? Why not just make it a free for all? Literally a free for all!
Strawman bullshit.
WOW! Abusing children and destroying families? I am sorry, when did Trump send an invitation to these parents offering to make their children hostages?
“And the other thing with the terrorists — you have to take out their families. When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families! They care about their lives, don’t kid yourselves. They say they don’t care about their lives. But you have to take out their families.”
Come on Baden, don't say I have no empathy and then take it down.
Really? Is that your take away from what I have said?
I didn't take anything down. You seem to be incapable of realizing what's happening to these parents and children. It's sick.
Baden, I GET IT but exactly what would YOU do?
Attempts at 'Mother May I' and 'Simon Says' have already been exhausted.
Do you understand why the children are not housed with their fathers?
Yes, they're just "immigrants" and it's all about politics and the wider border issue. Total strawman to detract from what's actually happening. You need to understand that you can have border security without rampant cruelty. Those are not the same issue.
It's obvious what I would do, I would stop separating children from their parents because it's absolutely inhumane. Stop conflating it with the wider border issue. You can build your insane wall if you want. I couldn't care less. But don't psychologically torture children and their parents. You just don't do that and get to call yourself a humane society.
Pretending this is the only option is you just being wilfully ignorant.
We can go back to treating it as a civil issue and not separate families.
Like what happened in Germany? :scream: Just let everyone in until your leader figures out that the country cannot handle the influx and then put up the barbed wire fencing?
I distinctly remember a golden hearted forum member who chose to help those fleeing and crossing his country and how quickly he was overwhelmed. :heart:
We cannot house detained families together, do you understand why they separate the men from the children and women?
Tiff, do you understand that you are still strawmanning? Nobody is talking about "letting everyone in". Send them all back if you want. We are talking abut a specific policy here.
Tiff, this is a new policy. You go back to doing what you did before. That's the answer.
Catch and release?
No, we cannot. Treating it as a civil issue depended on those who were issued a court date actually showing up. The majority of those issued a court date never showed.
Not criminally prosecuting every case.
No, it's not across the board. It's about making exceptions for those who have kids.
"There is no law that says children must be taken from their parents if they cross the border unlawfully, and previous administrations have made exceptions for those traveling with minor children when prosecuting immigrants for illegal entry."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/politics/trump-immigration-separation-border.html
You don't have to do this.
“They were forced to leave their children in this room, and then when they came back, the children were gone, and not a single one of them was able to say goodbye,” Ms. Jayapal said in an interview on Friday. "
This is what you're supporting, Tiff.
? Friedrich Nietzsche
We don't solve our immigration issues by becoming monsters. Even if the right path is harder we still travel it because that is what moral people do.
So because person X does not show up for court then your purposed solution is to take person Y's children away?
So that means if I run someone over then skip on bail we get to throw you in prison? Am I getting this right? I mean you are suggesting we punish unrelated individuals for someone's else crime, right?
I read the article but thank you for the highlight. I am a Mom so I do understand what the threat of that would mean to me. I am not in their situation and I do have EMPATHY for them and what they are fleeing.
But contrast that to those who remain after the Catch and release program whose children are now enrolled in school, receiving food stamps, medical care and any state aide that they qualify for because as a minor they have to be cared for by the state, legal resident or not.
So the taxes we pay are going not to improve our schools, to help our homeless or those who are hungry. No, they are being absorbed by the 'tax' that non legal citizens are putting on our social structure.
Do you realize the amount you're complaining about is absolutely dwarfed by the amount Trump just gave away to corporations and the rich in tax breaks? And that said corporations are not re-investing but buying their own shares with it. That you have a military budget of 700 billion and growing. Anyone who is willing to sell their soul for the peanuts this policy would save them in taxes while idly standing by and watching Trump throw billions of their tax dollars away on those who have the least need of it has their priorities seriously messed up.
Not exactly. If you skip on bail, you get tossed into prison. If enough people skip bail, then the bail bondsman would go out of business and yes, coming up with bail would probably not be an option for many people.
I am not saying that the current should pay for the prior's crime. What I am saying is that it is possible to be taken advantage of and there comes a limit as to how much you can take care of others without losing sight of your own self preservation.
Then why is anyone wanting to come here?
What has that got to do with anything I've said?
If we are so messed up, then why are people trying to get into the USA, illegally if necessary?
Which I also do around friends who are here in this country illegally. :zip:
I repeat. This has nothing to do with anything I've said. Why people want to immigrate to the US is irrelevant to the point I just made.
It would be more honest to tell them directly what you think about them stealing your tax dollars in my view. Take a position. Stick with it if you believe in it. I'll debate you but I'll respect the fact that that's your position if I know what it is.
And to you the obvious and only solution is to take children as hostages?
That is the part that is flying right over your head. You are sitting here arguing immigration, while everyone else is appalled with the tactics that are being used.
This is not a simple difference of political ideologies; no matter where you stand on the issue any morally aware individual finds these tactics shocking, evil and way over the top. Yet here you are, acting like it is the same old conversation as always.
I mean I don't doubt your good intentions on this or anything, but I want to shake your perspective any way I can. I'm sure you feel the same.
It would be more honest and if asked I probably would express it but that is likely why the topic has never come up. This particular friend, whose girlfriend is here illegally, and I go at political debates like it is a blood sport and I do wish to remain friends. So I respectfully stay away from the topic as there are topics that he stays away from knowing my history as a friend.
It is over the top, it is a tactic but it's not the murderous gangs that these folks are fleeing from either. There is a process, there has to be a process.
A process which does not have to include children hostages and tearing apart families. Just saying there has to be a "process" is not an argument at all as to why it has to be this process.
You've given a few arguments for your position but mostly you've danced around it with distractions. That suggests to me you're not really comfortable with it. My suggestion is try to abstract out the fact that these people are immigrants and imagine them as just people. Then ask yourself what kind of extreme circumstances would be necessary to treat anyone like that and if those circumstances really apply here. That's all I'd ask of you.
The question isn't about equality of punishment, it's about the punishment itself. And campus protests aren't exclusive to Left activists. Law enforcement protested the rapper, Common, successfully pulling him as a commencement speaker. Democratic politician Luis Gutierrez was shouted down by a conservative group while giving a speech. Conservatives at Texas Tech tried to ban Angela Davis from speaking at their school about mass incarceration. Fact is, the Right does their fair share of protesting speakers they don't like, to the point of disruption. Should these right winger protesters also be subjected to theoretical suspension or expulsion because they protest speakers who are likely relatively wealthy, and have alternative platforms with which to present their opinions?
Quoting raza
No, these are immigrants regardless. And immigrants who announce themselves to border patrol agents, which is not illegal, have been separated from their children too.
Quoting raza
Did you simply do a five second google search? This is not an Obama or Democratic policy. The no-tolerance policy of separating children is a new policy put in place by the Trump administration. The "holding cells" from 2014, which I am certainly not defending, were for minors, generally teenagers, who crossed the borders themselves in order to escape cartel violence, poverty, abuse, or to unite with family in the States. Obama, in many respects, created perverse authoritarian immigration policies, providing him the epithet, "Deporter in Chief". While this is a legacy that liberals (and everyone) need to grapple with, it is nevertheless distinct from the Trump policy of separating families who cross the border, often times without a structured plan of reuniting them.
This is simply incorrect. This policy was implemented by the Trump administration, and it can be reversed by the Trump administration. Trump, surprise surprise, is lying.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
No fucking clue what point you are trying to drive here Tiff. I don't desire families to be left out in the "sweltering heat", nor do I desire families split up with parents being deported back to their home countries, while their young children are left in Walmart. Wise-up if you think these are the only two viable options for immigration.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Given that this is a new policy, no. This is simply false.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Actually, you are right here. I meant to correct myself earlier. This is the worst atrocity since the Trump administration's callous approach to the Puerto Rico hurricane. And that was the worst atrocity since Hurricane Katrina. No real "correlation" to draw from here, except the indifference Republican administrations seem to have for American minorities.
The economics is a little more complicated than that.
You are correct in that the Trump administration "implemented" this policy but it was considered an option back in July of 2016 when we had tens of thousands of children being sent across the border without guardians. It was not "implemented" because of the damage that could be done to the children's psyche. I am not disputing the fact that in separating the children we are causing trauma. Just bear in mind that the parents entering illegally are aware of this policy. You are aware that they know what is happening at the entry points of our nations border, right?
When we have people seeking political asylum, in the numbers that we are, what do you expect? For us to leave them out in the sweltering heat? Have you seen what the temps are here in the desert? Have you seen the Wal*Mart Super centers that these kids are residing in? Do you really equate the two? — ArguingWAristotleTiff
Quoting Maw
The fucking idea I am "on about" is that the average wait time is up to 20 days. Have you ever gotten a really bad sunburn from a day at the beach? It would be not just traumatic to the children to leave them out in the elements but it would be down right deadly for anyone. That is what I am "fucking" going on about.
You do know that these people presenting themselves for political asylum KNOW that they might be separated and are coached repeatedly throughout their journey? — ArguingWAristotleTiff
Quoting Maw
If you take the time to read the citations I listed you would see that the immigrants are well aware of the policy being implemented.
I imagine this is false as well:
"Separately, in another indication that Trump’s hardline actions and rhetoric have had limited effect, the administration said Wednesday that border arrests topped 50,000 for a third straight month in May.That is roughly three times what they were a year earlier and higher than the levels seen during much of the Obama administration."
I have a hard time seeing that as being on the same level as "the worst US atrocity since the War in Iraq". But please, do expand your correlation. — ArguingWAristotleTiff
Quoting Maw
There is no correlation Maw. One is an act of Mother Nature and the other is the choice of free will.
They are speaking about immigrants not illegal immigrants. The whole issue gets a LOT more complicated when it comes to the illegal immigrants.
For instance, if you are here illegally and your husband beats you and your children, who are you going to call? To call the authorities would be damning themselves in the process. What happens if you as an illegal immigrant are mugged and raped? Who do you turn to?
The crimes within the illegal immigrant communities would blow your mind if they were only reported.
Please take 5 minutes to watch this video and try to understand the impact on our nation.
And I ask you, at what point does the necessity of self preservation come in?
I'm confused. Are you describing here a taxpayer-funded service that illegal immigrants choose not to avail themselves of?
Yes I most certainly am.
I have never said I agreed with any of these policies, I am just trying to give a real idea of what is going on, seeing as I live in a state that a lot of this is happening in.
I don't give a flying fig if someone is here legally or not, UNTIL they break the law.
For instance: a friend was driving home from work in his new truck. He was rear ended by a car with 4 illegal immigrants, carrying no identification, no insurance and didn't want the cops called.
What would you do?
What did he do? He took them up on their offer of $500 cash to pay for the insurance deductible he would have to pay if they reported it with the cops.
Now, not only did he cover for the fact that they were illegal but now he would be setting himself up for insurance fraud.
One more thing, see illegal immigrants can work in the USA as long as the employers don't check the E-Verify system and the immigrant presents a Social Security card. People can work for decades before a sting takes a company down that they find out that half the immigrants are using Social Security numbers of dead people or multiple people using the same number.
Cool eh?
Thank you Baden for considering me as a whole and not just the words on the screen. Your words and solid position do make me uncomfortable but I am okay with being made to feel uncomfortable, it makes me consider my position and take stock in what I think and what I feel. If I remove the label of illegal immigrants, I see citizens who need help or non citizens who need help and I am ready to help. What I cannot condone is abusing the offer of political asylum to the point where we lose sight of our own self preservation.
Then your issue is not with the immigration status of the perpetrator, but the victim. Illegal immigrants, in this scenario, would also fail to report crimes committed against them by native-born citizens and legal immigrants. Is that what you intended to argue?
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
See above.
I believe there are a number of studies that claim to show immigrants, including illegal immigrants, commit crimes at a lower rate than the native-born. You can Google as well as I can. I agree that if there is an underreporting issue, which is plausible, it might be difficult, but not impossible, to correct for that.
Also, I believe the Attorney General would take exception to your suggestion that entering the United States illegally is not in itself a crime.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Another social program illegal immigrants would pay into and receive no benefit from, as I understand it.
During this time, regarding the prior policy, families were held together for "no more than 21 days", after which both parents and child(ren) were released together. The new zero-tolerance policy was implemented because we have a xenophobic, racist, white supremacist administration that has continually demonstrated utter indifference to Latinos.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Tiff, you need to provide a citation for this claim. Personally, I'm unfamiliar with the publication you provided, and am skeptical at some of it's broader claim of greatly increased immigration when Latin American immigration has been steadily decreasing since the recession. It is perfectly feasible, that there have been an increase in asylum seekers and an increase in border arrests without an overall increase in immigration. Given that this is a new policy, I find it difficult to believe that immigrants who may have been traveling for thousands of miles were well-informed about it prior to reaching the border. In fact, in some instances, border agents lied to the parents and the children in order to separate them without incident. In one case, a father killed himself while in a detention cell after learning his child was taken away. There have also been cases in which immigrants, following US law, have announced themselves for asylum, and yet were separated from their child for several months. This policy has been implemented with subterfuge and callous lies and reeks of a prelude to genocide.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Tiff , what is the connection between the forced and indefinite separation of families and not "leaving children out in the sun"? I'm certainly not advocating that families be left in the blistering heat while a slow churning bureaucracy screens them, but separating families indefinitely in no way solves this.
Ultimately, immigration policy in this country has been shoddy, and I am not a proponent of Bill Clinton's, Bush's, Obama's approaches. But Trump's policy takes a defective system and dials up the inhumanity, and the forced separation, the deceit, and the rabid language and inhumane treatment is inexcusable.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Oh Lord. No. The Trump administration's blithe indifference to Puerto Rico greatly impacted the high number of fatalities, despite the Government's original 64 death toll estimate. According to a study from the New England Journal of Medicine, "one third of the deaths were attributed to delayed or interrupted health care."
Tiff, I'm not talking a position in support of illegal immigration, so this is irrelevant to me. My only point in this whole debate is about the deliberate and unnecessary* cruelty against children and their parents Trump is inflicting. And then disgustingly trying not to take responsibility for.
*It's absolutely irrational to think you have to be this inhumane in order to protect your border just as it's absolutely irrational to think you have to legalize torture to protect your national security. You need to separate things out otherwise it just sounds like a bunch of spurious excuses to try to justify the unjustifiable.
So would the crimes committed within the regular citizenry.
Anytime visibility barriers are erected, we give the occasion to crime to flourish. It has nothing to do with the status of the immigrants. I used to live in a quarter of the city populated mostly with Hassidic Jews. There were legitimate concerns about how such a closed community cared for their handicapped folks, and I saw more than once what would have constituted gross abuse.
Yes. And why is reading info on a case somehow a negative?
Are any of us on the ground at the scene of these events?
Yes, of course they should be subject to those same standards. This was my point.
In April, the New York Times reported:
>>>Some migrants have admitted they brought their children not only to remove them from danger in such places as Central America and Africa, but because they believed it would cause the authorities to release them from custody sooner.
Others have admitted to posing falsely with children who are not their own, and Border Patrol officials say that such instances of fraud are increasing.
According to azcentral.com, it is “common to have parents entrust their children to a smuggler as a favor or for profit.”<<<
If someone is determined to come here illegally, the decent and safest thing would be to leave the child at home with a relative and send money back home. Because we favor family units over single adults, we are creating an incentive to do the opposite and use children to cut deals with smugglers.
Mueller has already got 5 guilty pleas and 17 criminal indictments.You are so worried about that giant cry baby snowflake Donald Trump, that the reasons for the Russian investigation flies right over your head. If Trump is innocent he has nothing to worry about.
That is not what I intended to argue but yes I agree that any legal citizen could just as easily abuse an illegal immigrant as another illegal immigrant could, with the same lack of consequences.
I don't give a flying fig if someone is here legally or not, UNTIL they break the law. — ArguingWAristotleTiff
See above.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Thank you for having faith in me to use Google but as you rightly point out the numbers will never be even close to accurate until the unreported are able to be reported. Additionally, as far as "reporting" goes, our census numbers are totally irrelevant as most illegal residents did not participate in the census no matter how 'anonymous' it was guaranteed to be.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I am not sure where I said that entering the states illegally is not a crime, if I did, I was wrong.
Entering the United States illegally is a crime but simply being an unlawful presence is not a crime.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Possibly. I know that illegal immigrants that are using Social Security numbers that belong to deceased citizens pay into the system but I don't know what happens if they try to take it out or what happens when a raid exposes the paying into the system and what is done with that money. I imagine that the IRS is part of what tips the Feds off to what plants and farms to raid but the impact on a raid is huge, even on the legal immigrants. Fear is a big part of their lives because even if they are here legally, they often have family and friends that are here illegally.
Did anyone actually watch the link I provided?
Punishing protesters to own the libs. Got it.
So fucking what? What does any of that have to with the child separation policy?
Quoting Maw
The reason they were able to hold for 21 days was because at day 21, they were released, regardless if they have had their time in front of the judge or not. That was why the "catch and release" program was so popular. After being caught, held for 21 days, we legally had to release the illegal immigrant and they knew it. Our only way to abide by the law was to issue a court date, release those being held and contact them when their date came up in maybe 12 months, sometimes 2 years. As you can imagine the rate of appearing before the judge after being released was 30% at the highest. Where did the other 70% go?
Maw, logic this thru with me. Between the detention centers along Arizona's border with Mexico, we have the capacity to hold somewhere around 4k people within three detention centers. When we can handle the flow of those surrendering themselves to an entry point, asking for political asylum their stays were about 5 days. Now? We cannot even physically accommodate the asylum seekers AND follow the law we operate under in that we cannot hold anyone indefinitely. In other words, if a LARGE group of people present themselves at one time, it overwhelms our ability to process anyone as we normally would.
Just bear in mind that the parents entering illegally are aware of this policy. — ArguingWAristotleTiff
Quoting Maw
Maw, please try not to go overboard in the idea that this is some form of genocide for it lessens the respect for those who were actually lost to genocide. Here is your citation: here and here and here
The fucking idea I am "on about" is that the average wait time is up to 20 days. Have you ever gotten a really bad sunburn from a day at the beach? It would be not just traumatic to the children to leave them out in the elements but it would be down right deadly for anyone. That is what I am "fucking" going on about. — ArguingWAristotleTiff
Quoting Maw
Please provide a citation that suggests the separation is for an indefinite period of time. That is not how the law works nor would it make logical sense seeing the spike in those trying to obtain political asylum right now. My point is that when a group of people, legally present themselves asking for political asylum and the sheer numbers overwhelm a port of entry, we have to do something. Our detention facilities are not family centers and I understand that it is not the ideal, nor is it meant to be, Trump has implemented this policy as a deterrent but we have to take care of those who are affected by it. Hence we are doing the best we can, with what we have and that involves caring for minors while their parents work through the legal system.
None of this is without pain for those children separated or for those caring for the kids. The caregivers are not allowed to pick up a crying child, they cannot hug a child, they cannot comfort a child. Keep in mind that these guards are people too. At the same time Maw, if a woman comes into the hospital in labor and the child is born with Meth in it's body? That child is taken from that Mother until it is proven that she is safe to have it returned to her. Is taking her baby heartbreaking? Yes. Is it necessary? Yes. Until she can legally have her child returned someone has to care for that newborn, if not a family member then the newborn goes into a temporary children's shelter.
Quoting Maw
So what is YOUR solution?
There is no correlation Maw. One is an act of Mother Nature and the other is the choice of free will. — ArguingWAristotleTiff
Quoting Maw
Maw, I get the loss of life and the reasons why and I assure you it is not lost on me. The actual death count is closer to 4,000 because of delayed and interrupted health care. We have a friend who lost everything as a result of Maria and has returned to PR. He freely admits that the infrastructure was held together with bubble gum and shoe strings before Maria but after? It was obliviated. I don't think there was indifference to PR by the administration but rather they got caught in what many administrations do and that is the one two punch, never expecting the third that always hits.
If I remember correctly (please correct me if I am wrong) the first punch was Hurricane Harvey that missed PR but nailed Texas. The second punch was hurricane Maria that nailed PR and the third punch was the collapse of the PR infrastructure which is tragic and I hope is never repeated.
NicK asked how anyone could call what the USA is doing inhumane when there is real inhumane treatment over in Australia on Manus and Nauru island and why wasn't I bringing it up to compare real time treatment of illegal immigrants? I told him I was not about to conflate the two as I had enough to deal with and I am not sure there is anyone here that would be willing to defend Australia's immigration policy.
I never said they did, nor do I believe they do.
Quoting Jeremiah
You are entitled to your opinion of me, have at it.
The USA is doing what it has done since colonial times. The people find an excuse to label a minority group as outside the approved cultural circle and then use that as an excuse to treat them like crap.
With the Native Americans they were considerd outside Christendom and savages, which people used as an excuse to treat them like animals.
That was true with the blacks as well, but they later expanded on that with social Darwinism.
They said the gays and LGBTQ community were unnatural, mentally ill and also outside Christendom.
The main target today are the immigrants, they decided they are criminals, then use that as an excuse to get their racist fix. Using that as an excuse to be giant dick heads.
Maybe if Americans knew their history better we won't be stuck in this loop.
Of course I am entitled to my own opinions, that was never in question.
None of this is relevant to the specific matter I'm discussing: Trump's zero tolerance policy. There is no excuse for separating a child from their parent. You can pontificate about the lacuna's of the 'Catch and Release' policy, but that does not justify the inhumane separation that is taking place.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
History shows us that splitting families apart is often a prelude to genocide. The analogy is appropriate.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Daily Caller is not a legitimate source. Neither of the other two sources stat that immigrants are explicitly told their children will be separated from them prior to them arriving at the border. And I provided examples that makes that rather clear the policy is shrouded in deception.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
There are very few systems in place to help reunite parents with their child, and the onus is "largely on the parents to locate their children within government custody and seek their return," which is profoundly draconian given that the Government separated them in the first place. The information that they are given and the process is Kafkaesque.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Tragicomedy at its finest, Tiff.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
I am not talking about the whole issue of immigration Tiff. You continually try to digress from the specific Trump policy I originally addressed, to a much wider problem.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Right. Ergo, one of the worst US atrocities within the last 20 years.
As I understand the law and jurisprudence, kids cannot be kept in federal facilities their parents are detained in. Also they can be released to guardians, if ties can be proven.
That's dangerously irresponsible. Someone with reasons to immigrate illegally should never leave his family back home to suffer in his place.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
In which we justify our insensitivity to other people's suffering because of our bureaucratic inadequacies.
Additionally
Bolds added.
https://nyti.ms/2JNMA65
I do understand the actual purpose of it. It's part of the racket to protect criminals.
I think Trump is not worried about the "investigation" in terms of it finding him guilty of collusion or of anything else.
Read those rules again. They do not stipulate rules for one side only. You are imagining things.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Yes. Here's the link again for anyone who missed it. I also recommend watching it. (It has nearly 5 million views, so don't feel guilty about giving him a few more.)
There's some question about his numbers, but even if he's off by an order of magnitude, the point would stand that we cannot solve world poverty by taking in a million people a year, and inviting all the poor people in the world to move to America is probably Not A Great Plan™.
I suspect BS King (linked above) slightly missed the boat on why this video went viral: it's because people see that little tiny brandy glass on the left and imagine pouring ALL of the world's poor gumballs into it. I suspect Roy Beck knows that's what people will imagine while he's talking. Evidently you did, because you remember this as a video about the threat to America, which is not what it's supposed to be about at all. He blathers on about this and that, demolishing a position no one holds, spewing out numbers (which again are probably wrong) but the important thing is the visual people will remember: a massive gumball horde that must be held at bay.
Border crossing is not dangerous? How so?
I would love for you to substantiate that without the use of overly imaginative speculation on out of context news clips. As I don't think you really have a in-depth understanding here, or even a common understanding. I think your comprehension level on these matters is closer to wading-in-the-kiddie-pool.
Wait, can you even tell the difference between speculation and evidence?
Yes. That the hopeful speculation is that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to influence the election and the evidence for this is zero.
Admittedly, legal ease is not my forte which is why I surround myself with folks such as yourself, @Hanover @Ciceronianus the White and @sheps.
Let me try to explain this as simple as it is Monday:
If asylum seekers, present themselves at a port of entry, they are not breaking any USA law. They, parents and children, will be kept together until they have seen the judge and have been permitted or declined political asylum, at which time they will be moved through the USA channels of placement or turned back to return to their own country. Full stop.
If asylum seekers, travel over the USA/Mexico border, NOT at a port of entry and they are caught, they have broken the law. IF they are traveling with children, whose parents have broken the law, the children will be separated from their parent who is charged with breaking the law. Until the parent sees a judge, the children are not allowed to stay where their parents are being held, in a correction facility.
Children in America get taken away from their parents, when their parents have been convicted of a crime or are in a detention center waiting to see the judge about their crime.
Why would we treat a non US citizen breaking the law, any differently than we would a citizen breaking the law?
The FBI knew about Paul Manfort's dealings years before he worked for Trump. Check the timeline of Manafort crimes. These crimes occurred under Obama. Manafort did his worse stuff in conjunction with a lobbying company owned by the brother of the former Bill Clinton chief of staff; Podesta. This connection might explain why Obama did not act, since it would not look good for the Clintons, even if they were not personally involved. I often wonder if it was a coincidence that the DNC was hacked through Podesta, who was the brother of a person connected to Manafort. They had dealings with Ukraine.
One may then ask, If Russian collusion was so threatening, why didn't Obama warn Trump of Manafort's shady dealings? They knew of his dealing years before Trump hired him. Why wait and let Trump walk in into a potential spying trap, and then try to pin the past, more connected to friends of the Clintons, onto Trump? It was a set up to deflect and attack.
Manafort was initially protected by the swamp, until he became a tool of the swamp. Manafort is holding out, because of the double cross, not because of his loyalty to Trump. Manafort does not trust the swamp's latest offer, since they double crossed him in terms of an earlier Obama offer.
If you ever worked in government, it is all about selfish bureaucrats playing company politics. Little gets done beyond the expected out of fear of looking bad. Comey was acting in the spirit of company politics, kissing up to both sides, hoping whatever happens, he will come out ahead. He threw a bone to the Republicans, when bringing up Hillary's problems before the election. He also threw a bone to the Democrats when he deemed she had no ill intent. He was trying to kiss everyone's butt, so when the election was over, he would keep his job and/or not be a target with bull's eye on his back.
The IG report discusses company politic problems, but it also appears to be protecting the traditions of the FBI and intelligence agencies. In other words, this set of circumstances should not be considered justification, to throw out the baby with the bath water. The IG wrote in the same style as Comey; bureaucratic kiss everyone's butt. It tells the crimes but forgives them at the same time.
We may need to be a second special council, who can use this report as a map. The second council can fumigate the house without destroying the house.
I thought you said you understood the point of the Russian investigation; clearly you don't.
The central focus is not Trump; investigating Trump is consequential and rightfully so. This is about Russia's meddling in our 2016 election and this interference has been confirmed by the FBI and the CIA. Considering Russia's clear intended aim was to aid Trump in the election, so obviously the Trump campaign should be under heavy scrutiny. You don’t need to be a detective to understand that line of thought.
Abandoning this investigation just because Trump is incredibly thin skinned, and allowing Russia to continue their behavior leaves American sovereignty exposed to a new age of mass political interference by a hostile foreign power. That is just stupid beyond belief, and yet the current administration and its mindless drones seem far more vested in party politics, and for those interest they are more than willing to leave us exposes to these threats.
However, you have made it clear that you loyalty is to Pussy Grabber and not America, and for that end you seem to eagerly engage in the nonsense this administration and its state media spins.
And if you've abandoned defending Trump's heinous zero-tolerance policy, and it looks like you have, then I think we're done here.
Presumably Trump wasn't informed because a) it was an active investigation and Trump, not being the President(-elect), wasn't allowed to know about it, and b) for some of that period the investigation was stopped because of a lack of evidence, and only later reinstated after new evidence uncovered.
There is no evidence that this is true.
There were ad bots, which are ineffectual, promoting either candidate.
Russia is made up of many business entities. These entities also compete with each other. No different than US business entities that compete with each other for business in other parts of the world. This is also what lobbyists do.
One can pluck out the entities and isolate them from the others in order to suit one's political and business ends.
Quoting raza
Yes there is. The intelligence community and the Senate Intelligence Committee agree on that.
I understand that this is what you have been lead to believe.
The "investigation" ("insurance policy") will not be abandoned due to Trump's supposed thin skin.
It will just likely fall on it's own sword.
Have you seen this evidence?
I agree with you, but the Democrats are going to lose out if we do this. One way to combat Russian interference, in future elections, is to tighten voting rules and requirements. One tool is to require voter ID's. Democrats do not like having people use ID's, but this will have to happen.
Voter ID's have been blocked by the Democrats, using racial bias arguments, which is all about emotions. This has been effective until now. Russian interference argument can now compete in terms of emotions, and may even trump, the racial arguments. The result of having to show an ID, will adversely impact the Democrats more, than the Republicans, since they are the one's who complain all the time this will happen.
The Democrats threw a sucker punch; Russian interference, with the hope that would end the fight before it begins. Trump was staggered but he got back up and now he gets to thrown the same punch for a 2020 KO.
Is your memory only a few pages thick? This is a result of Trump's Zero-tolerance policy. The law does not always take children away and the most desirable goal is to always keep the children with their parents. If you run a stop sign should your children be taken away?
At any rate, all this talk about law is pointless, as it is MORALLY WRONG. Trump created this situation and he could stop it; the fact that he is allowing it to continue is just inhuman.
Of course not. I'm a British nobody, not someone with a high-level U.S. security clearance.
And that is what they rely on. They could release ALL the evidence to back this claim...but no.
If it was released then it would be scrutinized by those who are not in the club.
And you accuse others of believing things without evidence. Pretty hypocritical.
These are politicians. This is government. Government is corporate.
This isn't heaven and these aren't angels.
Therefore they must be corrupt and this must all be a conspiracy against Trump and his campaign/administration, who perhaps are angels and haven't committed any of these crimes they've been accused of?
It's an internal power struggle, Effectively a global internal power struggle.
What on Earth are you talking about?
The USIC released a statement that Russia was behind the e-mail compromise in an effort to disrupt and direct the US election. That was a joint statement of 17 different civilian and government intelligence agencies. Do you think that was in benefit of Trump? Was it done to damage Clinton? Let's use some common sense here. It is not a secret that Putin is no fan of Clinton, as she as proven herself as an assertive opponent of Russia. Even the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed Russia's goal was to aid Trump and damage Clinton. That has not really been in question; the dispute is over possible collusion with Russia. You do understand the difference, right?
Okay, I don't think the insults are necessary in this discussion but do as you please.
Running a stop sign is a civil violation, unless you are traveling at an extremely high rate of speed, reckless and hit a kid in a school cross walk. THEN the parent would be arrested and if there is no one to care for the child, the child is placed in Protective Services. A ranch up the street takes in such kids and their stay is about 3 days on average and from the visual you would never know the difference between our two ranches, as they are discreet. I whole heartedly agree that keeping the family in tact, is the ideal but how can you do that when our ports of entry are overwhelmed?
And to suggest that the folks crossing the border do not know about Trump's Zero tolerance policy, is to just reinforce a need for a physical barrier along the border except for the entry points. That would end any speculation that those seeking asylum were confused as to what would happen if they enter illegally.
I think we as a nation have witnessed the indiscriminate "Zero Tolerance" policy work and when it has failed.
One way it works is that the speed limit is 75 on AZ highways with a Zero Tolerance policy for anything over 75 mph. If you are traveling at 90 mph in a 75 mph speed zone, that is an offence and a criminal offence at that and you will be arrested on scene and your car impounded until you see the judge.
Conversely, we have seen the Zero Tolerance policy in California, in regards to drug offenders, in issuing the Three Strikes and your out, no matter what the first two offences were. California had a Zero Tolerance policy at 3 strikes, with no discretion allowed to the judge and what a cluster mess it created and we are trying to untangle one inmate at a time.
Again I ask, what would you suggest we do?
What?
This is about cyber security, so how is requiring voter ID suppose to stop that?
Simply being in the US without the appropriate documentation is not a crime, it's considered a civil matter under US law. Deportation is a civil penalty, not a criminal punishment. As a result, the separation of parents and their children is illegal under the treaties the US has signed up to.
Your memory is only a few pages thick. Sorry it is insulting, but it is also the truth.
You are right in that simply being in this country without appropriate documentation is not a crime. Neither is entering at a point of entry. But as soon as they enter illegally, are caught crossing the border and I think within 100 miles of the border, they have committed a crime.
If you think changes need to be made fine, but children are not political barging chips, destroying families in the meantime to use as political pressure is morally wrong. Stop the new policy, then work on immigration reform. The only reason Trump is doing it this way is because while he lacks a soul himself he knows he can use the moral hang ups of the Dems to pressure them. It is sick and wrong. Nothing you have actually said justifies the continuation of this situation.
It is really simple, we are overwhelmed at the border entry points. It is suggested that asylum seekers are not aware of the Zero Tolerance policy, which is why we need secure borders. So we can take those presenting themselves, listen to their reason and get them out of harms way. But to think that we can do that once they are in the country, is to revert back to the "Catch and Release" program and that was not working. Does that compute?
Who cares? In what way does that justify ripping a family apart? And I don't mean legally, I mean morally? You keep asking what else do we do, regardless of the fact this is a new policy and a new tactic. Trump just needs stop doing it. It really is that simple. You act like if you can somehow prove it is legally justify then that morally justifies it; however, that is not so, it would still be evil.
He wants secure borders. Period. Full STOP.
He has been pushing for a secure border since he thought of running for President. He has tried to get two sides together in how to secure it and they scream it is inhumane to put up a barrier, a wall in some places and technology in others.
As most things in life, this is not going to get solved until all sides are willing to compromise to find a solution to a problem.
You actually think destroying families is "better"? Is that really your potion?
And Hitler wanted to take over the world. Period. Full STOP.
The ends do not justify the means. These are children, it is our duty as adults to protect them.
I was trying to clarify with @Benkei as to what the law is, so I care and he responded so I think he cares. I don't think anyone here doesn't care about the situation and isn't looking for a solution.
What is your solution?
I personally don't think you care much about the children, at least not as much as you over-hyped fear of your own imagination.
Are you reading my posts or are you just responding emotionally?
Now it is only a few post thick, I think I have stated my position several times.
You have stated it is wrong and it needs to stop. You have offered nothing in the way of a solution.
Wait, let me get this straight. You are telling me that I stated my own position wrong?
You have stated the Zero Tolerance policy is wrong and it needs to stop, right?
Yes, that is my position.
Perhaps your problem is that you are not looking at this emotionally.
Perhaps. Here is a first hand account vs the man charged to enforce the Zero Tolerance policy, trying to separate facts from fiction. There is a suggestion about the height of emotion involved and whether or not it is appropriate.
Maybe we should also look at the economic gains of slavery without emotions. Morally is comprised of reason and emotion, you don't get a moral result if you exclude one of those elements. I really did already comment on all this.
With all due respect Jeremiah, you also brought up Hitler earlier in addition to slavery now and I am not going to compare the two. Not for fear of semblance but because I will not disparage what concentration camps victims and survivors have gone through.
I also brought up many other points that you are glossing over.
Jeremiah, you have brought up many valid points but have yet to offer a solution.
Actually I gave a solution, you just didn't like it. While your solution is to torture little kids. Given the two choices, I think mine is better.
Um....
Maw, that is a chilling link.
You're right, I wasn't aware that entering illegally could be prosecuted. However, it doesn't really make sense. You want to have them leave the country and instead put them in jail. In jail, they don't add to the economy and our only a drain on resources. And while it's true that the children cannot be criminally prosecuted, the civil penalty can be levied against them. Since, the civil penalty of deportation would suffice to reach the goal of removing illegal immigrants from US soil, there is no objective reason to elect the prosecutorial route. Also note that per the link you sent me only fines or imprisonment are possible punishment, not deportation.
The prosecution of the parents and the children ending up (presumably) with ICE, means it's difficult if not impossible for them to keep into contact, to be separately deported or imprisoned from each other and basically be unable to find each other even after they are released (in the case of parents) or deported (in the case of children).
Second, there is no objective reason why you'd separate children and parents while held to be deported. In practice, ICE normally does not take parents with very young children into custody but it is possible. Which is I think is an appropriate proportional decision in most cases. So if you want to be strict, you can take families into custody together under the civil procedure.
It's quite obvious to me that "zero tolerance" has been elected not for its effectiveness but for scare tactics. They have chosen to be cruel to children and parent in order to reach an abstract goal (less illegal border crossings). Aside from the ethical question whether that's necessary and proportional (I don't think it is), it isn't even proved that the goal will be reached through these means.
Quite frankly, I'm surprised you're defending this. It might be legally permissible to pursue illegal entry like this it's neither economical nor ethical and I'm suprised the latter does not already convince you this is wrong.
Exactly, and we are doing essentially the same thing today by turning away asylum seekers - men, women and children who are trying to escape abuse, cartel violence etc., only to ship them back to where it is likely they will be killed.
When you read history, the tendency is to think this can never happen again, but the unfortunate truth is that history is a wheel and not a straight line. People forget the lessons of the past and their lizard brain slowly pulls them back to those unethical judgments. The only solace I have here, is that with each turning of the wheel, if we push hard enough we can inch ourselves forward a bit.
Am I defending it or am I trying to explain what is happening on our border?
I think you are defending it.
Maw, if that was the makeup of all of those who are trying to seek asylum were what you suggest, it would be a lot easier. The problem is that mixed in with those seeking asylum are some that do not have good intentions. How do we figure out which is which when our entry ports are being overwhelmed?
What about the 65k unaccompanied minors that were taken in in 2014?
How are they being sustained?
Oh come on Tiff
Your moving me Maw, what can I say? The link to your immediate family changes things in my heart as I have a lot of family links to other topics and that matters greatly to me as well.
The reply that is moving me has been posted on The Philosophy Forum Facebook page. Thank you for your contribution.
Me too. Thank you.
Border crossing doesnt have to be any more dangerous than taking a hike. Crossing illegally into the US from where I am is a 74$ cab ride followed by a 45 minutes hike across some farmlands and woods. Unless some gung-ho border patrol idiot decides to gun me down, or hell, I come across some badgers, then there is no danger whatsoever.
(Trump)
Tells how spineless Trump is. And anyway, a mindless policy resulting just in a PR disaster in order to press for the ludicrous wall proposal. Which naturally won't work.
But Trump knows simply telling lies after lies continuosly, his supporters will believe him. Talk about alternative realities.
What do these stories have in common? Obviously they’re all tied to the character of the man occupying the White House, surely the worst human being ever to hold his position. But there’s also a larger context, and it’s not just about Donald Trump. What we’re witnessing is a systematic rejection of longstanding American values — the values that actually made America great.[/quote]
https://nyti.ms/2MBpTUn
Regarding borders and undocumented immigration - there is no easy answer to such problems, and they're only going to get worse. There are huge numbers of people who live in situations of desperate poverty in lawless regimes with no access to education or adequate means of livelihood. There are huge populations who are uprooted by war and political instability. There are entire countries where it is unconscionable to demand that people even should live - Afghanistan, Eritrea, and South Sudan spring to mind - and many others which are borderline. In the last several years there have been hundreds of thousands of undocumented arrivals in Europe, which is causing severe political problems and may yet bring down Angela Merkel (which Trump plainly is rooting for.)
In Australia, the conservative government elected in 2012 did actually stop the flow of boat arrivals (although there are still many visa overstays for example up to 200 African athletes and officials from the recent Commonwealth Games and others). There are still some pressing problems, not least what to do with about 1500 undocumented persons remaining after the drawbridge went up, who are living in New Guinea and Nauru in very poor conditions, and the common perception that the Australian government is catering to xenophobia and racism.
In any case, I can't see how these problems can be easily solved. Many of those seeking asylum are fleeing dreadful situations, but then I don't see how it's possible that hundreds and thousands, or even millions, of displaced people can simply be relocated to the developed world holus bolus. It doesn't seem feasible to me. I suppose the only possible conscionable attitude has to be massive foreign aid, enforced political stability and development in many of the countries of origin, a draconian clampdown on corruption and especially on arms trafficking into those trouble spots, and a willingness on the part of the developed world to share the benefits of globalism, liberalism and democracy. All of which has about zero chance of occurring - it was the kind of idealism that was behind the United Nations in the first place and with Trump at the helm, it's less likely than a settlement on Mars. So I'm not here with solutions or even opinions, other than that I think this is going to continue to be an enormous problem.
To expand on this point: this is essentially why deterrent-based policies are nearly always doomed to fail. Immigrants escaping the Northern Triangle are often faced with either rape and/or murder if they stay in their respective countries. Insofar as the US border policy provides a better fate than certain murder or rape, it will unlikely deter immigrants. Again, I will iterate that the new zero-tolerance policy has not been well communicated down into Latin America.
It is slowly but surely imploding.
Sounds dangerous to me.
No. By all means, have a go and realize, maybe, some consequences.
The wall would also make it very hard for most adults and all small children to climb over. This would make it next impossible to separate the children from their parents, unless their parents scale the wall and leave them behind. The Democrats do not want this humane option, since they are all about optics and scams.
I heard somewhere that about 3 weeks ago, a top Democrats strategist on a talk show pointed out that the Democrats have not been able to harm Trump. Every full scale media scam they have pulled has not stuck or done damage. The only scam approach that showed some promise was an immigrant children angle. About 2 weeks later, by some strange ESP miracle the entire swamp media complex came to the same conclusion at the same time. It is an organized scam.
The left does not give a crap about children. These children are pawns to them. If they cared about the children they would discourage children from being brought to the border, until they could deal with this issue in court.
Instead, they encourage this, so they can point the finger of blame. Having children sitting in pens makes good political optics. If they could encourage even more children so they could create an overcrowded situation for even better optics, they would sacrifice even more children. If they cared, they would help with a short term solution that minimizes the children in pens, which is discourage them from coming at this time.
Is separating children how Trump intends to discourage them from coming? Or is there some other way? If some other way then it's possible to discourage people from coming without separating children.
So I can turn your wild accusations around against you. If Trump cared, why is he doing it? It is within his power to reverse his policy decision.
And if he is separating children so as to discourage others from coming then he's the one using children as pawns (and clearly doesn't care about them).
Don't try to spin this as being a problem with the Democrats. This is entirely Trump. He's the one doing it.
There are minimum legal rules about crossing the road, therefore lessor consequences than crossing the border illegally.
I think it is quite simple to discourage this illegal border crossing. Send them all back with instructions to contact the American embassy in Mexico for further instructions on how to apply to immigrate.
What port of entry is closest to you?
You are some random individual on the Internet spinning vague accusations of a major conspiracy, that apparently spans across 17 different civilian and government intelligence agencies AND Congress, all of which are targeting Donald Trump and this is all based on nothing. You have nothing at all; you have not provided one fact to support this wild claim of your. I am suppose to believe you? I don't think so.
"The intelligence community and the Senate Intelligence Committee agree on that."
So I ask again.
Have you seen this evidence?
No you have not.
Well I did read many of the the emails and I have some of the fake news data on my PC; I was reviewing it for possible analysis. What evidence have you seen to support your wild conspiracy theory?
It is not so much about viewing the evidence as they just have much more creditably than you do. What you are actually suggesting is just ridiculous. Conspiracy nuts are not generally worth listening to.
You're merely a believer. The evidence of this is clearly stated. You don't need to see the evidence. Please do not do jury duty. .
You keep demanding evidence yet have given none to support your claims, which makes you look like a hypocrite.
"Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience."
Quoting wellwisher
Are you serious? How naive.
The wall has nothing to do with reality. It's an idea on the level you would make when drinking beer with some friends who aren't giving it a real thought, but just expressing their objection in general. That's why Trump hold on to it: far more simple to understand "the Wall" by the simple voter than some actual complex immigration policy & border policing strategy. It's something to give just a symbol of being tough on immigration. (And make money out of constructing something useless out of concrete.) Obviously there would more cheaper ways to close the land border to Iron Curtain levels which were seen in Soviet times, which then would simply then would leave the most desperate to take to the waters and make it a problem of the Coast Guard. But who cares about reality?
And anyway, the whole debate on border control and immigration policy simply becomes out of touch of reality. I've seen it here in Europe were the anti-immigration community simply has left reality and believe the most ludicrous statements. Actual facts don't matter anymore. The American xenophobes painting Europe as "lost" are even more whimsical and out of touch of reality.
Quoting Maw
Yeah, should have noticed. Separate Worlds.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/896884949634232320[/tweet]
:cheer:
So he and his sort got to try out their ideas and that's as it should be.
Because in America stupidity, misogyny and racism never gets its say? Is that your argument? Are you new to the USA?
Depends on what we are being assholes about.
A fundamental concern is that Trump's approval rating, regardless of his inhumane policies, incoherent twitter outbursts, antipathy towards allies, or geniality toward enemies, etc. has never sunk below 35%. While there are degrees in which people intensely approve of him, in the abstract, ostensibly one-third of the country agrees with "Trumpism", which is likely to outlast Trump's presidency. There are people who earnestly approve of the tax cut, the wall, Trump's immigration policy, the America First foreign doctrine, racial animosity, etc. which will not cease simply because Trump is out of office, and which were essentially seen as "justified" in the first place because Trump was voted into the presidency.
Had Clinton won, there is no doubt that Trump would have stoke outrage about a rigged system, corrupt political elites etc.. I believe it was Michael Wolff who wrote that Trump and his team, not believing that they would actually win, had plans to create some sort of Trump TV in partnership with Breitbart which would basically be an anti-Hillary, anti-liberal, anti-democratic platform. Considering how Fox News' viewership rose sharply during Obama's presidency, I don't doubt that Breitbart partnership would have been highly successful. But the alternative is that a Clinton win would have placed doubt in the viability of Trump's ideas because her election would be a public rejection of Trump, and they would have likely remained on the fringe, at least more so than now, where they are now public policy.
Regardless of turnout, it's clear that, at minimal, Trump's election as the Republican nomination signaled that there is something very rotten in the United States. Ultimately, I would have greatly preferred Clinton to be President while Trump just barks and growls like the mad dog he is on some heterodox network, because we would not have gotten this bourgeois tax cut, zero-tolerance immigration and ICE roundups, and all the various mistakes towards out foreign and domestic policy that are being too innumerable to count.
I say if we want a government of the people, we have to be prepared for the occasional bumpy ride.
Not much gets done until we hit a critical mass on anything.
In 2014 the profile of the illegal immigrant was a young, male from Mexico, sneaking across the border to get a better paying job. When they were caught by ICE, their case was heard within 48 hrs and they were sent back to Mexico via plane or bus. We had plenty of places to hold family units because families were not the typical illegal immigrants.
One of the complicating factors in 2018 is that the profile of the illegal immigrant has changed. We are seeing more women with children, fleeing savage conditions and looking for political asylum, which we can offer at a much slower rate than returning the illegal immigrant of 2014. If they are not granted political asylum, where do we return them to? They came through Mexico but Mexico is not the majority of these folks hometown. We cannot turn them away at the Mexican border and expect them to travel back to their southern country. We could let them travel through the USA, like Mexico, and present themselves at the Canadian border.
Can we find another country to help us out with these folks seeking political asylum? The cost to the USA is $34,000 a year per immigrant.
@Banno Australia?
I'm not being political about it. It really is just plain wrong. As Maw said, his way reflects what some portion of the American people agree with.
I know.
Quoting frank
To which he is changing minds one person at a time.
I am looking for solutions now not whom to blame. We have enough on our hands trying to reunite 2000k children under the age of 18 with their guardians.
Got any solutions?
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
???
In 2016, The National Academies produced a 20-year study on the economic impact of immigrants in the United States. The study shows that while first-generation immigrants are generally most costly than native-borns (mostly at the state and local level), their children "are among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the U.S. population, contributing more in taxes than either their parents or the rest of the native-born population." The study states that in the long-run, immigration creates an overall positive impact on economic growth.
Catch and release.
That solves nothing. We will have another generation of DACA kids.
-LBJ
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/sorry-but-illegal-aliens-cost-the-u-s-plenty/
The cost of $34,000 was the local news radio show's number and I cannot find a citation for it.
The most natural reason for economic growth is population growth. You don't need a study for this fact.
http://www.genocidewatch.com/united-states-of-america
If that is true then it is also our morally social duty to be upset when such "bumps" occur.
Quoting ssu
I'm sure the National Academies took such an obvious fact into account.
So your justification for destroying families and caging little kids is that you think it will cost you more money to do otherwise?
Duty to be upset? Emotions are just there like an ocean. The ocean has no duties. If you realize that the scene in front of you is a repetition, the accompanying emotion will be melancholy, not rage.
I think you should feel rage if it's in your nature, but isn't there a way to channel it productively?
It has been proven that people remember negative social experiences a lot longer than positive social experiences and social shaming is the foundation of how we reinforce moral norms. I mean, can you actually prove that my way is less productive?
I am corporate trained in interpersonal communication, with 10 years of experience in customer relations, both interacting with customers and instructing others on how to successfully communicate with people. If you think politeness is the fastest and most lasting way to make your point, then I disagree. People remember what a troll said long after they forgot what Mr. Nice Guy said. People will think about what a troll said, and they will become engaged with trying to prove the jerk wrong. When it comes to Mr. Nice Guy they will just "agree to disagree" forget him and move on. I know this from 10 years of on the job experience of being paid to be Mr. Nice Guy.
I have also spent some time studying basic sociology and social shaming is the main method in which we reinforce moral norms. Perhaps that is why negative experiences have such a lasting effect. In fact what you are trying to do now is socially shame me as you disapprove of my behavior, which I find a bit amusing.
Or maybe all that is just an excuse and after dealing with so many people for so long and always playing Mr. Nice Guy, I am just ready to cut through the BS. I don't know have not figured that part out yet, but one thing here is for certain, I have given my approach far more thought than you are giving me credit for and likely far more thought than you have given your own approach.
1) Many of the people who adhere to Trump think it's best to be aggressive and ruthless. The more ruthless you become, the more you become like them. If we do that, we're letting them dictate the climate. We become a bunch of growling dogs, alienated from one another and unable to wake up and see how much we have in common.
2) Shaming people for things they can't control fosters hopelessness, which is probably the greatest threat to the US at this point.
3) Being an asshole feels good. Yes. Hurting somebody else when you feel justified to do it is a drug. If you become addicted to that drug, your thinking can become clouded. Just be careful.
Ya, I am not being "ruthless", that is a bit of a hyperbole. Also, just a note, but Trump's methods are not new, people just have a short memory when it comes to US history. We are not just now letting these ass-hats have their say, you just don't know your history very well.
Furthermore being pissed off is completely the right reaction to what they are doing to these immigrate families and I am not sure why you seem to think it is somehow the wrong reaction.
That's the stereotype of the corporate mentality: your employees are easily replaceable anonymous names on the payroll (who rather than adding value merely eat into your profits) who are lazy, sneaky, shortsighted, etc. and who need to be kept in a constant state of fear. There's some truth to this within that specific context. I would however be cautious in translating that model/mindset to other spheres of life, especially those which do not subordinate human beings to a "system" which sees them in strictly instrumental terms.
In my experience in (small) business it's almost always a better strategy - at least a long-term one - to treat employees like adults. "Hey you lazy idiot I'm going to fire you if you don't pull your head out of your ass!" is translated to, "This is what the job requires and if it's something you can't do consistently then you should seek employment elsewhere." I've disciplined/counseled many a worker in those (calm) terms and have gotten pretty good results, and by "good results" I include parting ways as amicably as possible when differences are irresolveable. More often, though, it results in significantly improved attitude and performance.
I guess my main point here would be to argue against the idea that being an asshole is the best way to convince others of the rightness of your position. They''ll fake it out of fear - as noted there's some truth to that - but the change will be superficial, insincere, and precarious. I'd also add that being a "nice guy" does not necessarily preclude toughness when warranted, so that's a false dilemma. One can be a genuinely solid and compassionate person while not at all being a pushover. That's the sort of leadership that people admire and want to be around.
Now within the context of political debate, in my experience shaming works even less than in the business world - at least not in the sense of leading to genuine change in the other's perspective. What does work every so often, however, is (e.g.) acknowledging the partial legitimacy of their perspective, admitting the limitations of our own, suggesting that their views have been manipulated by people who don't share their noble intentions, etc. So you try to find some common ground and then work from there.
That attempt to foster good will by recognizing the "humanity" or basic decency of our perceived adversaries can make them much more receptive to our position than they'd otherwise be. If you wan't to stir up the "base" who already think like you then yeah, go ahead and shame those who are different. On the other hand, if you want to compel those who may be indecisive, or who may even be on the other side of an issue, then treating them with respect will likely work better. It's a rare person who doesn't get defensive and totally closed off when personally attacked.
There are some evil POS out there who don't deserve any sort of charity, of course, and these should be shamed for their heartless beliefs and/or actions (Trump!). But the main concern IMO should be with those who don't fall into this category, who may be misinformed or misguided. Decent people can hold irrational and/or even unethical views, but getting them to see that requires a bit of subtlety. Maybe others with a background in psychology can chime in here, but getting people (including ourselves!) to see the truth is, or can be, incredibly difficult.
Just my thoughts. We can all get back to the productive exchange of insults now.
No evidence has been presented that the DNC Podesta emails, etc, were hacked.
In fact the FBI were denied access to the DNC server by the DNC.
Now that sentence above is absolute fact and clarified by the FBI themselves.
It would appear the DNC had a disgruntled leaker. The presumption being disgruntlement at the treatment of the Bernie Sanders campaign
Same policy as Obama's. Here is Clinton in 2014 saying this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwTmN2wbJ0A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwTmN2wbJ0A
It's stunning how little thought, how little research you've done on this subject. I've seen this trite video being passed around by several Facebook friends today, and I wouldn't be surprised if you haphazardly picked up this video from your social media friends, rather than actually engage in an iota of due diligence on this distressing topic.
First, there's no doubt that Obama's border policy was detestable. It's aim was to detain families (no longer than 21 days), and leverage that to deter additional undocumented immigrants, which as I explain early in this thread, are essentially doomed to fail. I don't think anyone, liberal or not, should defend Obama's immigration policy in this case, as it's arguably the platform on which Trump built his zero-tolerance fiasco (although I have no doubt the Trump administration would have orchestrated family separation either way).
Second, Clinton wasn't Secretary of State in 2014. I mean the goddamn news ticker on the video you provided even shows that she's the former Secretary of State. Again, it looks like you did a five second google search. She's on her 2014 Hard Choices book tour and basically being classic Hillary Clinton where she indecisively vacillates around ideas trying to appeal to both conservatives and liberals, because after Obama's 2012 reelection she was absolutely going to run again for the presidency. Anyway, Clinton's response is vague, with slivers of nuance, but poorly articulated, like her 2016 presidential campaign in a nutshell. She states that undocumented children should be sent back if it can be established that there are responsible adults that can care for them back in their respective countries, and that there are undeniable "concerns if all of them can be sent back", which to me indicates that if a responsible adult is in a precarious position due do cartel threats, etc. then that may not be a viable solution. Either way, it's super fucking vague, and not remotely comparable to Trump's zero-tolerance policy, because instead of ripping children away from their parents when they reach ports of entry or without announcing themselves, what Clinton is articulating is to send children back to their families who live in the Northern Triangle.
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-department-homeland-security-and-office-director-national
You are so full of it.
The Zero Tolerance policy is Trump's brain child. You are a very dishonest person.
You are obviously unaware or are in denial that the FBI asked for access to the server. Crowdstrike, the private cyber security firm the DNC used, provided the only report. This report was not verified by government intelligence agencies through means of their own access to the server.
The FBI got the needed information from the 3rd party. A private company that the DNC decided to use and all this was reviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which concluded along with the FBI that Russia's goal was to damage Clinton in the 2016 election and was responsible for the leaked emails. Also the USIC constitutes more agencies than just the FBI.
You have no clue what you are talking about and have provided zero evidence to support any of your claims. Furthermore why the heck should I listen to you over the USIC? What are your qualifications in such matters?
https://nyti.ms/2lgOscM
Worth reading in full.
So you trust it to be an absolute fact because the FBI have said so, even though you haven't personally seen the evidence?
And yet when the FBI and other agencies say that Russia interfered to help Trump, suddenly they can't be trusted and public evidence is required.
Your hypocrisy is giving me whiplash.
If American citizens committed various crimes, DHS; department of human services, will take away their children or place them with responsible relatives. It is not fair to make the children go to jail, os they can be with criminal parents or criminal guardians who break the law. This would be cruel to the children who do not deserve this. It is better that they not see their parents in this position, so the criminal parents can lie to them later to perpetuate their trust. It will be hard to lie if the children see and hear that their parents were criminals who knowing broke the law.
Picture a drug dealer who is dealing from his house where there are children. DHS will not take the children to jail for being innocent by-standers. They will separate them from their parents, so the children are not in danger. Paul Manafort's children are not in jail with him. The left does no think beyond the latest con job. Use your brain and be a critical thinker.
This pretend concern for children just so happens to come at a same time when the IG report came out and there are hearings in Congress. This is a distraction, to hide public attention from the corruption that occurred under Obama in the law enforcement and justice departments.
The Democrats pretend there is injustice to children to hide all their injustice to American citizens. If you watch any of the hearings, the Democrats on the committee are also trying to shift the focus away from their crimes, using this latest concern for children scam. This has has nothing to do with the intent of the hearings. It is sort of like Johnny is about to get yelled at for breaking the window, so he rats on his brother to delay, soften and district his mother.
The economy is dong well under the misogyny and racism of Trump, with unemployment among the blacks, latinos, and women at an all time low. The actions of Trump are having the opposite impact compared to the talking points of the left. The leftist herd needs to learn critical thinking skills and not blindly recite the talking pints coming from their con artists leaders.
There is a saying that one can tell a tree by the fruit is bears. The fruit of Trump's economic tree is pro women, blacks and latino. It has a health impact on the very people the Democrats complain are being screwed.
If you look at Democrat party controlled large cities, like Chicago, the fruit for women and blacks is rotten fruit. There is little representation in the power structure, and there are high rates of poverty and crime for blacks. This tree has rotten fruit, but sounds goods to the those who memorize jingles. In th end results is what matters, not promises you don't keep.
I like how you talk about critical thinking skills then display a complete lack of them.
I am gonna float one of those concepts integral to critical thinking pass you. Now you make sure and let me know if I am going too fast for you.
Ready for it? It is a classic.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Don't worry that you missed that one, people with your level critical thinking often do.
Let's see the economy was doing well before Trump. Unemployment was low and in a downward trend before Trump. So what evidence do you have that Trump caused this?
Also, and more importantly, economic strength does not justify social injustices like misogyny and racism. I don't know why you would even try to make that justification. The South had great economic strength under slavery, but that sure the heck didn't make it right. What you are saying, is that your moral character can be bought off with a pay raise, and that is just sad. I would rather be poor and good than rich and evil, but apparently you, on the other hand, sell your soul cheap.
@Jeremiah
Why is it that the posts that analyze the problem are the ones that are responded to and those posts that offer solutions are disregarded?
This kind of response is why we are in the position we are in. The outrage over (insert issue) until we are at a fever pitch, on the verge of chaos or change and then poof....the immediately desired change is made, the outrage is over because the practice has stopped and those that were outraged feel their job is done, without ever finding a solution to the problem.
I'm not an expert on immigration policy, or an immigration lawyer, nor am I in any type of position to activate new immigration policies, so it's rather pointless. But I will say that we should provide immigrants who cross our borders, with good food, safe and comfortable shelter, therapists for those seeking asylum because I can't begin to imagine the horrors they faced in the Northern Triangle, while they undergo the process of being admitted into this country as all the evidence shows that immigrants are good for the country, rather than splitting their families apart and locking them in cages, and this administration is currently doing. Ultimately they should be treated with respect and dignity.
They're not cages you whiney, left-wing, tree-hugging hippie. They're chain-link fence enclosures. :rofl:
Also, as to everything going on in the world and what Trump's doing: just wait and see.
That's the defence of every Conservative in denial of the facts on the ground: that Trump will somehow be vindicated by a) peace with NK or b) anything else of the zillion things he claimed at some point in time. I'm sure that if you bully enough countries, one of those 192 will cave at some point on something. And that will make him a winner in the eyes of his supporters as they blithely ignore the destruction of civil society.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/critics-say-trumps-description-of-immigrants-recalls-nazi-propaganda/
"Social commentators pointed out that history has shown, particularly before and during the Holocaust, that “infest” — a term almost exclusively used to describe vermin — dehumanizes a population and is often a precursor to murder or genocide.
...
“‘Infest’ is language used in Nazi propaganda to describe the ‘infestation’ of Jews in Germany, who were compared to rats,” writer Rob Sheridan posted. “Here’s the President of the United States saying illegal immigrants ‘infest’ our country. Keep telling me those Nazi comparisons are unfair.”
I don't disagree Maw but that doesn't provide a solution to the illegal immigration hurdles for us to clear.
The problem is your dehumanization of immigrants not the fact that some get into your country, the fact of which you have been taking advantage of for years to get jobs done that American's don't want to do and to spur on your economy in the process. The problem is also the level of ingratitude of some of you now in considering them no more worthy of empathy than animals or vermin as your "president" describes them. The point being that we don't agree on the problem, so we are naturally going to define the solution is different ways. So, why keep asking the pointless question?
No dear friend. Not in a post 9.11 world.
Are you willing to condemn Trump's use of language or not? Because if you're not, you're not worth a millisecond more of my time.
Dude, the problem with housing children in an adult detention center is that there are laws against it. When American citizen Sally is arrested for a crime, while she is being held, she does not have her children with her in jail.
Tell me why American citizen Sally cannot keep her child with her in jail?
Trump's use of language is not something I agree with. No one should be referred to that way.
Now Sir, with all due respect please answer my question.
If it remains that way we are back to catch and release, with more than 90% never returning for their court date.
No conceivable amount of immigrants that are likely to cross your border illegally is worth losing your self-respect and dignity as a country over. Which is what has been happening.
But whatever. Send them back. Just don't treat them like they're subhuman.
Send them back where?
Why not suggesting that we help them through to Canada?
This is a disappointing response to a very specific question about your words.
Exactly how many extra are a few?
I did. The law states we cannot keep children in detention centers over 20 days.
I answered your question and your response didn't make any sense. As far as I'm concerned I'm arguing about treating people with basic human dignity. The details and exact numbers and methods need to be worked out within that parameter. Obviously, my position is that you're better off sacrificing some tax dollars than your standing as a modern humane democracy. If you're now going to ask many how many dollars exactly, you're missing the point entirely. You are morally obligated to uphold basic human rights. It's up to you to figure out a way to do that. It's your responsibility as a country.
Gotcha. Armchair advisor from another country to damn the inhumane ways of the USA but offering no solution to the illegal immigration problem we face.
Fair amount of time given to entertain your suggestions of possible solutions. :sad:
Did you read anything I wrote today? The solution, as even Trump has managed to work out, is to stop separating families at the border. Your overall level of immigration from Mexico is a separate issue, and is roughly net neutral anyway and therfore not a problem that I think needs a solution.
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-than-coming-to-the-u-s/
Yes Baden I have read what you have written today. We are not at a net neutral, we are operating with a net negative and it will be showing soon in the prices of lettuce that comes from Yuma, AZ a border town.
My struggle is not with legal immigrants, it is with the illegal immigrants. The reason we are at a net negative is not just because of the chaos at.the border but Mexico's overall economy is doing better.
We are obligated by law to educate illegal immigrants to the age of 18 without proof of citizenship and that puts a strain on the legal citizens tax dollar.
Do you think that charging illegal immigrants in state College tuition is fair, when every other American citizen that does not live in AZ pays out of state tuition, which is significantly higher?
These are just a few examples of the ripples of costs goes so far beyond the images at the border.
I don't want to be a nuisance, stepping into a very serious thread with an overly academic remark, but have you read Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy"? The famous remark I have in mind:
[quote=G.E.M. Anscombe]But if someone really thinks, in advance, that it is open to question whether such an action as procuring the judicial execution of the innocent should be quite excluded from consideration — I do not want to argue with him; he shows a corrupt mind.”[/quote]
That's my unshakable feeling about arguing with anyone pro-child concentration camp. There's no meaningful moral conversation to be had; the conversation itself is a form of corruption.
I'm on the record as saying you have a right to let in or keep out whoever you want. It's your country. And I presume you were historically soft on immigration because it benefited you economically for businesses to be able to pay low wages for unattractive jobs. It's a mess of your own making. You chose it as a country and it's your problem. But you need to find a way to solve it humanely. That's an issue of international concern. And Trump's dogwhistling to fascists isn't helping.
It's a fair point.
Trump is not fit to run this country, anyone of intelligence knew that before he was even elected. However, all his little Trump followers trip over themselves trying to keep up with supporting his shifting chaos. Trump has got to be the dumbest US president of modern history and maybe even all of US history. We are living in the era of stupid here in the USA.
Why was no one complaining when Obama separated children at the border?
http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/19/photos-obama-immigration-detention-facilities
Perhaps because the kids weren't held in the U.S. for up to 2 month after their parents were deported?
How many other brilliant questions like that can Trumpers conjure up?
You just don't understand Trump's Zero Tolerance policy at all, do you?
Whose zero tolerance policy?
Trump's, clearly.
Not necessarily, unfortunately. The EO here, states that:
"Where appropriate and consistent with the law and available resources" is fairly in-determinate language, providing wiggle room for the administration to separate families for vague, unclear reasons.
The EO then further states:
"Separating alien families to effectively enforce the law" strongly suggests that the Administration nevertheless considers family separation to be not only within the realm of "The Law", but an "effective" was to enforce it. Chilling stuff.
None these politicians enacted a policy to separate families at the border. Looks like you're just another 'Google Search Conservative'.
And would you like to admit you were wrong here, when I correct you here and here?
Why should the USA not be allowed to police its border?
Separating children from their parents if those parents are criminally prosecuted is within the law. So basically nothing needs to change based on that language.
The man is a giant idiot.
And the least stable. And the least diplomatic. And a proper condemnation of US society as degenerate.
Daily reminder that the U.S., following the signing of the 1951 & 1967 UN Convention on Refugee status cannot legally refuse asylum seekers, nor even simply discourage it.
http://www.unhcr.org/uk/protection/basic/3b66c2aa10/convention-protocol-relating-status-refugees.html
Unsustainable practices are always a temptation for those with ostensibly short term interests, such as politicians and CEOs. It requires character to eschew those gains for future generations.
Thanks Trump!
We can surmise that those present would be willing to believe him.
That's too simple and dismissive. Koch brothers and their ilk voted Conservative because of the tax benefits, some voted because they've always voted Republican, some voted because the racism appeals to them, some voted because of their dislike of Hillary, etc. etc. And yes, some voted because they're stupid.
In the end, the American political system doesn't offer real political choices due to its effective two-party system, extensive lobby apparatus, lack of political accountability and minimal differences between Democrats and Republicans to begin with. Voting for the Dems is just more of the same. The amount of "fighting" between Democrats and Republicans in that respect is rather hilarious from my point of view, where I'm used to an election sporting 23 different parties of which 13 ended up in parliament, ranging from a xenophobic, conservative party to a socialist party.
It’s not about ‘conservatism’. Many conservatives are deeply hostile to Trump, and Trump doesn’t represent conservative values or policies. It’s a hostile take-over of the GOP by a demagogue skilled in manipulating TV. Where the Conservatives can be truly faulted is in lying supine and allowing Trump to do what he likes to their party.
A hostile takeover? First thing, as Benkei said, dems and repubs are not particularly different. Well, history shows this in the cosy friendship Bill Clinon has with G W Bush along with their wars, Obama's wars included.
It has been a hostile resistance, on the whole, from the GOP.
Conservatives have been split on issues for some time though: neoconservatives and paleoconservatives, fiscal conservative and cultural conservatives, etc. which predate Trump's presidency.
I'd be cautious in holding up neoconservatives like Bill Kristol (love his Conversations though!) and Max Boot as exemplary models of what a principled conservatism looks like by way of juxtaposition with Trump.
Indeed.
You can't see any irony?
The "needed" information?
Yeah. They just needed anything to STOP them actually inspecting the server. The last thing the Comey lead FBI wanted to do was compromise their relationship with Clinton and put themselves in a position to lie about what was in the server.
If they don't see the server then it is less likely the FBI will be in trouble.
Comey took over HSBC bank, did he not, just when the bank got caught knowingly laundering terrorist's millions and Mexican drug cartel's millions?
HSBC was found guilty. So while under Comey The deal was made that HSBC was fined the equivalent of 5 weeks profit.
Millions of dead people as a consequence of help from HSBC Bank.
These are the types that run the FBI.
Only under pressure of questions before congress did they admit this fact.
And they also said when speaking to Congress that Russia sought to help Trump win. And the Senate Intelligence Committee have said the same.
You're just being a hypocrite in accepting what they say when it suits your agenda but not when it doesn't.
This is really a distraction away from the corruption within the Obama Injustice Department and Obama's FBI, as outlined in the IG report. The second special investigation, which may appear, will have the IG report as a road map. The Republicans can model their special investigation on the Mueller investigation, since the Democrats set the precedent? For example, Trump's special investigator can hire only Trump donors who are politically biased, just as the Mueller team is all Hillary donors. That is fair. The second tram can put people in jail for lying about anything, which may mean the entire Democrat party. One of Trump's campaign promise was lock her up. He likes to keep his promises. He can use procedure crimes. .
Independent voters will see the Democrat hypocrisy on display. They can also see how the Democrats act like a gang of bullies, with the gang picking on one person. This has resulted in Trump becoming more favorable to the majority of independents and those who seek fairness and not two sets of rules. This tactic is backfiring on the Democrats, who have nothing positive to offer. Their message is all negative, hostile or tired, which is not fun to be around. Trump is light, positive and new.
Trump's decision to change the practice of separating and housing the children of criminal trespassers was influenced by two women; his daughter and wife. This is good for the reputations of his wife and daughter who have been targets of the bullies. The great champions of women; Democrats attacked two women just for be related to Trump. This is their true colors.This move by Trump, it is not good for Trump's position as the misogynist and chief, since true a misogynist, as the left points out, would not listen to women. Trump may lose his membership in the women haters club, just in time for the midterms.
Once again the left was outsmarted. If the left continues to harp, due to a prolonged brain washing spin cycle, those on the political fence will further see their true colors. The question I have is, why didn't Obama do what Trump just did? Isn't he the great humanitarian? Why did Obama leave the practice of separating families in place?
No evidence of either has been presented.
The DNC server has not been inspected for it's evidence and then presented.
Evidence of Russia-Trump collusion evidence has been presented.
They have said there is not Russia-Trump collusion in Mueller's report.
Anything else said is politics. With regard to law, nothing.
(CORRECTION)
And it came after the Stormy Daniels fail.
Obama had the media on his side.
But then, it’s just hopelessness. Not even worth commenting about. No critical distance there, just simple nihilism.
Yes, it IS nihilism. That's where we're at IMO.