Laissez-faire Politics Thread - Praxis? I didn't play Deus Ex, sorry.

[shosta]

Big Dick Wolff's Twitter feed is so good. I don't know why I wasn't following him before.

[shosta]

screenshotted because there's no way this stays up

[benjipwns]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-passion-of-newt-gingrich

[OnlyRegret]

wow, how could you bernard

https://twitter.com/KevinKlawitter/status/1192436969650831360

left needs no m*n

https://twitter.com/queerBengali/status/1192132153087320065

well???

https://twitter.com/queerBengali/status/1191726718345785345

[OnlyRegret]

needing to one up the leftist stack by shitting on Hong Kongers to stick it to Americans 

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitLiberalsSay/comments/dtq6z5/hong_kong_terrorists_using_americans_as/

[benjipwns]

wow, how could you bernard

https://twitter.com/KevinKlawitter/status/1192436969650831360

Just learned I'm possibly right-of-center on immigration.

[shosta]

I thought you were an open borders kind of guy

[benjipwns]

Ya, but I would have voted against "immigration reform" in 2007 too, wouldn't "abolish" ICE (rename it back to INS and return it back out of DHS), and probably would have said something similar to whatever Bernie actually said in the latter two examples.

[benjipwns]

Plus Julian Castro is just a front for BIG TWIN interests.

[OnlyRegret]

komrades, today we purge the poor and fix racism by killing racists

https://web.archive.org/web/20191106195740/https:/twitter.com/JacksonKernion/status/1191916100402872320?s=20

https://twitter.com/the_moviebob/status/1191555663945707520

I just find his bloodlust a bit entertaining after this oldie

[benjipwns]

The Movie Blob has a long history of supporting eugenics.

[team filler]

[Mandark]

Sanders voted against the 2007 bill on explicitly protectionist grounds, and he's described "open borders" as being a trojan horse pushed by the Koch brothers.

My sense is that he mostly took the traditional position of US labor groups on immigration (viewing it as putting downward pressure on the wages of Americans) and as they shifted left so did he. If Kara (pbuh) were with us, he'd have a quip about the labor aristocracy.

[shosta]

https://twitter.com/profwolff/status/1193215925727547392

The Economics of Taxing Wealth
- Current proposals by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren
- How US already taxes wealth (of some, not others)
- How other countries tax wealth
- How US enables/allows wealth to escape taxes
- Redistributing wealth: pros and cons

In connection with Wolff’s discussion of the main topic above, he will also cover the following issues at the November 13, 2019, event:
1. The protest movements in Chile, Lebanon and beyond and how they differ from those in Hong Kong
2. The overdue critique of “libertarian” capitalism

These programs begin with 30 minutes of short updates on important economic events of the last month. Then Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. Our goal is to develop all participants’ understanding and ability to explain current economic events and trends to others. When time permits, we open the floor to questions and comments.

they'll put a youtube video up after, too.

[OnlyRegret]

she is back with more fire for the bernouts

https://twitter.com/queerBengali/status/1194026845651558407

[shosta]

I can't believe getfiscal and karakand post on the same forum of 480 irony poisoned people

[shosta]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/protesters-tahrir-square-iraq-191111195848776.html

Partly hidden behind a high-rise known as the "Turkish Restaurant" and flanked by lower-lying buildings, the location of Tahrir Square makes it a stronghold. At the square, protesters said, they created what the government has been unable to since the 2003 US-led invasion - a functioning pseudo state.

"The people have taken to the streets and achieved what the government couldn't do," said Abdul Jabar, 31, an Iraqi flag draped around his shoulders.

Equipped with a seemingly functional hierarchical structure, water and food, street-sweepers, and prayer rooms, the square offers basic services. These include some that the oil-rich country has struggled to provide Iraqis with, such as healthcare.

Al Kasim al-Abady, a 31-year-old activist, said the rehabilitation of the square and its surrounding areas has been one of the great successes of the uprising.

In the Turkish Restaurant building, a strategic high-rise taken over by protesters on October 25, they have "delivered electricity, water and shelter for hundreds of people who live there", said al-Abady.

In the green heart of the square, barbers give tired demonstrators free hair cuts. Across the road, beneath a flimsy tent, volunteers hand out water and food. A middle-aged man, named Hissam, and his team of 30 provide six free meals a day, including their own home-baked bread. Most of the food is paid out of the volunteers' own pockets, some are donated by other protesters.

Amid the demonstrators are also the poor and hungry of central Baghdad, who have found in the ongoing chaos a place to sleep and eat, as well as medical care.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/chile-protesters-reject-government-plan-rewrite-constitution-191111164719422.html

Interior Minister Gonzalo Blumel announced late on Sunday that the government would move to draw up a new constitution, saying that Congress would be responsible for rewriting the document, which would then be put to a public referendum. [...] A new constitution has been a central demand of protesters, who see the political and social inequalities as a result of the economic model built by Augusto Pinochet, the dictator who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990.

This constitution, which Chile still has today, created the legal basis for a market-driven economic model that privatised pensions, healthcare and education.

[curly]

damn dude you do drugs and have sex? that's pretty crazy

[Mandark]

On left twitter, sex work brings out more scorchingly hot takes than anything besides maybe MENA politics.

[OnlyRegret]

they also had a tweet playing off disabled prostitutes as being a good thing, radfem reddit was where I saw it

in any case, w/e some of these people are too repulsive to bother thinking about

[BIONIC]

Purge the Brooklyn community. The hogs have become feral and need to be culled.

[shosta]

[Joe Molotov]

 

[team filler]

https://hilaryagro.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/marxism-is-amphetamines-biopolitics-is-cocaine-social-science-theories-as-drugs/

Marxism is amphetamines. Needed to survive, it keeps you going on a daily basis. Without it, you feel exhausted and confused, and eat too much. It makes you want to get up out of your chair and get shit DONE. Works best when blended with others to take the edge off.

 

[shosta]

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1195865827553226755

[OnlyRegret]

https://twitter.com/Ange_Amene/status/1192869337100455936

[BIONIC]

https://twitter.com/ange_amene/status/1120530447082172417

[OnlyRegret]

https://twitter.com/willmenaker/status/1194748330796077057



https://twitter.com/willmenaker/status/1194756602374557696

[shosta]

demanding Felix Biederman name four women he actually likes

the best fans are the ones who have a love/hate relationship with the material. get over it!

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/Ange_Amene/status/1192869337100455936

Well that's escalated .jpg

[Great Rumbler]

https://twitter.com/Ange_Amene/status/1192869337100455936

My OPINION OVERRIDES YOURS AT ALL TIMES.

 

[Great Rumbler]

https://twitter.com/ange_amene/status/1120530447082172417

This is absolutely going in the newsfeed.

[OnlyRegret]

demanding Felix Biederman name four women he actually likes

the best fans are the ones who have a love/hate relationship with the material. get over it!

full of dweebs, if only I cared to use reddit enough to join the cool boys at Nick Mullen's secret place

edit: I realized the context that was a bit of that exchange
missing the original comment by Bruenig which seems to have been deleted, dug around to give some context

[shosta]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-protests-walmart/with-stores-burned-and-looted-walmart-seeks-police-protection-in-riot-hit-chile-idUSKBN1XS2GC

Walmart has sought court orders for police protection in protest-wracked Chile after more than 120 of its supermarkets were looted or burned.

The Chilean subsidiary of the U.S.-headquartered retailer (WMT.N) lodged orders with courts in six Chilean cities, saying the attacks on its stores had put its staff’s safety and jobs at risk, “gravely” affected its ability to operate in the country and caused it “enormous economic damage”.

“The state of Chile has failed to fulfill its duty to guarantee public order and internal public security,” it said in court documents submitted on Wednesday and made public on Monday.

foreign capitalists go mask off and just act like they outright own the country's public services.

[OnlyRegret]

king

https://twitter.com/daedaejr/status/1196536767761047553

[Mandark]

The WASBAPPIN account somehow stands out for having terminal poster brain, even on Twitter.

[shosta]

that looks about right

[Kara]

I miss Kara 

[team filler]

go raidahs!

[team filler]

[Cerveza mas fina]

What government has she overthrown

[Tripon]

What government has she overthrown

She's still part of the United States, so uh, maybe Bolivia.

[Kara]

Now, now, let's have some basic respect here.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Jeremy Corbyn is antisemitic campaign is shaking loose all sorts of stuff.

[close]

[Mandark]

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Jeremy Corbyn is antisemitic campaign is shaking loose all sorts of stuff.

[close]

The most racist person I know in real life currently has "#Together Against Antisemitism" (yes there's a hashtag even though the words are separate) on his FB profile pic.

[benjipwns]

that looks about right

There's an apocryphal story of when Dwight Eisenhower, proletariat revolutionary, was President of Columbia that they were going to place sidewalks and there was a testy fight over where exactly to place them. The wise class philosophe President General told them to wait a year, for the students would trample paths in the grass and that is where the sidewalks should be placed.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Even though that story is fake, this actually was the case at some landgrant schools where the campus expansion outpaced standard planning methods. Buildings were built first, and the infrastructure built after, so they generally used already trodden paths for sidewalks and later roads/parking. There were some rather famous crooked routes at either Missouri or Kansas for a long time.

Michigan State like a decade ago had the administration decide that rather than the long existing roads there should be a grid of four roads only that crossed campus (which is the largest size campus in the nation) and these were the only ones needed as all traffic could flow to them via other means, it became such a disaster that they completely tore up and rebuilt the universities entire road and sidewalk system within 18 months of the plan being finished. Only to do it again because rather than have intersections there were only to be roundabouts, but since the roads were so spaced apart the roundabouts were gigantic and thus consume too much of the total size of campus and so...

[close]

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/paxthedog/status/1198030907367710720

[Kara]

Court philosophy always lags a bit, give them time to catch up!

E: 

One expects a certain institutional lag. Mainstream economists nowadays might not be particularly good at predicting financial crashes, facilitating general prosperity, or coming up with models for preventing climate change, but when it comes to establishing themselves in positions of intellectual authority, unaffected by such failings, their success is unparalleled.

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/RetweetWitch/status/1198292519819210752

https://twitter.com/FoodForTrot/status/1198306631865339904

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/collinrees/status/1198329446878580737

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/walid970721/status/1198651517651304451

[Kara]

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Jeremy Corbyn is antisemitic campaign is shaking loose all sorts of stuff.

[close]

The most racist person I know in real life currently has "#Together Against Antisemitism" (yes there's a hashtag even though the words are separate) on his FB profile pic.

Been meaning to reply to this.

I've been mutuals on social media with maybe a dozen or so nü Labour devotees for a long time. Some of them have become quietist ever since Corbyn was elected head of the party, but some of them have just lost the plot and can never stop posting about him, which means that I've been inundated with the "Jeremy Corbyn is antisemitic" stuff for months. It's made me think a lot.

1. I'm glad that we have an independent identity here in the U.S. One that runs parallel to, and often crosses over with, the State of Israel to be sure, but it's still one that can stand on its own (and has or a long time). As best I can tell British Jewry hasn't been as fortunate, though I should probably account for how small it is to begin with when making this comparison.

2. It's really bizarre seeing people who think that they're good allies spout questionable content all the time. I'm not even talking about the hasbara that they parrot like a child dressing up in their parent's clothes, but just stuff like "I'm qualified to define the exact parameters of what antisemitism *is*." Our gentile allies here tend to be evangelicals who have a very cynical eschatological reason for supporting Israeli actions so I harbor no fantasies about how righteous among the nations they really are, but these are people who legitimately think they're doing good.

3. The only time they talk about antisemitism in the U.S. is when Ilhan Omar says something ill-advised, which really makes their professed status as allies ring hollow after the pogrom at Tree of Life or a president who keeps interesting company, praises certain very fine people, and demands certain actions from the agencies that answer to him. The other day one of them retweeted Hen Mazzig equating the "blood and soil" chant with "from the river to the sea" and I just closed the Twitter app like the Banderas laptop gif.

I don't want them to be filler, and if I'm being perfectly honest I'm agnostic on the whole Corbyn issue but this stuff really sucks, man.

[Kara]

To draw a flawed analogy, if you told me an American politician was racist I'd be agnostic too unless I had knowledge of some anti-racist actions they'd taken in the past. Obviously Corbyn has a C.V. in that regard, but Dutch squatters in Africa aren't entirely analogous to the diaspora / Israeli dynamic and from my travels I know that the struggle for civil rights for Palestinians attracts all sorts.

Also the British press is utter trash so trying to piece anything together from reporting is mostly a lost cause.

[benjipwns]

I admit I am obviously nowhere as intertwined into the specifics of the anti-semetic claims and so on, although when there were some articles a bit back about all the people calling him an anti-semetic monster I was somewhat shocked at how many of the quotes came from "lifelong" Labourites with the other parties comparatively mum on the subject.

Somewhat on topic, I was actually most surprised coming across how seriously and INTENSELY Americans on the "Left" (aka Twitter mostly) are starting to take all this Corbyn stuff. The coming of an election, in another country (that matters unlike Canada) that speaks English, has really ramped it up the last month.

The dude has seemingly like no chance of being anything but opposition and the polls have looked like this for years now. The Tories are apparently running an internal contest to see how low on their totem pole they can go and still lead him by 30 points. The Liberal Dems are the Liberal Dems.

And like you guys said, it's not like Corbyn really says anything all that nutty for someone in his Labour tendency. At least I don't find all that much of it to be. It's more like regular politician flubs than anything I would take as some kind of deep ideological statement.

Yet, this is apparently the major debate of the Global International. Corbyn: For or Against?

[benjipwns]

He says without disclaiming that he's been mostly avoiding libertarian or similar websites despite their being good sources for Wank Dad content because the cycle debate has already started and ramped up to include whether or not "true libertarians" should support Trump on impeachment.

For the record and for your amusement, it usually breaks down like this:
Cosmotarians - Support the LP if possible, impeachment is a regular good
"Constitutional" Libertarians - Support Trump because the LP won't enforce the borders if they somehow win, impeachment will let illegals take over
"Lifelong" Libertarians - Support Trump and the GOP because the LP won't enforce the borders, protect us from terrorism or regulate Facebook if they somehow win, impeachment will let the Democrats let illegals take over
Objectivists - Support Trump if only to oppose the Cosmotarians, but are currently too exhausted from trying to get everyone to pay attention to the recent Canadian elections because Objectivists are like 75% Canadian, this is a truth fact; impeachment will let Islamists take advantage of our weak foreign policy
Rothbardians - ongoing existential crisis
Ancaps - voting is immoral, but vote LP purely to spite all of the above; impeach him for violating the Constitution instead, then shrink down to a night watchmen state!
Paulites - Ron Paul 2020 (Dad used to hit homers and never got beat up by his neighbor.) WWRPD?

[benjipwns]

I guess I'm seeing more of a sudden very intense interest that I do not think will even exist after December 13, and there's lots of little not-so-subtle proxy warring related to Bernie, the "DSA" vs. "Tankies" Twitter War, etc.

[benjipwns]

https://archive.md/nESXY

“How to stop a civil war” says the cover of the latest Atlantic magazine. I can suggest a fix: the international community should intervene in the US. Of course Americans have a right to self-determination but the priority now is saving democracy.

It’s hard to assess the risk of political violence, given the US tradition of everyday gunslinging: the rival candidates for state elections in Montana, who each made ads showing themselves firing rifles at television screens, looked like actors playing Afghan warlords. Still, the recent ethnopolitical terror attacks in El Paso, Pittsburgh and elsewhere were shocking even by US standards.

The much tamer UK needs watching too. Like Americans, Britons have been upgrading their political views into their identities and dismissing opponents as traitors. Both countries now intend to resolve their conflict with winner-take-all elections.

Such scenarios rarely end well, warns former Yemeni government minister Rafat Al-Akhali, a fellow at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government. He says: “A lot of people in the regions that we work with thought we had to transfer their experiences of national dialogue to the UK and other countries.” So what should interventions in the US and potentially Britain look like?

Washington used to advocate a set schedule for countries in conflict. A binary election only worsens polarisation. Instead, says Al-Akhali, the first step is power sharing: a transitional government that includes all conflicting sides.

Next comes an Afghan-style loya jirga, or grand assembly, to kick off a national dialogue. Yemen’s brought together political parties, but also youth, women, civil society, southern secessionists and northern Houthi rebels. A US dialogue could look remarkably similar.

Given the death of truth, a South African-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission wouldn’t work in the US. Americans may also need to abandon the polarising impeachment of Donald Trump and let him seek exile in a friendly country: the model could be Ukraine’s kleptocratic pro-Kremlin former president Viktor Yanukovich, now based out of Russia.

The loya jirga writes a new constitution. This would be Britain’s first, and for the US, a much-needed update of its antiquated 1787 document. Japanese jurists could help draft it as a thank you to Americans for writing Japan’s excellent 1947 constitution.

The new text would dispense with vagaries such as “high crimes and misdemeanours”, define presidential corruption and end political control of the judiciary. If it’s undemocratic for the Polish or Hungarian governments to appoint judges, why can the US president do it?

The new constitution must cantonise the US, going way beyond “states’ rights” to neighbourhood rights. The smaller the units of power, the less important becomes the national political conflict. The US’s second republic will also need a new electoral system that favours coalitions instead of winner-takes-all rule.

The new constitution must also tackle foreign election-meddling. Ideally, a non-partisan institution would be put in charge of handling this, but the only one now somewhat trusted across the American divide is the military, and you generally don’t want soldiers in post-conflict transitions.

After Russia’s successes in the US and UK in 2016, half the world will be interfering in the next elections. Indeed, a British support group for India’s ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party boasts of campaigning for the Tories in 48 marginal seats. British Conservatives and US Republicans may welcome the help, but they should realise there’s at least a theoretical possibility that foreign powers might one day shift to their opponents.

In fact, if Russia feels any need to hasten Britain’s break-up and international isolation, it can already choose between Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, the Brexit party, the Scottish Nationalists, Sinn Féin and Plaid Cymru, while encouraging infighting between Remain parties.

Once the new constitution is signed, it’s time for closely scrutinised elections. Even before the US elections of 2000, the journalist Christopher Hitchens wrote: “The United States loves nothing better than to certify other countries’ ballots as ‘free and fair’, so there can hardly be any principled objection to a delegation of monitors from democratic nations taking up position, pens in hand, as America makes its ‘choice.’”

If only he’d been listened to. The problem is worse today: given gerrymandering and voter suppression, states such as North Carolina and Georgia are no longer full democracies. Tories are learning from Republicans: they’re now planning to make voters show identification, precisely because many poorer Britons don’t have any.

Whoever becomes leader must reach out. Andrew Yang, a no-hope Democratic candidate, has it right: “After I win the . . . election, my plan is to go to the district that voted for me the least in the entire country and say, ‘I know you didn’t support me, but I will be your president too.’”

But let’s not get over-optimistic. At best, intervention will freeze the US’s overlapping ethnic, economic and regional conflicts. The question for the international community then becomes: how much blood and treasure is it willing to expend on a country that may not be ready for democracy?

Simon Kuper is a British author. He writes about sports "from an anthropologic perspective."

[OnlyRegret]

Now, now, let's have some basic respect here.

(Image removed from quote.)

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Jeremy Corbyn is antisemitic campaign is shaking loose all sorts of stuff.

[close]

reluctant 

[OnlyRegret]

He says without disclaiming that he's been mostly avoiding libertarian or similar websites despite their being good sources for Wank Dad content because the cycle debate has already started and ramped up to include whether or not "true libertarians" should support Trump on impeachment.

For the record and for your amusement, it usually breaks down like this:
Cosmotarians - Support the LP if possible, impeachment is a regular good
"Constitutional" Libertarians - Support Trump because the LP won't enforce the borders if they somehow win, impeachment will let illegals take over
"Lifelong" Libertarians - Support Trump and the GOP because the LP won't enforce the borders, protect us from terrorism or regulate Facebook if they somehow win, impeachment will let the Democrats let illegals take over
Objectivists - Support Trump if only to oppose the Cosmotarians, but are currently too exhausted from trying to get everyone to pay attention to the recent Canadian elections because Objectivists are like 75% Canadian, this is a truth fact; impeachment will let Islamists take advantage of our weak foreign policy
Rothbardians - ongoing existential crisis
Ancaps - voting is immoral, but vote LP purely to spite all of the above; impeach him for violating the Constitution instead, then shrink down to a night watchmen state!
Paulites - Ron Paul 2020 (Dad used to hit homers and never got beat up by his neighbor.) WWRPD?

So what flavour are you?

[Kara]

That FT article is just the JDPON copy pasta.