All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[InformationGeek]

More from Saladino. Oh god, its complaining about dem lady superheroes.

Remember. Running for office.

[JCAll]

What does that even mean? You do realize that the Howard Stern of 2019 is significantly more mature than the Howard Stern of 1987.

Oh no, it has nothing to do with Stern. It's that "Debate me" has been the rallying cry of every bad faith right-wing lunatic this century, desperately fishing for legitimacy and a platform for attention/donations. Like, Ben Shapiro will just fart around Twitter replying "Debate me" towards every progressive he can find. It's...I hate it, it's awful.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Oh no, it has nothing to do with Stern. It's that "Debate me" has been the rallying cry of every bad faith right-wing lunatic this century, desperately fishing for legitimacy and a platform for attention/donations. Like, Ben Shapiro will just fart around Twitter replying "Debate me" towards every progressive he can find. It's...I hate it, it's awful.

Comically as Shapiro learned a couple weeks ago the whole 'DEBATE ME" stance will only go so far and once someone drops that challenge to you in a TV interview and your not ready...well its pretty funny.

[Tendrin]

Just have border patrol go back to what they used to do. Stop anyone who looks suspicious, but let them go if there's no evidence. The problem is that some of the officers there now see anyone with brown skin as looking suspicious.

I mean, ICE was founded in 2003. We don't need it. It's a terribly run organization filled to the brim with actual white supremacists. Abolish it. And while we're at it, let's abolish the GOP too.

[Tendrin]

What's going on India should terrify everyone.

Rakbar, a Muslim dairy farmer, was murdered by a Hindu mob who thought he was taking a cow to be slaughtered for meat. His wife, Asmeena, must undergo an intense iddat (mourning in purdah) and their daughter, Sahila, is forced to abandon school to take care of the household.
While the family falls apart, the hate machinery of rightwing Hindu nationalists – politicians and lynch mobs – works overtime to legitimise the killing. Set in a remote village in India, The Hour of Lynching sheds light on a global problem: communities turning on “the other” – sometimes with extreme violence
This film is produced in partnership with Field of Vision

The rise of this sort of fascism in India is /deeply/ worrisome.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/201...XIGE4K0n4gDOyE

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump May Pardon Several Suspected War Criminals. These Are Their Stories.

Their alleged crimes include killing young children and burning bodies. Those stories are flat out fucking abominable. I worry that Trump is doing for no other reason than to piss off liberals. Meanwhile, not much in the way of objection from Republicans.

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Mike Pence Tells West Point Graduates They Will Be In Combat: ‘It Will Happen’

“Some of you will join the fight on the Korean Peninsula ... where North Korea continues to threaten the peace,” the vice president said. One would think the administration would strive to AVOID sending our servicemen and servicewomen into combat, not tell West Pointers to EXPECT it! Are you fucking kidding me?

**********

Jon Voight Calls Trump ‘Greatest President Since Abraham Lincoln’

The conservative actor claimed Trump is “battling the left and their absurd words of destruction.” Oh, yes, let's ignore Franklin D. Roosevelt who steered the country through the worst days of World War II, or JFK who helped prevent World War III. Voight needs to SHUT. THE. ****. UP.

**********

Trump Gives William Barr Wide Declassification Authority In ‘Spying’ Probe

Intelligence officials reject claims that “spying” occurred during the 2016 election, but the president keeps calling for an investigation. Plain and simple: This is about Trump wanting payback on the country's intelligence apparatus for investigating him. Anyone who thinks differently is either delusional or stupid.

**********

King Of Irony Donald Trump Chuckles Over ‘Low IQ’ Joe ‘Bidan,’ Twitter Wits Can’t Even

“Joe Bidan for presidant! Tramp is terrafied he’ll win the 2020 elaction,” notes one response. I can't even myself.

[ed2962]

More from Saladino. Oh god, its complaining about dem lady superheroes.

Remember. Running for office.

If he doesn't make it into office, he can always start a YouTube channel.

[jetengine]

Heres a question regarding politics overall.

Do you believe the often trotted out "Some of the issues with our society are due to constant news and social media sphere which never lets up and spews negativity" thing ? Or do you think its garbage pushed out by politicians looking for an easy excuse for how their policies have caused social harm for their own gain?

[InformationGeek]

If he doesn't make it into office, he can always start a YouTube channel.

He already has one discussing dem liberals and violent black folk. He's way ahead of you.

[ed2962]

Comically as Shapiro learned a couple weeks ago the whole 'DEBATE ME" stance will only go so far and once someone drops that challenge to you in a TV interview and your not ready...well its pretty funny.

It wasn't even a debate. The thing with Andrew Neil was supposed to be an interview, but when pointed out that although the premise of Ben's new book is that we should be more civil, Ben has and does say all kinds of awful things about people, Ben got upset. His debate tricks didn't work on Neil so Ben stormed out in a huff.

[SquirrelMan]

Heres a question regarding politics overall.

Do you believe the often trotted out "Some of the issues with our society are due to constant news and social media sphere which never lets up and spews negativity" thing ? Or do you think its garbage pushed out by politicians looking for an easy excuse for how their policies have caused social harm for their own gain?

Well, there is research that shows that a lot of people think crime went up, when it really went down. And a lot of people think there are two sides to the climate crisis.

Those ideas must come from somewhere.

[PwrdOn]

Anti-China demagoguery, twenty years of it, is a thing. I remember my sibling telling me Clinton was bad because twenty years ago because he 'sold us out to China'.

Meanwhile, China is running enormous slave labor concentration camps but no one care because the victims are Muslim.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to despise China and its growing influence on the world, but none of the people that vocally hate them actually care about any of that stuff. Fundamentally, people are just especially triggered by China trying to dick over Western countries in the same way that the West has been dicking over the rest of the world for so long, being on the other side of that equation is not really a comfortable or familiar position.

As far as the Uighurs go, I don't think that any amount of well-meaning concern shown by the international community is going to do anything to help their plight, if anything the more sympathy they garner the more that the Chinese government will double down on the repressive policies. Just look at what happened to the Tibetans, they were quite the cause celebre for a while but the support stopped well short of actually doing anything to help them, and by this point China has basically beaten the Tibetans completely into submission, to the point where their international supporters basically just gave up and moved on to something else. China is banking that they can repeat the same trick with the Uighurs, except that this time they are dealing with an ethnic group that doesn't have any of the inherent charms of the rustic and peace loving Tibetans, or a charismatic leader like the Dalai Lama, so they are confident they can get away with a lot more.

[Tami]

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to despise China and its growing influence on the world, but none of the people that vocally hate them actually care about any of that stuff. Fundamentally, people are just especially triggered by China trying to dick over Western countries in the same way that the West has been dicking over the rest of the world for so long, being on the other side of that equation is not really a comfortable or familiar position.

As far as the Uighurs go, I don't think that any amount of well-meaning concern shown by the international community is going to do anything to help their plight, if anything the more sympathy they garner the more that the Chinese government will double down on the repressive policies. Just look at what happened to the Tibetans, they were quite the cause celebre for a while but the support stopped well short of actually doing anything to help them, and by this point China has basically beaten the Tibetans completely into submission, to the point where their international supporters basically just gave up and moved on to something else. China is banking that they can repeat the same trick with the Uighurs, except that this time they are dealing with an ethnic group that doesn't have any of the inherent charms of the rustic and peace loving Tibetans, or a charismatic leader like the Dalai Lama, so they are confident they can get away with a lot more.

‘If I disappear’: Chinese students make farewell messages amid crackdowns over labor activism

BEIJING — The video opens with the 21-year-old sociology student facing the camera. His voice quivers as he recounts his interrogation — his humiliation — for days at the hands of Beijing police.

The officials pressured him to quit labor activism and drop out of Peking University, he says. They slapped him until blood streamed from his nose. They jammed headphones into his ears and played hours of propaganda at full volume.

On the last day, he alleges, they had him bend over a table naked and spread his buttocks, joking darkly that they would teach him how to insert a listening device.

“This all happened on campus,” Qiu Zhanxuan seethes in the video he recorded in February after he said the police released him, temporarily, after a four-day ordeal.

“If I disappear,” he adds, “it’ll be because of them.”

Qiu disappeared April 29.

State security agents seized him that day from Beijing’s outskirts, his classmates say. Qiu’s offense? He was the leader of the Marxist student association at the elite Peking University, a communist of conscience who defied the Communist Party of China.

But the source of the dissent carried an extra sting for the government. Peking University, after all, educates China’s best and brightest, the top 0.1 percent of the country’s high school graduates. And its rebellious young Marxists were doing something particularly embarrassing: They were standing up for disenfranchised workers against the state.

They were, in other words, emulating the early Communist Party itself.

[Tami]

Parents are poisoning their children with bleach to 'cure' autism. These moms are trying to stop it.

When they aren’t working or taking care of their autistic children, Melissa Eaton and Amanda Seigler are moles.

Eaton, 39, a single mother from Salisbury, North Carolina, and Seigler, 38, a mom to six in Lake Worth, Florida, have spent much of their free time in the last three years infiltrating more than a dozen private Facebook groups for parents of autistic kids. In some of these groups, members describe using dubious, dangerous methods to try to “heal” their children’s autism — a condition with no medically known cause or cure.

The parents in many of these groups, which have ranged from tens to tens of thousands of members, believe that autism is caused by a hodgepodge of phenomena, including viruses, bacteria, fungal infections, parasites, heavy metal poisoning from vaccines, general inflammation, allergies, gluten and even the moon.

The so-called treatments are equally confused. Some parents credit turpentine or their children’s own urine as the secret miracle drug for reversing autism. One of the most sought-after chemicals is chlorine dioxide — a compound that the Food and Drug Administration warns amounts to industrial bleach, and doctors say can cause permanent harm. Parents still give it to their children orally, through enemas, and in baths. Proponents of chlorine dioxide profit off these parents’ fears and hopes by selling books about the supposed “cure,” marketing the chemicals and posting how-to videos.

[GindyPosts]

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to despise China and its growing influence on the world, but none of the people that vocally hate them actually care about any of that stuff. Fundamentally, people are just especially triggered by China trying to dick over Western countries in the same way that the West has been dicking over the rest of the world for so long, being on the other side of that equation is not really a comfortable or familiar position.

As far as the Uighurs go, I don't think that any amount of well-meaning concern shown by the international community is going to do anything to help their plight, if anything the more sympathy they garner the more that the Chinese government will double down on the repressive policies. Just look at what happened to the Tibetans, they were quite the cause celebre for a while but the support stopped well short of actually doing anything to help them, and by this point China has basically beaten the Tibetans completely into submission, to the point where their international supporters basically just gave up and moved on to something else. China is banking that they can repeat the same trick with the Uighurs, except that this time they are dealing with an ethnic group that doesn't have any of the inherent charms of the rustic and peace loving Tibetans, or a charismatic leader like the Dalai Lama, so they are confident they can get away with a lot more.

The Chinese government is well aware that the international perception (particularly Western) of Islam is that everyone who is a Muslim must be a terrorist or violently opposed to progressive ideas, so it's okay to be mean to them 'cuz they're bad people. It's not going to be talked about for those obvious reasons; Tibet had that appeal to the average layperson due to the allure of the Dalai Lama as well as the mystique of the region itself, while you couldn't get the average man or woman to identify Xinijang on a map.

The absurd part is that... Islamic countries themselves are okay with this abuse, since A) it's not their people being oppressed, and B) China helps feed their coffers.