How does the World view America these days?

  On 12/10/2016 at 2:03 PM, chenGOD said:

 

  On 12/10/2016 at 10:17 AM, ignatius said:

 

  On 12/10/2016 at 12:55 AM, Braintree said:

Selling America bullshit one tiny hat at a time.

 

made in China!

Dammit came here to post that.

 

I'll post this instead:

 

Umberto Eco on Fascism. Great read.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/

 

Eco rules. Check out "Travels in Hyperreality" when you have a chance.

Thanks, haven't read that one yet. I love everything I've read from him. He's just one of those authors you know it's going to be quality.

have his final book in my amazon wishlist, so should have it after christmas.

sweet. 

  Quote

 

PALANTIR TECHNOLOGIES, the data mining company co-founded by billionaire and Trump transition advisor Peter Thiel, will likely assist the Trump Administration in its efforts to track and collect intelligence on immigrants, according to a review of public records by The Intercept. Since 2011, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has paid Palantir tens of millions of dollars to help construct and operate a complex intelligence system called FALCON, which allows ICE to store, search, and analyze troves of data that include family relationships, employment information, immigration history, criminal records, and home and work addresses.

 

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/12/transition-adviser-peter-thiel-would-directly-profit-from-mass-deportations/

https://youtu.be/_O-kDINftu8

lol even trump can't stop Bill O'Reilly getting his panties in a bunch over this.

My usual response:

https://twitter.com/omgadamsaleh/status/811531782982078464

this is insane on so many levels.

so on face value, this guy gets kicked off the plane because he spoke Arabic.

But apparently he regularly does provoke being kicked off as a kind of prank thing.

See the replies...

Tbh this guy is the worst possible incarnation of a self loving millennial fuckwit imo.

Posting in America thread because I haven't seen anything like that IRL (Europe) ever.

yay war on drugs!  joe manchin is a total douche.. always has been always will be

also,

Opiates are a real problem, but the problem stems from doctors not knowing how to manage pain and the very real insidious nature of the addiction.

Coincidentally, deaths from opioid overdose over plummeted in places where cannabis is legalized. Time to start taxing and selling ultra pure euphoriants for the masses like the good ol' days. I don't think much would change in the way of bad things if we stopped viewing drug use as criminal.

This rejuvenation of the war on drugs m'kay is just a ruse to create more "law enforcement" jerbs, and tbqh we owe these opportunities to all our ptsd vets who've been chewed up and spat out by the military industrial complex

  On 12/22/2016 at 1:52 AM, Audioblysk said:

Opiates are a real problem, but the problem stems from doctors not knowing how to manage pain and the very real insidious nature of the addiction.

 

Coincidentally, deaths from opioid overdose over plummeted in places where cannabis is legalized. Time to start taxing and selling ultra pure euphoriants for the masses like the good ol' days. I don't think much would change in the way of bad things if we stopped viewing drug use as criminal.

yeah. .totally. doctors over prescribed them. ridiculously plus all the soldiers coming home were doped to the gills and the jackasses who write the book on when/how to prescribe opiates said that Oxy is 'non addictive' in the practices/guide whatever that doctors use.  they changed a few small paragraphs and that was that. MDs went to mooon w/that stuff. then the country reacted to opiate addiction via prescribed medications and said "we need to crack down on this" so they did and then oxy got super expensive and all the addicts switched to heroin because it's plentiful and cheap. and now that it's cut w/the fentanyl people are ODing. 

and yeah.. OD deaths down in places w/medical cannabis.

hopefully these fucbois in congress and at the justice dept and DEA don't get too eager. i think it would be pretty tough to unring the bell at this point and protests would be huge but i'd hate to see it come to that. 

  On 12/22/2016 at 5:09 AM, Bob Dobalina said:

This rejuvenation of the war on drugs m'kay is just a ruse to create more "law enforcement" jerbs, and tbqh we owe these opportunities to all our ptsd vets who've been chewed up and spat out by the military industrial complex

The ptsd vets are the ones with the oxy/heroin habits

But either way...this is what happens when society's decisions aren't tethered to empirical findings

You get some politician's moralistic gut-feeling deciding policy

The "non-addictive" opiate is a long running joke. Heroin was supposed to be a non-addictive alternative to morphine back in the day. It was in cough medicines and ear drops and whatever.

  On 12/23/2016 at 10:46 AM, mokz said:

The "non-addictive" opiate is a long running joke. Heroin was supposed to be a non-addictive alternative to morphine back in the day. It was in cough medicines and ear drops and whatever.

the good old days.

Trump was hardly hiding his love for Israel during the campaign,was always far more likely to let them away with murder IMHO.

well it's not obviously, but people are dumb, what ya gonna do?

America wins the Darwin awards for 2016 tbh

  On 12/24/2016 at 1:09 AM, caze said:

well it's not obviously, but people are dumb, what ya gonna do?

exactly. NOTHING MAKES SENSE ANYMORE

  On 12/24/2016 at 4:47 AM, Candiru said:

America wins the Darwin awards for 2016 tbh

that's saying something.. 2016.. worst year in memory. america wins worst in worst year. 

srsly though i think trump is going to do like putin's strategist and throw shade in every direction just to create chaos and distraction. he may sort of end up in his own little political world and not even pay attention to most of what his administration does. all the different departments.. or he'll micromanage the shit out of lot's of things.. lose his mind and swallowed up by his ego and go into nixon-like levels of paranoia and modern equivalent of unforgivable scandals. the conflicts of interests are so far just kind of brushed under the rug. 

meh.. america.. it's a perfect example of late stage capitalism for the world to learn from. 

Sorry, but i have to jump on the antagonist bandwagon here. I agree with the chaos/distraction perception, but I think the blame shouldn't be purely on Trump. Even if much of what he says or tweets, results in some kind of outrage. The blame for the outrage is just as much, or even more on the people who are outraged.

To me it's not clear who is more paranoid. Trumps administration, or the people being outraged? I'd rather blame the outraged people for all the chaos and distraction, at this point. Although I understand I have to be very careful doing so. I would agree that Trump is riding a fine line which shouldn't be normalized. But that is not a justification for the outrage we're currently seeing, imo.

With respect to the conflicts of interest for instance, I am under the assumption there's lot of legal precedence (constitution?) protecting the american democracy. And I'm fairly confident many people from different (political) backgrounds will hold Trump accountable for respecting and defending the integrity of his office. I think this is called "having faith in the institutions".

I can only hope more people channel their emotions in more productive ways. Not by being outraged, but by taking legal action whenever he crosses a line. It should be obvious that the "boy crying wolf" approach is ineffective. And worse, it enables Trump to do outrageous stuff. (It really does!)

So, in a way, the new Trump administration is an exciting test for the institutions of the American democracy. I've read somewhere that if you add all assets of people in the Trump administration, you have as much as the bottom third of the US population. Call it late stage capitalism, if you will. I call it an experiment of power: money or the institutions? It wont get any more transparent than we currently witness. And I hope that'll be a good thing.

Also, interesting editorial by former NSA analyst about Russian hacking:

http://observer.com/2016/12/former-nsa-analyst-debunks-three-myths-about-russian-hacking/

  Quote

In truth, the vast majority of the email theft perpetrated by Russian spies against the Democrats was utterly normal signals intelligence collection, what the pros call SIGINT. Russians do it, we do it—in 2016 every country that can does it. Spies steal secrets, it’s what they do. Of course espionage is illegal basically everywhere, but everybody does it. Hyperventilating about it doesn’t help.

Nothing new, but the novelty is that it comes from an insider. And it gives insight into their perspective.

Yeah but they got pretty far with it and now we have an actual retard in the White House. Which is pretty progressive actually.

What's next? In 2020 we're going to have to choose between 2pac's hologram and Buzz Lightyear, who reveals himself as an actual card carrying Nazi.

2020 will be Cyborg Kanye vs Resurrected Zombie Hitler

  On 12/24/2016 at 12:47 PM, Candiru said:

Yeah but they got pretty far with it and now we have an actual retard in the White House. Which is pretty progressive actually.

 

What's next? In 2020 we're going to have to choose between 2pac's hologram and Buzz Lightyear, who reveals himself as an actual card carrying Nazi.

just for the record: the point was NOT to downplay the russian hacking

  On 12/24/2016 at 12:47 PM, Candiru said:

In 2020 we're going to have to choose between 2pac's hologram and Buzz Lightyear, who reveals himself as an actual card carrying Nazi.

lol

  On 12/24/2016 at 10:27 AM, goDel said:

Sorry, but i have to jump on the antagonist bandwagon here. I agree with the chaos/distraction perception, but I think the blame shouldn't be purely on Trump. Even if much of what he says or tweets, results in some kind of outrage. The blame for the outrage is just as much, or even more on the people who are outraged.

 

To me it's not clear who is more paranoid. Trumps administration, or the people being outraged? I'd rather blame the outraged people for all the chaos and distraction, at this point. Although I understand I have to be very careful doing so. I would agree that Trump is riding a fine line which shouldn't be normalized. But that is not a justification for the outrage we're currently seeing, imo.

 

With respect to the conflicts of interest for instance, I am under the assumption there's lot of legal precedence (constitution?) protecting the american democracy. And I'm fairly confident many people from different (political) backgrounds will hold Trump accountable for respecting and defending the integrity of his office. I think this is called "having faith in the institutions".

 

I can only hope more people channel their emotions in more productive ways. Not by being outraged, but by taking legal action whenever he crosses a line. It should be obvious that the "boy crying wolf" approach is ineffective. And worse, it enables Trump to do outrageous stuff. (It really does!)

 

So, in a way, the new Trump administration is an exciting test for the institutions of the American democracy. I've read somewhere that if you add all assets of people in the Trump administration, you have as much as the bottom third of the US population. Call it late stage capitalism, if you will. I call it an experiment of power: money or the institutions? It wont get any more transparent than we currently witness. And I hope that'll be a good thing.

 

 

Also, interesting editorial by former NSA analyst about Russian hacking:

http://observer.com/2016/12/former-nsa-analyst-debunks-three-myths-about-russian-hacking/

 

  Quote

In truth, the vast majority of the email theft perpetrated by Russian spies against the Democrats was utterly normal signals intelligence collection, what the pros call SIGINT. Russians do it, we do it—in 2016 every country that can does it. Spies steal secrets, it’s what they do. Of course espionage is illegal basically everywhere, but everybody does it. Hyperventilating about it doesn’t help.

Nothing new, but the novelty is that it comes from an insider. And it gives insight into their perspective.

 

Nixon was pretty paranoid towards the end. i don't think trump is as self aware as nixon was.. so i don't know that he'll be so introspective as to become actually paranoid but if his administration doesn't stick together and stay on the same page who knows?  it seems like he has a few people who will act as handlers or at least in the press they'll be out there restating some of what he tweets or quips to the press to form a message. 

was it here i read the article about "trumps followers don't have an actual ideology just an irrational hatred of liberals"?  i can't remember.. it makes some sense for some of his followers and i suspect that coin can be flipped and same can be said about some liberals... 

anyway.. i agree about the outrage.. it serves no one to have the press/internet constantly outraged at whatever bullshit falls from his mouth. it also cannot be sustained or constructive. 

regarding conflicts of interest.. there is no rule about the presidency and conflict of interest.. only ethical guidelines that are really totally optional. it's up to the president to do these things but it's not required.. same as not sharing his tax returns.. this is not a requirement but every presidential candidate has done it for transparency. trump doesn't really care about that. 

but as the president.. who so far communicates by twitter.. and has no press conferences.. he's staying insulated and still managing to manipulate the stock market by making statements about boeing or lockheed martin.   i don't think it's quite clicked yet that he's no longer just an entertainer.. but his words have consequences. he's the president elect of the USA and whatever he says carries more weight now. i think he's going to toy with this some and it's going to be weird. 

i mention late state capitalism because the lines are all crossed/blurred and the open door between industry/stock market and government is all free flowing and is hardly a door anymore. it's a hallway. 

it's been that way a long time in some places.. the pentagon and arms dealers for example. they trade places all the time. the general accounting office (GAO) does a basic audit of every dept of federal government every year. a one page thing. budget/expenses.. a basic input vs output statement.. the pentagon is the only dept that is exempt from this. not because of anything other than they don't know where the money goes, how much they have and how much they spend ever year. the GAO got tired of asking them to produce this one page document so they said "forget it".  the pentagon.. i think in the 80s.. just stopped complying w/the request. the GAO said "fine".   they're having a field day in there. 

the bureaucracy is so large and corruption scattered through out that a lot of people who would normally care are just warn down by it and it's business as usual.  that's sort of how it happens i think.. at some point people just stop doing a double take and it's normal. i think that could happen with trump's presidency. 

i think it really could turn into a berlusconi type of circus.