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Why not post from YouTube to an English language website? Or better yet, the original feed posted by the White House?Oh wait.....in China you can't have those things.You mean in America we cant have those things. At least not on Youtube.
- Cowards who have me blocked ought not to exploit the rhetorical advantage of counterargument without reply.
- Obviously, such petty conduct belies any claim to credibility on the subject of censorship.
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@Intelligence_06
【美国白宫重申不支持“台独”-哔哩哔哩】 https://b23.tv/NVwjQNiPlease don’t dismiss this just because it is a Chinese -uploaded clip, it is American footage.
Why not post from YouTube to an English language website? Or better yet, the original feed posted by the White House?
Oh wait.....in China you can't have those things.
What Pelosi is doing is starting an unauthorized visit. Don’t forget that.
Per our Constitution, Pelosi has her own authority. Congress, directly representing the American people, does not run day to day foreign relationships but is constitutionally charged with overseeing foreign relations and has the final word on all treaties and declarations of war. As Speaker of the House, Pelosi has some authority over the National Security Council but the National Security Council has no authority over Pelosi that she needs to respect.
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@Intelligence_06
They get as much [rights] as we do in Chinese Mainland, if not more lax about trade.
Which is to say far less rights than they had just a few years ago.
With reengineered election rules, Hong Kong’s already limited democratic freedoms have been almost entirely stripped away. The number of overall seats in the city’s legislature was expanded to 90, but the number of directly elected seats was slashed to just 20. (Previously, half of the 70 seats were directly elected.) Other representatives are elected by functional constituencies, which are small, mostly commercial special-interest groups. Under a new policy of “patriots administering Hong Kong,” candidates were vetted by a panel headed by senior government officials and advised by the police. Not that there would have been many candidates to contest the positions even if the rules hadn’t changed; nearly every notable prodemocracy figure has been jailed, fled abroad, or retreated from public life after the passage of a draconian national-security law last year, another facet of a sweeping and unrelenting crackdown on Hong Kong’s liberties.
What is left is “hegemonic authoritarianism,” Lee Morgenbesser, a senior politics lecturer at Griffith University, in Australia, told me. It’s a system, he said, that exists when “de facto opposition parties are banned, basic civil liberties and political rights are overtly violated, the rule of law is arbitrarily breached, and the government has monopolized access to media.” Crucially, this type of governance structure allows places like Hong Kong and other regimes, such as those in Laos and Vietnam, to keep up the veneer of democratic competition but with the preferred results all but guaranteed. “Ultimately, elections may be allowed to exist,” Morgenbesser told me, “but they cease to be an avenue for actual opposition parties to gain power.”
from Why Authoritarian Regimes Bother With Elections
Timothy McLaughlin @ The Atlantic
You have no right to judge whether we get enough rights or not,
False. In a democracy I have to right to express any judgement I see fit.
we do, and we say we do get enough. It is simple. If we get large-scale outrages of a lack of rights, there would be an unstoppable trend on the internet not even able to be censored. Right nw, this does not exist(unless you are talking about in HK, etc, in which they clearly get an equality of rights).
But anecdotal reports from within a high censored regime can't be verified or trusted. Whether you are permitted to have an opinion other than the one you express is, at best, uncertain.
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Ask Hong Kong and Macau whether China keeps her promises to respect local autonomy and fundamental human rights.
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@Intelligence_06
Yeah, if we ignore the fact that the US is (in)famous for starting conflicts for decades now for their own gains.
Show some evidence here. All US territorial gains in the 20th century came in Pacific Islands after WW2- I assume you won't claim that the US started that one. The last was the Marshall Islands in 1947.
China has enforced 21 territorial expansions since that time.
Yes, the US has engaged in plenty of conflicts since WW2 -Korea, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria but unlike China, the US enforces no territorial claims to any of these states.
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Its funny that the suggestion of a HISTORY category garnered almost no interest and what little interest there was proved negative but now in the voting stage, HISTORY seems far more popular.
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Please-
- QUESTIONS/CONCERNS/DISCUSSION/ARGUMENT/CAMPAIGNING are all encouraged and may be posted to these FORUM TOPICS:
THANKS in ADVANCE for EVERYBODY's SINCERE and FRIENDLY PARTICIPATION!
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- YES
- YES
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FELLOW DARTers-
I hope everyone will participate by VOTING on the following two modest propositions:
PROPOSITION1:
Shall we request the creation of a new FORUM CATEGORY titled CONSPIRACY THEORIES ?
YES or NO?
PROPOSITION2:
Shall we request the creation of a new FORUM CATEGORY titled HISTORY ?
YES or NO?
VOTING PROCEDURE:
- VOTING will remain OPEN until 11:00 PM EST, FRIDAY, AUG. 15th
- One VOTE per PERSON, please.
- Duplicate VOTES will be disregarded.
- No requests to change VOTE after submission will be considered.
- Any indication of multi-accounting will be referred to MODERATION
- Please help promote voting clarity by limiting posts to VOTING ONLY using roughly this format:
- YES or NO
- YES or NO
- QUESTIONS/CONCERNS/DISCUSSION/ARGUMENT/CAMPAIGNING are all encouraged and may be posted to these FORUM TOPICS:
- https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/7756-proposed-meep-history-as-a-new-forum-category
- https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/7757-proposed-meep-conspiracy-theories-as-a-new-forum-category
- For either PROPOSITION, at least 10 users must have voted in the MEEP, and more than a majority of all those voting must have voted for the question or proposal.
- That means, in practice, that in a MEEP with 10 total voters, the minimum threshold for a binding result is 7 votes in favor of the proposal or question With 20 total voters, the minimum threshold for a binding result is 11.
- If either PROPOSITION fails to produce a binding result, no change shall be requested.
- If either PROPOSTION succeeds, I'll provide that result to DebateArt.com and the MODERATION TEAM requesting that change be completed before the END of 2022.
THANKS in ADVANCE for EVERYBODY's SINCERE and FRIENDLY PARTICIPATION!
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@Danielle
Democrats want D.C. to become a state along with Puerto Rico.
I know but that's far too small of any interest to justify two Senators and the whole North/South divide that justified a special district is not really applicable any more.
Another kooky idea I've had is to rewrite the Constitution to give each state one Senator and then the top 50 most populous cities elect a Senator. That would definitely create new imbalances in power but would also be far more democratic then the current scheme. DC would get a Senator in that scheme.
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@3RU7AL
you're doubtless a huge fan of oliver north as well
Wow do you not know history if you don't appreciate the profound difference between Operation Cyclone and Iran-Contra.
Charlie Wilson ran around and got every branch of government, on board consulted every ally before pushing through a popularly approved aid package. That's democracy in action.
Oliver North (on Reagan's behalf) was secretly sneaking weapons to Iran
- in direct violation of a US and International embargo on any kind of trade much less selling missiles and helicopter parts to an enemy holding American hostages
- at the same time the Reagan administration listed Iran a terrorist state
- When the US was actively allied with Iraq against Iran in the Iran-Iraq War. The Reagan administration was pumping arms into both sides of a gruesome war, one side openly and the other side secretly- collecting hundreds of millions of dollars that no law could trace then or now.
- Iran was initially losing that war but then went on the offensive using US built helicopters they could not have flown without Reagan's secret aid.
- As the extent of the US's betrayal of our alliance with Iraq became clear in 1990, the US lost any kind of diplomatic influence over Saddam Hussein.
- A very good case can be made that North's crimes were one very direct cause of the Gulf War and so by extension 9/11, the War in Afghanistan, The Iraq War and the War on Terror, Syria, ISIS, etc, etc, etc.
- which is not to even mention covert arms for hostages, secret support for terrorism in El Salvador that undermined US Central American relationships, etc.
One guy did a legal, democratically approved deal that stopped our enemy's illegal invasion.
The other guy did a hyper-illegal covert op that eventually got ten thousand us soldiers killed and more than 3000 US civilians and blew up the Middle East.
If we were to discover Biden secretly selling missiles to Russia today, that would be the equivalent of what Reagan did.
Not comparable in any fucking way.
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@3RU7AL
-->@oromagi
- humanitarian aid THREATENED TO be stripped and
- mainstream media is not headlining this.
how does this fit your sensibilities ?
humanitarian aid THREATENED TO be stripped
to this extent that this is written in the passive voice (that is, your sentence has no subject) I think it is less demonstrably false.
If the claim was more like "some EU bureaucrats are recommending that some EU foreign ministers link some aid more directly to cooperation on Ukraine", I think that would be much more accurate. Per our conversation, aid is at best a gift at worst a transaction. "stripped" suggests an entitlement or possession and no foreign aid or gift or transaction qualifies as an entitlement, right?
- mainstream media is not headlining this.
Well, that's not false but its a fairly subjective claim- what is headline news in a era without frontpages? All non-breaking news just hits the top of the queue and rolls down. The Ethiopia deal was the top International story on the AP News wire for a couple of hours on Thursdays. CNN covered Lavrov's pressure campaign, Zelenksy's African appeal and the US aid packages to Africa this week. I don't think any media covered the diplomatic memo story but like I said its not reallyall that newsworthy, certainly not in US markets.
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@Danielle
Getting rid of the Electoral College might be considered radical policy-wise.
I don't think that should even be controversial- as much a unnecessary holdover from agrarian thinking as daylight savings or pickup truck subsidies
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@Danielle
Inheritance should be abolished.
Jefferson and Franklin supported this notion
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@FLRW
All right. I haven't read Jaynes but it seems sort of amazing to argue a universal change to human cognitive function right at the moment the surviving remnant of literature and history begins. So the earliest writers demonstrate awareness of human consciousness was in place but since they don't write about their ancestor's self-conscious states human brains must have therefore been different? Is that really convincing evidence? Seems like a big claim to make that conveniently depends heavily on the absence of direct reports from those earlier humans.
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Enfranchise US territories and Federal districts.
Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands should be made one new US state.
Guam, Samoa, Marianas, etc should all join the state of Hawaii.
Native American reservations should collectively have the Federal representation of one state: that is, reservations should have 2 Senators and one or two Representatives, with electoral votes, etc.
We don't need the District of Columbia anymore, dissolve that district and let Washington become a city in Maryland.
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We should seriously consider buying Greenland from Denmark. Maybe a joint purchase with Canada if they're interested.
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If we focused law enforcement on illegal employers rather than illegal immigrants we'd make a major impact on that problem in no time. Much cheaper and easier to enforce. Put a few restaurant and hotel and golf course owners in jail for perpetuating illegal immigration, those opportunities will quickly dry up and the primary motivation for most illegal immigration goes away.
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Your TOPIC says, "radical but controversial"
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@thett3
Is saying a lifestyle is unsustainable and needs to be made unaffordable because people aren’t paying their “fair share” and ending the subsidy of infrastructure to those areas is necessary to improve “prosperity” not a complaint about subsidizing infrastructure to other people?
- Not anymore than saying that the price we pay for beef and pork in no way reflects the cost of those luxuries to future Americans implies some some complaint about ranchers or hamburger stands or beef eaters. I eat that beef and pork. I understand how we got here. That doesn't mean it doesn't need to change.
- Nor saying that the present price of gas in no way reflects the the cost of of that fuel to American taxpayers implies some criticism of oil companies (which is not to say I don't have many criticisms of oil companies) or people who drive cars. I drive a car I know how we got here. That doesn't mean it doesn't need to change.
- I come from ten generations of Appalachian hill people. My granduncle ran a crew electrifying rural Pennsylvania his whole life because of Roosevelt's WPA. But then their kids went to Penn State and those kids and grandkids spread out to cities across America. I know how we got here. I'm not complaining about them. That doesn't mean it doesn't need to change.
This is a disappointing trend I’ve noticed every time I talk to you: whenever you feel like you’ve said something you’re no longer able to defend you’ll just deny you ever said it, even though it’s right there in black and white.
- I think you'll find that if you stick to what I am writing and try less hard to shift my intent to what you suppose I must be secretly "very obviously implying" that little problem of yours will clear right up.
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@3RU7AL
->@oromagiWas Wilson wrong in this story? I don't think so. Do you?obviously
I forgot to mention that Charlie Wilson is also famous for brokering the transactional aid package that enabled the Mujahedeen to kick Russia out of Afghanistan.
Maybe we should debate this formally. What do you think?
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@3RU7AL
do you know what keeps a troll motivated ?posts like this
I know you are right about that. I should just ignore it best as I am able.
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"humanitarian aid" will now be stripped from nations who refuse to tacitly support "the war in ukraine"that's a copy and paste of what you claim is a "lie"
And also proved in detail that is a lie. You cannot name one example of humanitarian aid being stripped from any nation for refusing to support the war in Ukraine because no nation has done so. In fact, the US gave a shitload of money to Ethiopia on the day before you made this claim in spite of Ethiopia refusing to tacitly support the War in Ukraine.
You also said "good luck finding this story on cnn or fox or nbc" but all those outlets ran stories about Western & Russian diplomatic pressure campaigns this week accurately report US Foreign aid to Ehtiopia.
to mere "implication" and then again to "just a non-factual extension meant as an ice-breaker."it's pretty funny how obsessed you are with that introductory sentence
That's your claim, man. That's literally the topic you suggested we discuss. The way an argument works is you make a claim, I consider whether or not your claim is true. If I think its untrue, I make a counterargument and lay out my evidence for untruth. Then its your job to concede my counterargument or show show me the error in it, and so forth.
when you've made it perfectly clear that ALL FOREIGN AID IS TRANSACTIONAL which is the entire point of this conversation
False. In fact it has been like pulling teeth to get you to even say that you don't think foreign aid should be transactional much less make any kind of argument against that notion (which you definitely have not).
You seem to imply that transactional foreign aid is some kind shockingly bad conduct but that more the norm for all foreign relations ever.
Here's the Wikipedia article on AID:
Aid may serve one or more functions: it may be given as a signal of diplomatic approval, or to strengthen a military ally, to reward a government for behavior desired by the donor, to extend the donor's cultural influence, to provide infrastructure needed by the donor for resource extraction from the recipient country, or to gain other kinds of commercial access. Countries may provide aid for further diplomatic reasons. Humanitarian and altruistic purposes are often reasons for foreign assistance
That is, strictly altruistic reasons are listed as the seventh possible purpose for providing aid. All of the six prior examples are transactional.
The claims you made were:
- humanitarian aid will now be stripped and
- mainstream media is not reporting this.
Since you haven't presented any evidence to support either claim and made statement softening your OP, it seems like the discussion should be done. Right?
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@thett3
d. But that’s a land use issue, it has nothing to do with your compliant which was that urban areas have to subsidize rural areas getting roads, electricity, and running water. I fail to see how supporting preventing accidents has anything to do with complaining about subsidizing roads, electricity, and running water to rural areas.
The complaint was not about about subsidizing roads, electricity, and running water to rural areas. The complaint was that 20% of rural Americans calling themselves the REAL Americans when "the 80% of America that Pie calls "not real" could lose his 20% of "real" Americans tomorrow and be all the more prosperous, healthy, wealthy, and wise for the ejection."
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@Dr.Franklin
-->@oromagiAre you saying that the US is not pressuring countries to condemn the russian invasion
If you would only read what I have already posted to this forum, you will have your answer.
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@thett3
Is that really what you want for America? Because outside of some tourist hot spots I don’t know if there are any rural areas where they don’t effectively get subsidized by urban areas. But rural areas are where food is grown, where natural resources are extracted, and where unpleasant places like slaughterhouses or these days some factories are. The city and the country need each other. The city can’t produce the natural/agricultural resources it needs to keep running and the country can’t produce the type of wealth that first world citizens demand
Its exactly that interdependency that makes rural residency unsustainable. We need better public management of critical resources like arable land and fresh water. I'm not trying to be extreme: we will always need people to work and manage rural resources. We will always want to be be able to visit places of natural beauty or escape to oases of solitude but we can manage all that with far fewer people than are living rural now. Have you ever read Omnivore's Dilemma and Pollan's description of the State of Iowa as one vast factory floor devoted to corn production, overusing the land so aggressively that it becomes increasingly less regenerable to its natural prairie state with each passing year? How there used to vast stretches without any deer or squirrels because so much land was just an endless carpet of corn (I think Iowa has done much to improve this state in recent years). That's the kind of unsustainable living I'm thinking of. As you say, some factories like slaughterhouses are unpleasant places to live near but that's usually because they are incredibly toxic- we need to protect vital resources from the inevitable pollution and accidents that comes with such places- that means large scale re-zoning and planning and little of that is possible at the current level or rural residency. Certainly, we need to re-think the amount of land devoted to hyper-inefficient calorie production like cows and pigs. I like the idea of low-impact portable micro-housing as a more sustainable way to maintain rural populations. I don't like the idea of building some house out in the woods that has to be protected from wildfires every few years at greater public expense than than the value of the house. I don't like throwing public money at rebuilding beachfronts and swamp towns after every hurricane comes through. With greater population density, we can protect smaller areas more effectively from disaster and let the natural, even necessary processes of fires and hurricanes do their thing without ruining so many lives.
I could go on for hours and the whole notion is isuper complex but the short answer is yes, I that's what I want for America- it's really the only path I can see for preserving a natural, rural America for generations of Americans to come.
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@thett3
it’s not accurate to say that 80% of the country was for Biden while 20% was for Trump.
Never said that. Read it again.
The 80/20 split is urban/rural not Biden/Trump.
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@christianm
Unlike DDO, such collusion would already directly violate DART's CODE of CONDUCT
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@DebateArt.com
@David
@Barney
@Vader
@whiteflame
-->@Polytheist-WitchI was literally suggesting that anyone could run a MEEP, yourself included if you feel strongly enough about it. Anyone could have pushed for and run a MEEP over that time. There are a lot of proposals that we’re not going to personally run as MEEPs, particularly right after we finished with the previous MEEP, but that doesn’t mean that no one can run them and it doesn’t mean that the mods won’t respect the results.
My interpretation of this remark is that I can run a MEEP myself in spite of and in contradiction to DART's published MEEP rules which state:
"Moderation may submit questions and proposals regarding moderation policy, voting policy, and the code of conduct to Moderation Engagement and Enactment Processes (MEEPs). MEEPs are binding referenda and comment periods on the questions and proposals submitted. Moderation has full discretion on which questions and proposals are submitted to MEEPs, though no substantive change to the COC may be made without either the consent of the site owner(s) or ratification via a MEEP."
Be advised that I plan to run a MEEP from Aug 1st - 15th regarding the addition of two new Forum Categories, HISTORY and CONSPIRACY THEORIES.
I plan to adhere to these published rules:
"In order for a submitted question or proposal to be ratified, at least 10 users must have voted in the MEEP, and more than a majority of all those voting must have voted for the question or proposal. That means, in practice, that in a MEEP with 10 total voters, the minimum threshold for a binding result is 7 votes in favor of the proposal or question. MEEPs must be open for voting for at least 48 hours, and may be extended (at the mod's discretion) by no more than 12 hours. To be eligible to vote in a MEEP, the voter must be a user on DART, must have an account that is more than 24 hours old, and must not be banned during the voting window. If a MEEP fails to produce a binding result, moderation will maintain the pre-MEEP status quo, unless doing so is entirely untenable."
using Supadudz' precedent:
"You may only have 1 vote per person. This means that if you are voting under 2 accounts and are caught doing so, only 1 of the votes you cast will count
- Election tampering (which is defined as recruiting people outside the site to vote for a certain candidate) is illegal and WILL result in the votes used by manipulation to be disqualified
- Please try to maintain civility in this thread. This is the voting stage, not the argumentative/campaigning stage.
- YOU CAN NOT CHANGE YOUR VOTE ONCE YOU PLACE IT!!!!! Like in a real election, you can not take back your vote that you already submitted"
Since I have no notion of Mike's availability/capacity to support this change, I plan to make the change deliverable by end of 2022.
If I am out of order in any way, now is the time to let me know.
Frankly, support for either new category seems tepid to negative. I predict both motions will fail but I am more interested in establishing a precedent here as I am in effecting any change.
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@Dr.Franklin
->@oromagiThe United States of Gay is doing just that oro
Well, that's a lie. 3RU7AL has essentially conceded his OP claims by changing his claim from "aid has now been stripped" to mere "implication" and then again to "just a non-factual extension meant as an ice-breaker."
As I have already shown, the US gave $488 million in drought relief to Ethiopia just this week in spite of Ethiopian resistance to US diplomatic pressure on Ukraine, directly disproving your claim.
Don't know how you missed this.
Would you care to make a counter-argument, or just continue as usual to wallow in your willfully woefully malinformed condition?
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@christianm
I have advocated such a scheme since joining the site. I've made various recommendations ranging from 3-6 votes to earn a new debate. I've recently been suggesting a less formal arena format with shorter arguments and a lot back and forth and just flat out voting with no reason req'd. Maybe some kind of tiered debating with more formal requirements and more formal voting and recordkeeping as you climb.
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Anyway he's clearly pandering to a certain group of people and those people seem to think that they are the "true America," that they are REAL Americans. But people born and bred in New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC et. al. are also REAL Americans, Jimbo.
I think its important to note here that 80% of Americans live in those metropolitan areas. That's a rapidly shrinking 20% telling the overwhelming majority of Americans that they don't represent the American experience when the exact opposite is true. The real question here is why, in a democracy, should that 80% give so much deference that 20%? The American experience hasn't been a majority urban experience since the Great Depression and the "real" America Pie refers to has been declining unchecked since the Battle of Gettysburg.
Consider-
Biden won only 509 counties in the 2020 election compared to Trump's 2,547 counties but those 1 out of every 6 counties are home to 67 million more Americans than those 5 out of 6 and generate 71 cents of every dollar in American GDP. American cities are the engine that drives the American economy, rural counties produce a power net drag on the economy.
While death rates have been declining across the US for the last 30 years (since Americans mostly stopped smoking) , but that decline is twice as fast in the cities vs the country to the point where now city-dwellers enjoy nearly 3 years longer avg. life expectancy than rural folks. "Country" was about 20% more likely to die from the top ten leading causes of death, from heart attacks to suicide than "City." Trump counties committed suicide at a 43% higher rate in 2019 than Biden voting counties, almost certainly because of the strong link between suicide rates and gun ownership. Those stats are before COVID but Trump voting counties' death rates from COVID were 2.5-3 times the rates in Biden voting counties, despite much higher transmission rates in the city.
Look at quality of life indexes, education rates, public safety, health outcomes, civic engagement, unemployment, labor force participation- that 80% of America living in cities run by overwhelmingly democratic governments is living far far better than the 20% Pie calls the real American and improving all the time while life in Republican run rural counties are in long-term generally sustained decline.
city-folk have no business mocking the intelligence of farmers because urbanites don't know how to grow crops
In fact, most agricultural jobs have already been replaced by machines and the demand for future American farmers is less than zero. Country life is far less efficient, safe, or healthy than life in the city and given that the infrastructure and tax dollars required to sustain, country life is far, far more expensive to taxpayers than life in the city. America needs stop overfunding this less sustainable lifestyle. I'm not saying that we need to drag anybody in from the countryside, but certainly rural residents need to pay more of their proportional share of the greater expense it takes to deliver water, electricity, internet, etc to those homes. Insurance rates for hurricanes, flooding, forest fires, etc need to reflect the wildly disproportionate expense to Americans rural inhabitants represents. When rural counties are required to pay their fair share for infrastructure, rural lifestyles will become a luxury most can't afford and American prosperity will be all the more improved by that change.
Certainly, there's a generous and egalitarian spirit to your appeal for Americans to get along on either side of that divide but let's not mistake that divide for the "other half of America," because that's quite false. The 80% of America that Pie calls "not real" could lose his 20% of "real" Americans tomorrow and be all the more prosperous, healthy, wealthy, and wise for the ejection.
In a democracy, the majority rules, and that majority needs to work harder to make sure their substantially greater contribution to the US is preserved and protected from 19th century agrarian, patriarchal public policy. 50 Republican Senators represent just over a third of all Americans. Without some Constitutional amendment before 2040, two thirds of Americans will likely be represented by jut 30 Senators. The fact is that if America were just a little more democratic in its institutions that 80% of America wouldn't have much reason to care what the more backwards 20% think at all. Trumpists fully understand this dynamic which is why folks like Pie don't believe that America should be a democracy anymore.
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>@3RU7ALDemocracies check corruption with renewed opportunities to reform.Russia is a Democracy. So is Venezuela. Claims to say a "rhetorical question" then answers with a false premise.Resorts to Ad Homs when called out.Guy is a walking bag of lies.
Remember that this guy obsessively replying to every fucking post I make in every fucking forum has a restraining order against me, is blocking me. What kind of cowardly cunt stalks a debate site all day every day constantly trolling but also desperately avoiding any kind of actual debate? I wonder what mental illness compels this ridiculous chickenshit to talk about me all day, every day but keeps him totally terrified of actually talking to me about anything ever. Do his masters beat him when he gets proven wrong? Does his hitler 'stached mother make him him wear his diapers overlong? Why is greyparrot such a fearful little rat of a man and what manner of rhetorical strychnine might ever put that yellow-bellied bitch down?
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@3RU7AL
if i told you i go once a week and give money to homeless people, you'd probably think that was a "good thing"if i told you i go once a week and give money to homeless people, and gently suggest to them that they vote for my good friend who is running for city government, you'd probably think that was "ok"if i told you i go once a week and give money to homeless people, and gently suggest to them that they vote for my good friend who is running for city government, and additionally, i gently suggest that if they don't show me their voter registration and meet me at the polling place on election day, i might not have the budget to continue giving them money once a week, you'd probably think that was "transactional"
All of these examples are transactional. Giving away a little money is usually a pretty cheap price to pay for feeling good about yourself.
Let's be careful about comparing underdeveloped nations to homeless people- by definition, any government managing to stay in power has powerful collective intelligence, agency, defensive capability, influence in ways that are totally not comparable to the mentally ill and addicted people left to wander the streets without shelter.
Still, your example reminds me of Congressman Charlie Wilson's famous dog story-
"According to Wilson himself, he first entered politics as a teenager by running a campaign against his next-door neighbor, city council incumbent Charles Hazard. When Wilson was thirteen years old, his fourteen-year-old dog entered Hazard's yard. Hazard retaliated by mixing crushed glass into the dog's food, causing fatal internal bleeding. Following this incident, Wilson obtained a driver's permit and drove ninety-six voters to the polls in his family's two-door Chevrolet. As patrons left the car, Wilson told each of them that he didn't want to influence their vote, but that the incumbent Hazard had purposely killed his dog. After Hazard was defeated by a margin of 16 votes, Wilson went to his house to tell him that his black constituents voted to defeat him, and he "shouldn't poison any more dogs." Wilson cited this as "the day [he] fell in love with America."
Was Wilson wrong in this story? I don't think so. Do you?
Now, extend the example as a metaphor for our consideration- Europe is Wilson, Ukraine the dog (with apologies), Putin is Hazard and African nations the voters. I think winning a war by spending some money, spreading some influence is far more ethical (and quintessentially American) then head-to-head slaughter that drags out for years.
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@3RU7AL
-->@oromagiAre you saying that foreign aid should not buy foreign influence?is that a "rhetorical question" ?
Again, you make it clear don't understand how rhetorical questions work.
Honestly, I don't understand your hesitancy on a basic yes or no question that most people have resolved in their mind. I don't think its crazy to argue foreign aid should be treated like charitable giving but I do think it is naïve and wastes a powerful tool that can prevent greater expenses and even violence down the road.
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@3RU7AL
"why did you lie?"
I guess you don't understand how rhetorical questions work.
Wikipedia:
A rhetorical question may be intended as a challenge. The question is often difficult or impossible to answer. In the example, What have the Romans ever done for us? (Monty Python's Life of Brian) the question functions as a negative assertion. It is intended to mean The Romans have never done anything for us!.
Identically, "What nation is free from corruption? " is impossible to answer since there are none. Any reply with examples is inherently a rebuttal of that assertion, so replying "Singapore, etc" to that challenge is to refute the assertion that answer is impossible, quite different from your latter claim of "some nations less corrupt."
"What nation is free from corruption? " is a more sophisticated way of asserting as fact that no nation is free from corruption.
No offense intended but as a serious inquiry: is English your native language?
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THIRD REQUEST:
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Please answer this question as directly as you are able:
Are you saying that foreign aid should not buy foreign influence?
Why are you afraid to answer this fairly simple question?
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it is a logical extension of the leaked threat that you referenced in your first reply, clearly meant as an ice-breaker
False, as disproved by my US purchases Greenland example to which you have made no reply.
FOREIGEN AID = BRIBES
Yes. All foreign aid is essentially legal bribery. Egypt was the primary recipient of US aid for 30 years not because the US loves Muslim autocracies but as the cheapest, least violent method of preventing war with Israel, keeping ME oil flowing and the Suez open for commercial shipping.
If you think it should be otherwise, you have failed to state that opinion with any clarity.
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Please answer this question as directly as you are able:
Are you saying that foreign aid should not buy foreign influence?
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-->@oromagiYou are citing Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index.you seem obsessed with the genetic fallacy
and you remain patently ignorant regarding the nature of logical fallacy.
"The genetic fallacy (also known as the fallacy of origins or fallacy of virtue) is a fallacy of irrelevance in which arguments or information are dismissed or validated based solely on their source of origin rather than their content."
I said no nation is free of corruption.
You disagreed, relying on the ITCPI without citation or understanding of what data informs that index.
That is, the genetic fallacy is yours for reliance on a source without researching that source or connecting that data to topic.
I demonstrated a researched opinion regarding the validity of your source and explained why its not particularly enlightening regarding real corruption.
That is the opposite of genetic fallacy, that is connecting information to thesis in a very relevant way. I then took the first of your examples of perfect incorruptibility and eviscerated it with actual facts, bolstering my claim that no nation is without corrupt to which example you have made no reply.
the point here is that some countries are "less corrupt" than others
False. I said no nation is free of corruption. You countered with a list of nations with high ITCPI rankings. I demonstrated how your remark has no bearing on my claim. Now you retreat to truism. Obviously, "some countries are less corrupt than others" in no way refutes "No nation is free of corruption" I said no X is Y.
Your first post implied some X is Y. Now you irrelevantly retreat to some X is Z. "free of corruption" =/= "less corruption than others."
To circle back to GP's argument that Ukraine is too corrupt to support in a war against Russia, your choice of corruption information, TICPI ,consistently ranks Ukraine higher than Russia in terms of corruption, while still ranking Ukraine lowest in Europe.
Your OP claims, that
- humanitarian aid is now stripped from African countries and
- you won't find that story on cnn or nbc
both still stand proved as falsehoods of your design.
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Fake stuff- 'roided out bodies, salon tans, wigs, makeup, dyed hair, cosmetic surgery. I find most piercings unattractive. Face tattoos, colored contact lenses, fake dreadlocks, weaves, etc. Natural is always more attractive.
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Thanks, this article effectively demonstrates the falsity of both of your OP claims:
- No humanitarian aid to any nation had been stripped. No articles are reporting as much and you simply invented this lie for some unknown reason.
- Mainstream media is actively reporting on diplomatic pressure campaigns in Africa in spite of your claim that they are not.
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-->@oromagiAre you saying that foreign aid should not buy foreign influence?holy crap, are you kidding me ?
holy crap, are you dodging a direct question by asking a question I have already answered?
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-->@oromagiWhat nation is free from corruption?Singapore has again made it to the top ranks of the least corrupt countries in the world based on a global survey released annually.
Exactly my point.
- Even the top ranked nations only score 85/100 on corruption.
- You are citing Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. TI is a German non-profit founded by ex-World Bank executives that is funded by donations from large International Conglomerates- Google, Exon, Pepsi, etc. The CPI is based on interviews with top executives of those large conglomerates asking how easy is it for them to do business in that country, do they have to pay many bribes, fees, taxes, etc? An economy based on child prostitution will not negatively impact your TI CPI rating but pissing off Exon or Pepsi will.
- Although I'd argue that Transparency International has its uses as an EU economic thinktank, the non-profit has its own transparency problems- for example, one executive was caught on wiretap conspiring with Brazil's Chief Prosecutor to manufacture false corruption claims against the Worker's Party candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
- TICPI dis-accredited the US chapter in 2017 for being way too blatantly on the take.
- TICPI is not some kind of systematic analysis of corruption in a state, rather it a summary of what mostly old, mostly white corporate executives think of doing business in that state. Which is not to say TI's analysis is not sometimes a useful benchmark- just extremely biased towards corporate thinking.
Singapore is a perfect case study for my point.
- Singapore claims to be a Democratic Republic that just happens to always re-elect People's Action Party to majority power, with never less than 60% of the vote, every year since the nation's founding in 1959. That majority just happens to always re-elect the nation's founder or his eldest son to Prime Minister for 50 out Singapore's 63 years (and of course, maintain executive control in the interim a la Medvedev-Putin). The current President was elected in 2017 running unopposed after all other candidates were disqualified for being of the wrong race or political party.
- Of course, freedom of assembly is guaranteed by the Singapore constitution, just limited to 5 or less people outdoors. Sure, you can have a pickup basketball game in Singapore, just stop by the local police station and get your paperwork stamped first.
- Of course, freedom of speech in guaranteed by the Singapore constitution, just limited to the heavily monitored "Speaker's Corner" (no microphones, signs, banners, obscenity, etc. permitted) with 30 days prior notice to police. Failure to follow these rules is always met with at least a $2000 fine because anybody who receives a $2000 fine is disqualified from political office. Attempts to parade or picket any corporate or governmental facility will be met with swift beatings by police. Top officials in Singapore rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements by suing for defamation (in Singaporean courts) any corporation doing business in Singapore that gets caught referring to the Singaporean govt. as an autocracy, monarchy, or even "political dynasty"
- Of course, freedom of the press is guaranteed by the Singapore constitution, you just need to get govt approval before starting any newspaper, website, blog, etc. The Govt owns all television and radio stations in Singapore. Singapore has substantially improved its censorship in recent years- instead of outright banning pornographic content such as the Simpsons or Zoolander, the government now edits out any political, religious, or sexual content. You can now watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Glee in Singapore, it's just that all the references to gay stuff has been removed. Most references to Socialism, Communism, unions, etc are considered unacceptable political content and censored. Really outrageous blasphemy like The Last Temptation of Christ or Monty Python's Life of Brian is still outlawed.
In other words, the World Bank's notion of what makes a country corrupt and a citizen in a liberal democracy's notion of what makes a country corrupt are quite likely different concepts. Singapore, Switzerland, etc. knows how to keep Exon, Pepsi, etc. executives happy and so they enjoy high CPI ratings.
My assertion that there is no such thing as a nation without corruption stands.
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it is clearly the logical implication of "a more transactional approach to foreign aid"
So, to your thinking, any confidential memo by any diplomat "logically implies" a policy in current effect? That is, when a confidential State Dept. memo recommends purchasing Greenland from Denmark, you feel that the only logical and honest interpretation is that the US now owns Greenland?
i guess this don't seem even slightly concerning to you
Are you saying that foreign aid should not buy foreign influence? That when the US gives Ethiopia $488 million dollars that there should be no strings attached or advantage to US citizens? Why? I know we're coming off of 4 years of Trump administration but I nevertheless expect my government to always and exclusively act to the advantage of my nation, and to the disadvantage of nations that oppose American interests.
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But it's not the 1st time dumbass Democrats got involved in a world war supporting a corrupt nation. Won't be the last.
What nation is free from corruption? White supremacist dictatorships like Putin's codify their corruption. Democracies check corruption with renewed opportunities to reform. Ukraine after voting in Zelensky is objectively less corrupt than any point since independence. That is why Russia wants Zelensky dead- a democratic and free Ukraine- one that charges Russia free market prices for grain and free market rents for pipelines is destructive to Putin's supremacy.
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