ICE, responsible for the civil law approach, as a rule did not separate families with very young children due to the children's dependency on their parents. Now, children younger than five years old were separated from their parents some of them even unable to talk, that suggests ages below 3 and if my daughter is anything to go by: below 2 years old. I find it incredibly difficult to wrap my head around how people consider this morally acceptable; treating babies and toddlers as a means to deter illegal immigration.

Even if it were morally acceptable, there's no evidence criminal prosecution is effective. In fact, it was standard practise to follow the civil law route as it was more effective than criminal prosecution (which has a much higher burden of proof). The whole criminal court system was swamped as a result of the new policy, further underlining the change in policy was ill considered. — Benkei

Main objective with this policy is the shock value, to get the democrats to be up in arms and to create the image as if Trump would be fighting hard illegal immigration with his supporters. He cannot just come up with a tougher immigration policy that would be tolerated by the opposition (and likely would be something similar to Obama), he has to create a scandal, an uproar about it. Of course the reality is that this policy just creates a) a PR disaster, b) slight chaos to the whole process and c) likely demoralizes immigration officials. But all those things aren't at all important to Trump.

One really shouldn't treat Trump's remarks as if they would be policy openings of a normal functioning administration.

However with regard to a discussion about immigration and illegal immigration it is not necessary that it be a pro-Trump vs an anti-Trump debate. Take whoever the president happens to be away the debate will always still remain. — raza

With the disasterous actions of Trump, Trump surely is in the center here. Trump isn't at all interested in an actual effective and functioning immigration policy and border control, he is ONLY interested how his actions are seen with his die-hard followers. It's not policy, it's only political rhetoric, which makes it's such disasterous "policy". As if the US government is controlled by tweets and speeches in rallies. Trump desperately wants the attention of his minority of supporters and what better is to anger his opposition with remarks as now with the latest:

"We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came."

Yeah, no cumbersome bureaucracy.

Hell with the "due process".

It fits extremely well the thinking of idiots that are Trump supporters, who haven't the clue or simply don't care at all how governments work. And Trump doesn't care or likely is incapable of understanding that implementing a tougher immigration policy in a democracy simply doesn't go like this.

Ah, the Pro-Trump people here remind me of times of the first Dubya administration, the time of the Iraqi invasion and "Freedom Fries".

Similarly were then the same kind of people feeling the urge to defend US failing policy, then the decision to go to war and reurgitating the talking points of the jingoistic media (at that time). They had the need to rally behind their president and his ruinous decisions (just as now with Trump). The President simply could not make any bad decisions, and it was their responsibility to defend their president even on the earlier forum (old PF).

At least it's soothing to know that the Trump lovers will dissappear in the long run just like those Dubya lovers. Say the time when the next Right Wing Messiah comes, who with hindsight can tell the obvious truth about Trump's administration.

The study states that in the long-run, immigration creates an overall positive impact on economic growth. — Maw

The most natural reason for economic growth is population growth. You don't need a study for this fact.

This is why Trump wants the wall. If we had a wall across the southern border, real asylum seekers would need to enter by a front door. At the front door, children are not separated from honest parents. — 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.

No point in paying any attention to raza or @wellwisher — Maw

Yeah, should have noticed. Separate Worlds.

For a democracy to work, there have to be a lot of things that work also:

- The country has to be also justice state. Corruption cannot be a huge problem.

- The country cannot be very poor. Extreme povetry creates problems. A poor state simply doesn't have the ability to create a functioning justice state and likely has problems even to fulfill the basic services that a government has to provide.

- The country has to have social cohesion. If a country is very divided by ethnic, racial or class lines (or by some other divide), it's likely that even if the democratic institutions do work, the outcome can be very ugly. A functioning democracy needs the political actors to be able to cooperate and find a consensus from time to time.

I don't think that Western democracy is dying. It's perilous moment was in the 30's, but not now.

In my view the most disgusting thing is that Trump denies it's even his policy:

“I hate it. I hate the children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law. That’s their law,”

(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.

Not eating animals?

If it's based on a philosophical view, it's in my view an arrogant holier-than-thou attitude that simply is hypocrisy. Cows as ruminants are biologically vegans, humans are omnivores. A healthy balanced diet is the best option for a human. If it's a religious view, well, then it's part of your religion.

Without abstract entitities modelling the World is very crude, imperfect and lacking.

Abstract entities are extremely useful.

So useful, that their existence or unexistence is a meaningless question. If you assume they don't exist, well, then "existinting" has a quite shallow definition. Perhaps more closer to when we say something "physically exists".

Actually, there would be in my view a true way to solve this:

Have simply a peace agreement. One should remember that there is only an armstice between the countries.

Have both South and North Korea reduce there conventional armed forces dramatically, North Korea to give up it's nuclear weapons and simply have the US make a gradual withdrawal from South Korea. Okinawa and the bases in Japan are quite close By still to defend South Korea.

Especially a Republican administration, at least in theory, could make such a move if it could (again in theory) contain it's own hawks. Democrats simply couldn't be against a peace deal.

Unfortunately this actually goes too close to the North Korean view and Trump already has dismissed it. And the totally inept Trump has already the neocons in charge of foreign policy, so that's that.

As an untrustworthy American, I say de-escalation is having NK stop threatening the US mainland. That kind of talk is bad joo joo for everybody. Trust me. — frank

And just when has that de-escalation really happened? When the media isn't telling about a possible conflict, but is hopeful? That's the "de-escalation"? I agree here with Sophisticat.

North Korea has it's nuclear program. North Korea is building nuclear weapons. The hem and haw of the political discourse between the countries is absolutely nothing new. Nothing new. And this time there isn't even anything on the the table ...other that the two leaders will possibly meet.

The fact is that likely there will be those few missiles that will threaten US mainland. If they don't already exist. The media is quite mute about it, but when you read the interviews of the US generals and admirals responsible of the Korean theatre, their message is pretty bleak.

We can hope for a breakthrough, but that is unlikely. I'd figure this is just the ordinary we have seen in the Korean peninsula: sometimes there is hope in the air, officials meet, something is discussed ...until tensions rise again from a missile test or some B-2 flying over South Korea.

I tend to believe he actually did play a part in the recent de-escalation of tension involving North Korea, but not in a way that enhances the standing of the US in the world. I think China dealt with it and left the US irrelevant. — frank

Well, going off from the Iran deal sent a clear message that Americans in general, but especially the Trump administration cannot be trusted. If his totally ignorant base doesn't like something, Trump's going to change his views to woo his supporters... totally irrelevant of the foreign policy impact on the issue at hand.

And what on Earth is this "de-escalation" here? That first Trump talks tough (or talks about little rocket man) and then whants to meet the guy? That North Korea hasn't made a nuclear experiment or launched a missile for some time? Historically true "escalation" in the Korean peninsula has been quite deadly: North Koreans attacking and killing US personnel on the DMZ, sinking a South Korean naval vessel, bombarding a small town on an island.

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). — Arkady

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.

Or not.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2109429/A-dirty-war-British-soldiers-shot-dead-enemy-troops-waving-white-flag-Argentinian-prisoners-bayoneted-cold-blood-An-ex-Para-tells-horrors-Falklands.html

Every fact is both provable and disprovable by a well phrased Google search. See, https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/169761 — Hanover

Well,

Individual instances do happen and especially on the battlefield, that's for sure. Yet in that war you didn't have warcrimes basically ordered from higher above. Or perhaps the case just shows that a war fought lawfully and/or according to international laws is an oxymoron.

In the university I made a small study of the Crimean War in Finland, which showed just how honorable soldiers were during the Victorian era -especially to other Europeans. Today you wouldn't take "A word of honour" not to escape from an enemy officer and let him freely travel in your country, but captured Finnish officers (serving the Russian military) were granted just that in the UK.

There's just no such thing as a cleanly fought war. — Hanover

Ummm... the Falklands war is basically a war where both sides stick to the International conventions in war and didn't engage in what are called war crimes. Civilians weren't targeted.

So that's one for the history books.

The USA actually gives far more to Israel's enemies than it does to Israel. — LD Saunders

Those that have signed a peace deal with Isreal really aren't Israel's enemies anymore. And still, the US has given the most to Israel when it totally dominates it's neighbours in every way, starting with it's nuclear deterrent.

How could anyone be neutral? Unbiased? Not racist? To take a position places one in somebody's negative category box. ↪frank? ↪Ciceronianus the White? ↪ssu? ↪LD Saunders? ↪Hanover? ↪Πετροκότσυφας? ↪Andrew4Handel? ↪SophistiCat? ↪René Descartes? ↪Benkei? ↪aporiap? ↪charleton? ↪unenlightened? ↪Londoner? ↪CuddlyHedgehog? — Bitter Crank

I view that the existence of nation states or countries simply cannot reasoned from a moral perspective. They surely can be reasoned, but morality isn't a defining factor. This is because basically every nation that has gained independence has gotten that after some kind of war or conflict. Hence anybody declaring one state to be more "legitimate" than other is absurdly confused. In fact, I tend to think that those people talking about the legitimate rights are usually the ones who start wars.

Existence of a state as a sovereign is an issue of practicality. Westphalian sovereignty can be reasoned by it's practicality and usefulness.

Neither can the borders of a country be justified to be legitimate on some higher moral ground. It doesn't have to do with morality, but of convenience and realpolitik. Who won and who lost in the last conflict.

There is a reason why Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan all supported Israel during its last war in Gaza. It's because even those countries are getting tired of the Palestinians' crap. It's only the anti-Semitic left in the USA and Europe that supported the Palestinians digging terrorist tunnels into Israel, murdering Jewish teenagers, and violating every cease-fire agreement. Even the Saudis know better than to support such crap. — LD Saunders

This answer shows both your utter ignorance and bias about the Middle East perfectly.

The only reason Saudi Arabia tolerates Israel (and btw just now the crown Prince has said that Israel has a right to exist) is because of the Shia-Sunni conflict. Palestinians are Sunnis, but Hamas has close ties with Iran, which angers naturally Saudi Arabia. And Saudi Arabia is top of the pack because a) Iraq is down and out and b) Egypt has it's own problems and general al-Sisi is no Nasser.

To think that Saudis and other Arabs would be "tired of Palestinians' crap" is very odd idea.

Let me ask this: If Israel stopped the settlements of the disputed lands entirely and offered the Palestinians full autonomy within the lands generally recognized to be theirs, that is they offered a two state solution, would the sentiment on this Board be entirely in favor of Israel? That is, is it really the settlement of those lands that has caused the negative reaction to Israel? — Hanover

As I said before, the real problem would be for the Palestinian side to stick to the peace agreement. Because once you have the agreement, then that's that. Somewhere Palestine ends and Israel begins. Israel has been capable of removing the zionist religious fanatics quite easily from Sinai, let's remember that. So if there would be a reason for Israel to withdraw, they could do it and it can very well control it's borders. Jordan and Egypt have been able to do this and enforce the peace agreement, even if especially in Egypt populists have a opportunity for their populism in being agaist the Camp David accord. Lebanon is the case example when the government is too weak: Hezbollah has taken over South Lebanon and actually fought very well during the last war.

The truth is that in the Middle East, it takes a lot more courage and political bravery to be for a peace settlement than to be a hawk. It's far more easy to be a hawk and settle to the conclusion that limited wars are just a part of life. Just look at the Arab and Israeli leaders that have been killed by their country's own zealots because they did make a peace agreement.

But of course, there's no need for Israel to do any peace deal. A peace deal is done only when the continuation of the war is intolerable. For Israeli the occasional terrorist attack or rocket attack is a minor nuisance, not something that cannot be lived with.

SSU: You think the UN has an "objective" view regarding Israel? That's laughable. — LD Saunders

You're quite laughable.

I was talking about what UN Peacekeepers on the field reported. Not what something as large and schizophrenic as the "UN" officially views is something else.

Those reports done by individual blueberet soldiers and officers are quite objective because they don't have any own agenda or reasons to distort what was observed. I know many that have served in Lebanon as peacekeepers. A lot of Finnish reservists and active officers served in Lebanon and they didn't have any other agenda than just to report what they saw. Finnish troops have been there in Lebanon from 1982-2001 and 2006-2007 and from 2011 onwards to the present.

And the truth is that what they report isn't what typically is reported in the media.

The difference between these reports and the ordinary media reporting is simply that they are done by military trained people observing a military conflict, not the ordinary journalist take on reporting of the plight of the civilians in the hands of evil warlords/terrorists/Israelis Army/whatever. The judgemental aspect of the conflict is left out.

Interesting asymmetry. Atrocities are conditionally excused on one side and unconditionally condemned on the other. — SophistiCat

Yep.

I guess it is the American vitriolic style of juxtapositioning things to good and evil that makes the discourse so inherently dumb. My wife has a friend who is married to an Israeli and when talking with him about Mid-East politics he has allways been totally rational, realistic and had what I would call a natural critique towards his government which anyone living in a democracy typically has towards some policy actions of one's government. In fact, when you read the English versions of Israeli newspapers, you get the same feeling.

You don't get the same feeling when Americans or the American media talks about Israel. Never mind Christian fundamentalists who see modern day Israel not as just a nation state, but something very biblical and a benevolent sign of the end times finally coming. Even the ordinary commentary is totally different from any other country. To be fair, the other side, those who denounce Israel support the plight of the Palestinian people are similarly annoying in their zealous support of their cause.

And both sides just use the "useful idiots" that they have on their side.

SSU: There you go completely trying to twist my words. — LD Saunders

Oh I wasn't specifically talking to you. But seems like you thought so. Which is telling.

Your claims against Israel are pure bullshit. — LD Saunders

I do have faith in what the UN Peacekeepers have observed in Lebanon. They gave an objective view... that usually wasn't heard in the media.

How about you tell us when you have ever condemned the barbarity and crimes against humanity by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority? The Palestinian Authority as its official government policy demands the mass murder of Jews.

Yep, the typical viewpoint I was talking: critique of something makes you the ardent supporter of the other side. The typical ignorant bashing so common in the net.

Israel has been able to make peace with Egypt and Jordan and these countries have had the ability to also reinforce and stick their side of the agreement. Lebanon is far too weak to do this and so are the Palestinians. Withdrawal from Lebanon didn't make Israel's situation better as it was the Hezbollah, not the Lebanese Government, which then retook southern Lebanon.

Hamas has it's line to destroy Israel and the low-level conflict goes on. That shouldn't come as a surprise.

The most strange thing is how peaceful the Golan Heights have been where the Muslim extremists and Israel have been next to each other.

Serious question: why is critisizing the actions of Israel anti-semitic? Is this the case that only being Jewish or an Israeli, you can be critical of the actions of the Israeli government?

Besides, not all people are in favour of one side and against the other (as typically Americans think everything has to be). You can be critical of both sides. You don't have to be a supporter of the Palestinians and a hater of Israel or a worshipper of the Judeo-Christian heritage and hater of the arabs (or muslims).

If one makes a list of countries with human rights records, from the best to the worst, Israel would be near the top. — LD Saunders

At war at least it hasn't been so. When Israel invaded Lebanon in the early 1980's you could see Lebanese coming to the roads and clapping their hands in support of the action. Why? Well, of course they didn't like the PLO running things. Yet that changed quite quickly when the local populace came to interaction with the IDF.

Just to give an example observed by the UN peacekeepers in Lebanon: when an Israeli armoured column advancing on a road drove through an area of thick vegetation, they would simply open fire with their machine guns to pin down any possible ambushes lurking in the bushes. When a small girl playing in her family orchard got shot and killed this way, the IDF would simply inform that they have killed a terrorist. Now, to fire wildly and blindly at a spot where there might be an ambush has it's points, but also shows that total lack of concern of the civilian population.

Conspiracies and false flags happen, but one has to look from the broader perspective on these issue and notice that sooner or later history writing will get to the bottom. Or at least, there will be a lot historical studies reporting something is truly fishy.

The motive and the need for a false flag has to be self evident as there is the obvious danger of the whole thing can be exposed by whistleblowers or simply when something goes wrong. And that might topple the leaders making such daring move. And usually the false flag operations are quite ridiculous, like Germany staging an attack by Poland on it's border guards or that my country (Finland) decided to attack by artillery fire Stalin's Soviet Union in 1939.

Two modern false flag operations that come into mind is the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the Apartment building bombings in Russia in September 1999. Both had the intent to get a country to start a military conflict, in the case of the Tonkin incident to get the US involved in the Vietnam war and the apartment bombings in order for an unknown prime minister of Russia to start a war again against the Chechens after a humiliation peace-agreement.(I mean think about it, if terrorists make a bombing attack, why would they choose some unknown neighbourhood apartment buildings in the middle of the day when people are at work?)

What is notable in these cases is the research done about them and how actually difficult false flag operations are. In the Russian case the FSB agents were caught by the police and the duma speaker erranously talked about a bombing that yet had not happened. And then we had the famous whistleblower Litvinenko, who was later famously killed by Russia. And false flag operations are typically done in order to start a war.

Hence here the idea that the British would create this false flag operation is dubious. Hence by Occam's razor the reason that unenlightened lists seem to be the likely scenario.

Should one remind that if we could have as much gold we could have, the soft, malleable inert metal resistant to nearly all acids would be used in a lot of places starting from coating the plastic pipes used in plumbing? But as we can make artificial gold only extremely tiny amounts at CERN in the On-line Isotope Mass Separator the rareness of the metal is a reality. Yet surely there would be a demand for the metal if it would be as common as iron or copper. (Or if it actually wouldn't be mainly concentrated at the center of the Earth on this planet.)

The idea of thinking of a metal based monetary system seems to be an "old relic" as Keynes put it, but if the trust that we now have in the fiat monetary system collapses, it could be as realistic as it was in the past. Then our trust in the present system would seem naive and absurd. Who knows...

Both in the left and the right there is allways a contest for the leadership role between the moderates and the extrememists. If in the left it previously was a bitter struggle between the socialists and the communists, in the right it was earlier a fight with conservatives and genuine fascists. Today it's the far right views of populist anti-immigration movements who try to push old-school conservatism out from the right here in Europe.

In the US I would say that genuine American conservatism is depicted extremely well in Goldwater-Republicanism, that has deep roots in libertarianism and US history. There is also a difference between this kind of conservatism and the religious-right, which even if conservative in it's values, has more to do with religion than conservatism. Conservatism to be true to it's logical definition has to have a link to earlier times and history. Yet that kind of Republican conservatism is muted today and attacked by the right-wing populists as being RHINOs. First came right wing talk radio, then the unfortunate success of the small cabal called the neocons.

I see it as the dumbing down of political discourse in the US to a lousy talk show. The next stage would be when the politicians themselves will have literally fist fights on Capitol Hill during sessions. Likely we will see that.

You are correct, Sam26.

You can have a lot of views about MMT, but the theory's existence itself tells that the World has indeed changed. Just how much it has changed, that's the big question. The fact is that the fiat system is, well, younger than me and hence still is a new thing from the historical perspective. It likely isn't a perpetual machine, that we can just go from trillions of debt to quadrillions, quintillions and so on without anything happening with prices and it's nice to see that even the MMT people understand this.

The real difference is that inflation has been contained, or basically it has gone into asset inflation. Yet one has to understand that the whole idea of functioning "free" markets is quite dubious as central banks not only intervene in the currency market, but even in the stock market. Everything is actually quite controlled.

And we usually forget just how close to a huge collapse of the entire system came to during the last financial crisis just a decade ago. A lot of things are still there even today.

A very good article about MMT, thanks!

Yet MMT is a perfect example of economists making a theory of how the present is totally different from the past and that this is the way how the economy will function from here onwards. MMT is like the idea that the economy has matured away from a boom-bust cycle, when the economy has just had a very long boom (and likely faces an imminent crash). Hence MMT works perfectly... until it doesn't.

Of course, there has been the hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, extremely high inflation in Belarus or Ukraine and in many other countries. But those countries seem not to matter. On a positive note (thanks to the article), seems that the MMT developers do understand this on some level:

(from the article)

None of this is to say that budget deficits don’t matter at all. The fundamental point that the original developers of MMT would make—myself or Randall Wray or Warren Mosler— is that the risk of budget deficits is not insolvency but inflation. In saying that, however, we would also stress that inflation is the risk of any kind of overspending, whether investment, consumption, export, or government spending. Any component of aggregate demand could push the economy to that point where we get inflation. Excessive government spending is not always to blame.

I think that Japan is the case experiment for the MMT. If it gets into trouble with it's huge domestically owned debt and Abenomics sometime in the future, that's bad for MMT.

I think the distinction is that Democrats in the US seem to be moving more and more to the left culturally while simultaneously moving to the right on economic issues. — Erik

What you actually do in legislation is what counts, not what kind talk you give.

But on the discourse side, yes, the Democratic party is basically what here in Europe we would call social-democrats, which are basically socialists who are totally fine with the fruits that capitalism gives them and just want to micromanage wealth distribution with various programs.

I think what is really taking Place is that some Americans simply think that social-democracy would work as they think it hasn't been tried already.

The Democratic party is pretty far to the left these days, if you look at their most recent platform in particular. The last remaining pro-life Democrat barely got reelected recently as well, which is quite telling about how much it's changed — Thorongil

Only by American standards the Democratic party seems pretty far to the left.

Likely Americans would be simply shocked about how "leftist" conservative parties in Europe are. This is something that goes unnoticed. It starts with those parties being in favour of the established social welfare systems. How many European conservative parties support universal health care, for starters? They might raise the question of government finances, but they aren't at all so hostile as the American Republicans are about the issue.

What do you think? — Agustino

That Russians now that best thing in this time of fake news is to turn everything upside down and accuse others, go on the attack. However baseless or weak the counteraccusations are doesn't matter, as you aren't playing for an audience who will double check things and remember anything later about the issue (when the actual investigations are made public).

Conservatism and right-wingers and right-wing ideology aren't synonyms.

Just like "liberal", in the American use of the term, hasn't much to do with true leftist thought of socialism and communism. American democrats aren't socialists and even if some Bernie Sanders can say he is a socialist, compared to Europe he is quite centrist socialist, for many quite right wing.

And the US is a special case compared to many other countries, were those view themselves "conservatives" would in the US fall in the category of being liberals, democrats or rhinos.


Hence as the Democratic Party in the US is a centrist right-wing party, it means that basically you will find conservatives also there,

Likely Sessions held to his position by firing McCabe. If he wouldn't accepted Trump's petty wishes of taking away a pension from a person retiring from office, likely Sessions would have had to go.

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).

I think that Trump is becoming so emboldened that soon he will fire Mueller.

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:

Reluctantly I have concluded that President Trump is a serious threat to US national security. He is refusing to protect vital US interests from active Russian attacks. It is apparent that he is for some unknown reason under the sway of Mr Putin.10:46 PM - Mar 16, 2018

(retired general Barry McCaffrey)

When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America...America will triumph over you.

(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

someone like Alex Jones is an entertainer who deliberately concocts conspiracies to make money. It's his business. Given that, no serious-minded person should pay attention to him except as a source of amusement. — Baden

Fact is that people believe Alex and they think they are intelligently critical when they believe Alex Jones.

Besides, it's telling how Jones once jumped on the Trump train became the most purebred propagandist for Trump in the style of Goebbels and/or old-style Stalinist propaganda. Yep, as if these guys would want people to use their minds and be critical...

1. Race realism, 2. The Jewish Question, and 3. White identitarianism — gurugeorge

Sound extremely delusional bullshit to me. But perhaps one should give credit for wrapping the age old bullshit of racism with new definitions like "race realism".

All the alt-right had to achieve as to look as it would be important is for one of the most inept (or likely, the most inept) US Presidents to have, for a while, an advisor that promoted those whacky ideas.

Democrats that don't admit that Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate live in denial. Why the US ended up with so bad candidates as mrs Clinton and tovarich Trump is an interesting question.

If a person is taxed 100%, their income is irrelevant, no? it would be no different than having no salary at all. I suppose wealth could be defined as any existing wealth, but if taxed on death, it would only be 70 years or so before that initial wealth was depleted. — Sydasis

Well, if everything is taken from you, then I guess things like food to survive you don't buy, but is given to you. Everybody needs food to survive.

Secondly, wealth isn't in many occasion something that is depletable. It's only transferable. I myself own a few hectares of land and naturally the government can take it from me or I can sell it, but that land doesn't dissappear. Furthermore, wealth isn't something static (which Marxism gets a bit wrong), but can be created. This is why many leftist are so against capitalism as they think it's a zero some game: if someone gets rich, someone has to have gotten poorer or somehow those who have become rich have stolen the wealth from others.

What I was saying that the objective of communism is to do away with various classes, hence wealth transfer from rich to poor is only a transitionary event.

The question of wealth distribution on the other hand is a far older question than the time of Marx or even the utopian socialists like Charles Fourier. The story of the Gracchus brothers Tiberius and Gaius tell that the question of wealth distribution and wealth transfer were a political hot potatoe even in the ancient Republic of Rome. And of course, it is a genuinely important question for any society to solve.

So nothing new under the sun.

I appreciate you saying this. I hear the term fascist used a lot, particular since Trump, but also with the rise of neo-Nazism and ANTIFA. I don't really have a grasp on what a casually used meaning of fascism is these day. If you could explain this in more detail, you'd actually help me understand what these ANTIFA types are actually trying to say. I have no clue at times. — Sydasis

Some definitions on fascism, Likely you get the picture what fascism really is:

a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

(Merriam Webster)

Then definitions from genuine fascists:

The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.

...everything in the state, nothing against the State, nothing outside the state.

(Benito Mussolini)

What in fact is Fascism? A socialism emancipated from democracy. A trade unionism free of the chains of the class struggle had imposed on Italian labour. A methodical and successful will to bring together in a same fascio all the human factors of national production ... A determination to approach, to threat, to resolve the worker question in itself ... and to unite unions in corporations, to coordinate them, to incorporate the proletariat into the hereditary and traditional activities of the historical State of the Fatherland.

(Charles Maurras)

And of course then the Marxist intrepretation of fascism:

The historic function of fascism is to smash the working class, destroy its organizations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery

(Leon Trotsky)

* * *

First thing to understand that there's no coherent ideology with "ANTIFA types" as there isn't surely with ardent Trump supporters (as Trump has no coherent ideology). In my view the ANTIFA a counter reaction and a rallying cry against percieved right-wing extremism (which is more focused on racial and xenophobic issues than classic politics) that has become more open or is followed more in the media today. There's no doubt that Trump's rhetoric starting from accusing "Mexico sending it's worst" and "mexicans being rapists" opened the floodgates on what is acceptable speech in the public domain and influence a lot the mood. But some can feel that there is the danger of a fascist state rising, hence they join something like ANTIFA.

Basically the ANTIFA, just like before the "Occupy Movement" and other loose organizations before that is a way for the left to create a new youthful movement that a new generation of leftist people can join. If the movement is OK with violence, then people who thinks it's a necessity to fight it out with the cops or the "fascists" will join a new movement. This is because if a movement that perhaps has started as a grass roots movement is able to organize itself into a political movement, the organization of that movement is likely filled with one or another cabal and some generation of activists. Younger people will have problem to relate to this as time goes by, youngsters will be too young to remember what happened when they were still children. And of course, extremist groups usually flop when their supporters grow disillusioned about the possible success of their movements. Hence extremist groups typically recreat/reinvent themselves after sometime

And note that this is similar with right wing extremism. A whimsically small proportion of racist bigots belong to the Ku Klux clan and likely many view the robes and the cross burnings as strange and basically aren't so keen to organize themselves collectively.

Main question: Is it wrong for me to see ultra-high-taxation with the intent to redistribute wealth in a way that ensures total equality of outcome as a form of communism? — Sydasis

Yes. Because it's not communism.

When you think about communism, the transfer of wealth isn't what it's about because then you would start from the assumption or the situation that there would be rich people to tax and poor that you redistribute to.

Besides, the word "communism", just as "capitalism", "socialism" or "fascism" are used today in public discourse just as adjectives, which usually mean something negative without much thought given to what the underlying term and it's ideology is about. Like when you hear someone utter the word "Cultural Marxism", I would be pretty sure that the issue isn't the Frankfurt School that they are talking about. Or communism for that matter.

Just like many leftist use the term "fascist" quite casually in many instances where the subject has nothing to do with actual fascism. It's just a convenient way to express something negative from the political right and is a pseudo-intelligent way to describe your thoughts.

No not in the Ukraine, but in Vietnam, in Panama, in the Falklands, at Hiroshima, in Egypt, in Afghanistan, etc.

It does not mean Russia isn't a bad country, it just means the West is also very bad. — René Descartes

Small question: are countries bad?

If we are talking about Ukraine or some specific political event, is it relevant then to say "but the US dropped atomic bombs to Hiroshima and Nagasaki!". What's the connection? Or we should say that because... we don't know that or what? It's not even an answer.

In the end it seems to come down to refuse that one side or the other has a justified point, even if not everything they say is correct. Here the perspective issue comes to be important.

So has Russia facts on it's side when it comes to Ukraine? Some, naturally. The majority of Crimeans were likely indeed in favour of joining Russia. Just like the Sudeten Germans earlier were enthusiastic to join Germany. Yes, Nikita moved it to Ukraine during the Soviet Union. Does this then justify for a military attack and to start a war that is basically going on in Eastern Ukraine? In my view, no. Because military aggression and instilling a war that still is going on far overweighs the Russian justifications.

Add there that this has been a typical way how Russia has operated in it's "Near Abroad", financing and creating separatist movements and if these are on the verge of being routed, then it intervenes military. (Russia did this to Georgia years before there was the Russo-Georgian war)



And René:

Falklands? How so in the Falklands? That war was actual one of the few if not the only one in our lifetime where both sides of the conflict upheld the laws of war and didn't commit attrocities. Why Falklands is in your view an example where "The West was worse"? You have to tell me.