US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1978

Some of the biggest technology firms in the United States have been accused in a lawsuit of complicity in the death and maiming of hundreds, if not thousands of African children who mine cobalt, a mineral vital to the production of the lithium-ion batteries in everything from smartphones to electric cars. The defendants named in the suit are Apple, Google parent company Alphabet, Microsoft, Dell and Tesla.

Research by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimated that in 2012 there were about 40,000 children working in the DRC mines. More than half of the world's supply of cobalt comes from the DRC, and 20 percent of that is mined by hand, according to Darton Commodities Ltd., a London-based research company that specializes in cobalt.

Widespread reporting about the horrific conditions for children in DRC's cobalt mines has increased pressure on these companies for several years. But the lawsuit filed on Sunday, which was first reported by The Guardian, is the first legal action brought against the American companies.

The lawsuit filed by International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates) on Sunday claims the children on behalf of whom the plaintiffs have sued worked illegally at DRC mines owned by British company Glencore and others. The filing says cobalt from the Glencore mines is sold to a metal and mineral trading firm in Belgium called Umicore, which sells refined cobalt to the named defendant corporations in the U.S. The court document said children were also working at mines owned by Chinese company Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, which supplies at least three of the named corporations.

"Until they are forced to do better, Apple and the other companies are relying on largely illiterate, desperately poor, and exceedingly vulnerable people to figure out Apple's complaint mechanism and report supply chain violations when they certainly cannot afford personal computers or iPhones and they do not have internet or cell phone access to connect to the outside world within the context of a violent regime that does not tolerate dissent and an unregulated industry that could retaliate with impunity against any whistleblowers," the court filing states.

John Doe 1, says that he started working in the mines when he was nine. The lawsuit claims that earlier this year, he was working as a human mule for Kamoto Copper Company, carrying bags of cobalt rocks for $0.75 a day, when he fell into a tunnel. After he was dragged out of the tunnel by fellow workers, he says he was left alone on the ground at the mining site until his parents heard about the accident and arrived to help him. He is now paralysed from the chest down and will never walk again.

Other families included in the claim say that their children were killed in tunnel collapses or suffered serious injuries such as smashed limbs and broken spines while crawling through tunnels or carrying heavy loads. The families say that none were paid any compensation for the deaths and injuries.

One of the central allegations in the lawsuit is that Apple, Google, Dell, Microsoft and Tesla were aware and had “specific knowledge” that the cobalt they use in their products is linked to child labour performed in hazardous conditions, and were complicit in the forced labour of the children.

On January 01 2020 20:50 Nebuchad wrote:


What you perceive as "what can be done" is influenced by the grand vision of the left and the right, and by the difference between liberalism and leftism. When your leftwing party runs to the center to be neoliberal and pushes the right further right so that it's now borderline fascist, what can be done is different than when you have a real leftist party on the left and a liberal party on the right. When you run as a leftist and then you staff your cabinet based 99% on what liberals want, the capacities and intentions of your cabinet will be different than that of a leftist cabinet. When you run as a leftist and then squander the good will that was given to you so much so that 1000 electoral seats turn to the opposing party, it influences what can be done by your administration outside of executive orders. It's also not just about you, as the political map that you leave behind will influence what the next representatives of the left can and cannot do.

The politics that you describe there are politics of capitulation. A politician can run on 95% of the right's platform, get elected, and that would be a victory for the left because the other politician was running on 100% of the right's platform. If you remove the ideas from the equation, there is no reason why those ideas would ever win. It would be bad political strategy for your ideas to win. That's not a good outlook.

On January 02 2020 01:24 Biff The Understudy wrote:

I don't see what is a politics of capitulation. All I want from a politician is that he leaves the country in a better state than when he gets into office.

At that point, Obama, Bernie or fucking Karl Marx in the White House would basically not achieve anything much different from each other. They would all push as hard as possible to pass left leaning reforms, and pass a fraction of them in an imperfect way. Which is great. It changes people's lives for the better.

I don't believe in those grand political ideals and care not about pursuing some fantasies of political purity and childish dreams about The Revolution.

And if Obama was elected in Norway and wanted to push the country right (he probably would), I would oppose him. But he did a stellar job as POTUS, and I would support anyone like him in that context.

Since we are at it, i prefer someone who doesn't sell cheap dreams of revolution to get elected. If Bernie wins, he will probably end up being a good president, pushing the country a bit to the left just as Obama did by fighting like a demon, but his supporters will be super pissed off and disillusioned because The Revolution will not have delivered. And that's not a good thing.

On January 02 2020 01:24 Biff The Understudy wrote:

I don't see what is a politics of capitulation. All I want from a politician is that he leaves the country in a better state than when he gets into office.

At that point, Obama, Bernie or fucking Karl Marx in the White House would basically not achieve anything much different from each other. They would all push as hard as possible to pass left leaning reforms, and pass a fraction of them in an imperfect way. Which is great. It changes people's lives for the better.

I don't believe in those grand political ideals and care not about pursuing some fantasies of political purity and childish dreams about The Revolution.

And if Obama was elected in Norway and wanted to push the country right (he probably would), I would oppose him. But he did a stellar job as POTUS, and I would support anyone like him in that context.

Since we are at it, i prefer someone who doesn't sell cheap dreams of revolution to get elected. If Bernie wins, he will probably end up being a good president, pushing the country a bit to the left just as Obama did by fighting like a demon, but his supporters will be super pissed off and disillusioned because The Revolution will not have delivered. And that's not a good thing.

On January 02 2020 02:19 JimmiC wrote:

Compromise is basically a requirement of democracy and even more so in non first past the post systems that most everyone here thinks is a fairer system. It is much better for a politician to fight his opponents on the election and than work with them once elected. To continue fighting while elected causes almost nothing to get done, which is pointless. As you mentioned compromising on some things to get bigger more important things done is a sign of strength not weakness. To say otherwise is either a sign of ignorance or naivety. It would be just as silly to expect ones partner to always agree with them and to never have to themselves compromise. That is just not how life with free will works, and sometimes those compromises actually work pretty good or even better.

On January 02 2020 02:09 Nebuchad wrote:


Obama is a contradictory figure in the framing that you give. He fights like a demon to get more leftwing stuff, he's doing basically the same as Bernie could, but if he was in Norway in another context, then he would push the country to the right and you'd fight against him?

If he wouldn't do everything he can when the deck is on his side, why would you assume that he's doing everything he can when the deck is stacked against him? Logically, he wouldn't. That's an issue, and that's why your framing of "purity" is factually wrong. Liberalism isn't impure leftism, it's a different ideology with different goals.

That's also where the capitulation comes in: we have a vision for society in the background, and we're giving up this vision because of pragmatism. But as we're giving up on our ideals being implemented, what's considered pragmatic changes, since less people are fighting on one side of the aisle and therefore the compromise position is no longer in the same place as it was when it comes to ideologies: it drifts to the right. And suddenly we don't care whether our champion is advancing liberalism or leftism, as long as we can tell ourselves they're improving the world. If we follow this logic we can even accept a quasi-conservative liberal like Biden as being good for the left, so long as the alternative candidate would have been worse. This pragmatic vision that is devoid of ideology is the kind of thought process that explains why the left keeps losing and the far right keeps strengthening, regardless of whether the nominally leftist candidate is in power or not.

If we follow this logic we can even accept a quasi-conservative liberal like Biden as being good for the left, so long as the alternative candidate would have been worse. This pragmatic vision that is devoid of ideology is the kind of thought process that explains why the left keeps losing and the far right keeps strengthening, regardless of whether the nominally leftist candidate is in power or not

On January 02 2020 02:28 Nebuchad wrote:


If you start your search for compromise from a centrist position, the compromise that you reach will be closer to the rightwing position than if you start from a leftwing position. If you repeat that for 40 years since 1980s, your society will move to the right; and just about all of our societies have. There's a reason why conservatives tell liberals that they should be more compromising, while they themselves never move an inch, except to become more rightwing when the last compromise position makes them feel justified in doing so. They understand that the centrist tendency to look for common ground and compromise is a weakness that they can exploit, and they have. They understand that politics is about winning.

Edit: That being said, a lot of liberals do understand this to an extent, since they never look for compromise and common ground when talking to their left, only when they talk to their right. At their left are the insane people that need to be dismissed immediately so that we can start having adult conversations with the conservative. So in a sense some of it is more an affect than a misunderstanding.

On January 02 2020 02:55 JimmiC wrote:
This is a very strange thought on how to tax the rich, where they actually choose to pay more because it gives them status.

So things like making special licence plates that cost way more money but fund the government. Maybe special things they can place on their lawn when they pay more taxes. So like people who paid 100,000 a year in taxes could put up a silver sign 500,000 a gold sign, 1,000,000 a platinum sign and so on. People already are paying stupid prices for things for status why wouldn't they pay that amount to the government if the government made it's on status items.

It is already working in SA where people have paid millions for special license plate numbers for a number of years. I wonder how much the ultra rich would pay in taxes for special trinkets they could display publicly? Would people actually try to pay more in taxes rather than less to hit certain targets?

I think it is a interesting approach, that sounds ridiculous but might actually work. As long as the people paying got very exclusive and visible rewards for doing it. If people are willing to pay 10 million for a watch that tells time just as good as 1 dollar watch I'm sure a surprising amount would pay millions for fancy license plates and other display items.

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/FunMoney/story?id=4301197&page=1

On January 02 2020 03:35 GreenHorizons wrote:
It was the FEC deadline for presidential campaigns and some of the headlines are that Sanders continues to break records with more donations than any campaign in history already hitting a million individual donors in September.

Former Mayor Buttigieg had a good quarter likely placing 2nd overall with 2 million donations from about 750k donors in 2019

Warren sent out an email saying her numbers were slipping and I haven't personally seen anything from her since close of books yesterday.

https://twitter.com/edokeefe/status/1212435064849653761

On January 02 2020 02:09 Nebuchad wrote:


Obama is a contradictory figure in the framing that you give. He fights like a demon to get more leftwing stuff, he's doing basically the same as Bernie could, but if he was in Norway in another context, then he would push the country to the right and you'd fight against him?

If he wouldn't do everything he can when the deck is on his side, why would you assume that he's doing everything he can when the deck is stacked against him? Logically, he wouldn't. That's an issue, and that's why your framing of "purity" is factually wrong. Liberalism isn't impure leftism, it's a different ideology with different goals.

That's also where the capitulation comes in: we have a vision for society in the background, and we're giving up this vision because of pragmatism. But as we're giving up on our ideals being implemented, what's considered pragmatic changes, since less people are fighting on one side of the aisle and therefore the compromise position is no longer in the same place as it was when it comes to ideologies: it drifts to the right. And suddenly we don't care whether our champion is advancing liberalism or leftism, as long as we can tell ourselves they're improving the world. If we follow this logic we can even accept a quasi-conservative liberal like Biden as being good for the left, so long as the alternative candidate would have been worse. This pragmatic vision that is devoid of ideology is the kind of thought process that explains why the left keeps losing and the far right keeps strengthening, regardless of whether the nominally leftist candidate is in power or not.

On January 02 2020 18:53 Biff The Understudy wrote:

American society is so far on the right that in the realm of the possible right now, liberals and leftists want exactly the same thing. The end goal might not be the exact same (even though I'm not even sure about that) but both liberals and leftist basically want the US to look a little bit more like Denmark.

Now we can debate whether or not we want a narrative to keep people fired up for elections about how we want to change the world radically. If you have good memory, that's what got Obama elected the first time (he was a bit the Bernie of 2008) and that costed him hugely when people realized he was only ever going to manage a universal healthcare, a cleanup of lobbyists in Washington, a comprehensive financial reform we could only dream of in the EU and a few other things instead of the socialist paradise they believed he would bring.

I don't care about that. If you want to talk about great ideals and political theory that never see the light of the day, that's fine. I want poor people who get cancer to be treated instead of dying at home with no help because they don't have an insurance. See, I believe that's what matters.


When it comes to Norway, what I meant is that the context, and therefore the range of possibilities is totally different. Instead of being wayyyyyy right of what american liberals want, the country is further on the left than them. Suddenly being liberal and left wing are two totally different things and the result of both in office will be different. Just as Macron would be a left wing wet dream in the US although in France he is centre right, Obama would be somewhere in the centre in Norway. Again. It's a question of context.

On January 02 2020 19:01 GreenHorizons wrote:


I get your point/argument and typically it would win the day (did the last 40+ years Neb referenced earlier) but how do you reconcile that with what's in the realm of necessary to mitigate global ecological collapse?

On January 02 2020 19:12 Gorsameth wrote:
By accepting that there is absolutely no support for the radical changes needed and that its just not going to happen.
And yes I am aware that is a very pessimistic outlook and that it means humanity is basically fucked but I find it hard to hold any other view when looking at events both local and global.