Elerond
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Posts posted by Elerond
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Arnold Schwarzenegger proposes that he and Trump switch jobs
https://twitter.com/Schwarzenegger/status/827169996866347008
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Ha, Ha, Ha, they were never Bush's lapdogs, Bush was literally hitler, until he became a respected elder statesman so that Trump could become the new literal hitler.
For Reuters? Have you even read Bush era articles in Reuters. If you think those are calling somebody Hitler like then Fox news about Obama must have been really constant calling him as incarnation of Satan and bringer of apocalypse or even something worse in comparison. Because they were quite pro with his policies like war in Iraq etc..
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I guess all those references about Obama's lap dog press just went straight over your head.It seems that Reuters' editorial staff now counts US government as hostile, pro-censoring and anti press. Which is quite achievement in 12 days, when you take account that before Reuters was very supportive of most things done by US government.
Before they were Obama's lap dogs they were Bush's lap dogs, and before that they were Clinton's lap dogs. This is first time that I have seen them to take negative stance towards current US government. This is just speaking about Reuters.
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It seems that Reuters' editorial staff now counts US government as hostile, pro-censoring and anti press. Which is quite achievement in 12 days, when you take account that before Reuters was very supportive of most things done by US government.
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Republicans in House seems to have fun with Trump and how he ignores them.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-immigration-congress-order-234392
Hill staffers secretly worked on Trump's immigration order
Several House Judiciary Committee aides helped craft the controversial directive without telling Republican leaders. -
How many of these we can mark as checked these days.
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I'm not particularly hung up on the use of the word 'ban' itself, I do think that suspension is more accurate. Trump using ban doesn't mean much, especially on twitter where he has limited characters available; he's an off the cuff speaker anyway.
Mostly though, the EO itself is very careful not to couch this as either a (permanent) ban but as a (temporary) suspension or as a religious thing- except insofar as it 'encourages' receiving persecuted religious minorities (practically, ME christians since I don't think it's aimed at, say, Rohinja from Burma or Shia from Saudi) yet it has generally been described as both by the media. When it doesn't get struck down as targeting religion there will be a lot of people reading WaPo/ NYT type articles who will be outraeged!!!!1!!! because they haven't read the EO and are going by what the media is saying. There's enough there to dislike without distortion.
But it is also very carefully constructed so that it mostly only effects Muslims. You can see what it is purpose is even though it is tried to make so that it don't blatantly break law. But its intention is quite clear from how it is constructed.
I must say that way it is constructed reminds me of German's so called anti-Jew laws that never actually named Jews as their target, but in reality they were about only population group targeted by those laws.
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I can't find any actual references of direct bans by Obama, only that he made getting in USA much much more harder for people from certain countries, by adding visa requirements and security checks etc..
The Trump 'ban' at least theoretically isn't an actual ban either though despite how it's being reported. It's a suspension until proper (extreme) vetting can be put in place. That could, of course, be a constructive ban and the temporary measure is meant to be permanent, but the legal basis for it is near identical to Obama's, and Obama rigorously defended his right to issue such edicts on the subject. Certainly there's more than a whiff of hypocrisy about criticism from Obama of such things, and a fair bit of selective reporting going on.
(ftr measure is stupid populism. I have no objection in theory since the US is perfectly justified in wanting to control its borders but it also needs to be applied even handedly, and an even handed application means that KSA/ Egypt etc get banned as well since KSA especially is the prime jihadi exporter)
He himself calls it a ban so I don't see any point to argue opposite
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"Yeah, and it holds no ground as an accusation if the article in question isn't fake."
I only have your word and the site's word that it isn't fake news. And, youa re relying on their word. Their word can't be trusted so I don't trust the article. It might be real. It might not. TYT are a bunch of silly gooses but for me they are more trustworthy than that fake news site. So, give me a source superior to a TYT wannabe. And, again, the article talks about Iraq. I never mentioned Iraq. I said Syria. Know your ME countries!
When did Obama did such ban for Syrians?
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I cant wait until tomorrows Supreme Court nomination announcement. I predict epic levels of cloth rending and teeth gnashing.
Whats that you say Gfted1? Why bother waiting for a nomination before deciding your course of action?
Senate Dems will filibuster Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
So they are continuing what they started last year.
Question is will they even nominate new justices when last one of current ones dies
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Elerond spam is silly and comes from a fake news website. Mine comes from a 'journalist' that works a TYT a group that loathes Trump so why would they lie?
Bototm line is Obama has done similar things and hardly anyone blinked an eye but Trump does it and omg obvi Hitler. But... shhh.. let's ignore the fact it was Trump who ordered the mass murder of civilians of various Mulsim countries. No. That was Obama. Or banning of Syrian refugees for a while. (I never once made mention of Iraq so how does your 'source' disprove that?)
I can't find any actual references of direct bans by Obama, only that he made getting in USA much much more harder for people from certain countries, by adding visa requirements and security checks etc..
TYT usually don't get their facts right even when they directly quote thing they are saying. Which is why I can't bear to watch, listen or read their pieces.
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Also... the people whining about this ban didn't complain so loudly when Obama wa sbombing the **** out of some these coutnries. They didn't complain when Obama put them on the 'danger list'. They didn't complain when Obama banned refugees from Syrira for months at a time.
It also should be noted that Trump didn't choose these countries. Obama did. the only country named in Trump's executive order was Syria by name. The rest came from Obama. I, at first, believe the fake news that Trump chose these countries and not others because of his businesses but in reality it was because he was following Obama's lead.
Hmmm...
Trump’s facile claim that his refugee policy is similar to Obama’s in 2011
The only news report that we could find that referred to a six-month ban was a 2013 ABC News article that included this line: “As a result of the Kentucky case, the State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for six months in 2011, federal officials told ABC News — even for many who had heroically helped U.S. forces as interpreters and intelligence assets.”
The “Kentucky case” refers to two Iraqis in Kentucky who in May 2011 were arrested and faced federal terrorism charges after officials discovered from an informant that Waad Ramadan Alwan, before he had been granted asylum in the United States, had constructed improvised roadside bombs in Iraq. The FBI, after examining fragments from thousands of bomb parts, found Alwan’s fingerprints on a cordless phone that had been wired to detonate an improvised bomb in 2005.
The arrests caused an uproar in Congress, and the Obama administration pledged to reexamine the records of 58,000 Iraqis who had been settled in the United States. The administration also imposed new, more extensive background checks on Iraqi refugees. Media reports at the time focused on how the new screening procedures had delayed visa approvals, even as the United States was preparing to end its involvement in the Iraq War.
“The enhanced screening procedures have caused a logjam in regular visa admissions from Iraq, even for those who risked their lives to aid American troops and who now fear reprisals as the Obama administration winds down the U.S. military presence,” the Baltimore Sun reported.
The Los Angeles Times reported that U.S. officials acknowledged delays but were trying to speed up the process:
A U.S. Embassy official in Baghdad, speaking on condition he not be identified, acknowledged “unfortunate delays” in issuing special visas, the result of enhanced security clearance procedures, some instituted after the Kentucky arrests. But he said recent changes would speed the process.
The State Department’s National Visa Center has been ordered to flag special visa applications for expedited action, the official said. And a requirement that Iraqi applicants provide an original signature on certain forms sent to the U.S. has been dropped after Iraqis complained of logistical difficulties.
“We are making changes, ordered at the very highest levels, that will help shave time off the application process,” the official said.
At a September 2011 congressional hearing, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano if a hold had been placed on Iraqi visa applications.
COLLINS: “So my question is, is there a hold on that population until they can be more stringently vetted to ensure that we’re not letting into this country, people who would do us harm?”
NAPOLITANO: “Yep. Let me, if I might, answer your question two parts. First part, with respect to the 56, 57,000 who were resettled pursuant to the original resettlement program, they have all been revetted against all of the DHS databases, all of the NCTC [National Counter Terrorism Center] databases and the Department of Defense’s biometric databases and so that work has now been done and focused.”
COLLINS: “That’s completed?”
NAPOLITANO: “That is completed. Moving forward, no one will be resettled without going through the same sort of vet. Now I don’t know if that equates to a hold, as you say, but I can say that having done the already resettled population moving forward, they will all be reviewed against those kinds of databases.”
The new rules were stringent, the Economist reported, and resulted in some turmoil.
“Immigration authorities soon began rechecking all Iraqi refugees in America, reportedly comparing fingerprints and other records with military and intelligence documents in dusty archives. About 1,000 soon-to-be immigrants in Iraq were told that they would not be allowed to board flights already booked. Some were removed from planes. Thousands more Iraqi applicants had to restart the immigration process, because their security clearances expired when the program stalled. Men must now pass five separate checks, women four, and children three.”
State Department records show there was a significant drop in refugee arrivals from Iraq in 2011. There were 18,251 in 2010, 6,339 in 2011 and 16,369 in 2012. But it’s unclear that equates to an actual six-month pause in visa processing, rather than a dramatic slowdown in approvals as new rules were put in place. One news report said “pace of visa approvals having slowed to a crawl,” indicating some were still being approved.
Update: Former Obama administration official Jon Finer denied that any ban in Iraqi refugee admissions was put in place under Obama. “While the flow of Iraqi refugees slowed significantly during the Obama administration’s review, refugees continued to be admitted to the United States during that time, and there was not a single month in which no Iraqis arrived here,” he wrote in Foreign Policy. “In other words, while there were delays in processing, there was no outright ban.”
Another former official, Eric P. Schwartz, the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration at the time, also told The Fact Checker that Trump’s statement is false:
“President Obama never imposed a six-month ban on Iraqi processing. For several months in 2011, there was a lower level of Iraqi resettlement, as the government implemented certain security enhancements. Indeed, as we identified new and valuable opportunities to enhance screening, we did so. Nobody should object to a continual effort to identify legitimate enhancements, but it is disreputable to use that as a pretext to effectively shut down a program that is overwhelmingly safe and has enabled the United States to exercise world leadership. In any event, there was never a point during that period in which Iraqi resettlement was stopped, or banned.”
The Pinocchio Test
So what’s the difference with Trump’s action?
First, Obama responded to an actual threat — the discovery that two Iraqi refugees had been implicated in bombmaking in Iraq that had targeted U.S. troops. (Iraq, after all, was a war zone.) Under congressional pressure, officials decided to reexamine all previous refugees and impose new screening procedures, which led to a slowdown in processing new applications. Trump, by contrast, issued his executive order without any known triggering threat. (His staff has pointed to attacks unrelated to the countries named in his order.)
Second, Obama did not announce a ban on visa applications. In fact, as seen in Napolitano’s answer to Collins, administration officials danced around that question. There was certainly a lot of news reporting that visa applications had slowed to a trickle. But the Obama administration never said it had a policy to halt all applications. Indeed, it is now clear that no ban was put in place. Even so, the delays did not go unnoticed, so there was a lot of critical news reporting at the time about the angst of Iraqis waiting for approval.
Third, Obama’s policy did not prevent all citizens of that country, including green-card holders, from traveling to the United States. Trump’s policy is much more sweeping, though officials have appeared to pull back from barring permanent U.S. residents.
We have sought comment from the White House and from Obama administration officials and so may update this if more information becomes available. But so far this is worthy of at least Two Pinocchios.
Update: In light of the response from Obama administration officials that there never was a point when Iraqi resettlement was stopped or banned, we are updating this ruling to Three Pinocchios. Iraqi refugee processing was slowed, in response to a specific threat, but it was not halted. The Trump White House, meanwhile, has failed to provide any evidence for its statement.
Three Pinocchios
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P.S. I see what you mean about the other years, care to clairfy about what was significant about 1954?
Here somethings of some significance that happened in 1954
Elizabeth II becomes the first reigning monarch to visit Australia.
1954 transfer of Crimea: The Soviet Politburo of the Soviet Union orders the transfer the Crimean Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR.
The first mass vaccination of children against polio begins in Pittsburgh, United States.
U.S. officials announce that a hydrogen bomb test (Castle Bravo) has been conducted on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
U.S. Capitol shooting incident: Four Puerto Rican nationalists open fire in the United States House of Representatives chamber and wound five; they are apprehended by security guards.
Finland and Germany officially end their state of war.
French troops begin the battle against the Viet Minh in Dien Bien Phu.
In Vietnam, the Viet Minh capture the main airstrip of Dien Bien Phu. The remaining French Army units there are partially isolated.
The Soviet Union recognises the sovereignty of East Germany. Soviet troops remain in the country.
U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower presented his "domino theory":
Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences
Vice President Richard Nixon announces that the United States may be “putting our own boys in Indochina regardless of Allied support”
Senator Joseph McCarthy begins hearings investigating the United States Army for being "soft" on Communism.
Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is released in Japan.
The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ends in a French defeat
A CIA-engineered military coup occurs in Guatemala.
Sarah Mae Flemming is expelled from a bus in South Carolina for sitting in a white-only section.
Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz steps down in a CIA-sponsored military coup, triggering a bloody civil war that continues for more than 35 years.
The world's first atomic power station opens at Obninsk, near Moscow.
The Common Nordic Labor Market Act comes into effect.
Release of Elvis Presley's first single, "That's All Right", by Sun Records (recorded July 5 in Memphis, Tennessee).
Food rationing in Great Britain ends with the lifting of restrictions on sale and purchase of meat, 14 years after it began early in World War II and nearly a decade after the war's end.
First Indochina War: The Geneva Conference sends French forces to the south, and Vietnamese forces to the north, of a ceasefire line, and calls for elections to decide the government for all of Vietnam by July 1956. Failure to abide by the terms of the agreement leads to the establishment de facto of regimes of North Vietnam and South Vietnam, and the Vietnam War.
Italian mountaineers Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni become the first successfully to reach the summit of the Himalayan peak K2.
The First Indochina War ends with the Vietnam People's Army in North Vietnam, the Vietnamese National Army in South Vietnam, the Kingdom of Cambodia in Cambodia, and the Kingdom of Laos in Laos, emerging victorious against the French Army.
Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas commits suicide after being accused of involvement in a conspiracy to murder his chief political opponent, Carlos Lacerda.
The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) is established in Bangkok, Thailand.
The Miss America Pageant is broadcast on television for the first time.
William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies is published in London.
Pre-Vietnam War: The Viet Minh takes control of North Vietnam.
Texas Instruments announces the development of the first commercial transistor radio. The Regency TR-1 goes on sale the following month.
Algerian War of Independence: The Algerian National Liberation Front begins a revolt against French rule.
Japan and Burma sign a peace treaty in Rangoon, to end their long-extinct state of war.
The Korean Cold War between the communist North and the capitalist South begins over a year after the conclusion of the Korean War.
The U.S. Supreme Court decides the landmark case Berman v. Parker (348 U.S. 26), upholding the federal slum clearance and urban renewal programs.
In Sylacauga, Alabama, a four-kilogram piece of the Hodges Meteorite crashes through the roof of a house and badly bruises a napping woman, in the first documented case of an object from outer space hitting a person.
Red Scare: The United States Senate votes 67–22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute."
J. Hartwell Harrison, and Joseph Murray perform the world's first successful kidney transplant in Boston, Massachusetts.
Laos gains full independence from France.
New Zealand engineer Sir William Hamilton develops the first pump-jet engine (the "Hamilton Jet") capable of propelling a jetboat
The first electric drip brew coffeemaker is patented in Germany and named the Wigomat after its inventor Gottlob Widmann.
The Boy Scouts of America desegregates on the basis of race.
In South Vietnam the Viet Minh is reorganised into the Viet Cong.
After the death of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union starts releasing political prisoners and deportees from its Gulag prison camps.
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And also what was the first country Iran aligned to after the sanctions were dropped ?
You mean same country that Trump chose to be his first country to align towards? It is OK for USA to reach agreements with Russia but not for Iran?
Well that is not what happened, the sanctions against Russia havent been dropped so what agreements do you mean?
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/28/politics/trump-calls-putin-world-leaders/
Trump and Putin discuss stabilizing ties, Kremlin says
CNN's Matthew Chance in Moscow said a Kremlin summary of the phone call talked about stabilizing the relationship between the two nations and several other subjects. Some of the other issues included restoring trade ties, international terrorism, the situations in Ukraine and the Korean Peninsula, and the coordination of military action against ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria.
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And also what was the first country Iran aligned to after the sanctions were dropped ?
You mean same country that Trump chose to be his first country to align towards? It is OK for USA to reach agreements with Russia but not for Iran?
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It is mind warming to see that all the super Christians and bible thumpers in US Senate and Congress are still willing stand behind Christian values like they are when it comes to subjects like marriage equality and having right to refuse service because of religious values
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Here's something that I think is missing from a lot of reports, what countries exactly did the people who have attacked America and American institutes go and travel and be influenced/trained/indoctrinated/supplied visit?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/trump-syrian-refugees.html
All these countries have ISIS groups, so its a valid preventative measure, are you worried this making the USA look bad ?
Also Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Malaysia and France have ISIS groups.
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Why dont the Sunni Muslim countries accept some of them?
Because they are allies of USA and were just forward thinkers in policies that USA will establish?
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It seem that this dangerous citizen of UK, but who is ex-Somalia fears that his return to US will also be denied
https://www.facebook.com/MoFarahGold/posts/1369028299785195
Mo Farah
On 1st January this year, Her Majesty The Queen made me a Knight of the Realm. On 27th January, President Donald Trump seems to have made me an alien.
I am a British citizen who has lived in America for the past six years - working hard, contributing to society, paying my taxes and bringing up our four children in the place they now call home. Now, me and many others like me are being told that we may not be welcome. It’s deeply troubling that I will have to tell my children that Daddy might not be able to come home - to explain why the President has introduced a policy that comes from a place of ignorance and prejudice.
I was welcomed into Britain from Somalia at eight years old and given the chance to succeed and realise my dreams. I have been proud to represent my country, win medals for the British people and receive the greatest honour of a knighthood. My story is an example of what can happen when you follow polices of compassion and understanding, not hate and isolation.EDIT: Removed alternative facts that slipped in. As Farah don't anymore have Somalian citizenship and he has not yet tried to enter to USA after the ban.
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After we finish soiling ourselves with outrage, I wonder what that ban would mean in real-world numbers. What's the annual immigration quota for those seven countries? And what % of the quota is normally filled annually?
Total number of Iranian descents in USA is about 1 million (estimate 2016).
Total number of people with Somali ancestry living in USA is about 200000 (census data 2012)
Total number of Syrian descents in USA is about 157000 (census data 2005)
Total number of Sudanese descents in USA is 42,214 (census data 2013)
Total number of Iraqi descents in USA is about 150000 (census data 2015)
Total number of Libyan descents in USA is about 9000 (census data 2012)
Total number of Yemeni descents in USA is about 40000 (census data 2014)
Can't say what annual numbers are, but not probably that high that total ban would add more security compared to security vetting and visa(+green card) process that was done before it.
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Bans seems to be doing good and blocking very dangerous sounding people to entering in the country
Boston-area academics are facing bans on entering US
Among those whose plans were disrupted was Seyed Soheil Saeedi Saravi, a scientist from Iran, who was planning to come to Boston with his wife to work at a research laboratory specializing in cardiovascular disease at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Now his visa has been suspended for three months.
“Many Iranians are successful persons in the field of science and trade in US. We are peaceful people and we are out of political games,” Saravi, 30, wrote in an e-mail. “We learn, research, work for development of our country and help to improve the public health of global populations. . . . I am so sorry for this decision.”
Dr. Thomas Michel, a cardiologist who hired Savari to work in his lab, got the news Friday. He said the travel ban is jeopardizing the country’s position in the scientific community.
“So many people who have been trained in science in this country have gone on to do amazing things in the US and their home countries,” Michel said. “That is being undermined.”
Samira Asgari, who holds a doctorate from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, posted a Twitter message Saturday announcing that she had been barred from boarding a flight to the United States because she’s Iranian.
She was traveling to Boston to begin working on a tuberculosis project at a Harvard Medical School research laboratory run by Dr. Soumya Raychaudhuri.
He said he recruited Asgari after hearing her give a talk last May at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. She was granted a J-1 Visa and was awarded two years of research funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation.
“I couldn’t believe that somebody with a visa with her standing would be denied entry,” Raychaudhuri said in a telephone interview. “I was very upset.”
He said Asgari had flown from Geneva to Frankfurt where she was barred from continuing to Boston.
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They're also close US allies, who we can't afford to quarrel with. So only fatal attacks count? There were just recently a couple of attacks by Somalis.Time when Teen Vogue is your example of good journalism
Yesterday (January 27), President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning immigration from seven countries, all of which are predominantly Muslim. The countries in question are Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. During the signing, President Trump proclaimed, "I am establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America."
However, over the past four decades, there have been no fatal attacks on American soil that were orchestrated from immigrants from any of those seven banned countries. Additionally, according to a report from the Cato Institute, no Americans have been killed in the past 15 years by Muslim Americans with family backgrounds in any of those countries. And it has been noted that zero of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from any of those seven countries. The report from the Cato Institute concluded that Trump's ban "will have virtually no effect on improving U.S. national security."
Incidentally, the same report demonstrates that approximately 3,000 Americans have been killed by citizens from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey. The majority of those victims died during the 9/11 attacks.
Those four countries have something pretty glaring in common – they are all locations where President Trump has close business ties.
Egypt with government that is somewhat hostile towards USA is ally, but Iraq with government placed by USA isn't?
And I would questioning how good ally Turkey is in these days.
I can't say what counts as fatal attacks don't at least seem to be the reason for the bans.
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Time when Teen Vogue is your example of good journalism
Yesterday (January 27), President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning immigration from seven countries, all of which are predominantly Muslim. The countries in question are Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. During the signing, President Trump proclaimed, "I am establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America."
However, over the past four decades, there have been no fatal attacks on American soil that were orchestrated from immigrants from any of those seven banned countries. Additionally, according to a report from the Cato Institute, no Americans have been killed in the past 15 years by Muslim Americans with family backgrounds in any of those countries. And it has been noted that zero of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from any of those seven countries. The report from the Cato Institute concluded that Trump's ban "will have virtually no effect on improving U.S. national security."
Incidentally, the same report demonstrates that approximately 3,000 Americans have been killed by citizens from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey. The majority of those victims died during the 9/11 attacks.
Those four countries have something pretty glaring in common – they are all locations where President Trump has close business ties.
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Not only aren't there options other than CC, but my (dutch, mastercard certified) credit card gets declined by fig.. While it works just fine for overseas amazon etc. What up with that.
They use stripe as their payment processor. When KS moved to use it I had problems to get it accept my visa certified credit card.
Politics 2017 part II
in Way Off-Topic
Posted · Edited by Elerond
I would say that their problem is in fact that lots of people mix them with Slovakia and don't actually know what kind country Slovenia is. But from my only visit there I would say that it is quite western European, but my view is based mostly only one city. Where I went shopping as I lived in near by resort that was in border of Hungary and Slovenia.