US Politics Mega-Blog - Page 2

On September 10 2018 07:12 xDaunt wrote:
I’m not in favor of their methods, but at least the Chinese understand that multiculturalism is a threat to traditional Han dominance and the stability of the country. If the Chinese want to hold onto Xinjiang long term, then they are going to need assimilate the local population.

On September 10 2018 08:48 GreenHorizons wrote:


What parts of their methods do you oppose? You don't have to be comprehensive, I'm just curious.

On September 10 2018 09:15 xDaunt wrote:

Well, as a general rule, I’m against the forcible detention of people who have not committed crimes or done anything that should be considered a crime.

On September 10 2018 09:28 GreenHorizons wrote:


Did you know that 70% of people in local jails are not convicted of any crime?

Perhaps they also have that issue in China, but surely you don't think that's what makes it unacceptable?

On September 10 2018 10:03 xDaunt wrote:

So, a couple things about that graph. First and foremost, no duh most of the people in local jails are not convicted. Local jails are not meant to house convicts. Prisons are. Second, holding people in jail pending prosecution is a necessary component of the criminal justice system. Many people are simply held for a night or two and then charges are dropped. Many of the people who are charged wouldn't show up at court if they were simply released. Others are dangerous and need to be held. If you want to complain about unequal application of the bail process, fine, but comparing the holding of people in local jails who are convicted to what China is doing with its Ouighur population is specious in the extreme.

What China is allegedly doing in Xinjiang is a completely different animal. For one, there is no due process. People are being imprisoned and held not because they did anything that we would consider to be a crime, but because of what they believe. It's outright thought policing in which people are being locked away or months, if not years, at a time for reeducation. No part of the American justice system even remotely resembles this.

Another way to measure where pretrial detention is highest is to estimate the rate of pretrial detention as a proportion of the general population. This provides a standardized comparison across countries of varying sizes, and is not altered by changes in the sentenced prison population. Here, several countries far outpace the global average of 40 pretrial detainees per 100,000 in the general population. Panama (223) heads the list, followed by Uruguay (180), the U.S. (157), the Dominican Republic (136), El Salvador (113), and Peru (111)

Overall, Ranatza said there are 2,181 people who are being held in Louisiana jails that have been there for a year or more without going to trial. That's about 15 percent of the combined jail populations of 14,041 people who had not been convicted of any crime yet, according to information provided by Ranatza.

Of those 2,181 people:

1,507 had been held between one and two years without a trial;
448 had been held between two and three years without a trial;
141 had been held between three and four years without a trial; and
85 people had been held more than four years without a trial.
Ranatza said the numbers were based on a survey of parish jails he made last month. Sixty-two of Louisiana's 64 parishes participated.

On September 10 2018 10:53 xDaunt wrote:
People who spend more than a year in jail without trial are there because they waived speedy trial rights.

A divided New York State Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, on Thursday threw out the indictment of a man who spent more than six years in the Rikers Island jail in a Manhattan murder case, saying his constitutional right to a speedy trial was violated.

The 4-3 decision favoring Reginald Wiggins came less than a month after the federal appeals court in Manhattan dismissed on speedy trial grounds the indictment of an upstate man, Joseph Tigano, held for nearly seven years before being convicted on marijuana charges.

On September 10 2018 10:58 GreenHorizons wrote:


Several of those examples specifically didn't. Simply saying it doesn't make it true.

On September 10 2018 11:06 xDaunt wrote:

So you’re going to point to the one (or few exceptions) where the trial judge clearly screwed up to make your point? Come on, you know better than that.

On September 10 2018 11:19 GreenHorizons wrote:


Perhaps you're looking at a source that shows most people waiting years for trials have waived their right to a speedy trial and that it isn't coerced by the system?

On September 10 2018 11:29 xDaunt wrote:

The fundamental problem with your argument is that you are starting from the premise that the US and Chinese legal systems are comparably unjust. This is an unreasonable premise to take given that is without factual basis. If you want to attack various injustices regarding the American legal system, that's fine. There are certainly things to talk about. But equating what happens in the US to gross, mass injustices that occur in a totalitarian country like China is a nonstarter.

On September 10 2018 11:35 GreenHorizons wrote:


If that's a no on the source then I'm going to have to reject your claim.

Isn't China ruled by a party, not a dictator?

On September 11 2018 02:03 xDaunt wrote:


I'm not arguing that no one who waives speedy trial rights is "coerced" by the State. I'm merely pointing out that these comparatively few people who are being held for long periods of time without trial are in a very, very different set of circumstances than the Ouighurs who are being detained in China.



"Totalitarian" doesn't necessarily mean "dictator" or "one-person rule." It refers to the powers that are vested in the state, however composed. In China, all power is vested in the state. People do not have rights except as the state allows. The Chinese state's totalitarian power manifests itself in many ways that simply do not exist here in the US, including tights controls over the contents of the media, internet, religion, speech/expression in general, and many other social interactions.

Honest question -- are you really unaware of how the Chinese system works?

On September 11 2018 06:00 xDaunt wrote:
GH, I really don't know what to tell you, man. If you can't see the difference between the Chinese and American systems, then you're truly lost. You can look at whatever freedom index that you want, but they all consistently show the US as being a "free country" and China being a "not free country." See here, here, and here.

And it really doesn't take much effort to see specific Chinese human rights abuses. Though the Chinese are obstructing reporting on what's going on in Xinjiang for obvious reasons, there's still plenty of information regarding what's going on. Additionally, the Chinese have quite a history of imprisoning and harassing human rights attorneys that dare speak out against the government. No one can seriously argue that the US does anything similar. Now, what I find interesting about China is that the Chinese don't really seem to care about this lack of freedom, but that's a separate issue from whether the US and China have comparable levels of freedom. They very clearly don't.

And again, I don't know what unsupported claim you think I'm making. I'm not arguing that everyone who waives speedy trial does so without any degree of government compulsion (though I bet the vast majority of people did so without government compulsion, if any were illicitly compelled at all). All I did was point out that no one in the US languishes in jail without adjudication of their case and without remedy. Unlike China, the US legal system is fortified with due process protections that are enforced. What you seem to be missing is that the occasional break down of the system is not evidence of the fact that there is no system.

Finally, I don't understand your ongoing hard on for Venezuela. That country is a bloody socialist disaster. You should be running from Chavismo as fast as you can.

FBI Agent Peter Strzok conspired with his in-house lover to leak anti-Trump stories to the media in the spring of 2017 when he headed the Russia probe into the Trump campaign, a congressman said on Monday.

Rep. Mark Meadows, North Carolina Republican, sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein saying a House task force had just received a new shipment of Justice Department documents

“Our review of these news documents raises grave concerns regarding an apparent systemic culture of media leaking by high-ranking officials at FBI and DOJ,” Mr. Meadows said. “Review of these new documents suggest a coordinated effort on the part of the FBI and DOJ to release information in the public domain potentially harmful to President Donald Trump’s administration.”

Mr. Meadows provided an example.

On April 10, 2017, Mr. Strzok text-messaged Lisa Page, his lover and then-FBI counsel, to discuss a “media leak strategy.”

“I had literally just gone to find this phone to tell you I want to talk to you about media leak strategy with DOJ before you go,” Mr. Strzok said.

FBI Agent Peter Strzok conspired with his in-house lover to leak anti-Trump stories to the media in the spring of 2017 when he headed the Russia probe into the Trump campaign, a congressman said on Monday.

Rep. Mark Meadows, North Carolina Republican, sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein saying a House task force had just received a new shipment of Justice Department documents

“Our review of these news documents raises grave concerns regarding an apparent systemic culture of media leaking by high-ranking officials at FBI and DOJ,” Mr. Meadows said. “Review of these new documents suggest a coordinated effort on the part of the FBI and DOJ to release information in the public domain potentially harmful to President Donald Trump’s administration.”

Mr. Meadows provided an example.

On April 10, 2017, Mr. Strzok text-messaged Lisa Page, his lover and then-FBI counsel, to discuss a “media leak strategy.”

“I had literally just gone to find this phone to tell you I want to talk to you about media leak strategy with DOJ before you go,” Mr. Strzok said.

On September 11 2018 06:49 xDaunt wrote:
Well, there certainly is an issue regarding what we're talking about. When I first suggested that there is evidence of Chinese abuses in Xinjiang, you countered with that graph showing that most people being held in local jails were unconvicted, and questioned whether I really had a problem with the mass incarceration people. Then after I pointed out that local jails serve different purposes than prisons, you brought up the issue of people being held for years without trial. In response, I pointed out that that only happens when people waive speedy trial. Then you suggested, without any evidence, that people who waive speedy trial do so predominantly under government coercion, and tried to say that I was arguing the opposite, which I have repeatedly said I'm not.

So let's batten down the hatches. What do you really want to discuss?

And as an aside, given that you do care about "systemic racism," I'm kinda surprised at how little you know about how the American justice system operates. There are certainly arguments to be made in your favor as to why there are flaws in the American justice system (maybe you haven't noticed, but Trump is actually to fix many of these problems rather than just talk about them like Obama and democrats did), but arguing that American due process is comparable to Chinese notions of due process is not the path that you want to go down.

On September 11 2018 06:57 xDaunt wrote:


Source.

So back to the Russia/collusion nonsense for a moment. Here we have evidence that Stzok and Page were collaborating on leaking information to the press for political purposes. And more importantly, Strzok is discussing a "media leak strategy with DOJ," implicating his superiors at the FBI and Department of Justice. It doesn't take a genius to see that McCabe and Comey are about to go down in flames. The only question is who else goes down with them.

On September 11 2018 06:58 GreenHorizons wrote:


My main point was that even by the worst accounts (of which there are few) whatever is happening over there (regarding the Uyghur Muslim population) isn't as bad as the US has done in people's living memory.

Doesn't mean it wouldn't be wrong if those stories were true, just that pretending it's something the US hasn't, or wouldn't do doesn't match up with our living history.

I am however extremely skeptical of the descriptions provided by the few people who went and some people who say their family members went.