flobaba wrote:So what do you do ? Nothing ?
Despite you continually claiming Hillary is worse than Trump, it is quite clearly not true. Everyone knows both are poor options, but one would be infinitely worse for the country in terms of foreign policy and race relations, gender equality, religious freedom and only God knows what else.
If you can't see that, you're obviously irrationally biased.
You need to have this debate without personal attacks Flobs.
I hear you boss
This is kinda amazing, and disturbing, and further bears out the idea that Trump really is a contemporary "fascist" (of a new kind)
“I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged, I have to be honest,” he told the crowd.
He did not elaborate but later repeated the charge on Monday night with Sean Hannity on Fox News, saying: “November 8th, we’d better be careful, because that election is going to be rigged. And I hope the Republicans are watching closely or it’s going to be taken away from us.”
Roger Stone, a long time confidante of Trump, amplified these concerns in an interview with a far right wing radio show.
Stone said: “I think we have widespread voter fraud, but the first thing that Trump needs to do is begin talking about it constantly.”
Laying out a strategy for Trump to adopt Sone added: “He needs to say for example, today would be a perfect example: ‘I am leading in Florida. The polls all show it. If I lose Florida, we will know that there’s voter fraud. If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.’”
This reads disturbingly like an exhortation to his supporters to ignore the election result. I think it's absurd at this point, and I doubt it will result in anything, but the very fact of its surfacing is a worry.
Burnwinter wrote:Jonesy's putting his point a bit starkly, but he's less wrong than someone who declares blindly "Putin bad, Obama good"—inspection of world affairs reveals the US is responsible for more deaths, more military threats and more military incursions than Russia, either directly or by proxy.
I also feel a lot of distaste for the comparison of the "domestic" political atrocities of countries with those of empires—after all, being empires, their reach is transnational and they're capable of relocating and outsourcing the worst of what they do, which as we know, the US does. Pax Americana hasn't grown out of virtuous US democracy alone, only US democracy linked by alliances to a shifting archipelago of tyrannies.
Appreciate your moderating my post and the whole argument mate, I usually state my opinions pretty forthright in an attempt to start discussions, a young Biggus without the racial antagonism if you will. I liked especially your phrase that I'm "less wrong" than a fictional person 
Also kudos for the second paragraph, you basically repeated the essence of my post (maybe went even further) but didn't get shit for it probably because that wordy tome of a sentence confused most readers after the first line already. Mediating and confounding people with verboseness while having pretty radical views yourself - you really are a jurist manqué
Jurist manqué? I'm a pedant for all seasons 
Apologies, I can see how my post came off as condescension, that "less wrong" was a bit of a bum note!
I was trying to reframe or paraphrase what you'd been saying, which was being unfairly interpreted as pro-Putin, in a more universally anti-imperialist way.
"a shifting archipelago of tyrannies" Foucauldian stuff.
Russia is much worse than "imperialist" (whatever the fuck that is). Russia joins wars just so it can make a reality TV show out of them at home. One consequence of that policy is that approx. 300,000 people are set to starve in Aleppo in the next few weeks.
Burnwinter wrote:Jurist manqué? I'm a pedant for all seasons
Apologies, I can see how my post came off as condescension, that "less wrong" was a bit of a bum note!
I was trying to reframe or paraphrase what you'd been saying, which was being unfairly interpreted as pro-Putin, in a more universally anti-imperialist way.
No worries, I didn't take it as condescension.
Gurgen wrote:Russia is much worse than "imperialist" (whatever the fuck that is).
Maybe you should find out …
The trouble with the situations in Aleppo and other siege sites like Madaya, the situations that are causing the starvation, is that they are precisely defined by the struggle between two imperialist alliances.
If the US and Turkey and other regional actors weren't filtering piles of materiel to IS and the "moderate rebels" (who don't really exist) of the FSA, these sieges would not be happening.
If Russia and Iran weren't propping up Assad by funding Hezbollah and contributing air power then these sieges would not be happening.
Because of this, the reality is that you can pick a side of the conflict in general, because of your ideological preferences or the propaganda you happen to believe, but you can't really justly pick a side based on the fact of these sieges and the consequent starvation alone.
Also, the US and Turkey aren't supplying IS because they're secretly salafists, and Russia and Iran aren't propping up Assad because they secretly think barrel-bombing civilians is a great idea. They're doing it, once again, because they want control of the region and its natural resources.
Yeah, you're dead wrong there. Russia needs its base in Syria, sure, but apart from that their intervention is based solely on the need to create another diversion from the situation at home. They would not have intervened if the Ukraine soap was still going strong. They don't want control of the region, they want to keep their foothold and be able to broadcast something on TV that makes their population forget their incomes were cut in half in the last few years.
As for your point about the "moderate rebels", I agree supporting them is stupid but I don't think non-interventionism would prevent conflict. You need to realise that the West cannot win in these matters. If the West does not intervene, the Arab world cries: "the Great Satan is supporting our evil dictators and doesn't care about us! They made Pykes-Sicot and now they abandon us!" If the West does intervene, the Arab world cries: "the Great Satan is bombing our children / waging war on Islam, etc. etc." I would always choose non-intervention but that wouldn't stop wars in the Middle East from happening or the West being blamed for them. Blaming outside forces for all of their troubles is simply how governments in those countries (and Russia) function. Imagine the amount of introspection necessary if the West wasn't there
Gurgen wrote:Yeah, you're dead wrong there. Russia needs its base in Syria, sure, but apart from that their intervention is based solely on the need to create another diversion from the situation at home. They would not have intervened if the Ukraine soap was still going strong. They don't want control of the region, they want to keep their foothold and be able to broadcast something on TV that makes their population forget their incomes were cut in half in the last few years.
As for your point about the "moderate rebels", I agree supporting them is stupid but I don't think non-interventionism would prevent conflict. You need to realise that the West cannot win in these matters. If the West does not intervene, the Arab world cries: "the Great Satan is supporting our evil dictators and doesn't care about us! They made Pykes-Sicot and now they abandon us!" If the West does intervene, the Arab world cries: "the Great Satan is bombing our children / waging war on Islam, etc. etc." I would always choose non-intervention but that wouldn't stop wars in the Middle East from happening or the West being blamed for them.
Do you think the West is not to blame for them?
It's partly to blame, depending on the war we're talking about. And partly to blame for making some of them worse. But I don't think all conflict in the Middle East originates from some Western plot, early colonialism, Sykes-Picot or whatever. Plenty of regions which have previously been subject to major "imperialist" meddling aren't in the constant state of fuck-up that the Middle East is.
trump is a global problem, not just an american one.
His thoughts on NATO are, eh, interesting.
That clip is pretty frightening.
@[deleted]
Look, I think we all can accept that "the situation is complex" or whatever, and that there are long-standing, generational traumas and sectarianism in the Middle East that would contribute to violent conflict even in the absence of imperial power. There is no one single actor—except possibly militarised capitalism—to which the constant churn of violence can be attributed.
With that in mind, here's a list of just some of the things the US has done in the region:
Masterminded the 1953 coup d'etat in Iran that led to the removal of Mossadegh's government (retribution for nationalising the oil industry)
Masterminded the 1963 coup d'etat that installed the Ba'ath Party in power in Iraq
Supported the Shah's oppressive regime via the CIA creating the conditions for the religious revolution
Uncritically pursued long-standing military alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia
Condoned the spread of Wahhabism by Saudi Arabia perceiving political Islam as a counterweight to communism
Pursued a long-standing campaign against secular pan-Arabist and Ba'athist regimes
Insisted on the removal of Saddam Hussein from power irrespective of the consequences
Enforced sanctions on Hussein's regime in Iraq that led to estimated millions of deaths
Fabricated a "clash of civilisations" with Islam through ceaseless propaganda after 9/11
Invaded Iraq on a false pretext and without international approval
Withdrew from Iraq when nothing resembling a functioning nation remained of it, after hundreds of thousands of deaths
Installed the al-Maliki government which condoned the actions of Shia death squads throughout Iraq
Allowed an ungovernable Sunni-occupied region to form (possibly deliberately—cf NSA leaks) and subsequently become ISIS
Intervened in Libya through NATO, reducing the country to ruins in what is generally agreed to be a complete disaster
Insisted intransigently on the removal of Assad from power against strong opposition in 2011, through the UN and then a "special working group"
Refused to allow Assad to step down in favour of an internationally monitored democratic election in Syria in 2012 (because he still had popular support)
Given the CIA billions to train and arm "FSA rebels" who subsequently fought for JAN and ISIS
Condoned Turkish brokerage of ISIS oil extraction, allowing the ISIS quasi-state to grow
Condoned Turkish brutality against the Kurds, except where convenient
etc. etc.
And speaking of the Syrian civil war, here is a précis of its economic impacts:
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/syriasource/factbox-syria-s-conflict-economy
That's the cost of insisting on regime change diplomatically, or trying to enforce it through intelligence agencies when there's no sign of a popular mandate.
It's not like any of this is unknown, and it's not like it can be fit to either a vision of humanitarian benevolence or even basic realpolitik. It's a clusterfuck of venal strategic meddling that's been non-stop since before WWII.
So that's what imperialism is, anyway, in case you were still wondering. And yes, there's a very long list of what the former Soviet Union got up to in the region as well, but not as long.
As for the US and its struggle with Russia in the contemporary world, you should start with the fact that US military spending exceeds Russian by a factor of ten, and go from there.
Thanks for that Burnwinter - a lot to digest there (as I generally end up reading up on much of what is discussed here), and as an American a lot to stomach.
Burnwinter wrote:This is kinda amazing, and disturbing, and further bears out the idea that Trump really is a contemporary "fascist" (of a new kind)
“I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged, I have to be honest,” he told the crowd.
He did not elaborate but later repeated the charge on Monday night with Sean Hannity on Fox News, saying: “November 8th, we’d better be careful, because that election is going to be rigged. And I hope the Republicans are watching closely or it’s going to be taken away from us.”
Roger Stone, a long time confidante of Trump, amplified these concerns in an interview with a far right wing radio show.
Stone said: “I think we have widespread voter fraud, but the first thing that Trump needs to do is begin talking about it constantly.”
Laying out a strategy for Trump to adopt Sone added: “He needs to say for example, today would be a perfect example: ‘I am leading in Florida. The polls all show it. If I lose Florida, we will know that there’s voter fraud. If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.’”
This reads disturbingly like an exhortation to his supporters to ignore the election result. I think it's absurd at this point, and I doubt it will result in anything, but the very fact of its surfacing is a worry.
The majority of Trump's supporters are so single minded that aside from voting for Trump they'll have no major impact (showing) on upcoming elections (Senate / House seats). I can only hope they ignore, or rather, forget the election result as it means they won't be around for the next election.
MistaT wrote:Thanks for that Burnwinter - a lot to digest there (as I generally end up reading up on much of what is discussed here), and as an American a lot to stomach.
Just want to add a postscript to the above—the statements there are off the top of my head, and some of them are speculative in nature, for example I have no proof of exactly how the US is "condoning" Turkish purchases of IS oil, we just know that's how IS is getting its money, and we know that the US has been tentatively allied to Turkey during the Syrian civil war.
I believe the US and its institutions are not evil—and the same goes for Putin's Russia—instead they are a strange mixture of purposeful and erratic, like most complex organisations which move in response to competing and changing internal interests (like changing administrations or agency structures).
I don't claim any particular expertise about the Middle East, but I think it's undeniable that it's been the site of incredibly intense military and foreign policy activity for a lot of powers that have their own interests in mind. If you look at the historical results of that activity, it's an extremely ugly picture.
It reveals the oxymoronic character of any attempt to develop a consistent moral hermeneutics of foreign policy when you listen to US or UK politicians positing a fresh "humanitarian" intervention to fix a strategic disaster zone which has mostly been caused by their last "humanitarian" intervention, which was itself justified by calls to dismantle a "rogue state" that to a significant extent they created and supported.
The Bush Doctrine, R2P, you name it, it's all complete bullshit. Money talks.
this entire election cycle has been both incredibly depressing and incredibly interesting. for a bunch of reasons.
dems typically do much better in presidential years (down the ticket from the senate to the house to governor races) in a normal election cycle for a number of reasons. given the gerrymandering the republicans have introduced in the last decade, it will be almost impossible for democrats to swing the house. that said, they probably would have picked up a few senate seats either way this year, given that republicans have to defend many more seats including a few in purple states, but given that the presidential nominee is supposed to help down ticket support, just the opposite seems like it might happen this year. lots of people are going out to vote against trump, and moderates may be more likely to protest the entire republican party. in swing states that could be huge.
because of that, i think that is why most republicans, especially those up for re-election, have been "tepid" at best in their support for trump. normally you expect the pres nominee to give you a boost, but i think all of the republicans running must feel like he is going to kill their chances of winning.
the democratic party itself is a huge dumpster fire right now, but thank fucking christ they got rid of debbie wasserman schultz. she was a complete and total trainwreck. great timing, too, right in the middle of an absolutely crucial election cycle.
the polls that are blank havent released updated national numbers (that i saw) since i last updated.
