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On September 15 2014 04:28 Dapper_Cad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 14 2014 20:46 coverpunch wrote:On September 14 2014 19:46 Simberto wrote:
So basically, what you need is a functional union culture. But for some reason americans don't like unions. An unfortunate casualty of polarized politics. Unions are regarded as greedy and petty, willing to choke out the entire company for needless and unsustainable benefits. It goes relatively unnoticed that there do exist workers who need good representation to protect them from industry abuses and ensure their interests are also considered as a variable beside ROI and growth, which are often given excessive weight. Regarded by whom? There is an enduring myth that unions killed the British and American auto industries, a myth which is rarely examined. Strange that currently countries with some of the strongest union cultures on the planet (Japan, German, France) also currently build most ( and best) of the planets cars.
Fixed that for you.
We're not always happy about those though. Less in regards of the car-industry, but more public transport (like at the moment, traindrivers/pilots making a fuss). Overall though, i think unions in germany differ greatly from what a union in the US would look like, in terms of mentality. In general, union and company try to work together, they both have to make concessions to each other (and they mostly do). To me it feels like a union in the US is actually working against the company.
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On September 15 2014 07:35 m4ini wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2014 04:28 Dapper_Cad wrote:On September 14 2014 20:46 coverpunch wrote:On September 14 2014 19:46 Simberto wrote:
So basically, what you need is a functional union culture. But for some reason americans don't like unions. An unfortunate casualty of polarized politics. Unions are regarded as greedy and petty, willing to choke out the entire company for needless and unsustainable benefits. It goes relatively unnoticed that there do exist workers who need good representation to protect them from industry abuses and ensure their interests are also considered as a variable beside ROI and growth, which are often given excessive weight. Regarded by whom? There is an enduring myth that unions killed the British and American auto industries, a myth which is rarely examined. Strange that currently countries with some of the strongest union cultures on the planet (Japan, German, France) also currently build most ( and best) of the planets cars. Fixed that for you. We're not always happy about those though. Less in regards of the car-industry, but more public transport (like at the moment, traindrivers/pilots making a fuss). Overall though, i think unions in germany differ greatly from what a union in the US would look like, in terms of mentality. In general, union and company try to work together, they both have to make concessions to each other (and they mostly do). To me it feels like a union in the US is actually working against the company.
Do you realize how absurd that last line sounds? A group of employees are working against the company that is employing them?
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On September 15 2014 04:28 Dapper_Cad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 14 2014 20:46 coverpunch wrote:On September 14 2014 19:46 Simberto wrote:
So basically, what you need is a functional union culture. But for some reason americans don't like unions. An unfortunate casualty of polarized politics. Unions are regarded as greedy and petty, willing to choke out the entire company for needless and unsustainable benefits. It goes relatively unnoticed that there do exist workers who need good representation to protect them from industry abuses and ensure their interests are also considered as a variable beside ROI and growth, which are often given excessive weight. Regarded by whom? There is an enduring myth that unions killed the British and American auto industries, a myth which is rarely examined. Strange that currently countries with some of the strongest union cultures on the planet (Japan, German, France) also currently build most of the planets cars. Look at any public opinion poll to see how labor unions are regarded amongst Americans. Just off the cuff, Gallup shows equal support/opposition of unions, but an upswing of 8% in the last 5 years wishing Unions would have less influence than they have today. State politics for me just recently included teachers unions opposing a judgement on some pretty obvious problems with newly-hired yet firing-immune failing teachers and LAPD demanding raises and refusing to split any of their health insurance premiums. You are well within your rights if you've never heard of the bad rap unions have gotten and believe it to be overstated. I find in my local area the focus is public employee unions that demand great raises, lavish pensions, and who absolutely refuse to pay anything into their own health plans.
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On September 15 2014 08:33 Danglars wrote:
public employee unions
i wonder why this subset of the unions is the locus of danglars' union related discontent...
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Because they are the only ones existing in america, after all a company doesn't tolerate a union that could balance its power over its workers if it doesn't have to and workers have basically no rights.
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On September 15 2014 08:00 Livelovedie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2014 07:35 m4ini wrote:On September 15 2014 04:28 Dapper_Cad wrote:On September 14 2014 20:46 coverpunch wrote:On September 14 2014 19:46 Simberto wrote:
So basically, what you need is a functional union culture. But for some reason americans don't like unions. An unfortunate casualty of polarized politics. Unions are regarded as greedy and petty, willing to choke out the entire company for needless and unsustainable benefits. It goes relatively unnoticed that there do exist workers who need good representation to protect them from industry abuses and ensure their interests are also considered as a variable beside ROI and growth, which are often given excessive weight. Regarded by whom? There is an enduring myth that unions killed the British and American auto industries, a myth which is rarely examined. Strange that currently countries with some of the strongest union cultures on the planet (Japan, German, France) also currently build most ( and best) of the planets cars. Fixed that for you. We're not always happy about those though. Less in regards of the car-industry, but more public transport (like at the moment, traindrivers/pilots making a fuss). Overall though, i think unions in germany differ greatly from what a union in the US would look like, in terms of mentality. In general, union and company try to work together, they both have to make concessions to each other (and they mostly do). To me it feels like a union in the US is actually working against the company. Do you realize how absurd that last line sounds? A group of employees are working against the company that is employing them?
Never happened? Look at detroit, and say that again. And no, i know that it wasn't just the unions who are responsible for that, but they were responsible for the biggest part. A uniondude should know that if they demand almost three times more than other workers get paid, they will ruin the company that employs them.
So yes. A group of employees working against the company employing them. Not because "huehuehue we'll destoy u!" but because blinding greed.
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On September 15 2014 08:00 Livelovedie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2014 07:35 m4ini wrote:On September 15 2014 04:28 Dapper_Cad wrote:On September 14 2014 20:46 coverpunch wrote:On September 14 2014 19:46 Simberto wrote:
So basically, what you need is a functional union culture. But for some reason americans don't like unions. An unfortunate casualty of polarized politics. Unions are regarded as greedy and petty, willing to choke out the entire company for needless and unsustainable benefits. It goes relatively unnoticed that there do exist workers who need good representation to protect them from industry abuses and ensure their interests are also considered as a variable beside ROI and growth, which are often given excessive weight. Regarded by whom? There is an enduring myth that unions killed the British and American auto industries, a myth which is rarely examined. Strange that currently countries with some of the strongest union cultures on the planet (Japan, German, France) also currently build most ( and best) of the planets cars. Fixed that for you. We're not always happy about those though. Less in regards of the car-industry, but more public transport (like at the moment, traindrivers/pilots making a fuss). Overall though, i think unions in germany differ greatly from what a union in the US would look like, in terms of mentality. In general, union and company try to work together, they both have to make concessions to each other (and they mostly do). To me it feels like a union in the US is actually working against the company. Do you realize how absurd that last line sounds? A group of employees are working against the company that is employing them?
Currently Lufthansa pilots are striking although every single one of them earns well over six figures and goes on pension with 51. Most unions are doing a good job, but a small but vocal number of them are actually overdoing it.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
'working against' gives the impression of intentionally sabotaging the company or some such conscious directive. but that's not really necessary. it is true that unions can be shortsighted and not act in the interest of the entire structure.
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it is true that unions can be shortsighted and not act in the interest of the entire structure.
Well that's not really saying much. The same is true of anyone in any business. Not to mention more than a few non-union people have made lots of money intentionally destroying companies or just not caring if they do.
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On September 15 2014 08:55 nunez wrote:i wonder why this subset of the unions is the locus of danglars' union related discontent... When you wish to leave your psychologist armchair and discuss politics, I'll be waiting. For substantive discussion, you might even check out the links and do a little more wondering on the nature of the issues.
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On September 13 2014 06:38 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2014 04:20 xDaunt wrote:On September 13 2014 04:03 IgnE wrote: Do you think the world is better off than it would have been if we had never invaded Iraq, even after the Kuwait invasion? I have to think about that one. It's a closer a call than I'd like to admit. Upon reflection, my answer is as follows: I'm not sure that you're asking the right question. It may be that the world would be a better place right now had the US not invaded Iraq in the 90s, but that would be a very temporary thing. From my perspective the problems that we're seeing in the Muslim/Arab world have been a long time coming and were ultimately inevitable. They may have arrived a decade or two earlier as a result of US meddling in the Middle East, but there was no stopping it from happening. Dictatorships are unstable entities, and the popular and underlying social problems were going to surface eventually as the dictatorships fell. On the flip side, I do see some utility in the US imposing international order and stability upon the world by attacking Iraq in the Gulf War. Failure to act would send a bad message around the world.
What do you think caused the problems that "have been a long time coming and were ultimately inevitable?" And how would you define those problems? Dictatorships may be unstable entities but the Unites States was the one propping up a lot of them, including Saddam.
In December 1992 Osama Bin Laden bombed a hotel in Aden and it was shortly after this bombing, and the first Iraq war, when American troops flooded into Saudi Arabia, that Bin Laden started developing his terrorist aims against the United States, issuing a fatwa to his newly burgeoning terrorist group, al-Qaeda, justifying the deaths of innocents, and later issuing a fatwa imposing a duty on Muslims to liberate Muslim mosques and lands by killing any North Americans who were desecrating them with their presence. 9/11 arguably never would have happened but for HW's war.
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Yet Al Qaeda did not attack the United States until the embassy bombings in 1998.
You could just as easily argue that ignoring 1990s instability in Algeria, Egypt, and Afghanistan allowed Al Qaeda to metastasize and emboldened them to bigger and bigger attacks, including the US as a target. The narrative that terrorism festers in the dark corners of the world is the more standard one and why the US has taken a much bigger role in regional events with the War on Terror, most of which neither the government nor the public talks about very much.
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Fresh from his symbolically important role in helping to expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, bin Laden had been eager to play the leading role in protecting his Saudi homeland from Iraqi incursion.
In September 1990, he told Prince Sultan, the Saudi defense minister, that he could muster 100,000 fighters within three months and there would be no need for American or other "non-Muslim troops."
"There are no caves in Kuwait," Prince Sultan said in response. The Saudis much preferred the promise of hundreds of thousands of Western troops made to them by Dick Cheney, then the U.S. defense secretary, to the prospect of thousands of armed jihadists operating within their borders.
This ultimately led to bin Laden's final break with the Saudi elite and turned his organization's attention toward Western enemies, says Adam Mausner, a research associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
After U.S. forces had remained in Saudi Arabia for some years, bin Laden wrote the Saudi king that "it is unconscionable to let the country become an American colony with American soldiers — their filthy feet everywhere."
"The presence of American troops on Saudi soil galvanized the faction of al-Qaida that wanted to focus on the 'far enemy' first," Mausner says. "Al-Qaida really got on the road to 9/11 because of American troops' presence in Saudi Arabia."
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Wait you want to argue that the United States should have been more involved in the region? Perhaps installing US-backed dictatorships in every country in the region? "The narrative that terrorism festers in the dark corners of the world" is the one promulgated by the country leading a War on Terror (as if such a war could be waged) and you don't think to wonder if it's true? I should believe you because a bunch of Americans and their lackeys say it's true?
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Hey, I HAVE been wondering if it is true. I have expressed disappointment and astonishment on this forum at how few other people are bothered by the War on Terror expanding even further under Obama.
Even now, almost nobody on this forum has seriously questioned President Obama's reasoning for air strikes in Iraq and possibly Syria to roll back ISIS, whether it is a good strategy and what might happen beyond winning.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
to properly judge his strats on terrorism you'd have to know detailed info about the threats and how they develop. otherwise what do you have to go on besides vague ideas of sun tzu or some such
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On September 15 2014 15:54 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2014 06:38 xDaunt wrote:On September 13 2014 04:20 xDaunt wrote:On September 13 2014 04:03 IgnE wrote: Do you think the world is better off than it would have been if we had never invaded Iraq, even after the Kuwait invasion? I have to think about that one. It's a closer a call than I'd like to admit. Upon reflection, my answer is as follows: I'm not sure that you're asking the right question. It may be that the world would be a better place right now had the US not invaded Iraq in the 90s, but that would be a very temporary thing. From my perspective the problems that we're seeing in the Muslim/Arab world have been a long time coming and were ultimately inevitable. They may have arrived a decade or two earlier as a result of US meddling in the Middle East, but there was no stopping it from happening. Dictatorships are unstable entities, and the popular and underlying social problems were going to surface eventually as the dictatorships fell. On the flip side, I do see some utility in the US imposing international order and stability upon the world by attacking Iraq in the Gulf War. Failure to act would send a bad message around the world. What do you think caused the problems that "have been a long time coming and were ultimately inevitable?" And how would you define those problems? Dictatorships may be unstable entities but the Unites States was the one propping up a lot of them, including Saddam. In December 1992 Osama Bin Laden bombed a hotel in Aden and it was shortly after this bombing, and the first Iraq war, when American troops flooded into Saudi Arabia, that Bin Laden started developing his terrorist aims against the United States, issuing a fatwa to his newly burgeoning terrorist group, al-Qaeda, justifying the deaths of innocents, and later issuing a fatwa imposing a duty on Muslims to liberate Muslim mosques and lands by killing any North Americans who were desecrating them with their presence. 9/11 arguably never would have happened but for HW's war.
I think it's shortsighted to look only back to the 1990s. This is a region that has been governed by autocrats and imperialist powers continuously for centuries. Sure, they kept a lid on underlying tribal, religious, and ethnic tensions that have existed for generations (if not centuries), but these problems were always going to explode sooner or later. You need look no further than Lebanon to see the truth in this eventuality.
And I don't really agree with the premise that Al Qaeda and other Muslim terrorists groups would have left the US alone but for the Gulf War. Their religious zealotry and intolerance cannot be underestimated. Western/Muslim relations have been explosive for centuries, and I'm not sure why things would be any different in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Nothing has really changed.
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On September 15 2014 22:01 oneofthem wrote:
to properly judge his strats on terrorism you'd have to know detailed info about the threats and how they develop. otherwise what do you have to go on besides vague ideas of sun tzu or some such
And the Obama administration isn't talking about the threats because...
Which contrasts with Desert Storm, where the article IgnE just posted had this:
"The stakes in 1990 and '91 were really rather enormous," says Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina. "Had Saddam Hussein gotten control of the Saudi oil fields, he would have had the world economy by the throat. That was immediately recognized by capitals around the world."
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On September 15 2014 13:50 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2014 08:55 nunez wrote:On September 15 2014 08:33 Danglars wrote:
public employee unions i wonder why this subset of the unions is the locus of danglars' union related discontent... When you wish to leave your psychologist armchair and discuss politics, I'll be waiting. For substantive discussion, you might even check out the links and do a little more wondering on the nature of the issues.
using the modus operandi of a union as the reason why you are raging against a subset of the unions doesn't compute...
even if this subset is not strict, like simberto said, it does not make sense.
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On September 15 2014 22:43 coverpunch wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2014 22:01 oneofthem wrote:
to properly judge his strats on terrorism you'd have to know detailed info about the threats and how they develop. otherwise what do you have to go on besides vague ideas of sun tzu or some such And the Obama administration isn't talking about the threats because... Which contrasts with Desert Storm, where the article IgnE just posted had this: Show nested quote +"The stakes in 1990 and '91 were really rather enormous," says Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina. "Had Saddam Hussein gotten control of the Saudi oil fields, he would have had the world economy by the throat. That was immediately recognized by capitals around the world."
I'll answer my own question: they don't know
Hours before President Obama announced a new U.S. military offensive against the Islamic State, one of his top counterterrorism officials testified to Congress that the al-Qaeda offshoot had an estimated 10,000 fighters.
The next day a new assessment arrived from the CIA: The terrorist organization’s ranks had more than doubled in recent months, surging to somewhere between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters across Iraq and Syria.
The enormous discrepancy reflects, in part, significant uncertainty among U.S. intelligence agencies over the dimensions of and danger posed by America’s latest Islamist adversary.
“There is no contain policy for ISIL,” Secretary of State John F. Kerry said this month. “They’re an ambitious, avowed genocidal, territorial-grabbing, Caliphate-desiring, quasi-state within a regular army. And leaving them in some capacity intact anywhere would leave a cancer in place that will ultimately come back to haunt us.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote in a recent op-ed that “the threat ISIS poses cannot be overstated.” She went on to describe the group as “the most vicious, well-funded and militant terrorist organization we have ever seen.”
“ISIL’s ability to carry out complex, large-scale attacks in the West is currently limited,” [Nicholas Rasmussen, deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center] said in testimony before a Senate committee last week. The Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula “remains the al-Qaeda affiliate most likely to attempt transnational attacks against the United States.”
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United States41117 Posts
Sen. Rand Paul wanted to eliminate aid to Israel. Now he doesn’t. He wanted to scrap the Medicare system. Now he’s not sure.
He didn’t like the idea of a border fence — it was expensive, and it reminded him of the Berlin Wall. Now he wants two fences, one behind the other.
And what about same-sex marriage? Paul’s position — such marriages are morally wrong, but Republicans should stop obsessing about them — seems so muddled that an Iowa pastor recently confronted him in frustration.
“With all due respect, that sounds very retreatist of you,” minister Michael Demastus said he told Paul (R-Ky.) after the senator explained his position during a stop in Des Moines.
Paul has built a reputation as a libertarian ideologue, a Washington outsider guided by a rigid devotion to principle.
But his policy vision is, in fact, a work in progress. While he has maintained his core support for cutting spending and protecting Americans’ privacy rights, Paul has shaded, changed or dropped some of the ideas that he espoused as a tea party candidate and in his confrontational early days as a senator.
As the prospect of a 2016 presidential bid looms larger, Paul is making it clear that he did not come to Washington to be a purist like his father, former congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex.).
He came to be a politician, like everybody else.
This transformation carries enormous risk. As Rand Paul seeks to broaden his appeal, he may damage his image as an authentic non-politician who is unafraid to stand up for his beliefs.
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