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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States24251 Posts
On September 11 2018 07:08 xDaunt wrote: Well, we didn't get reliable reports about what was really happening to Jews in Nazi Germany until we actually had people on the ground looking at the situation, right? I would suggest to you that there's a similar dynamic in play here. I'll freely admit that that we don't know exactly what is going on in Xinjiang, but it must be accepted that the Chinese government is responsible for that absence of information. Combine that fact with China's otherwise abysmal human rights record and propensity for "aggressive" cultural imperialism, and there's more than enough information out there to give one pause. A more reasonable position than I've heard from many, though I'd say the US and China's human rights records post revolution/civil rights (~60's) don't reflect as negatively on China as you do. As to when we knew about Jews in Nazi Germany there's some quick unpacking to do there. First the parallels Throughout the 1930s, Congress could not pass an anti-lynching bill; Jim Crow laws (and customs) reigned in many parts of the country; and Mexican immigrants and Mexican-American citizens were forcibly deported from California. Antisemitism rose throughout the decade, and many hotels, colleges, and private clubs restricted or prohibited Jews from visiting, attending, or becoming members. Some more interesting context: + Show Spoiler + Americans could read front-page stories about Jews being kicked out of their jobs and beaten on the streets in Germany. Dozens of American newspapers had correspondents based in Germany who sent back vivid descriptions of what they were witnessing under the new Nazi leadership. Americans read these articles, and despite all of their own problems, many grew concerned. Thousands of Americans attended anti-Nazi marches and rallies throughout the United States, protesting early persecutions, the boycott of Jewish stores, and Nazi book burnings. An American movement to boycott German-made goods and the stores that sold them began and lasted for nearly a decade, mainly in large cities on the east coast. And between March and May 1933, tens of thousands of people—from 29 states and Washington, DC—signed petitions calling on the new Roosevelt administration to protest Nazi persecution of the Jews. But we know what the authors do not: that the US government ultimately would not formally protest Nazi Germany in 1933—except to protect American citizens, dozens of whom were beaten on German streets, many because they were perceived to be Jewish. Nazi Germany owed American banks billions of dollars, and the Roosevelt administration was unwilling to issue a protest, in part because of the risk that Hitler would cancel his country's debts. Nazi Germany was a sovereign nation, and most Americans did not consider intervention in Germany's treatment of its own citizens the role of the United States. www.ushmm.org I'm not sure if you're talking about when the public knew or when the Allies knew? Newly accessed material from the United Nations – not seen for around 70 years – shows that as early as December 1942, the US, UK and Soviet governments were aware that at least two million Jews had been murdered and a further five million were at risk of being killed, and were preparing charges. Despite this, the Allied Powers did very little to try and rescue or provide sanctuary to those in mortal danger. Indeed, in March 1943, Viscount Cranborne, a minister in the war cabinet of Winston Churchill, said the Jews should not be considered a special case and that the British Empire was already too full of refugees to offer a safe haven to any more. www.independent.co.uk So that's to say we had reporters in Germany in 1933 witnessing this stuff themselves, and as early as 1942 the US government knew about ~2,000,000 dead Jewish people and another 5,000,000 in imminent and mortal danger. EDIT: We kinda have to presume in November they weren't under the belief that there were none, presumably they had been tracking this for a while. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States24251 Posts
On September 11 2018 08:16 xDaunt wrote: In this instance, I think what matters is what the public knows, because governments can't be expected reveal intelligence like that to the public. Regardless of what the Allies, Allied governments, and related intelligence services knew before 1945, the public very clearly did not know what was going on in Nazi Germany. I expect that the US government (among others) know exactly what is going on in Xinjiang, and I would be shocked if they didn't have intelligence assets there causing trouble for the Chinese. Perhaps sponsoring and encouraging terrorism like they have in the middle east and domestically? I'm curious on your (or any lurkers) take on this: She's being brought up on manslaughter charges, you think she should or will be convicted? | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States24251 Posts
On September 11 2018 08:38 xDaunt wrote: I dunno, I don't like to comment on cases like these until I see all of the evidence. If there's one thing that everyone should know by now, it's that the press gets legal/court shit wrong most of the time. It can see this one going both ways, depending upon what Texas's statutes regarding justifiable homicide are. One problem that she seems to have is that there's no mention of the guy doing anything threatening/aggressive. Shouldn't he have been legally allowed to shoot and kill her once she came in and began behaving aggressively toward him? EDIT: I understand your reluctance, but is there anything in the available information that indicates to you she shouldn't go to prison? | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
On September 11 2018 08:41 GreenHorizons wrote: Shouldn't he have been legally allowed to shoot and kill her once she came in and began behaving aggressively toward him? EDIT: I understand your reluctance, but is there anything in the available information that indicates to you she shouldn't go to prison? Yes, I'd expect that he'd have the right to shoot her under Texas law. As for her, I don't really have any reason to believe that she shouldn't be prosecuted and potentially go to prison based upon the news article that you linked. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States24251 Posts
On September 11 2018 09:12 xDaunt wrote: Yes, I'd expect that he'd have the right to shoot her under Texas law. As for her, I don't really have any reason to believe that she shouldn't be prosecuted and potentially go to prison based upon the news article that you linked. We'll see if anything exculpatory (can't imagine anything, like how he acted seems irrelevant) comes out or if the prosecutor can beat the odds and get a conviction. Then we can visit what that means about the US justice system (when viewed in the context of the frequency of related issues). In what ways does sending her to prison (which is as close to justice as I think our system gets) improve the outcome in your view? | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States24251 Posts
On September 11 2018 09:31 xDaunt wrote: I didn't say that I thought sending her to prison would be a "good" outcome. Presuming that this was simply an honest mistake and that she is otherwise someone who would be a law abiding citizen, I probably would not be in favor of sending her to prison. How could it possibly be an "honest mistake"? Forgive the presumption if you would please. What would improve the outcome at this point? What is prison good for in your view? EDIT: Lol Ted Cruz is looking scared in Texas. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
Prison exists for many purposes, including retribution, rehabilitation, and public safety. It will continue to be a necessary institution for as long as society has criminals. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
All of that said, Trump definitely did a number on Lyin' Ted in 2016. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States24251 Posts
On September 12 2018 02:28 xDaunt wrote: If she truly believed that she was entering her house, and that the guy that she shot was a threat to her, then I would call it an honest mistake. Note that this does not mean that she should walk free under Texas law. Prison exists for many purposes, including retribution, rehabilitation, and public safety. It will continue to be a necessary institution for as long as society has criminals. I disagree, that it would be an honest mistake even under those circumstances. I also think prisons are completely ineffective at anything but caging the people society has given up on. Retribution is some old testament stuff, aint no rehab in most prisons, and while they do keep people detained without being convicted, or that have been wrongly convicted, as well as people who actually committed crimes, they do virtually nothing to prevent them when they get out. It's an old idea that has past it's usefulness and prisons should be abolished imo. Additionally, I wholeheartedly reject the idea that any prison we have today needs to stay open. That doesn't mean no one should ever be detained or restrained, just that there isn't a salvageable institution in the country. They all have to be completely reimagined from the ground up. Or we can continue being the country that puts more people in prison/jail than any other and continue to have dismal results from it. ______________________________________________________________________________________________ I find it fascinating that liberals have managed to identify that the NYT op-ed was actually helping Trump, but they haven't asked themselves how something they have so easily identified as propaganda and naked self-interest managed to make it through the whole NYT leadership without them realizing they were helping out the scumbag who wrote it and providing almost 0 news value. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States24251 Posts
On September 12 2018 07:32 xDaunt wrote: Of course they aren't going to ask that question, just like they won't ask why the press is largely ignoring the ever-increasing mountain of evidence that the DOJ and FBI were corrupt under Obama (and perhaps prior to Obama). Right, but they have always been corrupt and political. We're just seeing how Trump brought it to the surface like so much of the corruption in DC. Not that he isn't just as guilty as anyone else, he's just passed on the pretense and is saying there's nothing that the checks on his power can do about it. It looks like he's right. They are all such shit they can't bring him down without leaving themselves vulnerable to be dragged down with him. And liberals "lesser evilism" leaves them stuck supporting corruption that's mildly less overt and offensive under a guise of sensibility and pragmatism. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
Now, looking at the current press landscape as it pertains to the Mueller investigation and the investigation of Trump, the press is very clearly way out on the polarized limb of "Mueller and the FBI/DOJ are righteous, Trump needs to be investigated." Very little credence has been given by the mainstream press to the possibility that there is a big problem in the FBI/DOJ (and potentially elsewhere). What happens when Trump releases the full FISA applications thereby fully exposing those problems? And here's the real kicker: we already know from documents released that the press is implicated in this mess. Not only are there the text messages between Strzok and Page openly discussing the media leak strategy, but we also know from the information about the FISA applications already released that the FBI, when applying for the FISA warrants, cited to press articles containing the information that was almost certainly leaked by Strzok and Page. In other words, the FBI relied upon the press articles to buttress the credibility of the faulty evidence that the FBI had (namely the Steele dossier), nevermind that the press wasn't providing any new evidence. Stated another way, the press was an accessory to whatever bad acts occurred with the FISA applications. Being involved in this, even if its indirectly and unintentionally, isn't going to help the media regain its credibility. Of course, all of this is contingent upon the declassification of the FISA application showing that there was no other basis for the warrant other than the Steele dossier. | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
Glad it came out though, it is a great display of what exactly it is that that crowd stands for. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
On September 12 2018 08:49 LegalLord wrote: That NYT op-ed is a doozy. I could only continue to be amazed by how anyone could be tone-deaf enough to write that and expect people not to see it for the politically motivated farce it was. But I bet the #resist crowd lapped it up uncritically. Glad it came out though, it is a great display of what exactly it is that that crowd stands for. Anonymous sourcing is out of control. It’s bad enough that articles were being based upon the false quotes of anonymous sources. Publishing anonymous op-eds is simply beyond the pale. And whoever wrote that op-ed is probably hardly ever near the White House, much less one of Trump’s top officials. The author is clearly a huge McCain fan, which disqualifies him from getting anywhere near Trump. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States24251 Posts
On September 12 2018 09:23 xDaunt wrote: Anonymous sourcing is out of control. It’s bad enough that articles were being based upon the false quotes of anonymous sources. Publishing anonymous op-eds is simply beyond the pale. And whoever wrote that op-ed is probably hardly ever near the White House, much less one of Trump’s top officials. The author is clearly a huge McCain fan, which disqualifies him from getting anywhere near Trump. That is so true. It's been astonishing how quickly basic journalism was thrown out the window to get scoops. Maybe about half (if that) of the anonymous sourced reports don't even meet the basic journalistic ethic of citing why they are anonymous. Mostly because " I'm doing this anonymously so I can keep working for the Trump administration" takes a lot of the punch out of the article. That no "media watch", millionaire TV news host, or even mainstream article writers has mentioned this should give everyone serious pause about the credibility not just of the reports, but of the institutions that allow such a failure of basic journalism to be centered on their platforms. iirc this piece did but the NYT is going to eat it in the teeth when it comes out that the "Senior Trump admin official" who wrote it is a no-name glorified staffer. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
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