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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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United States44286 Posts
They give us all these goods and they don't take anything from us, the bastards.
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On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff.
Foreign policy via multinational corporations coming home.
Don't think people appreciate what that means, so here's an example:
In March 2007 Chiquita Brands pleaded guilty in a United States Federal court to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, when it admitted to the payment of more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a group that the United States has labeled a terrorist organization since 2001. Under a plea agreement, Chiquita Brands agreed to pay $25 million in restitution and damages to the families of victims of the AUC. The AUC had been paid to protect the company's interest in the region.[59]
In addition to monetary payments, Chiquita has also been accused of smuggling weapons (3,000 AK-47s) to the AUC and in assisting the AUC in smuggling drugs to Europe.[60] Chiquita Brands admitted that they paid AUC operatives to silence union organizers and intimidate farmers into selling only to Chiquita. In the plea agreement, the Colombian government let Chiquita Brands keep the names of U.S. Citizens who brokered this agreement with the AUC secret, in exchange for relief to 390 families.
Despite calls from Colombian authorities and human rights organizations to extradite the U.S. citizens responsible for war crimes and aiding a terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to grant the request, citing 'conflicts of law'. As with other high-profile cases involving wrongdoing by American companies abroad, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice are very careful to hand over any American citizen to be tried under another country's legal system, so for the time being Chiquita Brands International avoided a catastrophic scandal, and instead walked away with a humiliating defeat in court and eight of its employees fired.
en.wikipedia.org
And another: The US Supreme Court has ruled food giants Nestlé USA and Cargill can't be sued for child slavery ...
On February 04 2025 04:05 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 03:47 Simberto wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Funnily enough, this is also exactly what people have warned about before Trump got elected. This is scary shit. You are currently seeing your democracy being dismantled. Trump is systematically removing anyone who is not loyal from all key positions in the country. And we are less than a month in. At this rate, if he does another Januar 6th, there will not be anyone left to stop it. Indeed. 2016 was pretty shit already but this term has injected the steroids in basically all domains. It’s considerably worse, and quicker in taking shape. I look forward to another 4 years of smug ‘centrist’ types just ignoring this and saying the real problem is the left is too mean in calling it out of course If we only didn’t call the racism, or general idiocy for what it is then they’d not do that! It’s not remotely subtle, or cleverly disguised. If you’re down with this administration you’re either a Fascist or a happy Fascist enabler, and it’s as simple as that. Gurn all you want, you made your bed so stop fucking whinging about a spade being called a spade. The "Pied piper" strategy may be the most catastrophic political play in modern US politics
We applying this to Democrats voting for his cabinet?
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On February 04 2025 04:19 Dan HH wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 03:47 Simberto wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Funnily enough, this is also exactly what people have warned about before Trump got elected. This is scary shit. You are currently seeing your democracy being dismantled. Trump is systematically removing anyone who is not loyal from all key positions in the country. And we are less than a month in. At this rate, if he does another Januar 6th, there will not be anyone left to stop it. The lack of reaction from the public is shocking, there's only been some tiny protests so far. In the past couple of weeks there were protests of 100k+ in Serbia, Slovakia, Germany for relatively small potatoes compared to what's happening in the US. Country's being dismantled in front of their eyes and they write fanfics about hypothetical socialist revolutions in 2600 while eating dumplings on the couch. Figure out how to convince these libs/Democrats that they have to do more than vote/demand votes every couple years and we can do it tomorrow.
Instead Democrats are in complete directionless disarray with their "first step" already looking pretty shaky.
In private meetings and at public events, elected Democrats appear leaderless, rudderless and divided. They disagree over how often and how stridently to oppose Trump. They have no shared understanding of why they lost the election, never mind how they can win in the future.
And in a first step toward elevating new leaders, an election this weekend for chair of the Democratic National Committee, the party chose a candidate, Ken Martin of Minnesota, who said he planned to conduct a postelection review largely focused on tactics and messaging. Martin said he had not determined the parameters of the review, other than that he was not interested in discussing whether former President Joe Biden should have sought reelection.
Murphy (who I picked on recently) said something important that connects to the question I'm asking Wombat. and anyone still betting on Democrats, electoralism, and US institutions.
“It’s going to be very hard to mobilize people in America if we consistently deliver lots of votes for nominees and legislation,” Murphy said. “You have to portray a sense of alarm and urgency, or people will continue to believe that the country will be OK.”
www.nytimes.com
EDIT: Pretty sure the anticapitalist gets it On February 04 2025 04:32 Zambrah wrote:
Protests dont do shit in the US, we've seen that over the last few decades, I dont blame people for not wanting to go out and waste their time. Protests work when they can't be waited out or are targeted towards people who will listen to the protestors, Trump and the fascist brigade isnt that.
If people wanted to make their voices heard they should boot up GTA and toss some bricks through key houses windows and make life a nightmare for the powerful people of GTA whenever they can get away with it in GTA.
But also, yes fascists will use people playing GTA as justification to crackdown harder.
Before anyone says "that's why we have to play job simulator" remember that there's no greater power around for us to appeal to with that. You're just not resisting the fascists at that point.
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Northern Ireland27343 Posts
On February 04 2025 05:24 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Foreign policy via multinational corporations coming home. Don't think people appreciate what that means, so here's an example: Show nested quote +In March 2007 Chiquita Brands pleaded guilty in a United States Federal court to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, when it admitted to the payment of more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a group that the United States has labeled a terrorist organization since 2001. Under a plea agreement, Chiquita Brands agreed to pay $25 million in restitution and damages to the families of victims of the AUC. The AUC had been paid to protect the company's interest in the region.[59]
In addition to monetary payments, Chiquita has also been accused of smuggling weapons (3,000 AK-47s) to the AUC and in assisting the AUC in smuggling drugs to Europe.[60] Chiquita Brands admitted that they paid AUC operatives to silence union organizers and intimidate farmers into selling only to Chiquita. In the plea agreement, the Colombian government let Chiquita Brands keep the names of U.S. Citizens who brokered this agreement with the AUC secret, in exchange for relief to 390 families.
Despite calls from Colombian authorities and human rights organizations to extradite the U.S. citizens responsible for war crimes and aiding a terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to grant the request, citing 'conflicts of law'. As with other high-profile cases involving wrongdoing by American companies abroad, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice are very careful to hand over any American citizen to be tried under another country's legal system, so for the time being Chiquita Brands International avoided a catastrophic scandal, and instead walked away with a humiliating defeat in court and eight of its employees fired. en.wikipedia.orgAnd another: The US Supreme Court has ruled food giants Nestlé USA and Cargill can't be sued for child slavery ...Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 04:05 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 03:47 Simberto wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Funnily enough, this is also exactly what people have warned about before Trump got elected. This is scary shit. You are currently seeing your democracy being dismantled. Trump is systematically removing anyone who is not loyal from all key positions in the country. And we are less than a month in. At this rate, if he does another Januar 6th, there will not be anyone left to stop it. Indeed. 2016 was pretty shit already but this term has injected the steroids in basically all domains. It’s considerably worse, and quicker in taking shape. I look forward to another 4 years of smug ‘centrist’ types just ignoring this and saying the real problem is the left is too mean in calling it out of course If we only didn’t call the racism, or general idiocy for what it is then they’d not do that! It’s not remotely subtle, or cleverly disguised. If you’re down with this administration you’re either a Fascist or a happy Fascist enabler, and it’s as simple as that. Gurn all you want, you made your bed so stop fucking whinging about a spade being called a spade. The " Pied piper" strategy may be the most catastrophic political play in modern US politics We applying this to Democrats voting for his cabinet?
Whether a rhetorical question for the benefit of the thread,
or an earnest one that you’ve forgotten my previously stated position on, the answer is simply yes?
As I mentioned Schrödinger’s socialist a few pages back, so too do the Dems employ Schrodinger’s Fascist and have very liberally done so in recent times, especially post 2016
So dangerous that you should subsume all your principles to keep out the greater evil, but apparently not dangerous enough to refuse to confirn cabinet appointments. Or do much of much really.
A lot of shite is posted in this page so keeping track gets tricky, but I’ve always agreed with that contention, and have gone to bat on it multiple times.
Granted my contempt for the Democrats isn’t quite at your level, albeit pretty damn high.
There aren’t really any positive reads of recent Democrat strategy like.
The absolute best is ‘we don’t really think Trump is a Fascist but we thought it was a good electoral strategy’. Which isn’t great but does beat ‘we think Trump is a Fascist but if we wins an election we won’t do shit’. Or ‘Wait, Trump has Fascist tendencies? Really?!’
There’s also the issue of electoralism as a more general approach, and that approach within specific contexts.
It’s that level more hopeless in the US context than elsewhere. And it’s still frequently deficient elsewhere, but to much less pronounced degrees.
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On February 04 2025 05:56 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 05:24 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Foreign policy via multinational corporations coming home. Don't think people appreciate what that means, so here's an example: In March 2007 Chiquita Brands pleaded guilty in a United States Federal court to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, when it admitted to the payment of more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a group that the United States has labeled a terrorist organization since 2001. Under a plea agreement, Chiquita Brands agreed to pay $25 million in restitution and damages to the families of victims of the AUC. The AUC had been paid to protect the company's interest in the region.[59]
In addition to monetary payments, Chiquita has also been accused of smuggling weapons (3,000 AK-47s) to the AUC and in assisting the AUC in smuggling drugs to Europe.[60] Chiquita Brands admitted that they paid AUC operatives to silence union organizers and intimidate farmers into selling only to Chiquita. In the plea agreement, the Colombian government let Chiquita Brands keep the names of U.S. Citizens who brokered this agreement with the AUC secret, in exchange for relief to 390 families.
Despite calls from Colombian authorities and human rights organizations to extradite the U.S. citizens responsible for war crimes and aiding a terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to grant the request, citing 'conflicts of law'. As with other high-profile cases involving wrongdoing by American companies abroad, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice are very careful to hand over any American citizen to be tried under another country's legal system, so for the time being Chiquita Brands International avoided a catastrophic scandal, and instead walked away with a humiliating defeat in court and eight of its employees fired. en.wikipedia.orgAnd another: The US Supreme Court has ruled food giants Nestlé USA and Cargill can't be sued for child slavery ...On February 04 2025 04:05 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 03:47 Simberto wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Funnily enough, this is also exactly what people have warned about before Trump got elected. This is scary shit. You are currently seeing your democracy being dismantled. Trump is systematically removing anyone who is not loyal from all key positions in the country. And we are less than a month in. At this rate, if he does another Januar 6th, there will not be anyone left to stop it. Indeed. 2016 was pretty shit already but this term has injected the steroids in basically all domains. It’s considerably worse, and quicker in taking shape. I look forward to another 4 years of smug ‘centrist’ types just ignoring this and saying the real problem is the left is too mean in calling it out of course If we only didn’t call the racism, or general idiocy for what it is then they’d not do that! It’s not remotely subtle, or cleverly disguised. If you’re down with this administration you’re either a Fascist or a happy Fascist enabler, and it’s as simple as that. Gurn all you want, you made your bed so stop fucking whinging about a spade being called a spade. The " Pied piper" strategy may be the most catastrophic political play in modern US politics We applying this to Democrats voting for his cabinet? Whether a rhetorical question for the benefit of the thread, or an earnest one that you’ve forgotten my previously stated position on, the answer is simply yes? + Show Spoiler +As I mentioned Schrödinger’s socialist a few pages back, so too do the Dems employ Schrodinger’s Fascist and have very liberally done so in recent times, especially post 2016
So dangerous that you should subsume all your principles to keep out the greater evil, but apparently not dangerous enough to refuse to confirn cabinet appointments. Or do much of much really.
A lot of shite is posted in this page so keeping track gets tricky, but I’ve always agreed with that contention, and have gone to bat on it multiple times.
Granted my contempt for the Democrats isn’t quite at your level, albeit pretty damn high.
There aren’t really any positive reads of recent Democrat strategy like.
The absolute best is ‘we don’t really think Trump is a Fascist but we thought it was a good electoral strategy’. Which isn’t great but does beat ‘we think Trump is a Fascist but if we wins an election we won’t do shit’. Or ‘Wait, Trump has Fascist tendencies? Really?!’
There’s also the issue of electoralism as a more general approach, and that approach within specific contexts.
It’s that level more hopeless in the US context than elsewhere. And it’s still frequently deficient elsewhere, but to much less pronounced degrees.
A bit of both in that it raises the question of: How many fascist/enablers do you need in your party to be a party of fascists?
But also, does it matter how many it takes if it is already everyone?
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So I see Trump is now trying to enact the rule-through-fear part of the fascist takeover. Might actually work. But could also backfire very hard.
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On February 04 2025 06:26 Magic Powers wrote:
So I see Trump is now trying to enact the rule-through-fear part of the fascist takeover. Might actually work. But could also backfire very hard.
If I knew an oligarch was given access to my financial information and the social media magnate was just slapped with a hefty fine, mostly as an ideologically motivated message maybe, I‘d leave my country.
While I can.
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Northern Ireland27343 Posts
On February 04 2025 07:51 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 06:26 Magic Powers wrote:
So I see Trump is now trying to enact the rule-through-fear part of the fascist takeover. Might actually work. But could also backfire very hard. If I knew an oligarch was given access to my financial information and the social media magnate was just slapped with a hefty fine, mostly as an ideologically motivated message maybe, I‘d leave my country. While I can.
What’s this referring to incidentally?
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The DOGE which was created out of thin air, led by a guy never cleared by congress used brute force and ressources from a foreign national billionaire with recent contacts to mosovow and china, cleared "Top secret" by Trump, to gain access to ALL fed employees data and take control the flow of federal money.
Openly threatening federal employees with instant termination if they speak or act up, sending out gag-orders to public relation offices of all federal agencies.
How is this legal?
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On February 04 2025 07:56 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 07:51 Vivax wrote:On February 04 2025 06:26 Magic Powers wrote:
So I see Trump is now trying to enact the rule-through-fear part of the fascist takeover. Might actually work. But could also backfire very hard. If I knew an oligarch was given access to my financial information and the social media magnate was just slapped with a hefty fine, mostly as an ideologically motivated message maybe, I‘d leave my country. While I can. What’s this referring to incidentally?
I can‘t find the articles to provide the source atm but it was from either derstandard or il messaggero respectively. Should be from last week or so.
Apparently Musk got access to financial data of citizens and Meta got fined 25 million for some reason around the capitol riots or its ‚opinion’ thereof iirc.
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Northern Ireland27343 Posts
On February 04 2025 06:03 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 05:56 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 05:24 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Foreign policy via multinational corporations coming home. Don't think people appreciate what that means, so here's an example: In March 2007 Chiquita Brands pleaded guilty in a United States Federal court to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, when it admitted to the payment of more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a group that the United States has labeled a terrorist organization since 2001. Under a plea agreement, Chiquita Brands agreed to pay $25 million in restitution and damages to the families of victims of the AUC. The AUC had been paid to protect the company's interest in the region.[59]
In addition to monetary payments, Chiquita has also been accused of smuggling weapons (3,000 AK-47s) to the AUC and in assisting the AUC in smuggling drugs to Europe.[60] Chiquita Brands admitted that they paid AUC operatives to silence union organizers and intimidate farmers into selling only to Chiquita. In the plea agreement, the Colombian government let Chiquita Brands keep the names of U.S. Citizens who brokered this agreement with the AUC secret, in exchange for relief to 390 families.
Despite calls from Colombian authorities and human rights organizations to extradite the U.S. citizens responsible for war crimes and aiding a terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to grant the request, citing 'conflicts of law'. As with other high-profile cases involving wrongdoing by American companies abroad, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice are very careful to hand over any American citizen to be tried under another country's legal system, so for the time being Chiquita Brands International avoided a catastrophic scandal, and instead walked away with a humiliating defeat in court and eight of its employees fired. en.wikipedia.orgAnd another: The US Supreme Court has ruled food giants Nestlé USA and Cargill can't be sued for child slavery ...On February 04 2025 04:05 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 03:47 Simberto wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Funnily enough, this is also exactly what people have warned about before Trump got elected. This is scary shit. You are currently seeing your democracy being dismantled. Trump is systematically removing anyone who is not loyal from all key positions in the country. And we are less than a month in. At this rate, if he does another Januar 6th, there will not be anyone left to stop it. Indeed. 2016 was pretty shit already but this term has injected the steroids in basically all domains. It’s considerably worse, and quicker in taking shape. I look forward to another 4 years of smug ‘centrist’ types just ignoring this and saying the real problem is the left is too mean in calling it out of course If we only didn’t call the racism, or general idiocy for what it is then they’d not do that! It’s not remotely subtle, or cleverly disguised. If you’re down with this administration you’re either a Fascist or a happy Fascist enabler, and it’s as simple as that. Gurn all you want, you made your bed so stop fucking whinging about a spade being called a spade. The " Pied piper" strategy may be the most catastrophic political play in modern US politics We applying this to Democrats voting for his cabinet? Whether a rhetorical question for the benefit of the thread, or an earnest one that you’ve forgotten my previously stated position on, the answer is simply yes? + Show Spoiler +As I mentioned Schrödinger’s socialist a few pages back, so too do the Dems employ Schrodinger’s Fascist and have very liberally done so in recent times, especially post 2016
So dangerous that you should subsume all your principles to keep out the greater evil, but apparently not dangerous enough to refuse to confirn cabinet appointments. Or do much of much really.
A lot of shite is posted in this page so keeping track gets tricky, but I’ve always agreed with that contention, and have gone to bat on it multiple times.
Granted my contempt for the Democrats isn’t quite at your level, albeit pretty damn high.
There aren’t really any positive reads of recent Democrat strategy like.
The absolute best is ‘we don’t really think Trump is a Fascist but we thought it was a good electoral strategy’. Which isn’t great but does beat ‘we think Trump is a Fascist but if we wins an election we won’t do shit’. Or ‘Wait, Trump has Fascist tendencies? Really?!’
There’s also the issue of electoralism as a more general approach, and that approach within specific contexts.
It’s that level more hopeless in the US context than elsewhere. And it’s still frequently deficient elsewhere, but to much less pronounced degrees. A bit of both in that it raises the question of: How many fascist/enablers do you need in your party to be a party of fascists? But also, does it matter how many it takes if it is already everyone?
How long is a piece of string?
Is the metric being successful in preventing the onset of Fascism or just the moral purity of the attempt?
Is not wanting to trigger a complete further breakdown of political structures and precipitate a quite likely very destructive civil conflict in the name of anti-Fascism summat that makes you a Fascist?
I mean at a fundamental brass tacks level, sure.
It’s not like Trump’s brown shirts were going around beating folks intending to vote against him, or the whole shebang was rigged.
Folks coulda, I dunno. Voted or something?
We’d still be in that state of electoralism not delivering, and pondering what to do there but having staved off a previously covert but now much more mask off, overtly fascist regime.
For all the many failures of centrist politics to allay the encroachment of Fascists in recent times, the left has been even more ineffectual. Infuriatingly so if you’re so-inclined, as I am myself.
Even if it’s correct, ‘I don’t believe in electoralism so won’t do the lowest effort form of political engagement, but other folks are failing us by not being more politically engaged’ is up there with the most irritating, alienating messaging going.
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On February 04 2025 08:45 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 06:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 05:56 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 05:24 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Foreign policy via multinational corporations coming home. Don't think people appreciate what that means, so here's an example: In March 2007 Chiquita Brands pleaded guilty in a United States Federal court to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, when it admitted to the payment of more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a group that the United States has labeled a terrorist organization since 2001. Under a plea agreement, Chiquita Brands agreed to pay $25 million in restitution and damages to the families of victims of the AUC. The AUC had been paid to protect the company's interest in the region.[59]
In addition to monetary payments, Chiquita has also been accused of smuggling weapons (3,000 AK-47s) to the AUC and in assisting the AUC in smuggling drugs to Europe.[60] Chiquita Brands admitted that they paid AUC operatives to silence union organizers and intimidate farmers into selling only to Chiquita. In the plea agreement, the Colombian government let Chiquita Brands keep the names of U.S. Citizens who brokered this agreement with the AUC secret, in exchange for relief to 390 families.
Despite calls from Colombian authorities and human rights organizations to extradite the U.S. citizens responsible for war crimes and aiding a terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to grant the request, citing 'conflicts of law'. As with other high-profile cases involving wrongdoing by American companies abroad, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice are very careful to hand over any American citizen to be tried under another country's legal system, so for the time being Chiquita Brands International avoided a catastrophic scandal, and instead walked away with a humiliating defeat in court and eight of its employees fired. en.wikipedia.orgAnd another: The US Supreme Court has ruled food giants Nestlé USA and Cargill can't be sued for child slavery ...On February 04 2025 04:05 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 03:47 Simberto wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Funnily enough, this is also exactly what people have warned about before Trump got elected. This is scary shit. You are currently seeing your democracy being dismantled. Trump is systematically removing anyone who is not loyal from all key positions in the country. And we are less than a month in. At this rate, if he does another Januar 6th, there will not be anyone left to stop it. Indeed. 2016 was pretty shit already but this term has injected the steroids in basically all domains. It’s considerably worse, and quicker in taking shape. I look forward to another 4 years of smug ‘centrist’ types just ignoring this and saying the real problem is the left is too mean in calling it out of course If we only didn’t call the racism, or general idiocy for what it is then they’d not do that! It’s not remotely subtle, or cleverly disguised. If you’re down with this administration you’re either a Fascist or a happy Fascist enabler, and it’s as simple as that. Gurn all you want, you made your bed so stop fucking whinging about a spade being called a spade. The " Pied piper" strategy may be the most catastrophic political play in modern US politics We applying this to Democrats voting for his cabinet? Whether a rhetorical question for the benefit of the thread, or an earnest one that you’ve forgotten my previously stated position on, the answer is simply yes? + Show Spoiler +As I mentioned Schrödinger’s socialist a few pages back, so too do the Dems employ Schrodinger’s Fascist and have very liberally done so in recent times, especially post 2016
So dangerous that you should subsume all your principles to keep out the greater evil, but apparently not dangerous enough to refuse to confirn cabinet appointments. Or do much of much really.
A lot of shite is posted in this page so keeping track gets tricky, but I’ve always agreed with that contention, and have gone to bat on it multiple times.
Granted my contempt for the Democrats isn’t quite at your level, albeit pretty damn high.
There aren’t really any positive reads of recent Democrat strategy like.
The absolute best is ‘we don’t really think Trump is a Fascist but we thought it was a good electoral strategy’. Which isn’t great but does beat ‘we think Trump is a Fascist but if we wins an election we won’t do shit’. Or ‘Wait, Trump has Fascist tendencies? Really?!’
There’s also the issue of electoralism as a more general approach, and that approach within specific contexts.
It’s that level more hopeless in the US context than elsewhere. And it’s still frequently deficient elsewhere, but to much less pronounced degrees. A bit of both in that it raises the question of: How many fascist/enablers do you need in your party to be a party of fascists? But also, does it matter how many it takes if it is already everyone? How long is a piece of string? + Show Spoiler +
Is the metric being successful in preventing the onset of Fascism or just the moral purity of the attempt?
Is not wanting to trigger a complete further breakdown of political structures and precipitate a quite likely very destructive civil conflict in the name of anti-Fascism summat that makes you a Fascist?
I mean at a fundamental brass tacks level, sure.
It’s not like Trump’s brown shirts were going around beating folks intending to vote against him, or the whole shebang was rigged.
Folks coulda, I dunno. Voted or something?
We’d still be in that state of electoralism not delivering, and pondering what to do there but having staved off a previously covert but now much more mask off, overtly fascist regime.
For all the many failures of centrist politics to allay the encroachment of Fascists in recent times, the left has been even more ineffectual. Infuriatingly so if you’re so-inclined, as I am myself.
Even if it’s correct, ‘I don’t believe in electoralism so won’t do the lowest effort form of political engagement, but other folks are failing us by not being more politically engaged’ is up there with the most irritating, alienating messaging going.
That was a lot, but none of it seemed to answer the pretty straightforward questions. Maybe that was a reluctant/frustrated "yes Democrats are a party of fascists, but also, people should have voted for those fascists"?
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United States44286 Posts
Trump’s original tariff EO specified that there would be additional tariffs if Canada responded in kind. Canada responded in kind and Trump canceled the original EO and decided not to tariff Canada right now. Trump and Poilievre in absolute DEI right now while Trudeau looks like a total tariff.
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1. Without GOP Voter surpression, Harris might have won the Election anyway.
2. The "Brown shirts going around phase" was in 2020, Hitlers first attempt of a coup was in 1923, attempting a coup in Munich.
3. The Nazis taking control was 10 years later via elections and political system failure. After 1933 and the brown shirts were obsolete, because the nazi party overtook any and all aspect of life (=Gleichschaltung), threatening people into cooperation. Teachers, Bureaucrats, Businessowners, Workers.. if your existence depends on having the "correct" political beliefs.. people change really fast.
When the primitve gang types got too nervous, hitler had their leadership killed (Night of the long knifes). That's for when the "Proud boys" start to act up.
4. Collecting names was a cornerstone of the Holocaust. When Nazi Germany took the netherlands, the people helped heaps with delivering jews to the trains. Even jews helped in exchange for higher positions and status, believing it would shield them from being transfered to what they thought were labour camps for a limted time. Deadly wrong.
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Northern Ireland27343 Posts
On February 04 2025 09:04 KwarK wrote:
Trump’s original tariff EO specified that there would be additional tariffs if Canada responded in kind. Canada responded in kind and Trump canceled the original EO and decided not to tariff Canada right now. Trump and Poilievre in absolute DEI right now while Trudeau looks like a total tariff.
Is there any CRT in this?
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On February 04 2025 09:18 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 09:04 KwarK wrote:
Trump’s original tariff EO specified that there would be additional tariffs if Canada responded in kind. Canada responded in kind and Trump canceled the original EO and decided not to tariff Canada right now. Trump and Poilievre in absolute DEI right now while Trudeau looks like a total tariff. Is there any CRT in this?
Yep. C.R.T. stands for the 3 newest American states: Cuba, Reenland, and the Thrillippines.
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United States44286 Posts
On February 04 2025 09:18 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 09:04 KwarK wrote:
Trump’s original tariff EO specified that there would be additional tariffs if Canada responded in kind. Canada responded in kind and Trump canceled the original EO and decided not to tariff Canada right now. Trump and Poilievre in absolute DEI right now while Trudeau looks like a total tariff. Is there any CRT in this?
The entire negotiating strategy was a pile of CRT. They opened by telling Canada that they were going to tariff Canada whatever Canada did and that they weren’t willing to negotiate. That there was nothing Canada could do about it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0hiyEJQCr_4
For some reason the people of Canada felt that a complete refusal to negotiate and instead just doing naked unproved aggressive economic warfare wasn’t a negotiating strategy and treated it as some kind of attack. So Trump pulled out his strategy book from previous negotiations with the Taliban and simply surrendered as quickly as possible and as frequently as possible.
They took something that they’d had for months, declared that the whole thing was a ploy to obtain it, and agreed to give Canada what they wanted.
CRT tier leadership.
Trump had to fight for what Biden already negotiated to receive.
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On February 04 2025 08:45 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 06:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 05:56 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 05:24 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Foreign policy via multinational corporations coming home. Don't think people appreciate what that means, so here's an example: In March 2007 Chiquita Brands pleaded guilty in a United States Federal court to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, when it admitted to the payment of more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a group that the United States has labeled a terrorist organization since 2001. Under a plea agreement, Chiquita Brands agreed to pay $25 million in restitution and damages to the families of victims of the AUC. The AUC had been paid to protect the company's interest in the region.[59]
In addition to monetary payments, Chiquita has also been accused of smuggling weapons (3,000 AK-47s) to the AUC and in assisting the AUC in smuggling drugs to Europe.[60] Chiquita Brands admitted that they paid AUC operatives to silence union organizers and intimidate farmers into selling only to Chiquita. In the plea agreement, the Colombian government let Chiquita Brands keep the names of U.S. Citizens who brokered this agreement with the AUC secret, in exchange for relief to 390 families.
Despite calls from Colombian authorities and human rights organizations to extradite the U.S. citizens responsible for war crimes and aiding a terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to grant the request, citing 'conflicts of law'. As with other high-profile cases involving wrongdoing by American companies abroad, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice are very careful to hand over any American citizen to be tried under another country's legal system, so for the time being Chiquita Brands International avoided a catastrophic scandal, and instead walked away with a humiliating defeat in court and eight of its employees fired. en.wikipedia.orgAnd another: The US Supreme Court has ruled food giants Nestlé USA and Cargill can't be sued for child slavery ...On February 04 2025 04:05 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 03:47 Simberto wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Funnily enough, this is also exactly what people have warned about before Trump got elected. This is scary shit. You are currently seeing your democracy being dismantled. Trump is systematically removing anyone who is not loyal from all key positions in the country. And we are less than a month in. At this rate, if he does another Januar 6th, there will not be anyone left to stop it. Indeed. 2016 was pretty shit already but this term has injected the steroids in basically all domains. It’s considerably worse, and quicker in taking shape. I look forward to another 4 years of smug ‘centrist’ types just ignoring this and saying the real problem is the left is too mean in calling it out of course If we only didn’t call the racism, or general idiocy for what it is then they’d not do that! It’s not remotely subtle, or cleverly disguised. If you’re down with this administration you’re either a Fascist or a happy Fascist enabler, and it’s as simple as that. Gurn all you want, you made your bed so stop fucking whinging about a spade being called a spade. The " Pied piper" strategy may be the most catastrophic political play in modern US politics We applying this to Democrats voting for his cabinet? Whether a rhetorical question for the benefit of the thread, or an earnest one that you’ve forgotten my previously stated position on, the answer is simply yes? + Show Spoiler +As I mentioned Schrödinger’s socialist a few pages back, so too do the Dems employ Schrodinger’s Fascist and have very liberally done so in recent times, especially post 2016
So dangerous that you should subsume all your principles to keep out the greater evil, but apparently not dangerous enough to refuse to confirn cabinet appointments. Or do much of much really.
A lot of shite is posted in this page so keeping track gets tricky, but I’ve always agreed with that contention, and have gone to bat on it multiple times.
Granted my contempt for the Democrats isn’t quite at your level, albeit pretty damn high.
There aren’t really any positive reads of recent Democrat strategy like.
The absolute best is ‘we don’t really think Trump is a Fascist but we thought it was a good electoral strategy’. Which isn’t great but does beat ‘we think Trump is a Fascist but if we wins an election we won’t do shit’. Or ‘Wait, Trump has Fascist tendencies? Really?!’
There’s also the issue of electoralism as a more general approach, and that approach within specific contexts.
It’s that level more hopeless in the US context than elsewhere. And it’s still frequently deficient elsewhere, but to much less pronounced degrees. A bit of both in that it raises the question of: How many fascist/enablers do you need in your party to be a party of fascists? But also, does it matter how many it takes if it is already everyone? How long is a piece of string? Is the metric being successful in preventing the onset of Fascism or just the moral purity of the attempt? Is not wanting to trigger a complete further breakdown of political structures and precipitate a quite likely very destructive civil conflict in the name of anti-Fascism summat that makes you a Fascist? I mean at a fundamental brass tacks level, sure. It’s not like Trump’s brown shirts were going around beating folks intending to vote against him, or the whole shebang was rigged. Folks coulda, I dunno. Voted or something? We’d still be in that state of electoralism not delivering, and pondering what to do there but having staved off a previously covert but now much more mask off, overtly fascist regime. For all the many failures of centrist politics to allay the encroachment of Fascists in recent times, the left has been even more ineffectual. Infuriatingly so if you’re so-inclined, as I am myself. Even if it’s correct, ‘I don’t believe in electoralism so won’t do the lowest effort form of political engagement, but other folks are failing us by not being more politically engaged’ is up there with the most irritating, alienating messaging going.
I think this is a fair point. I am blessed to live in a country with a coalition between socialists and social democrats ruling. One of the protests that preceded Occupy Wall street was the 15M movement in Spain. But whereas the Indignados went on to inspire (not form, Podemos' origins are more bourgeois than that, but its political ideas were essentially 100% aligned with the Indignados) a political party that went on to govern, I'm not sure the Occupy movement was more than a speedbump in the US.
If there were ever a time to Occupy the Mall, that time is now, yet there doesn't seem to actually be any opposition to Trump at all. And yes, that *should* be the Democrats' job (or actually any congressman with even half a spine). But similarly it was the Democrats' job to hold those accountable for the subprime mortgage fiasco, and when that didn't happen, the protests were omnipresent. Yet they fizzled and are now nowhere to be seen. Compare that to the Gilettes Jaunes in France, and Macron is just your typical neoliberal stooge doing typical political overreach.
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On February 04 2025 09:51 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 08:45 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 06:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 05:56 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 05:24 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Foreign policy via multinational corporations coming home. Don't think people appreciate what that means, so here's an example: In March 2007 Chiquita Brands pleaded guilty in a United States Federal court to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, when it admitted to the payment of more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a group that the United States has labeled a terrorist organization since 2001. Under a plea agreement, Chiquita Brands agreed to pay $25 million in restitution and damages to the families of victims of the AUC. The AUC had been paid to protect the company's interest in the region.[59]
In addition to monetary payments, Chiquita has also been accused of smuggling weapons (3,000 AK-47s) to the AUC and in assisting the AUC in smuggling drugs to Europe.[60] Chiquita Brands admitted that they paid AUC operatives to silence union organizers and intimidate farmers into selling only to Chiquita. In the plea agreement, the Colombian government let Chiquita Brands keep the names of U.S. Citizens who brokered this agreement with the AUC secret, in exchange for relief to 390 families.
Despite calls from Colombian authorities and human rights organizations to extradite the U.S. citizens responsible for war crimes and aiding a terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to grant the request, citing 'conflicts of law'. As with other high-profile cases involving wrongdoing by American companies abroad, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice are very careful to hand over any American citizen to be tried under another country's legal system, so for the time being Chiquita Brands International avoided a catastrophic scandal, and instead walked away with a humiliating defeat in court and eight of its employees fired. en.wikipedia.orgAnd another: The US Supreme Court has ruled food giants Nestlé USA and Cargill can't be sued for child slavery ...On February 04 2025 04:05 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 03:47 Simberto wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Funnily enough, this is also exactly what people have warned about before Trump got elected. This is scary shit. You are currently seeing your democracy being dismantled. Trump is systematically removing anyone who is not loyal from all key positions in the country. And we are less than a month in. At this rate, if he does another Januar 6th, there will not be anyone left to stop it. Indeed. 2016 was pretty shit already but this term has injected the steroids in basically all domains. It’s considerably worse, and quicker in taking shape. I look forward to another 4 years of smug ‘centrist’ types just ignoring this and saying the real problem is the left is too mean in calling it out of course If we only didn’t call the racism, or general idiocy for what it is then they’d not do that! It’s not remotely subtle, or cleverly disguised. If you’re down with this administration you’re either a Fascist or a happy Fascist enabler, and it’s as simple as that. Gurn all you want, you made your bed so stop fucking whinging about a spade being called a spade. The " Pied piper" strategy may be the most catastrophic political play in modern US politics We applying this to Democrats voting for his cabinet? Whether a rhetorical question for the benefit of the thread, or an earnest one that you’ve forgotten my previously stated position on, the answer is simply yes? + Show Spoiler +As I mentioned Schrödinger’s socialist a few pages back, so too do the Dems employ Schrodinger’s Fascist and have very liberally done so in recent times, especially post 2016
So dangerous that you should subsume all your principles to keep out the greater evil, but apparently not dangerous enough to refuse to confirn cabinet appointments. Or do much of much really.
A lot of shite is posted in this page so keeping track gets tricky, but I’ve always agreed with that contention, and have gone to bat on it multiple times.
Granted my contempt for the Democrats isn’t quite at your level, albeit pretty damn high.
There aren’t really any positive reads of recent Democrat strategy like.
The absolute best is ‘we don’t really think Trump is a Fascist but we thought it was a good electoral strategy’. Which isn’t great but does beat ‘we think Trump is a Fascist but if we wins an election we won’t do shit’. Or ‘Wait, Trump has Fascist tendencies? Really?!’
There’s also the issue of electoralism as a more general approach, and that approach within specific contexts.
It’s that level more hopeless in the US context than elsewhere. And it’s still frequently deficient elsewhere, but to much less pronounced degrees. A bit of both in that it raises the question of: How many fascist/enablers do you need in your party to be a party of fascists? But also, does it matter how many it takes if it is already everyone? How long is a piece of string? Is the metric being successful in preventing the onset of Fascism or just the moral purity of the attempt? Is not wanting to trigger a complete further breakdown of political structures and precipitate a quite likely very destructive civil conflict in the name of anti-Fascism summat that makes you a Fascist? I mean at a fundamental brass tacks level, sure. It’s not like Trump’s brown shirts were going around beating folks intending to vote against him, or the whole shebang was rigged. Folks coulda, I dunno. Voted or something? We’d still be in that state of electoralism not delivering, and pondering what to do there but having staved off a previously covert but now much more mask off, overtly fascist regime. For all the many failures of centrist politics to allay the encroachment of Fascists in recent times, the left has been even more ineffectual. Infuriatingly so if you’re so-inclined, as I am myself. Even if it’s correct, ‘I don’t believe in electoralism so won’t do the lowest effort form of political engagement, but other folks are failing us by not being more politically engaged’ is up there with the most irritating, alienating messaging going. I think this is a fair point. I am blessed to live in a country with a coalition between socialists and social democrats ruling. One of the protests that preceded Occupy Wall street was the 15M movement in Spain. But whereas the Indignados went on to inspire (not form, Podemos' origins are more bourgeois than that, but its political ideas were essentially 100% aligned with the Indignados) a political party that went on to govern, I'm not sure the Occupy movement was more than a speedbump in the US. If there were ever a time to Occupy the Mall, that time is now, yet there doesn't seem to actually be any opposition to Trump at all. And yes, that *should* be the Democrats' job (or actually any congressman with even half a spine). But similarly it was the Democrats' job to hold those accountable for the subprime mortgage fiasco, and when that didn't happen, the protests were omnipresent. Yet they fizzled and are now nowhere to be seen. Compare that to the Gilettes Jaunes in France, and Macron is just your typical neoliberal stooge doing typical political overreach.
I wonder how much the horrible experience a people feel collectively from brutal dictatorships effects the political leanings of today? Like are the hopeless of Spain basically the same as the hopeless elsewhere but they know they don't want Franco back, whereas the others don't want USSR.
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Northern Ireland27343 Posts
On February 04 2025 08:57 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 08:45 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 06:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 05:56 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 05:24 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Foreign policy via multinational corporations coming home. Don't think people appreciate what that means, so here's an example: In March 2007 Chiquita Brands pleaded guilty in a United States Federal court to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, when it admitted to the payment of more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a group that the United States has labeled a terrorist organization since 2001. Under a plea agreement, Chiquita Brands agreed to pay $25 million in restitution and damages to the families of victims of the AUC. The AUC had been paid to protect the company's interest in the region.[59]
In addition to monetary payments, Chiquita has also been accused of smuggling weapons (3,000 AK-47s) to the AUC and in assisting the AUC in smuggling drugs to Europe.[60] Chiquita Brands admitted that they paid AUC operatives to silence union organizers and intimidate farmers into selling only to Chiquita. In the plea agreement, the Colombian government let Chiquita Brands keep the names of U.S. Citizens who brokered this agreement with the AUC secret, in exchange for relief to 390 families.
Despite calls from Colombian authorities and human rights organizations to extradite the U.S. citizens responsible for war crimes and aiding a terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to grant the request, citing 'conflicts of law'. As with other high-profile cases involving wrongdoing by American companies abroad, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice are very careful to hand over any American citizen to be tried under another country's legal system, so for the time being Chiquita Brands International avoided a catastrophic scandal, and instead walked away with a humiliating defeat in court and eight of its employees fired. en.wikipedia.orgAnd another: The US Supreme Court has ruled food giants Nestlé USA and Cargill can't be sued for child slavery ...On February 04 2025 04:05 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 03:47 Simberto wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Funnily enough, this is also exactly what people have warned about before Trump got elected. This is scary shit. You are currently seeing your democracy being dismantled. Trump is systematically removing anyone who is not loyal from all key positions in the country. And we are less than a month in. At this rate, if he does another Januar 6th, there will not be anyone left to stop it. Indeed. 2016 was pretty shit already but this term has injected the steroids in basically all domains. It’s considerably worse, and quicker in taking shape. I look forward to another 4 years of smug ‘centrist’ types just ignoring this and saying the real problem is the left is too mean in calling it out of course If we only didn’t call the racism, or general idiocy for what it is then they’d not do that! It’s not remotely subtle, or cleverly disguised. If you’re down with this administration you’re either a Fascist or a happy Fascist enabler, and it’s as simple as that. Gurn all you want, you made your bed so stop fucking whinging about a spade being called a spade. The " Pied piper" strategy may be the most catastrophic political play in modern US politics We applying this to Democrats voting for his cabinet? Whether a rhetorical question for the benefit of the thread, or an earnest one that you’ve forgotten my previously stated position on, the answer is simply yes? + Show Spoiler +As I mentioned Schrödinger’s socialist a few pages back, so too do the Dems employ Schrodinger’s Fascist and have very liberally done so in recent times, especially post 2016
So dangerous that you should subsume all your principles to keep out the greater evil, but apparently not dangerous enough to refuse to confirn cabinet appointments. Or do much of much really.
A lot of shite is posted in this page so keeping track gets tricky, but I’ve always agreed with that contention, and have gone to bat on it multiple times.
Granted my contempt for the Democrats isn’t quite at your level, albeit pretty damn high.
There aren’t really any positive reads of recent Democrat strategy like.
The absolute best is ‘we don’t really think Trump is a Fascist but we thought it was a good electoral strategy’. Which isn’t great but does beat ‘we think Trump is a Fascist but if we wins an election we won’t do shit’. Or ‘Wait, Trump has Fascist tendencies? Really?!’
There’s also the issue of electoralism as a more general approach, and that approach within specific contexts.
It’s that level more hopeless in the US context than elsewhere. And it’s still frequently deficient elsewhere, but to much less pronounced degrees. A bit of both in that it raises the question of: How many fascist/enablers do you need in your party to be a party of fascists? But also, does it matter how many it takes if it is already everyone? How long is a piece of string? + Show Spoiler +
Is the metric being successful in preventing the onset of Fascism or just the moral purity of the attempt?
Is not wanting to trigger a complete further breakdown of political structures and precipitate a quite likely very destructive civil conflict in the name of anti-Fascism summat that makes you a Fascist?
I mean at a fundamental brass tacks level, sure.
It’s not like Trump’s brown shirts were going around beating folks intending to vote against him, or the whole shebang was rigged.
Folks coulda, I dunno. Voted or something?
We’d still be in that state of electoralism not delivering, and pondering what to do there but having staved off a previously covert but now much more mask off, overtly fascist regime.
For all the many failures of centrist politics to allay the encroachment of Fascists in recent times, the left has been even more ineffectual. Infuriatingly so if you’re so-inclined, as I am myself.
Even if it’s correct, ‘I don’t believe in electoralism so won’t do the lowest effort form of political engagement, but other folks are failing us by not being more politically engaged’ is up there with the most irritating, alienating messaging going.
That was a lot, but none of it seemed to answer the pretty straightforward questions. Maybe that was a reluctant/frustrated "yes Democrats are a party of fascists, but also, people should have voted for those fascists"?
It’s not a straightforward question, that’s the problem, and indeed why I didn’t give a binary answer to it for that reason.
I think you spend an inordinate amount of time pissing on the efforts of theoretical allies. I think you’ve got a hammer, and when you’ve got a hammer everything looks like the Dems. Who I shit on fucking frequently for the record.
I think expecting people to make principled stands that will potentially actively hurt their station in life against the Fascists is ridiculous when you give a pass on people having their wee protest against electoralism.
Is the Fascist threat real or not? Schrodinger’s Fascist goes both ways. I criticised the Democratic Party for it earlier, but they’re not the only entity here.
Like fuck me, this irritates me, as a socialist myself. The fuck are you going to convince anyone who isn’t that way wired already?
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