US Politics: Redefining National Security

[sToNED_CAT]

1 minute ago, Nasty LongRider said:

White supremacists, you mean.  White supremacists.

They are there, but they are in minority. Most Breitbart readers could be best described simply as patriotic traditionalists. From what I saw, they want society and country to remain the same as in 80ties (not 50ties like some leftist think haha) The same description fits whole alt right. It's not some neonazi movement, it is simply an alternative to both corporate and libertarian (they don't really care much about small govt) republicans. I used the term patriots, because they combine what is traditionally thought as patriotism with economic patriotism too (both corporate and half of libertarian republicans don't care about later).

[sToNED_CAT]

5 minutes ago, mormont said:

Really, that's the best argument you've got here? You're not wrong, someone else is lying?

Geneva conventions clearly say the refugees have duty to ask for asylum in first safe country. It is not the duty of countries, that signed it to accept refugees who got there through another safe country. Hence when (if) Merkel said USA (and Germany and other EU countries) has some kind of legal obligation to accept those people, she is lying.

[Altherion]

22 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Bargaining for what? If they started with what they wanted they would have got it anyways....

Maybe and maybe not -- if Trump & Co. came out with what they wanted, there would still be protests, lawsuits, etc. This way, their opponents get to feel as though they came away with something.

Such a proposal also serves several other purposes. As mormont says, it picks a fight with the press which, given the current state of the latter, is usually a good idea. It will also reveal to which extent the courts are willing to cooperate with Trump's agenda as well as any other truly implacable enemies in positions of power such as the Senate.

[DunderMifflin]

1 hour ago, Martell Spy said:

43 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

 

 

Large heart probably just means you have high blood pressure or some sort of artery disease. I don't think a byproduct is becoming smarter though

 

[LongRider]

13 minutes ago, sToNED_CAT said:

They are there, but they are in minority. Most Breitbart readers could be best described simply as patriotic traditionalists. From what I saw, they want society and country to remain the same as in 80ties (not 50ties like some leftist think haha) The same description fits whole alt right. It's not some neonazi movement, it is simply an alternative to both corporate and libertarian (they don't really care much about small govt) republicans. I used the term patriots, because they combine what is traditionally thought as patriotism with economic patriotism too (both corporate and half of libertarian republicans don't care about later).

White supremacists who want to go back to the '80's.  So sad really, so very sad. 

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

1 hour ago, sToNED_CAT said:

She doesn't even know what geneva convention says. All countries have no obligation to take in refugees. The first safe country does. That means for example, in case of Europe, vast majority of them should have been granted asylum in Turkey. Instead Merkel invited them all to Germany. She will lose election, and destroy CDU in process, because of that.

 

Wasn't this changed by the 1967 protocols? Didn't that change both the limitations on who was a refugee and the geographic limitations.

[sToNED_CAT]

Oh, and for those who believe that somehow Bannon is not qualified to have a chair in NSC, here is his CV:

Quote

Master's degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. In 1985,[30]
Master of Business Administration degree with honors from Harvard Business School
Surface Warfare Officer in the Pacific Fleet
Special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon
Goldman Sachs as an investment banker in the Mergers and Acquisitions Department
Environment - Acting Director of Earth-science research project Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona
Executive producer in the Hollywood film and media industry
Executive chair and co-founder of the Government Accountability Institute
Executive Chair of BreitBart News

I have the impression most people think he was nothing but Breitbart CEO, before joining administration.

 

[Fragile Bird]

22 minutes ago, sToNED_CAT said:

Oh, and for those who believe that somehow Bannon is not qualified to have a chair in NSC, here is his CV:

I have the impression most people think he was nothing but Breitbart CEO, before joining administration.

 

FFS, it's not about his credentials, it's about who he is and what his professed positions are.

[Liffguard]

33 minutes ago, sToNED_CAT said:

Oh, and for those who believe that somehow Bannon is not qualified to have a chair in NSC, here is his CV:

I have the impression most people think he was nothing but Breitbart CEO, before joining administration.

 

It's less about qualifications and more about how he has publically stated his goal is to destroy the federal government.

[LongRider]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/22/steve-bannon-trump-s-top-guy-told-me-he-was-a-leninist.html

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“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.

Shocked, I asked him what he meant.

“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon was employing Lenin’s strategy for Tea Party populist goals. He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press...............

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His goal was to bring down the entire establishment including the leaders of the Republican Party in Congress. He went on to tell me that he was the East Coast coordinator of all the Tea Party groups. His plan was to get its candidates nominated on the Republican ticket, and then to back campaigns that they could win. Then, Bannon said, when elected they would be held accountable to fight for the agenda he and the Tea Party stood for. ..

 

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Trump’s decision to take on Bannon indicates that he wants to wage his campaign along the lines laid down by him—that of destroying the Republican leadership and the Party as we know it.

 

[Spockydog]

Serious question. How bad does this have to get before the Generals step in?

[Squab]

25 minutes ago, Lany Freelove Cassandra said:

Wasn't this changed by the 1967 protocols? Didn't that change both the limitations on who was a refugee and the geographic limitations.

In that respect, it only changed the definition of Refugee. The original 1951 convention limited the definition of refugee to people displaced prior to January 1951 and allowed countries to limit their own definition to only those from Europe, in that 1B had two options to choose from, person displaced from either:

1. Just those events occurring in Europe prior to 1951; or
2.  those events occurring in Europe or elsewhere before 1 January 1951.

The 1967 removed the date and removed geographical restriction, save those that opted for option 1.

[Squab]

5 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Serious question. How bad does this have to get before the Generals step in?

Doesn't the right of the people to keep and bare arms make it difficult for the government or military to rule the whole country via martial law.  Lots of potential militia and guerilla fires to fight, and that's not even considering those in the military who support trump.

[Larry of the Lawn]

3 minutes ago, Squab said:

Doesn't the right of the people to keep and bare arms make it difficult 

To hide forearm tattoos?  It does

[Aemon Stark]

1 hour ago, sToNED_CAT said:

They are there, but they are in minority. Most Breitbart readers could be best described simply as patriotic traditionalists. From what I saw, they want society and country to remain the same as in 80ties (not 50ties like some leftist think haha) The same description fits whole alt right. It's not some neonazi movement, it is simply an alternative to both corporate and libertarian (they don't really care much about small govt) republicans. I used the term patriots, because they combine what is traditionally thought as patriotism with economic patriotism too (both corporate and half of libertarian republicans don't care about later).

So they want to return to a world of shoulder pads and stop motion animation? I was born in the 80s. People that think we can somehow "return" to an idealized past are not especially patriotic or traditionalist (the 80s??). They're just idiots. Nostalgic ignorant types who fixate on an ideal of... a pre-internet period? What's the problem? Too much acceptance of people who are, you know, "different"? Imagine that, letting people lives their lives as they would see fit according to their sexual orientation or - shockingly - religion! 

Of course, the 80s was also the era of Thatcher and Reagan. Too corporatist maybe? Or too pro-free trade? They did subscribe to that whole "trickle down" theory that has gone so well for the 99%, so maybe you're aiming for that too? 

And it isn't "libertarian" in any way shape or form to detain anyone with fully legal residency status and put them in hand-cuffs. Suggesting otherwise is simply obfuscation and denial of the fact that because you think that not liking Muslim people entitles you to advocate for denial of their fundamental rights. 

4 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Serious question. How bad does this have to get before the Generals step in?

Well, probably a good time to rewatch Seven Days in May to see. 

[Ormond]

15 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Serious question. How bad does this have to get before the Generals step in?

Personally I do not see a full fledged military coup in the United States. What I could see, if it get completely bad, is for the top military leaders to go to the Republican leadership in Congress and the Cabinet and assure them they would be backed in the case of either impeachment or the invocation of the fourth section of the 25th Amendment, with perhaps some strong encouragement for them to take one of those routes. But I don't think "the generals" would take over upfront. 

[Squab]

1 minute ago, larrytheimp said:

To hide forearm tattoos?  It does

bwahahaha, I'm gunna leave it.  *Bear

[Dr. Pepper]

I think the Bannon white nationalist folks wanted a return to law and order.  The 80's were a terrible time for that.  

[Werthead]

The good news is that the speed and virulence of the reaction seems to have completed knocked Trump for six. He clearly expected some hand-wringing and complaints, not being bombarded with calls from allies telling him to knock it off, mass demonstrations across the country and the threat of retaliation from other countries. His last statement was bizarrely contrite by his standards, but he's not backed down yet.

There needs to be unambiguous clarity on what's going on. Britain has been told officially by the US state department of a set of rules which states that people don't need to worry if they have green cards, or if they're coming from a country other than one of the seven (even if they're from one of those countries) or if they have dual nationality. But the actual border checks are still stopping people on all of those basis.

Bad news is that next time they do something on this scale, they'll know to be prepared for it.

 

Quote

 

You’re correct on question B, so one beer for that. Hitler’s love for England oozes off several pages in Mein Kampf. It makes total sense, but it was not something I had been aware of.

 

You have rather read a bit much into that in Mein Kampf, as he did criticise Britain a lot for its relationships with Japan and the USA. Britain was a country Hitler felt he "could do business with", but he didn't understand that the dodgy stuff Britain has done - the treatment of Ireland and South Africa, among others - was not the result of any widespread ideological belief in racial supremacy but because of an overwhelming attitude of laissez faire economics and indifference to suffering until someone in Surrey got upset over it and organised a petition, at which point the policy would rather rapidly be booted out the door no matter how profitable it was (see how relatively painlessly Britain outlawed slavery compared to the United States). He drastically overestimated the British desire for fascism and really, really did not understand why Britain stayed in the war when all hope appeared lost. By the time he got to 1940 and Churchill and Halifax told him to go fuck himself (after the peace offer after the fall of France), his attitude to Britain had dramatically changed and he was heard screaming that he planned to deport the entire male population of the country as slaves.

Hitler's relative well disposition towards the UK might be explained by Britain invading Russia for no readily discernible reason after WWI, and his belief that there was a hatred of Communism in Britain that he could work with. Oddly that might have worked (Churchill hated Stalin possibly more than Hitler, even when he was allied to him) if British public opinion hadn't been partially swayed by pro-Communist stories of the Spanish Civil War.

 

Quote

 

Hard to believe, tbh.

 

 

Only if you forget that Russia was in play as an ally of Britain and especially France in 1938. It's one of the reasons Munich happened, Poland refused to give Russian troops free passage across their territory (for extremely understandable reasons, as came to pass anyway), Britain and France decided not to pressure Poland into acquiescing and Stalin pointed out that he couldn't effectively invade Germany by sea and air, so the realistic threat of military reprisals against Germany evaporated.

 

The state of the German military in 1938 was not particularly impressive. The real behemoth of mass war industrialisation and the creation of the resulting war machine didn't really starting kicking in until later in 1939, and when Britain and France declared war the Germans had a real fear of them attacking the Ruhr because they couldn't defend that region and attack Poland simultaneously. They were baffled when the British and French declared war and then didn't do anything for almost nine months.

 

That's all a bit off-topic though. Isn't it about time we had another WWII thread?

[sToNED_CAT]

27 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/22/steve-bannon-trump-s-top-guy-told-me-he-was-a-leninist.html

Government doesn't equal country, I think he was talking more about globalist elites of both parties that form government right now. If so, he has my full support. And frankly most people who elected him would support it too. Both corporate republicanism and clintonian democrats are not especially popular right now.

23 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Serious question. How bad does this have to get before the Generals step in?

Step in against Trump, or to support him against "Resitance"?