The Mueller investigation.

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Quantum Quack, Feb 17, 2018.

  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Not for lack of evidence or effort.
    You are fully invested in believing everything fed you by US rightwing corporate media, and nothing from outside that bubble gets through.
    It is simply and completely accurate. It is information for you, about a feature of your posting identity that you appear unaware of (it is far too ignorant to reason from evidence, as it attempts ) - you can accept it, and learn, or reject it and remain delusional.
    If you knew anything about Trump voters, you would know that these are not "attacks", but accurate descriptions.
    Silly boy.
    For starters, you bollixed the issue of "separation", because you overlooked the enslaved black people. You granted the right to secede, to choose their own government in their own territory, to slaveowners. Now you change the subject. Ok:

    Slavery was almost the only issue - not just the main issue, but the only serious one capable of motivating a war. Everything else came from slavery, was subsidiary to slavery. There were no other significant issues motivating the Confederacy, and the Confederacy started the War - as you should have read, in the reams of documents I provided you.

    You don't know that, because you don't know anything about the American Civil War or American racial politics. You don't know you don't know that, because you don't know the agenda, record, and methods, of the propaganda operations you have mistaken for sources of argument etc.
    You are an ignorant sucker, being played by Jonah Goldberg's paymasters.
    You explain why you are a Trump supporter, in the same way half the Trump supporters explain themselves, and then complain when treated as one. Funny.
    I "handle" you as I handle all the Trump supporters who claim they are only supporting Trump because he is less evil than Clinton - it's a standard line, you got it from the same Clinton-obsessed Hillary hate sources they did. How do I know that? Because you posted the language, the videos, the bizarre stupidities, and all the bs that came from those sources and nowhere else. Then you - like the other Trump supporters - posted all kinds of nonsense about Trump, again from those sources and nowhere else: that he's a "businessman", that he is not a "globalist", that he is a foe of "politically correct" speech, that he has an ideology of some better kind, that he represents a rift in the deep state, etc etc etc. All bs favoring Trump - so he's not just "less evil", but actually good in some ways. So in this "less evil" claim you are full of shit, like all those other Trump supporters - by the evidence you posted, right here.

    It's a silly explanation, in other words (Trump is far more evil than Clinton), but I believe it, just as I believe it from the rest of the Trump crowd: you have failed to recognize evil in the form of fascism, and you are completely unaware of the depth of your ignorance about US politics. So are they.

    Now: read the public Mueller report. It is just as described by the left, liberals, and those Democrats who are actually left or liberal: a documentation of some of the impeachable offenses committed by Trump, some of them serious crimes. That's your starting point: according to the rule of law you favor, Trump should be removed from office and indicted for criminal behavior.
     
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  3. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    In this particular case, I do not blame you for missing evidence and effort. And it has lead to partial success. This is what you have to expect, given that those with the opposite opinion have also not lacked evidence or effort.
    Your first obvious error is that you confuse the "posting identity" with reality. Of course, I do not present my real identity with all details in a forum which is full of enemies of many things I support. Then, as I have tried to explain to you, in a confrontational style of discussion you will not see what you have reached, thus, you will tend to think that your opponent is much less open to reasonable arguments than he is in reality. This confrontational style is typical today, so even if I try to be less confrontative than others, I often feel that I have to follow to some degree "tit for tat" and to argue in confrontative ways too.

    Would you be ready to try, simply as an experiment, to start a conversation with me which follows quite rigorous rules of decency? That means, there would be no personal attacks at all, ad hominems would have to be provided only with an excuse that in this case, the source which has been provided is so unreliable that you cannot accept it as evidence. On the other hand, it would become obligatory to inform the other side about which parts of his arguments you have accepted.
    Among the libertarians there are many who consider, like me, Trump as less evil than Clinton and (if American) have voted for him. For those, these attacks are far from being accurate.
    Yes. And this is what I have to do, given that libertarian utopia is, in this context, not an option. So, all parts - supporters of the big state as well as the separatists - are evil suppressors of the people. If I support separatists, I therefore always have to support evil suppressors of the people in their claimed territory. There are, of course, differences in the degree of this evil, and in case of slavery, this degree is very large. The evil of a civil war is, nonetheless, greater than the evil of peaceful separation.
    The other issues have been named in that thread, they were serious too, and your sources have not provided sufficient evidence for such an extremal point of view. If you want to continue this old discussion, revive it at the appropriate place.
    In other words, it is your standard policy to defame. You name people who have explained to you that they support Trump as less evil than Clinton "Trump supporters" who think that he is "actually good in some ways". Given that Trump himself is a quite unsympathetic person and every decent person would try to stay away from such a guy and avoid any association with him, to name one who elected Trump as less evil a Trump admirer or so is simply a personal insult. And you know this, that's why you do this.
    And what you provide as "evidence" for this is nothing but laughable:
    But that in a confrontative discussion along the Trump vs. Clinton line each side posts only what makes the own choice preferable is natural. If I would judge about you based on such discussions, the result would be quite symmetric - you would appear to be part of the Clinton fan club, providing all the arguments in favor of Clinton they have provided, and it looks like she is actually good in some ways. Nonetheless, you deny being a Clinton supporter.
    You have forgotten completely that I do not care about US-internal policy. What I care about is US foreign policy, and also only because it is an aggressive one, starting aggressions against many countries. So, if you follow some real rule of law or some faked "three felonies a day"-"law" which allows to send everybody into the GULAG if one wishes is nothing I care about. As well I do not care about inner policy issues in the US related to fascism vs. "liberalism" (which has nothing to do with classical liberalism). What I care about is what could weaken the danger of foreign aggression. Inner conflict is, in some aspects, good (it certainly weakens the US, and a weaker US has fewer resources to fight wars). But there is, of course, also the danger that in case of inner conflicts the rulers try to unify the nation behind them starting a foreign war.

    These are the things I have to think about. The content of the Mueller report is quite irrelevant to these questions, reading it would be loss of time.

    Actually, I tend to think that inner US conflict is preferable, the harm done to the US power is more important than the additional danger of a war for propaganda reasons.

    The reasoning is the following: There will be a finite transition period from the unipolar to the multipolar world which is the most dangerous time. A weakening of the US shortens this transition time.

    Then, there is also a difference in the type of war. The danger of a transition time toward a multipolar world is a war of the former hegemon against the other new poles. This would mean war against Russia or China. A war to unify the nation behind a weak leader is usually an easy war - with some predictable certainty of success in a short time, else it makes no sense to start it given that the next elections are not that far away. Thus, it would be a small war, even Iran would be too big for this. So, to summarize, I see a decrease in the big danger against an increase in a smaller danger.

    So, given that with Bolton/Pompeo the Trump team is in no way better than anything else which could follow, impeachment would be good, because it would deepen the conflict a lot during the time it takes to impeach him. So, I wish you success in your aim to impeach him.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Already tried. You proved unable to follow rules or arguments, you posted without any basis in factual reality, and you posted Republican Party slander and lies straight from the worst of US fascism's media wing; decent people don't do that.
    Fascist propagandists are not decent people - not even the parrots.
    There never was a unipolar world, there is no different and stable "multipolar" world or identifiable "transition" to it, a fascist US is more dangerous indefinitely - not merely during its "transition", and a "multipolar" collection of fascistic or otherwise authoritarian governments is most dangerous during its attempted "transitions" to a "unipolar" state rather than vice versa.
    It doesn't matter what you think you care about. I respond to your posting here, in which your near total ignorance of US civil society is a major factor.
    Ah, bothsides - the currently predominant Republican Party line .
    The difference being - as usual - that reality of US civil society you know nothing about.
    I don't provide arguments in favor of Clinton. Never have. The Clinton koolaid crowd media feed - which is not a dominant US media feed, btw, unlike the Republican Party line - does not resemble my posting; major differences in language, in issues, in stances, in timing, in everything, are easily observed. But you never observe anything.
    Once again: You can't post sense without information, and on the topic of Clinton you wandered into the wingnut weeds long ago.
    US foreign policy derives from US internal policy. Its major driver is US rightwing corporate capitalist interests. You can "care" about whatever floats your boat, but if you know so little of US politics you think Clinton would be more likely to start a nuclear war than Trump your "caring" won't help you.
    You don't discuss. You can't.
    Posting crude propaganda from the US marketing pros as if it were argument or opinion is not "natural" in a discussion - it's not discussion at all. You might as well post ads for phones as "discussions" about phones. (Actually, phone ads sometimes include accurate information - so I am granting you slack with such a comparison).
    A diplomatically and economically weaker US is more likely to start wars - and the US has plenty of resources for war. The US launched a full scale land war against Iraq, conquest and occupation, without even raising taxes or conscripting industrial services.
    Living and learning about fascism.
    Lesson one: fascist governments are incompetent. They fuck up, a lot. Even a guy like Putin - far more capable than the average autocrat or criminal boss - makes critical errors and self-harming decisions. A guy like Trump is a loose cannon.

    Read the public Mueller report. The behavior documented there is not mastermind criminality - it's lowclass, clumsy, screwing around. The only people who seem to have a handle on things are the Russians working Trump's campaign, trying to keep their official government clear - the rest of the stuff belongs in Jackass movie.
     
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  7. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    Looks like it makes no sense to discuss anything with iceaura. There is no longer even an intention to argue at all, all that can be expected is defamation and ad hominem at best, usually simply personal attacks without any base. I have tried too long to change this, time to finally give up.
     
  8. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,882
    You know what we call that bit when an American says it?

    White supremacism.

    Seriously, you're not original.

    And, come on, a dude who says he's from Germany pushes white supremacism? Yeah, that never happens, does it? And if that notion bothers you, well, quit walking into it.

    Here, watch the freedom birdie: We violate his constitutionally-protected freedom if we refuse him the freedom to violate and constrict other people's constitutionally-protected freedom.

    This utterly stupid paradox is at the heart of American supremacism. When slavers try to make the American Civil War about other issues, like state's rights, economics, and liberty, they argue the state's right to enjoy the liberty of building an economy with slaves; that is, they enjoy the right and liberty and economy of withholding from others the rights to liberty and economic participation.

    And one of the dumbest things in the world is that the rest of us are supposed to put on some sort of airs either openly legitimizing or, at the very least, basically empowering such idiocy as to embody the question of sinister or stupid. Between deliberate cruelty and the desperate noncompetency that is its only functional excuse, the important thing to remember is that far greater efforts than you are either willing or able to give have undertaken the enterprise of trying to excuse the Confederacy, and every last one of them has failed miserably.

    I think the problem is that you're looking for a reason to oppose democracy.

    Well, that, or you're just not competent enough to take part.

    Or maybe this is like your make-believe about social contract. How about your pretense of apathy toward societal suicide pacts you apparently can't help but advocate? Maybe, "So what?" (#482↑) seemed like a good answer in its moment, but that's your own question of priorities. For as much as you appeal to ideas that sound like rule of law, that pretense gives way to your explicit rejections thereof. Inasmuch as that makes you just like everybody else, actually, no. Some people try to achieve something and fail; some think it would be nice but don't really try. Like your Mueller investigation argument: It has shown nothing your ignorant political bias wants to see; the rest of your opinion in this issue isn't simply dressed up in ignorance, but feeds on it.

    When one actively works to subvert democracy, it isn't really a question of being prevented from supporting it; you made a choice. And, seriously, the idea of a russophiliac, "libertarian", white supremacist Trump defender from abroad whose outlook is only distinguishable from the domestic standard for the volume of time and words he is willing to waste on disseminating misinformation is what it is, but, functionally, amounts to just another heap of steaming, pretentious, American rightism.

    There is always a question of who benefits from chaos and confusion. There is also a basic sketch of an idea that every once in a while, people should break form, especially when they are going out of their way to hit what read like template marks.

    Let's take a moment to read through a pretty flaccid maneuver.

    †​

    "Libertarian anarchism" is, by function, perpetual instability. One of the things that happens with anarchism is that any social contract must be established anew with each participant. As your, and other, rightist "libertarianism" goes, it seems the refusal of the liberty to refuse other people liberty is enough to compel many to reject the social contract. In these United States, the liberty of supremacism, as such, drives the most harmful elements and aspects of our heritage.

    In #492, quoted above, you are the one who connected, "the right of every group of people to separate from the rest of the world on some own territory, with full sovereignty over that territory", with the right to own slaves and justify it by skin color: "the US has even fought a horrible civil war about this and is proud of having beaten the separatists."

    In #497, quoted above, you have actually handed us a typical justification of the Confederacy and slavery alike. Furthermore, you're talking about the United States, and perhaps our literary history on this count is somehow subtle: We invoked the right to war in our Declaration of Independence; we tanked the Declaration twice in establishing the Republic, because we weren't really about liberty and justice for all at that point, but, instead, white-Christian supremacism and basic avarice. Nor can we overlook male supremacism; once upon a time we used to present Abigail Adams to children as if she was heroic for reminding her husband, "Remember the ladies"; what we never taught the children is what John Adams↱ said in response, which in turn was just filthy, complaining that people who weren't him, including slaves, Russians, and even the Hessians, would want equal rights ("Priviledges"), while guarding against the "Despotism of the Peticoat"; he actually left a large blank space in the closing lines of his letter instead of writing the word "women". Yes, really. Two hundred forty-three years ago, that supremacism asserted to speak for the ostensible good guys. While it is true the Republic has never recovered, you are advocating, under the guise of libertarian anarchism, for the Name of the Masters and their empowerment to mastery over other human beings.

    And it's true, after this long, many Americans pretty much know it when we see it; the rest is just a question of how we feel about it. More directly toward what you said, there are many whose "aim would not be 'to maintain industrial scale slavery'" or some other injustice, but, whoopsie, they can't help themselves, and unfortunately the only permissible courses according to their outlooks necessarily perpetuate and empower that injustice. Seriously, we encounter that grift a lot.

    Interestingly—

    —you come back to something we've covered before↗, after you appealed to appeasing Nazis in jutifying appeasement of North Korea. Consider that, to the one, we have the Nazis, or the Kim regime; to the other, we have the Allies, or the U.S., and whatever other players And while you argue Von Clausewitz, you tend to ignore victimized Jews, starved Koreans, and oppressed dissidents; similarly, in this discussion, it is the African-American slaves and abused indigenous tribes who need to suffer for the sake of what you advocate. And, yes, we get it, your aim would not be to maintain injustice; it's just, that's how the world needs to be, or whatever.

    By the time you get around to #500—

    —we actually need to guess what you're after, but, still, it's your straw fallacy seeking to justify injustice.

    The larger point, of course, is that by the time we get through #500, you're pretty much trading in stock white supremacism: "The opponent claim, for example, that there have been even black people fighting on the side of the Confederation." I honestly don't know why people justifying the Confederacy think this point is so important. All we ever hear about explanations from them is what doesn't work; they seem unable to make a coherent affirmative argument. In all the history of humanity, the fact of a black slave abetting the Confederacy stands out compared to other questions of collaborators just how?

    Of course, that's generally not your point. Iceaura and I saw a version of this about a year ago, in which the hapless advocate—¡whoopsie!—just happened to accidentally hit basic white supremacist marks; there comes a point at which it's unbelievable.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Adams, John. "John Adams to Abigail Adams, 14 April 1776". Adams Family Correspondence, eds. L. H. Butterfield et al. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963. HERB.ASHP.cuny.edu. 21 May 2019. http://bit.ly/2gN3rt4
     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    How would you know?

    Missed this one:
    The only way Russia is going to be a "pole" is by military coercion, violent threat, physical pressure. Its economy is a crippled mess - about the size of Italy's, populated by men in bad health, raw resource dependent, and run by organized crime. Its culture is emulated, imitated, or adopted by nobody except at gunpoint.

    China, meanwhile, although with a far better claim on "pole" status than Russia, is governed by an oppressive and near-totalitarian centralized State with none of the libertarian features or freedoms you claim to value. It is also militarizing, rapidly and purposefully.

    So that's the "multipolarity" you celebrate - a world gearing up for war.
     
  10. CptBork Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,460
    I wasn't asking about how individuals following your philosophy would deal with an interstellar alien invasion as compared to how a Russian imperialist would approach the issue. Rather I was asking about how I could distinguish the two philosophies in practice, regarding Russian territory and foreign policy. Is there any territory that Russia possesses or lays claim to, on which you would disagree with the claims of a Russian imperialist?

    You say you support the right of populations to have self-determination on their lands. Does that apply to Chechen separatists, or did thousands of Russian soldiers shoot themselves in order to invent an enemy? What about Kosovo Albanians, do they have a right to self-determination in their lands? If Latvia and Estonia were, say, to ban the Russian language from schools and public services, would Russia have a right to invade and seize territories therein where ethnic Russians constitute a majority, if they request it? If Ukraine doesn't get to keep Crimea, are they entitled to alternative territorial compensation for the Ukrainian lands Stalin cleansed and settled with ethnic Russians, or do you deny that any such ethnic cleansing ever took place? What about Venezuela, Syria, Georgia, Moldova etc., would Russian imperialists have any disagreements with you at the soup kitchen over these things?

    In science, a theory gains acceptance when it's shown to have substantial predictive power over future measurements or events. The theory that you're a Russian imperialist, or some other form of Russophiliac extremist, and that your political positions are motivated on such a basis, seems to predict every single position you take on an issue in which Russia is even marginally involved.

    If that were true, you'd be very upset about having Trump in office taking swings at China and Iran and throwing his weight around in South America, as opposed to focussing on Hillary Clinton, who just wanted sanctions on Russian oligarchs and some minor humanitarian actions in Syria.
     
  11. CptBork Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,460
    Didn't you know? Apparently all the Nazis are in Ukraine, refusing to wave the Russian flag and make exclusive deals with Russian industry. As for racism, it doesn't exist in his blood; lots of African dictators send their kids to school in Moscow.
     
  12. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    An interesting link to a really funny article (at least I had fun reading it). Ok, some propaganda stereotypes are present, but much less than usual, so my recommendation: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/arti...2019521&utm_term=fcprerelease-prospects-may19

    Long experience. But I'm open to be surprised by an unexpected change of behavior on your side toward civilized discussion.
    A nice collection of the usual propaganda stereotypes. But to be a pole, it is already sufficient to be truly independent. That means, to have weapons strong enough to deter the US from attacking, to have resources enough that it gives the ability to survive even the strongest US sanctions regime, even if it is extended to all US allies, and to be sufficiently stable against US-supported regime change. Once this is given, you are already a pole, an independent entity not under US control. And the very existence of such a pole opens a lot of possibilities for many other (not that strong) players, allows them to oppose the US too. Players like Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, ...
    The point being? I do not claim that I support the other players. I support multipolarity.
    The US is much more aggressive than Russia, China, Iran, NK, Venezuela, and all other evil countries combined. Indeed, multipolarity alone is not heaven on Earth, but much better than US rule. This is what I have learned through Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and so on.
     
  13. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    I did not know that Orwellian newspeak in the US goes already that far, but it is not completely unexpected.

    And I think you understand very well that a particular historical thesis about what was important in the Civil War has nothing to do with weird ideas about the supremacy of whatever races. It is not even logical: A real white racist would have no problem with the Civil War being fought to protect slavery, once slavery would be in his opinion a good idea.

    And, no, this notion does not bother me. Because I, fortunately, do not have to care at all what Western "liberals" think about me. I do not even want to have a job in the US, whatever would be paid there.
    There is nothing stupid with this paradox. It is a known problem of liberal ideology: How to handle those who don't accept liberal ideology. This problem has to be faced and somehow solved by every ethical system.

    And if it is not solved explicitly, it is solved implicitly, and the implicit solution is the most primitive and worst possible one: the enemies of the ethical system have no rights at all, one can do with them whatever one likes (or whatever is allowed to do in that ethical system with sadistic child murderers) whenever it becomes clear (or simply somehow plausible, or even only probable) that they do not accept the ethical system (or whatever part of it).

    In the system which I propose, this problem is also present, but I prefer to solve it explicitly. Every community should have the right to separate and to do what they like on their own territory. Communities which accept this right will give it to their own subcommunities too. Communities which do not accept it are simply like states today. Once I want territorial sovereignty for my own community, I would have to give such sovereignty to other communities too. This sovereignty is complete, that means, there is no exception for communities which do not even accept this principle, and do not give sovereignty to their subcommunities. The rule how to live with such communities is simple: The same territorial sovereignty. They can do on their own territory what they like. We can fight them only if they attack our territory first. As long as they don't do such things, it does not even matter if they accept our own sovereignty more than de facto.

    The idea behind this is quite simple and pragmatic: War is not an appropriate way to help the suppressed. However suppressed, they remain alive, in a war, many of them will be killed. Even more problematic is that if such a justification for war exists, it will be heavily misused by everybody who likes to conquer other territories.
    First, of course, there is the question of how you solve the problem of what to do with those who do not accept your ideology.

    Then, you seem to think that I'm somehow interested in excusing the Confederacy. But I'm not emotionally involved in this issue at all. I was interested to see what will be answered to arguments proposed against the actual presentation of the Civil War, in particular by DiLorenzo. The result was, IMHO, mixed. Iceaura was able to present some evidence that what DiLorenzo wrote is not completely accurate, and that in particular, the slavery issue was more important than presented by DiLorenzo. But the evidence presented by DiLorenzo that other issues were much more important was not invalidated completely by what was presented as counterevidence. Is DiLorenzo somehow a White Supremacist who tries to excuse the Confederacy? I couldn't care less about that ad hominem. If he has a point, I will hear a White Supremacist too. As I said many times, if Hitler said 2+2=4, I will support him in this question.
    I have reasons to oppose democracy. Once I have them, to find more of them is nothing I would object to.

    And, yes, I have made a choice. I do not support democracy. I do not fight it - it is simply an inferior choice, which works appropriately only on a very small scale, and for whatever is relevant on larger scales I have better proposals. But if some large community prefers democracy, I will not fight this, and the justification of not fighting this is the same as the one for not fighting slavery in the Confederacy - stupid decisions, even if they actually harm suppressed people (as democracies do), are not worth to start wars.

    So, all that is legitimate is intellectual argumentation against democracy.
    No. The society I envisage will be much more stable than the actual one.

    Why? Because the base of it is a system where all the people have accepted, volitionally, the rules which are relevant for them in their everyday life. As a consequence, there will be much less conflict over the rules. If you start to disagree with the rules you previously accepted, the conflict starts as a minor one. It becomes a dangerous one only once you are forced to submit to rules you no longer accept. In libertarian anarchism, you have a choice - to separate, and either to join another already existing community with rules you are ready to accept or to find some other people in your community to split together or even to split as a single person.

    There is, of course, some instability, but this is nothing but the natural instability of new generations coming and thinking differently from their parents.
    Indeed. But, once established, it will be much more stable because the participant supports it in a much stronger way.
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    No experience.
    That the risk of major war involving nuclear powers is increasing.
    Your daydreams are uninformed.
    This from the guy who posted the Confederacy - an attempted State specifically and explicitly organized around a slave labor economy, to the point of launching full scale war in defense of its chattel slavery - as a concrete example of progress toward such a system.
    That was your idea of stability, multipolarity, and people "volitionally accepting" the rules they live by: Slaveowners committing treason and starting wars.
    Of course. As long as you can dodge the reality of what you are advocating, restrict all discussion to some cloud cuckoo land of theoretical multipolarity, and never confront the nature of the "poles" and such that will make up the actual situation, you have a chance of not looking like an idiot.
    The post is accurately descriptive, in simple fact.
    Nonsense. Russia has no claim to being a pole except by physical threat - its control of raw resources others need, and its military strength. Aside from that, it's a cultural and economic backwater without major global influence.
    That's the nature of the "multipolarity" you advocate for here - the poles will be military powers in a state of mutual threat.
    So? That's not going to change for the better by "weakening" the US diplomatically. It's certainly not going to change under a fascist US regime - one with the keys to the US military, including the nukes.

    And if the rule of law in the US is sufficiently crippled - such as by failure to act on the Mueller report - a fascist regime with the keys to the US nuclear arsenal becomes likely. If it happens, remember that this is what you and the rest of the Republican Party base wanted.
     
  15. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    There is no connection between these rights, except in your fantasy. Because there is no "right to own slaves and justify it by skin color".

    There is only a right of sovereignty over its own territory. And this right of sovereignty includes the right to do stupid and even horrible things on this territory. Just if you don't get the difference: A "right to own slaves and justify it by skin color" would allow you to do this everywhere. The right to do particular stupid things exists only on a particular sovereign territory of some particular stupid community. And, once it presupposes that the slaves have no right to separate, it applies only to communities of enemies of the ethical system I propose. Those who accept the ethics of sovereignty have no such right.
    I do not ignore them at all - if I would ignore them, I would not write anything about such questions. I think I have found, with territorial sovereignty, a reasonable approach to the old problem of what to do with enemies of the own ethical system. And, given that such proposals for ethical systems should be tested in the most serious way, that means, in situations where to follow it seems as amoral as possible, I discuss such questions.

    So, I do not plan to avoid such problems. And, indeed, for slaves in the Confederacy, starving Korean under Kim's regime, dissidents in the Soviet Union, let's add the sexually abused children in Waco to have something on a small scale, my proposal for an ethical system has a quite clear answer, an answer which is not the one you like: all this does not justify a war.
    This tells much more about your type of reasoning than about me. I care about arguments, content. You care about persons, about the question if you are able to collect enough support for unpopular or non-PC opinions so that you will be able to apply ad hominem against whatever other unwanted arguments they propose.

    My approach is the scientific one - one has to care about arguments, and not to care at all at who proposes a particular argument. Your approach is appropriate and reasonable for propagandists of whatever ideology. I will never reject an argument simply because you or iceaura have proposed it. You invoke ad hominem all the time, it is essentially your main argument - and it does not even matter if the ad hominem is directed against the fantasy sources iceaura claims to be my sources or to me directly.

    For those who accept ad hominem arguments, the propagandists will in the long run always win - every independent mind will propose, at one point or another, some despised opinion which can be used then for the ad hominem against him. So, there would be even no necessity for distortion, like naming people who disagree about the history of Civil War "White Supremacists" or people who have doubt about the catastrophic character of the (acceptedly) human-made global warming "AGW deniers". It is always sufficient that the other person thinks independently, without following the particular ideology, and you will find something horrible enough for the proponents of this ideology.
     
  16. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    Yes, this does apply to Chechnya as well as to Kosovo.

    But actually, the local Chechen government is on the Russian side and has been on the Russian side during the second Chechen war. This was one of the first good things Putin succeeded - to reach that the split between the Wahabi fundamentalism imported from Saudi Arabia and the traditional Sufi Islam of the Chechens became deeper than the national split between Russians and Chechens so that the Sufi Chechens switched sides and fought together with Russia against the Wahabis.

    Then, I have explained, the right of separation does not imply a right of foreign powers to start aggression against the state. So, while I do not question the right of the Albanians to separate, I question the right of the NATO to bomb Belgrad.
    No. The Russians would have the right to try to separate, but Russia would not have a right to invade as the NATO did in Kosovo.
    I deny this, of course. Ukraine has been a communist construction from the start, created by Lenin, who combined former Ukraine with former Novorussia, two completely different parts of former Russia, into a single unit. Stalin did ethnic cleansing but in favor of Ukraine, directed against the Polish population in what is now the Western part of Ukraine but was Polish before WW II.
    No. In Georgia, Russia supported Ossetian and Abkhasian separatists against genocidal Georgians. In Moldova, Russia supports a part which was, as well, unified by Stalin with a region of a quite different nationality, and supports here separatists too. In Venezuela and Syria it supports people who do not want to submit to US rule, but rule their countries by their own governments.
    I'm happy that Trump does things which strengthens US enemies everywhere and even creates new ones. The strategic coalition Russia/China/Iran is certainly much stronger than it would have been given a less stupid US foreign policy.

    That's how US rule looks like - that other states own some resources is considered to be a "physical threat". That's because some "others" (which probably means the US) need them.

    In reply to my "The US is much more aggressive than Russia, China, Iran, NK, Venezuela, and all other evil countries combined." we read:
    Maybe, we will see. It is at least worth to try. Whatever weakens the greatest aggressor is usually good. The fact itself is obvious enough, so not even iceaura has more to answer than "So?".
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    The slaveowners had no territory - their slaves had the right of sovereignty, not them.
    You missed that because you don't know anything about US racial politics, and you don't know anything about the US Civil War.
    Whatever strengthens fascist takeover and increases its already predominant reliance on military threat and aggression is usually bad. When the fascist takeover is of the world's most powerful military, one that already has military bases spread across the planet and an oversupply of nuclear weapons with no role in defense, it's downright dangerous.
    Russia has nothing but physical threat to offer, and has already used its control of oil and gas to threaten and coerce - along with its military, used to annex Crimea and a couple of other areas.

    If it's a "pole", that's what your "multipolarity" will be in reality. China is gearing up for military action (having annexed Tibet and installed totalitarian oppression in its Muslim regions), as is Israel and Saudi Arabia and Iran and Pakistan and other "poles".

    The three countries that have expanded their territory by military force recently are Israel, Russia, and China. All three are continuing this policy - Russia is currently helping Syrian strongman Bashad stomp on the Syrians who tried to separate, China is expanding into the ocean - and other people's islands, including Taiwan of course - nearby, Israel is annexing and settling more territory taken by force from other people.
    Or the separatists, right? So Russia has no business making war against Syrian separatists.
    So when you claimed to fear major war above all, you were what - not paying attention?
    The US is already too aggressive, too little diplomatic, too militarized. The effects have been bad. Making a bad situation worse is not worth trying.

    And so we return to that topic you so obviously want to avoid: the Russian dealings and other criminal behavior of Trump and his family and his administration as documented in the Mueller report. Why do you suppose Putin is ok with Trump's laundering of Russian money, his robbing of the Russian economy and people?
     
  18. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    The Confederacy had no territory? LOL.
    Liberalism, which is essentially a globalist project, has failed, so there is no unifying idea in our world anymore. World government is no alternative. In fact, the years of unipolarity have been a nice demonstration of what would be the result of a world government - namely something completely and violently totalitarian. Think about it: In 1990 the whole world was ready to embrace liberal democracy. Fukuyama thought the game of politics was over. But, no: The de facto rulers, the US, became increasingly totalitarian, in essentially all aspects of totalitarianism: Creating and fighting enemies, starting wars where peaceful evolution would have been a much better choice, political correctness, increasing media control, an increasing number of people no mass media would be ready to "give a platform". Such totalitarianism leads, with certainty, to failure, so that the unipolar world failed.

    And this failure is recognized as a failure of liberalism, which is no longer attractive to people around the world, at least not in the form it is presented today in form of "Western values". The consequence will be that other ideologies gain power.

    Democracy is also discredited, first by the Western lies, where "democracy" is distorted to "being an US vassal". Second by recognizing the role of "democracy" and "free press" as a tool to regime changes whenever one likes it for the US: The US buys the mass media and then can control, via the control of the mass media, the politicians and the elections. So, it is simply not a viable model for those who are not US vassals.

    So, what could be the base for something different than a multipolar world? Everything else would require some unifying ideas. There is nothing left which could be used for this purpose.
    Russia is not a libertarian state, it is a classical state, thus, follow not my libertarian ideas, but classical international law. In this law, separatists have no rights to separate, and a state can ask other states for support against separatists.

    BTW, the jihadists are not separatists. There are some separatists in Syria too, the Kurds. But Russia has not yet done anything against them.
    To what? A lot of enemies of the US is good because they can unite and together they will be strong enough to deter the US from starting more wars.
    If this leads to conflicts with its former allies, so that they no longer abide the orders from Washington, this is worth trying.
    Why do you think Putin is somehow ok with some Western propaganda fantasies? Why do you think Putin is somehow ok with whatever Trump is doing?
     
  19. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,882
    It sounds to me like under your wannabe there can be slavery as a sovereign territorial right.

    But that's just it, you didn't:

    In this part, your discussion is about the big state players, not the slaves. Indeed,the "peaceful way" and "peaceful side" you support includes the violence of human bondage, as well as the implicit requirement that one starts a war by refusing to surrender to an ongoing act of war°.

    It is unsurprising that you require the continued infliction of injustice. To the other, though, when it comes to the American Civil War, you're amateur hour, and way too late to the show. We really have been through this over and over, again, and the only thing you're accomplishing with this performance is self-denigration in exchange for being seen advocating on behalf of injustice.

    I would actually suggest your projection tells us more about you. Think of it this way: Iceaura and I both got to watch someone flail about, last year, and what your assessment overlooks is, in fact, the point of argument and content, e.g., the hapless advocate—¡whoopsie!—just happened to accidentally hit basic white supremacist marks while clodhopping through tropes about Amendment XVII, and also a bizarre anglophilia. The point only has to do with you or that particular advocate as individuals insofar as any individual might be presenting certain argument and content.

    There is a certain aspect by which it doesn't matter who brings it, because the argument itself does not work. The problem is not explicitly that someone simply raises a question; it is a pretense of ignorance despite trying to argue a certain course, and if we focus on the word ignorance the problem is convenient ignorance. It got to the point that the hapless advocate needed to pretend basic confusion of everything from civics to the English language, and all for the benefit of some American white supremacists who really focus on Anglican heritage.

    I can show you a theologian describing a view of nineteenth century history that reads, "Theological method came to rely less on instinctive deference to inherited confessions and more on self-evident propositions organized by scientific method" (Noll, 4).

    We can, of course, contest the basic idea of a scientific method about theology, but that largely involves splitting hairs between what that idea of the scientific method actually means compared to what the protest requires. For our part, the significance is, sure, I can abide this version of scientific methodology because I know what it means: Functionally, it means logical constructions without regard to the validity of the presuppositions. Between the eleventh and nineteenth centuries, for instance, certes much was discovered and argued and understood, but its actual scientific value is nil for depending on presuppositions that cannot be validated.

    And, yes, you are similarly attending science; that is to say, whether it's the Nicene Creed in the fourth century, Anselm's proof of God's existence in the eleventh, or the twentieth century emergence of doctrinal Christian fundamentalism, the pretense of scientific method Noll suggests of American Christendom in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, works more like a word game, arranging if/then without any consideration toward whether the ifs are true. Catholics, by the way, are really good at this; so are Seventh-Day Adventists. Latter-Day Saints provide an interesting contrast, insofar as they have, formally, given up an if pertaining to questions of God's favor and skin color, but decades later the attitudes still persist and influence many Mormons.

    It is also true that the esteemed Clive Barker advised, "Nothing ever begins", and, "There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs." More directly, "It must be arbitrary, then, the place at which we choose to embark." And that works for fiction and legend, and thus revealed scripture. However, in that framework, what can be treated scientifically is the record we have; that is, the proper statement is not necessarily that this or that happened, but, rather, that this or that is what the record tells us.

    And, sure, you can call your approach "scientific", but only in the manner of purporting to organize the record according to unreliable presuppositions, which in turn was no more or less "scientific" in the fourth century, when pride moved the Bishops to codify heresy, than in the eleventh, when a lack of proof was itself the proof, or nineteenth, when a prophet pulled Scripture out of a hat, or the twenty-first, when you organize articles of make-believe—i.e., deference to "self-evident propositions", more commonly referred to as articles of faith—according to a "scientific" approach.

    To wit:

    Despite the LOL, though, you offer nothing.

    The desperation of the show you're putting on is pretty obvious:

    One important question is why the craven and insistent subject change from the Mueller report. No, really:

    This is what it takes to be you.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    ° Also, you must remember that the so-called "peaceful" side you find yourself standing for actually opened the war; by Von Clausewitz, of course, we can argue the people they shot at actually started the war by not surrendering or getting out of the way. So it seems to me that your support of the peaceful separatists means overlooking their violence and demanding others refuse to protect themselves.​

    Barker, Clive. Weaveworld. New York: Poseidon, 1987.

    Noll, Mark. America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
     
  20. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,882

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    It is worth noting that Stephen Calk surrendered to federal authorities, today, following the unsealing of a corruption indictment. The Department of Justice↱ today announced:

    Audrey Strauss, the Attorney for the United States, Acting Under Authority Conferred by 28 U.S.C. § 515, William F. Sweeney Jr., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), and Patricia Tarasca, the Special Agent-in-Charge of the New York Region for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Office of Inspector General (“FDIC OIG”), announced today the unsealing of an indictment charging STEPHEN M. CALK with financial institution bribery for corruptly using his position as the head of a federally insured bank to issue millions of dollars in high-risk loans to a borrower in exchange for a personal benefit: assistance from the borrower in obtaining a senior position with an incoming presidential administration. CALK is expected to be presented this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman ....

    .... STEPHEM M. CALK, 54, is charged with one count of financial institution bribery, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

    The heart of the charge:

    Between in or about July 2016 and January 2017, CALK engaged in a corrupt scheme to exploit his position as the head of the Bank and the Holding Company in an effort to secure a valuable personal benefit for himself, namely, the Borrower's assistance in obtaining for CALK a senior position in the presidential administration. During this time period, the Borrower sought millions of dollars in loans from the Bank. CALK understood that the Borrower urgently needed these loans in order to terminate or avoid foreclosure proceedings on multiple properties owned by the Borrower and the Borrower's family. Further, CALK believed that the Borrower could use his influence with the Presidential Transition Team to assist CALK in obtaining a senior administration position.

    CALK thus sought to leverage his control over the Bank and the loans sought by the Borrower to his personal advantage. Specifically, CALK offered to, and did, cause the Bank and Holding Company to extend $16 million in loans to the Borrower in exchange for the Borrower's requested assistance in obtaining a high-level position in the presidential administration ....

    The Borrower listed in this case is Paul Manafort, and because of questions about his debts to Russian interests including Oleg Deripaska, this case came up from Manhattan to the Mueller investigation before being sent back for handling in the Southern District of New York. Additionally, there are notes circulating in the press that this is not one of the redacted cases in the Mueller report. We should, then, probably bear in mind that parts of what is happening will not be included in the Mueller report, as such cases, while not unrelated, exceed particulars of the investigation's explicit purview.
    ____________________

    Notes:


    United States Attorney's Office Southern District of New York. "Bank CEO Stephen M. Calk Charged With Corruptly Soliciting A Presidential Administration Position In Exchange For Approving $16 Million In Loans". 23 May 2019. Justice.gov. 23 May 2019. http://bit.ly/2K4RlLz
     
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  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Not if you don't want war.
    The slaveowners had no territory - according to you.

    The slaveowners had no right to the territory occupied by the slaves, according to you. The slaves had the right of secession, and the right to accept whatever help in attaining that anyone offered to them. That is all according to your posts here - you posted that.
    You didn't know what you were talking about, of course, just as you didn't follow your own argument in Syria with the Kurds and other secessionists.
    By the suckers inside the US corporate media propaganda bubble.
    When "liberalism" has been defeated and supplanted by authoritarian movements and strongman governments, informed people assign responsibility for the consequential failures and disasters to those who caused them - not those who opposed them but were defeated.
    Living and learning about fascism. And "multipolarity".
    Many jihadists are separatists. All of them favor weakening the US government - for essentially the same reasons you do. And Russia has helped not only Syria, but Iran and Turkey, defeat the Kurdish separatists and impose unwanted government upon them. You described that as "multipolarity" - which means, apparently, that it's ok because it wasn't the US doing the evil.
    My take on Putin is familiar to you - he's essentially a mob boss, which is what fascism amounts to, who got hold of governmental power. So there's no mystery for me in his preference for lawlessness and autocratic, corruptible government.
    But you actually claim to favor law, civilization, nonviolence, etc. So when you are brought face to face with documentation of Putin's complicity in massive embezzlement from the Russian citizenry, Putin's tolerance and abetting of money laundering on the scale of Trump's dealings with the Russian "corporate" elite (and quite likely Putin himself), and Putin's significant backing of a fascist movement in the world's premier military power via corruption and media manipulation, you have an actual conflict to deal with - what people term "cognitive dissonance". So how will you deal with this Mueller report?
     
  22. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    No. sovereign rights have only those who accept the ethics themselves. Everybody else gets sovereignty only de facto and only if de facto the territorial sovereignty of the other communities is accepted.

    This is nothing but the de facto situation with NK: Once they have nuclear weapons, starting a war with them is not a good option. This does not mean that Kim has any right to do what he does in NK.
    War is a notion of international law and is possible only between states (if one forgets Orwellian "war against terror" and so on). In my libertarian ethical system, I prefer to use aggression for what is rejected. "War" combines aggression with legitimate self-defense, so it is not useful for ethical considerations.

    So, if one accepts the libertarian ethics, one has to surrender to the wish of some part of the community to separate, and even without anything done by those who want to separate.

    The states involved in the Civil War were not libertarian at all, and in this sense irrelevant. Except for the case of how to act toward communities which don't accept libertarian ethics. Here the answer given is clear: If they don't attack your territory, you have no right to attack their territory too, and it does not matter if what they do there is criminal according to your own ideas about justice.
    Except that I don't require any such thing. All that I do is to restrict what can be done to stop it. War is not a legitime way to stop it.
    Except that it is not a projection. You continue in this reply to argue about what some hypothetical person thinks, say, some "bizarre anglophilia". I would not care at all about such personal attributes, would use them neither for ad hominem nor for simple personal attacks, it would be essentially useless for me.
    If an argument does not work because of problems which are ignored by the guy who proposes the argument, what's the problem? Point to these problems. No need for any ad hominem or so. That people tend to ignore problems is well-known, and it is even a reasonable strategy to handle a lot of problems with some idea in some particular order, an order which is mainly defined by the actual chances to solve them. If you care first about problem A, you will ignore the problems B and C. The alternative is to stop thinking about the idea at all. Once A is solved, you may start to care about B, ignoring C. Is this type of ignorance convenient for the guy who thinks about that idea? Of course. Any problem with this? No. Simply tell him that problem C is yet totally ignored, and in that actual situation, you have made a decisive argument.

    Your discourse about theology using the scientific method is irrelevant. The point of my remark was that your method based on ad hominem as the main argument is clearly not the scientific one.
    Laziness. The formally correct approach would be to open a new thread and to post here a link to that thread. Answering here is much easier.
    The winner has always been the innocent victim of aggression. At least in modern times.
    No, the point is simply that separation can be done, if accepted by the former big state, in a peaceful way, without anybody being harmed. But if there are parts of the territory where people want to separate, the continuation of the big state is always violent oppression.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    In the real world, guerrilla wars and wars of rebellion and tribal wars and wars of population oppression by a State and so forth are quite common.
    Not in Crimea. Or the Golan Heights. Or Iraq. Or the Congo. Or Sudan. Or Libya. Or former Yugoslavia. Or Tibet.
    So what Russia is doing in Syria and Ukraine, for example, is completely unjustified - Russia has no right. Likewise what the slaveowners tried to do in the US, by attacking US territory and the rightfully secessionist slaves.

    And with this new insight into Putin's behavior, you can see by your own lights how the Mueller report's documentation of criminal and impeachable doings becomes a welcome justification for forestalling such behavior by Trump, legally and in a civilized manner, without war.
     

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