US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1507

On December 05 2014 16:13 oneofthem wrote:
not the best start with the choice of 'human' rights there. i don't really see the rights framework working all that well with animals.

On December 07 2014 06:40 tadL wrote:
Source? I bet you sold Isis the weapons they use. And I get warned for this question? Are you kidding me? I just wanted to introduce my point with this question...

The soldiers at the blast crater sensed something was wrong.
During the Iraq war, at least 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers were exposed to aging chemical weapons abandoned years earlier.
These weapons were not part of an active arsenal. They were remnants from Iraq's arms program in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.
Many troops who were exposed received inadequate care. None of the veterans were enrolled in long-term health monitoring.
Munitions are unaccounted for in areas of Iraq now under control of ISIS.
In response to this investigation, the Pentagon acknowledged that more than 600 troops reported chemical exposure, but it failed to recognize the scope or offer adequate treatment.

It was August 2008 near Taji, Iraq. They had just exploded a stack of old Iraqi artillery shells buried beside a murky lake. The blast, part of an effort to destroy munitions that could be used in makeshift bombs, uncovered more shells.
Two technicians assigned to dispose of munitions stepped into the hole. Lake water seeped in. One of them, Specialist Andrew T. Goldman, noticed a pungent odor, something, he said, he had never smelled before.
He lifted a shell. Oily paste oozed from a crack. “That doesn’t look like pond water,” said his team leader, Staff Sgt. Eric J. Duling.
The specialist swabbed the shell with chemical detection paper. It turned red — indicating sulfur mustard, the chemical warfare agent designed to burn a victim’s airway, skin and eyes.
All three men recall an awkward pause. Then Sergeant Duling gave an order: “Get the hell out.”
Five years after President George W. Bush sent troops into Iraq, these soldiers had entered an expansive but largely secret chapter of America’s long and bitter involvement in Iraq.
From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule.
In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
The United States had gone to war declaring it must destroy an active weapons of mass destruction program. Instead, American troops gradually found and ultimately suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West.
...

The secrecy fit a pattern. Since the outset of the war, the scale of the United States’ encounters with chemical weapons in Iraq was neither publicly shared nor widely circulated within the military. These encounters carry worrisome implications now that the Islamic State, a Qaeda splinter group, controls much of the territory where the weapons were found.
The American government withheld word about its discoveries even from troops it sent into harm’s way and from military doctors. The government’s secrecy, victims and participants said, prevented troops in some of the war’s most dangerous jobs from receiving proper medical care and official recognition of their wounds.

On December 07 2014 07:03 Paljas wrote:

the framework of basic rights (and just basic ones) for animals (or atleast for great apes) seems to be solid and should be supported in my opinion.

what are you concerns exactly?

On December 07 2014 07:03 Paljas wrote:

the framework of basic rights (and just basic ones) for animals (or atleast for great apes) seems to be solid and should be supported in my opinion.

what are you concerns exactly?

On December 07 2014 07:51 tadL wrote:
If you remember right it was like this (and i know usa people in general dont know when they fuck up):

Iran was once usa best friend and you armed him like stupid. shah of Persia if you remember, a terrible dictator punished his own people till they grouped around Ayatollah Khomeini and they had a peaceful revolution. no shots fired. Shah of persia had to leave and usa got fucking scared like always.

than you searched again for another human friendly leader (like usa always does) Saddam Hussein. you armed him like stupid to attack iran. and he could keep the oil. after a while he realised that he cant conquer iran because they fought back with the same weapons he had.

And after Saddam was like, well i could attack another country because he had to pay bills. bills for weapons usa sold him. than usa came and said kind of "wait who you attack is still our decision" and after the times(?) or was it spiegel? wrote "the new hitler" papa bush was like "hitler? thats my job".

than you destroyed the country and there was no way that he would ever arm himself up. and than because of stupidity of bush jr you attacked a country that was already beaten to the ground. There was a list with 50 or so companys that have been part of the search action. German companys came to to check if all is still there that was funny ^^

thats kind of the shirt version.

The point i want to make is why you even talk here about politics. You accept that you dont have to give a fuck about rules. Not your own, not the one you accepted / created for the world. Why even talk about it? I mean its funny like hell for me and the election time for the president is the world greatest comedy show on earth for me. But thats what I do not get. I mean you even pay income tax without any law that forces you. Just a terror organisation will come and put you in jail as far as i understood it.

On December 07 2014 09:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Why even talk about it is a good question. You seem to simply dislike the US and want to rationalize your dislike however you can.

On December 07 2014 08:54 xDaunt wrote:

There's a difference between legislatively mandating that animals be treated according to specific humane standards and declaring that animals have the same rights as people. The latter is simply insane.

On December 07 2014 09:17 oneofthem wrote:

framework of rights based on persnohood. look at the case

On December 07 2014 07:51 tadL wrote:
The point i want to make is why you even talk here about politics. You accept that you dont have to give a fuck about rules. Not your own, not the one you accepted / created for the world. Why even talk about it? I mean its funny like hell for me and the election time for the president is the world greatest comedy show on earth for me. But thats what I do not get. I mean you even pay income tax without any law that forces you. Just a terror organisation will come and put you in jail as far as i understood it.

On December 07 2014 05:52 tadL wrote:
Hey USA did you finally found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? I mean I do not see any one go to jail so you did not lie did you?
User was warned for this post

On December 07 2014 10:19 Paljas wrote:

Basic rights obviously dont include the right to vote, or the right to own property. But I cant find anthing insane about granting a chimpanzee the right to live and the right not to be held in a cage.


I am not a fan of using the personhood as the only metric to grant rights either. (especially not the legal term, as coporations apparently are persons too)
But it seems to be a sufficient condition in this case.
Tommy IS a person in the proper sense of the word, and should be treated as such.
This includes basic rights.

On December 07 2014 10:19 Paljas wrote:

Basic rights obviously dont include the right to vote, or the right to own property. But I cant find anthing insane about granting a chimpanzee the right to live and the right not to be held in a cage.


I am not a fan of using the personhood as the only metric to grant rights either. (especially not the legal term, as coporations apparently are persons too)
But it seems to be a sufficient condition in this case.
Tommy IS a person in the proper sense of the word, and should be treated as such.
This includes basic rights.

On December 07 2014 09:55 Nyxisto wrote:

Because international law has no enforcer, every violation further erodes its legitimacy. Every shady act lowers the bar and gives other countries an excuse to do the same, this is why I think that the American behaviour actually matters greatly when it comes to international conflicts.

On December 07 2014 10:48 xDaunt wrote:

Once again we return to my regular point that one of the primary conceits of liberals is being preoccupied with particular results at the expense of developing a proper means to get there. Let me reiterate: requesting a court to declare that animals have the rights of people is insane. Period. You clearly haven't though out the full set of implications and consequences of such a decision. The proper way to address the problem that you want to correct is to buttress animal cruelty laws.

On December 07 2014 10:51 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Sometimes it is the US enforcing those laws. Sometimes it is Europeans engaging in the shady acts. Would you like to discuss all of it or just the bits where the US is doing something you don't like?

On December 07 2014 05:47 zlefin wrote:
regarding ferguson and policing

I'm Pondering alternate solutions to issues.
One issue that causes things like this, is that having two police officers to a car means less police coverage/longer response times. But having just one means the officer doesn't have backup automatically, which can put him in danger.

I wonder if it would be possible to hire extra muscle to support the police for an in-between approach.
i.e. have one police officer, with one semi-officer there to support. The semi-officer wouldn't use the full standards and training for officers, and wouldn't have the full (or perhaps much of any) police powers; they would be there primarily to backup the officer (as well as doing other minor tasks I'm sure). They wouldn't be allowed to initiate things on their own, they have to follow the officer's lead about how to handle the situation.
It might be possible to pay such people considerably less than officer standard due to the lower requirements and training.


Looked up the average pay for security guards and bouncers vs police online; and it's quite a difference.
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes339032.htm
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes333051.htm

some other sites said bouncer pay was typically about the same as security guard pay (a little lower, but sometimes getting a portion of the tips at places).

On December 07 2014 11:30 Nyxisto wrote:

As this it the US politics thread I think it makes sense to focus on what the US does when foreign policy topics come up, also "sometimes the US does something bad, sometimes the EU does something bad" is a gross mischaracterization. Budget-wise and politically it was without a doubt the US that is responsible for the more disastrous decisions over the last few decades.