Trump Thread

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

When Trump was talking of Sweden, did he know anything beforehand?
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/21/eu...ockholm-riots/
Or had he traveled with Doc Brown and Marty McFly into the future?

There are, actually, often minor disturbances in Sweden involving immigrants and the Police.

This doesn't look like it really qualified as a real "riot" in the French sense.

[Idaho]

There are legal companies in america that offer "No win, No fee" rates on cases.
Again, what does this extension account for?

You are right. The market can efficiently deal with this. The system works!

[Idaho]

That looks more like out-and-out corruption than Fascism.

When the state allows its enforcers free reign over its citizens, the individual examples do look like corruption.

[Greyblades]

You are right. The market can efficiently deal with this. The system works!

Not much of a refutation.

Nor an answer to the question.

[Greyblades]

Doublepost.

[drone]

Here is a good Washington Post series on asset forfeiture from a couple of years ago.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/inv...=.224f7ec3b968

I remember back when this got started during the heyday of the "War on Drugs", easy to pass laws when spun as cops seizing yachts and Ferraris from big time dealers. I think the general gist of the story for lawful citizens is, don't carry more than $200 in cash. If they take it, it's generally not worth your time/money to try to get it back. You may be innocent, but your property is guilty as hell!

[Seamus Fermanagh]

So I see there are increasingly moves to outlaw public protest in the US:

http://tucson.com/news/local/crime/s...2062bd07b.html

I see that it's also being used to expand the civil forfeiture rules to... Nice!

So the state decides if you are allowed to protest, and if it decides that you aren't, it takes all your stuff.

If that isn't fascism, what the hell is it?

The civil forfeiture rules in the US are unbelievable. Any of you non Americans who haven't acquainted yourselves - here's a rogues gallery to give you a taste:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/listver...orfeiture/amp/

A novel way for law enforcement to boost their budgets by stealing off (mainly) black people.

Idaho and I are not normally on the same side of most issues. However, the civil forfeiture rules for drug crimes in America are far too easily abused and applying the same rules for such things as protesting without a permit would be ludicrous. I cannot see that application as anything other than an infringement of the first amendment. Injunct it now and strike it down soon after.

If I recall, @Strike For The South is also quite leery of this forfeiture stuff.

[Idaho]

You guys only live there, what would you know. Greyblades has a deeper understanding, based on a sense of moral superiority that only an English tory could nature.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

As with a number of well-intentioned things, the forfeiture process in the war on drugs was well meant but did not think through the unintended consequences.

Goal: Make drug dealers pay for the cost of the war on drugs, tying the property forfeiture to the presence of illegal drugs or paraphernalia that tested positive for same. Confiscate the (house, boat, car, etc.) and auction for cash which then funded the anti-drug effort.

In practice: tying forfeiture to the item's use for drugs and NOT to the owner's or operator's actions allowed for confiscation of lots of stuff -- even if it had been stolen or rented from its rightful owner who then received no compensation. Even if there was no evidence to link any person to a crime that would meet the minimum needed to arraign someone, the stuff could still be taken and sold. Sadly, it is all to easy to teach yourself to justify raids and confiscation that can't really generate legal evidence, but can get you loot. Most police departments have not abused this.....most.

The potential for abuse in these situations is galling.

[Pannonian]

You guys only live there, what would you know. Greyblades has a deeper understanding, based on a sense of moral superiority that only an English tory could nature.

GB is as enthusiastic about Corbyn as you are.

[Greyblades]

I am?

I cannot see that application as anything other than an infringement of the first amendment.

You cant? I could easily see the police wanting to using it on protestors wielding various weapons before they get the chance to use them.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

When the state allows its enforcers free reign over its citizens, the individual examples do look like corruption.

Fascism is a political system, throwing it around in inappropriate ways cheapens that.

[AE Bravo]

Don't worry about that. The "Putin is still a fascist" posts have cheapened it enough here.

[Idaho]

GB is as enthusiastic about Corbyn as you are.

Heh. I think you should keep your pet topic limited to its own thread.

[Pannonian]

Heh. I think you should keep your pet topic limited to its own thread.

You're the one calling him a Tory, and I corrected you on that. Check out his posts in the Corbyn thread for his sympathies. If you want to stick to the thread topic, then GB is a Trump supporter. So he's been on the winning side in 3 votes so far: Corbyn, Brexit and Trump.

[Husar]

So he's been on the winning side in 3 votes so far: Corbyn, Brexit and Trump.

Wonderful!

[Greyblades]

Looks like someone rolled a 1 on sense motive.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Fascism is a political system, throwing it around in inappropriate ways cheapens that.

Except that Putin's government can be demonstrated to be of a Fascist nature.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I am?


You cant? I could easily see the police wanting to using it on protestors wielding various weapons before they get the chance to use them.

In the USA, police already have the right to use force to disarm or stop an attacker who poses grievous threat to them and/or bystanders. Property confiscation when it is clearly used as part of a criminal act for which the person has been judged guilty is not without its place, but public protest is both Constitutionally guaranteed and, in the vast majority of instances, reasonably peaceful.

If you are starting a riot, then the cops will wade in with their truncheons and a whiff of teargas. Confiscating your property because you failed to get a permit for your peaceful protest would be government intimidation and specifically counter to the first amendment. The police can, and have, arrested such persons for trespass or blocking public thoroughfares (misdemeanors), but to do more would be outrageous.

[Greyblades]

I should clarify: the impression I am getting is that these legal expansions are there so that, when the police see anyone in a protest crowd that appear to be wanting to turn violent, they can either arrest or confiscate what they need to premptively prevent escalation.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I should clarify: the impression I am getting is that these legal expansions are there so that, when the police see anyone in a protest crowd that appear to be wanting to turn violent, they can either arrest or confiscate what they need to premptively prevent escalation.

I am sure that is the intent. I worry that it will encourage "preemptive violence on the part of the police. In addition, curtailing protests BEFORE they turn violent violates the spirit of our Constitution and, I suspect, the letter of it as well.

[Strike For The South]

Civil forfeiture is robbery. It's original intent, during the drug war, was to nueter the drug lords ability to access their cash. However, this has devolved into taking whatever a cash a black guy has on him during a traffic stop in east Texas. The cops then use this cash to further militarize, and what's the point of those toys if you can't use them?

Its totally insane that a tool originally intended for drug king pins and pension swindlers is now used to fund police departments and an incentive to uncover "wrong doing". Meaning, a bit of weed in the house.

Total 8th amendment violation. Total bastardized version of due process.

Also so Arizona is now looking to apply racketeering charges to protesters. Fascists man.

seamus summoned me

[Montmorency]

Protest is inherently an act of political violence and therefore any individual intending to protest may conceivably be indicted along with his or her property under the proposal.

Fundamental civil rights contradiction. The bill won't stand (long).

[Strike For The South]

We are going to have define terms. You're not going to weasel your out of this using your vocabulary.

[Montmorency]

We are going to have define terms. You're not going to weasel your out of this using your vocabulary.

Is TacFlamers damage in the 30s?


En garde!

Hannah Arendt wants to distinguish between violence and power. One perspective she briefly cites (in On Violence) is one that, while not exactly equating the two or linking violence to a manifestation of power, describes power as like a subset of violence. (But Arendt would not agree, arguing that violence and power are opposite.) Speaking on democracy, the institutions and laws of republican government are maintained not by power of men or laws, but of the people's consent in the legitimacy of the two. In other words, the people exercise the power over the state to give the state power, or to diminish it (separate from authority).


There are plenty of conceptions of political violence today, but I think most which don't simply limit or predicate the definition to or on bodily force, harm, or intimidation for political cause or in political context, are related to the musings above. (Though again Arendt would disagree, seeing violence as instrumental rather than as a relationship inflicting "damage".)

A legally unrestricted majority rule, that is, a democracy without a constitution, can be very formidable in the suppression of the rights of minorities and
very effective in the suffocation of dissent without any use of violence. But that does not mean that violence and power are the same.

So, in light of a recursive power to power of republican subjects, protest could be interpreted directly as an act of violence against the state in that it aims to turn that power against itself, to diminish it.

To be clear, you would be much likelier to see leftist activists espousing views on political violence that can label most acts of policy as potentially or inherently violent, and probably only radicals who accept protest itself as inherently violent. I don't actually follow anarchist theory or praxis to be precise about it, but have encountered various Internet conversations, so I look to the classic work for familiar ground. What I mean with my post above is that Republicans hoping to expand laws in the interest of limiting undesirable protest, or punishing those who engage in it, fall into the trap of playing with this logic of power. The legislation can't operate without the assumption that protest is violence diffuse, with individual eruptions emerging therefrom, which on its face then has to contradict the letter of the Constitution - which would have to be interpreted as legitimizing this specific violence of people over state. Now we're in Steve Bannon territory or sommthin. A Republican sticking to their more natural instinct that the process of protest and any given violent event must be distinguished cannot simply find "a protest" a violent enterprise, so law or policy should only be used to either balance the exercise of protest against other rights or somehow trim about a "true" core of protest. So traditionalists can defend the Boston Tea Party by pointing out holistic virtues, or by separating out the destruction or rowdiness for condemnation apart from the rest. But that's another story

Just a notion.




On a more concrete note, some old surveys from the early 70s suggest an interesting diversity in common understandings of violence.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Greyblades]

Sounds to me like political entities were/are looking to redefine the word violence in such a complex (or at least intentionally confusing) way as to let them call thier actually peaceful opponents violent and thus attach the original stigmas in the eye of the common man while simultaneously allowing them to stigmatise any intellectual calling this out as ignorant or irrationally opposed to the term's redefining.

[Husar]

I completely agree with whatever Monty just said.

There are also reports about an increasing number of "attacks" on Jewish cemeteries in the US since Trump took office, it sounds a lot like the increase of attacks on immigrants after the Brexit referendum.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/02/26...-cemetery.html

And meanwhile in German carnival:
http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/...-videowebl.jpg

[Montmorency]

And meanwhile in German carnival:
http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/...-videowebl.jpg

"Pension fund"?

[Husar]

"Pension fund"?

Deutsche Rentenversicherung is the public pension fund of Germany.
I assume it's the one you pay into via automatic deductions from your paycheck and that will later pay your pension according to the law.
At least the 73 million members would suggest that is what it is.

[Greyblades]

They ever figure out who toppled the tombstones?

Im going to refrain from comment untill then, not going to set myself up for embarrassment should the suspected perps turn out to be the exact ones to make me look like an idiot.

Edit: oh these are new ones, not yet it seems.