American politics has entered a new level of craziness. Donald J Trump may have reached peak craziness or peak political opportunism with his call to ban all Muslims from entering America.
So that you can appreciate the special crazy nature of his statement here it is:
Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on. According to Pew Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population. Most recently, a poll from the Center for Security Policy released data showing “25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad” and 51% of those polled, “agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah.” Shariah authorizes such atrocities as murder against non-believers who won’t convert, beheadings and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women.
Mr. Trump stated, “Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life. If I win the election for President, we are going to Make America Great Again.”
Just think. In many polls this guy is the leading Republican candidate for President. He could be the next American President. Be afraid, be very afraid …
I guess Tim Groser’s not going to be ambassador then
“If I win the election for President, we are going to Make America Grate Again.”
FIFY.
Mass shooting/killings in Paris
““When you look at Paris — you know the toughest gun laws in the world, Paris — nobody had guns but the bad guys. Nobody had guns. Nobody,” Trump said at a rally here. “They were just shooting them one by one and then they (security forces) broke in and had a big shootout and ultimately killed the terrorists.”
“You can say what you want, but if they had guns, if our people had guns, if they were allowed to carry –” Trump said, pausing as the crowd erupted into raucous applause, “– it would’ve been a much, much different situation.”
D Trump
and on the Mass Shooting in Calfirfornia
“Trump compared the shooting to the Paris attacks on 13 November, saying that in both cases if the victims had been carrying guns, the death toll would have been lower.
“You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to get it stopped, because we can’t let this happen to our country. We’re going to get it stopped. And by the way, if the people in Paris or the people in California, if you had a couple of folks in there with guns and they knew how to use them and they were in that room, you wouldn’t have dead people. The dead people would be the other guys. So just remember that,” he said.”
They should arm the US public with airplanes, boxcutters and explosives too.
It’s odd though, that the US probably spends amongst the highest on guns and pmbs and suff, and can’t kill off the Taleban, Al Qaeda or ISIS… just bad luck prolly.
Oh yes indeed. Their military budget dwarfs all others. But you’re right. They really don’t get such a great return on their investment when they use it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11936179/What-are-the-biggest-defence-budgets-in-the-world.html
They might just be not very good. Might explain why their leaders constantly have to go on TV telling the people the USA is the greatest. To cover up that it aint.
The chaos in Syria is due in part to the destablisation and radicalization policies of the US, coupled to the unwillingness to back moderates and the Arab spring, well, no money in peace full revolutions.. ..or oil contracts.
So its no wonder that the weak oppressed Syrians, tired of Assad state fear machine, want out, and when the slightest suspect than a few terrorists where amongst their number, the US Christian right agenda says no o immigration.
When the Republicans let the weak suffer for political grandstanding rather than welcoming them, it says soething about how soulless the US is.
No, not satanic, just horrid low politicians.
Now as to trump, arguably he is there to engage the public who are truely turned of by the Congress, run by Republicans raving and drilling. And the joke is that there still is no credible candidate with all his hard work to get voters to look at the Republicans.
They are very, very good. There isn’t anyone better, since the Germans gave up military adventurism. Thing is, conventional forces aren’t designed with irregular warfare in mind – still, when you run a comparison on how US forces have handled fighting against irregular forces compared with other top-level countries’ regular forces (eg, the Soviets in Afghanistan, Russian Federation in Chechnya, Brits against the Irish, the Wehrmacht against various countries’ resistance movements), the US forces really are pretty fucking good.
Except they use helicopters too much. And the helicopters break down, get shot down and generally screw things up. They’d be a lot better if they got less killed too.
cept for their propensity to kill their allies and bomb the wrong targets and their complete failure to actually achieve peace
Friendly fire and false targetting is an inevitable feature of humans operating weaponry in combat. And achieving peace isn’t possible for regular forces against irregular forces – only political solutions can do that. I’ll grant you that US governments are just not very good.
Donald Trump is much like Winston Peters here. He says outrageous things to gain headlines. Most of what he is calling for here would be impossible to implement and is also unconstitutional so has zero chance of coming about. I would hate to see Trump become President myself but even if he did by some strange miricle I am confident none of what he is saying will happen.
Maybe not, but look what that other bombastic moron G W Bush achieved.
Uh, knowing what we know about GW Bush’s lack of intelligence, experience and education do you really believe that he was the one responsible.
Yeah I do. I think he was an active collaborator not a simple dupe.
Responsible for what, exactly?
I hope Trump wins the nomination, in the same way I like it that Collins is back in Cabinet.
I agree. I also have a feeling Trump has a preferred candidate of his own, and will withdraw from the race at a strategically significant point in the race, handing his endorsement to his favourite. I’m picking that might be a ‘chalice’ very view want to drink from!
Nah, Trump will keep on embodying National Party values, saying all the things you’re thinking, and then lose the presidential election.
Trump is slightly like Peters insofar as they can say otherwise unsayable things. This points to a far stronger problem: the left have forgotten how to speak a language of strong international engagement about meeting military violence.
I class it along gender lines.
Democrats+Labour have a reputation for expertise in mother-generative issues:
schooling, education, and healthcare
But Republicans+National+Liberal have a reputation for expertise in the dad-enforcement issues: warfare, policing, and inter-state agreements.
Peters and Trump are not drunk uncles. They represent an idea of fatherhood that is millennia old, and appears to be returning in voter preferences.
That surge in popularity for Republicans, Conservatives and Le Pen’s Nationalists is a voter instinct towards strength and protection.
The left need to state when it’s a good time to hold a gun, go to fight, crack heads, get angry, and protect people from the worst of the world. That’s why Hilary Clinton walks such a very fine line: she has to look far tougher than her husband. (Clark was one of the few to hold the Omniparent into a coherent force. Don’t get me started on Key).
“” Don’t get me started on Key””
Oh go on go on I always enjoy you’re POV .
I give credit to Trump for not blaming Muslim hatred of the United States on “hating our freedoms.”
And why should we be afraid of Trump but not Hilary Clinton; after all she helped run the US foreign policies and assassination programmes which are behind so much of the Muslim hatred of the United States.
It’s the difference between a leader who maintains the status quo and one who wants to take a country much further down the fucked up rabbit hole. I mean it’s not as if Trump wouldn’t do the things that Clinton would, he’s going to do them as well as his own stupid.
You’re basically saying that Trump would be the worst of Clinton and the worst of himself.
I don’t think so: for starters Trump thinks foreign wars are a bad idea.
Also worth considering that the US deep state is far more powerful than any president (or congress).
He may think it’s a bad idea, but that doesn’t mean he still won’t do it. You also seem to be implying that the president gets to make that decision on their own. You really think he won’t do what’s needed or what he’s told to do?
Besides, his stance on war is nothing to do with things that would improve US foreign affairs, or it’s actions in the Middle East,
The difference is – Trumps campaign is 100% funded from his own money. All the other campaigners are funded by others.
Therefore Trump has the POTENTIAL to not be directed through the same reins as other campaigners.
I wonder if he paid back all the creditors of his 4 bankruptciies (company debts) first.
This is the organisation that conducted the poll Trump’s basing his latest comments on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Security_Policy
Headed by former Reagan official Frank Gaffney and an inspiration to Anders Breivik.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Frank_J._Gaffney,_Jr.#Anders_Breivik
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/07/201172611337853373.html
Certain people on the left’s have a desire to blame the victims for Islamic based terror attacks.
The victims are the 2M or more Muslims and Arabs that the West has killed since the start of Gulf War 1.
It’s more complicated than that CV. The West & its support of corrupt governments have certainly fed the beast but now its out of control and feeding itself on religion, & on teenage idealism and disaffection. There are plenty of innocent victims of militant Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East and Africa being killed and maimed every day who’ve done nothing to deserve that.
What nonsense. The 2 million figure you quote is likely based on gross overestimations of casualties.
I remember reading about the Iraq war and they claimed over a million killed in Iraq based on a survey done. A survey for goodness sake! As if you can accurately identify the numbers by asking a sample of people in a war zone.
2 million people would probably be more than the number of civillians killed by the Western Allies in Germany during WWII and that was when they were deliberately targeting major population centers with a concerted fire bombing campaign.
Gosman, here’s a quote from the web, “telesur.net” which gives similar figures.
“In March, the Washington D.C.-based Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) – a group of Nobel Peace Prize recipients – released a report saying that the U.S. interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan alone killed close to 2 million, and that the figure was closer to 4 million when tallying up the deaths of civilians caused by the U.S. in other countries, such as Syria and Yemen.
In stark contrast, according to Statista – a website that specializes in creating statistics on a number of issues – noted that the worldwide death toll of extremist attacks between 2006 and 2013 are far fewer than 200,000.”
2 million people would probably be more than the number of civillians killed by the Western Allies in Germany during WWII and that was when they were deliberately targeting major population centers with a concerted fire bombing campaign.
Yes, exactly. It’s estimated that the western allies’ strategic bombing killed around 650,000 Germans, and that involved three years’ worth of large-scale carpet-bombing of German cities, to the point where firestorms developed that killed pretty much everyone in a kilometer radius. In Hamburg it took 1000 bombers dropping a mixture of incendiaries and high explosive that made a huge firestorm, to kill around 43,000 people. CV’s 2 million figure is laughable.
If CV’s including muslim deaths caused by the West’s sanctions on Iraq post the Gulf War, and counting both civilians and troops killed, and including deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a result of the War on Terror his numbers are supported by some studies. In fact as noted above by mac1 above, 2 million may be an underestimate. The figure may be closer to 4 million. Our Western governments’ leaders have an interest in not finding out the real total numbers.
http://www.mintpressnews.com/do-the-math-global-war-on-terror-has-killed-4-million-muslims-or-more/208225/
If CV’s including Muslim deaths caused by the West’s sanctions on Iraq following the war to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, he’s a liar. The West’s sanctions didn’t cause a single Muslim death – the government of Iraq was responsible for them. If he’s including the deaths caused by the war to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, again he’s a liar. The war to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait was the responsibility of the government of Iraq. Deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan due to the “war on terror” are trivial by the standards of most international conflicts. The 2 million figure is propaganda bullshit by people who should and do know better.
“The West’s sanctions didn’t cause a single Muslim death – the government of Iraq was responsible for them.”
No it wasn’t. You seem to be saying that those who won the first Gulf War are not responsible for how they subsequently treated a conquered country’s population.
Are you saying that an entire population should be systematically starved in order to punish a militarily defeated regime for alleged possession of ‘weapons of mass destruction’?
It’s worth winding back the clock twenty years to remind ourselves how responsibility for the deaths from sanctions was apportioned at the time. Here’s a New York Times report from 1995:
“As many as 576,000 Iraqi children may have died since the end of the Persian Gulf war because of economic sanctions imposed by the Security Council, according to two scientists who surveyed the country for the Food and Agriculture Organisation.
…
In 1991, she said in an interview, rates of malnutrition in Iraq were similar to those in Kuwait. In the paper for The Lancet, she says Iraq has now sunk to the levels of poor developing countries, with underweight rates among children comparable to those in Ghana or Mali.
The percentage of Iraqi children affected by “wasting,” or emaciation requiring urgent attention, rose to 12 percent in 1995, from 3 percent in 1991, Dr. Fawzi reported, adding that these figures are extraordinarily high, similar to those found in Malagasy and Myanmar.
Several United Nations agencies, including F.A.O. and Unicef, have expressed concern about the damage being done to Iraqis, especially children, by United Nations economic sanctions. Two years ago, F.A.O. warned that Iraq risked widespread starvation.“
First, the numbers of deaths vary wildly according to the source, so are effectively unknown.
Second, absolute dictators are responsible for what happens in their countries to a greater and even more direct extent than in democracies. If the effect of the UN-imposed sanctions was civilian deaths, that was due to the Iraqi dictatorship’s unwillingness to run its economy under the sanctions in a way that would protect its population. Instead, it put itself first and regarded civilian deaths as a useful propaganda tool. The UN holds no responsibility for that. Many countries have been blockaded in a time of conflict, most of them with no “oil for food” exemption to the blockade, without their populations suffering the way the Iraqi population did – that’s the difference between government and tyranny. Blame tyrants for the effects of their tyranny, not the UN.
The estimates for the number of Iraqi deaths during Saddam Hussein’s regime is upwards of 1 million. That is the horror the sanctions sought to overturn. It seems some people would have been happy to leave a murderous despot in power.
Thanks for the response Psycho Milt. Much appreciated – but a couple of points in response.
First, I’d like to see estimates of the death toll from the sanctions that come from equally reputable sources yet have much lower numbers. Please send them through.
Second, I’m afraid responsibility for these deaths is not as easy for the United Nations to evade as your argument based on the tyrannical nature of the regime might suggest.
Imposing economic sanctions impoverishes all countries upon which the sanctions are imposed. That is largely the point of sanctions. To claim that imposing economic hardship on a population is not the aim of sanctions is entirely disingenuous and not credible.
But, as you say, the Iraqi government was a dictatorship and the United Nations, under U.S. urging, was well aware of this when sanctions were imposed.
That these sanctions were imposed on a dictatorship in full knowledge of the highly predictable classic behaviour for dictatorships that you outline – and, in fact, a dictatorship that one has been loudly and busily characterising to the world as brutal, inhuman and evil – simply in order to achieve political ends, assert dominance and inflict punishment is at best morally reckless.
To then continue with those sanctions with ample and increasing evidence of the humanitarian disaster that was unfolding is unforgivable, inexcusable, morally reprehensible and utterly irresponsible.
You make much of the differences between tyrannies and democracies. There’s another difference: With reference to tyrannies it is widely accepted that it is the domestic population that is most subject to being tyrannised.
To impose massive economic sanctions that would inevitably further tyrannise the population (and which were being used by the regime to actually cement its support in the population) is a grotesque measure.
And, if pressuring the tyrannical regime into submitting to our demands was the aim, then presumably the whole point of such a strategy of broad, near total, economic sanctions must have been to inflict considerable pain and suffering on the subject population. So much pain, in fact, that even the most despicable and ruthless tyrant would be in danger of being overthrown. So the infliction of such pain on a long-suffering population must actually have been the intent of the strategy of economic sanctions in the first place.
In contrast to tyrannies, democracies are supposedly ones in which the population governs itself and, therefore, ones in which such populations should take responsibility for the consequences of the actions of the democratic state.
That democracies imposed these sanctions and continued to enforce them on the basis that “all that the brutal, inhuman, evil tyrant has to do is consider the welfare of his own people and give in to our demands” is transparent self-justification for a barbarous act.
Even democracies shouldn’t be able to talk out of both sides of their mouths at once – and get away with it. Either Saddam was an utterly evil dictator who would take every opportunity to sacrifice his domestic population on the altar of his need for power or he wasn’t. Which was it?
Imposition of economic sanctions would only be remotely defensible if one was fairly sure that the government of the sanctioned country would be moved to do its best to look out for the welfare of its own people as a first priority under such conditions.
We imposed those sanctions on a country ruled by a dictator we claimed was utterly brutal and totally evil. We are therefore responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths that resulted from those sanctions being imposed.
We are adults, not children. We should take responsibility for the actions we initiate – and persevere with for years – on the world stage.
Especially so when the consequences are visited upon the innocent.
Re the wildly varying estimates of deaths due to sanctions, Wikipedia has a bunch of them.
Re the UN’s culpability for imposing sanctions on a ruthless dictatorship that was guaranteed to pass the effects on to the local populace: the UN decided it couldn’t let the guy who’d spent the last 10 years unsuccessfully invading Iran and successfully invading Kuwait, remain in charge of enormous military capability for use on his neighbours as he saw fit. That’s within the UN’s mandate. The alternative to sanctions would have been invading and destroying his military capability, which, as we noticed in 2003, was definitely the worse of the alternatives. There was a third option, that of the UN shrugging its collective shoulders and doing nothing, but by your logic that would make the UN culpable for deaths caused by the regime’s BAU, which was also a large number. In short: most likely not 2 million; not “the West”; and not the UN either.
The first recorded attack by muslims on US citizens was on 14 April 1972. What foreign policy or assassination programs had the US engaged in prior to that that you are using in your victim blaming?
If two people are intent on fighting one another, describing one as “the victim” is merely an indication of whose side you’re on.
There isn’t an act of violence that can be justified by some prior act of violence – spontaneous acts of self-defence excluded – “he hit me, so I hit him first”.
As for US foreign policy, it doesn’t justify terrorism any more than terrorism justifies US foreign policy. If you’re determined to find a casus belli, however, the CIA’s involvement in Iran during the ’50’s is a* candidate. If you were debating in good faith, however, you’d already have discovered that for yourself.
Next time, take some personal responsibility and justify your dogma with some homework.
*there are others – cf “homework”.
By the way, the “Harlem mosque incident” – you don’t have to look to foreign policy to find a casus belli for that.
If Trump is the leading Republican candidate at present, then it says an awful lot about the warped psyche of a proportion of the US public!
The thought of this idiot reaching the White House, should be sending shudders down the spine of the rest of the world!
God or whoever help us! Because we will need it if Trump is elected President!
The US public is currently increasingly desperate/despondent.
If Trump’s or Sander’s presidential run is somehow blocked, in the next election someone even more extreme and anti-status quo will come forward and be voted in.
The Handmaid’s Tale is becoming more and more prophetic everyday.
Marie Le Pen is surging in France as well.
This ain’t a pretty electoral season to be of the left.
On the other hand, as I’ve argued, there are plenty of movements towards major multilateral agreements.
Will ISIS divide its opponents, or unite them?
So far, it’s tending to unite them more. So far.
At least he won’t win a general election. The ideal situation will be he gets the nomination and splits the Republican party, which will strengthen Democrats, lol.
But the scary thing is he also plans on including Muslim American citizens. Going away for a holiday to Canada? Oh well, guess you can’t get let back into America. This is very similar to the rhetoric used by Nazis against the Jews.
But I will say that a Hillary Clinton presidency will be infinitely better than a Trump presidency. Hillary Clinton is problematic, but she’s not climate change denier, she’s not anti-immigration or xenophobic, she isn’t a gun nut, and she isn’t that right-wing on economic policy (just centre or centre-right..). I’ll take a moderate liberal over a virulent, racist, xenophobic, hard-right anti-immigration demagogue any day.
And @CV don’t be so sure Trump hates war. He has said he’d ‘destroy ISIS by whatever means necessary’ and supports ground troops in Iraq: http://time.com/3999665/trump-iraq-ground-troops/
Trump would be worse than Hillary Clinton on foreign policy, economic policy, immigration policy, rights and freedoms, guns, etc etc. To suggest that Hillary is somehow worse than Trump is…laughable.
Don’t forget he has also said that if he is president then they will go into the Middle East and just take the oil. What ever it takes.
Are you saying honesty is a bad thing. Currently China takes the oil. What Trump said is “why are American soldiers being killed and injured in Iraq, but then China taking the oil”. “If American soldiers are the ones being killed in Iraq, then AMERICANS should be the ones taking the oil.
Also China have around 300 billion more dollars coming out of America, than what they have going into America. Japan has around 40 billion more. Not good for America.
I am starting to wonder if Trump is the most brilliant Left winger of all time.
Step 1, stand for the Republican nomination on your own money so you can say what ever you want.
Step 2, say the most stupid and bigoted things you can think of to bring all those people who think that way on your side.
Step 3, shine I light on this dangerous side of US society for all to see mean while wrecking the republican primary.
Step 4, watch as Hilary becomes President Clinton 2 “Wall Street Strikes Back”.
That thought crossed my mind to. He’s that far outthere with some of the shit he says its almost satire.
Trump is what de Tocqueville tried to warn America about – the worst kind of cynical demagogue. The kind of fool who’ll start world war three by staging pissing contests with Putin and China, or drive internal dysfunction over some significant tipping point and create an internal insurgency or militarised police black ops campaigns. The ego of William Shatner without a universe to boldly expand into…
The absolute and complete answer is in the following link, straight from the mouth of Donald Trump…
https://youtu.be/lQG0lvDOE-8?t=58s
Please create a new post with the contents of the link, so we can know there is not an agenda related to any post concerning Trump.
Thanks kindly.
This is in fact very easy to resolve.
America can ban muslims and shunt them all out of the country.
And the middle east can ban americans and shunt them all out too. In fact the Americans can simply pack up their guns and leave of their own accord…
Why don’t the americans stay out of muslim countries?
After all, the americans kill more innocent muslims than muslims kill innocent americans
The news last night on the tele gave me the frights actually.
You have masses of rednecks and right wingers screaming for blood in the US.
Masses of French tricolours flying in support of right wingers winning yesterday’s elections there with a landslide. The instant I saw those tricolours waving in masses I thought Germany 1930s rallies.
Said to someone after the Paris event that it is about to become daily and outright warfare is going open up on American and European streets. In fact it pretty much is war there. Which shouldn’t surprise americans and Europeans as they have in fact been at war so of course they should expect to suffer from war too, and not just think E channel is any kind of reality.
It is absolutely going to erupt. The volcano has been belching but is about to go into full explosive catastrophe mode.
Donald Trump
The end result of 250 years of the American way
What a result
Except the US has a Constitutional check on people like Trump getting his way. Unless he manages somehow to convince enough people that they should also change their Constitution there is no way he will be able to implement his ideas.
Yep most of the commentariat there seems to have now caught up with the fact his suggested ban on muslims is unconstitutional and his extremist rants are now becoming so absurd he’s probably already unelectable as POTUS.
It looks like he’ll at least do well in the Republican primaries that are coming up. Here’s some recent polling for New Hampshire.
It doesn’t, however, cover the time since his ‘Muslim ban’ announcement.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/74909193/donald-trumps-antimuslim-call-roundly-condemned-by-republican-hierarchy