[Aptorian]

Any of you woke people have a link to a good article on the conditions in "the camps"?

I haven't read anything about what's actually going on in there but statistically speaking, if you lock up tens of thousands of people for any length of time, people are going to die. Of old age, sickness, accidents, fighting, etc. Especially if they're already in rough condition before they arrive. All the health care in the world isn't going to change that.

I'm more curious of the sanitation and living conditions.

[worry]

The thread I posted is literally article after article about that very topic, but if Twitter is your curiosity's kryptonite, I've got you covered. A de-Twitterized unrolling of the thread, with all citations intact: https://threadreader...9826855936.html

[Aptorian]

I hate Twitter so I try to avoid it when possible. But your link certainly paints a grim picture.

Any statements from the UN in terms of wanting insight or investigations? Those are clearly not mild kinds of human rights violations.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 19 June 2019 - 07:22 AM

[worry]

That's a very good question and tbh I haven't heard anything about the UN visiting sites or even asking to. That's potentially just a blind spot on my part. I know that a formal complaint was lodged by numerous orgs (unions, faith orgs, rights orgs, etc.) with the Human Rights Council last year but it was specifically about the family separation policy (link). But the US withdrew from the Human Rights Council last year (for unrelated reasons regarding Israel, IIRC) and I'm afraid has no interest in accountability.

[Maark Abbott]

Worry, any chance you can give me a general blow-by-blow of what the US-Iran beef is? Your own take would be good in that as well. Because I'm struggling not to see the US as 'the bad guy' in all of this from what little I know.

[Obdigore]

 Maark Abbott, on 19 June 2019 - 08:02 AM, said:

Worry, any chance you can give me a general blow-by-blow of what the US-Iran beef is? Your own take would be good in that as well. Because I'm struggling not to see the US as 'the bad guy' in all of this from what little I know.

Thats easy.

Trump wants to undo anything Obama did, and something Obama did was the Iran Deal (along with about 5 nations in Europe).

The second thing is he hired John Bolton, who is both a chickenhawk and literal warmonger.

The third thing is Trump's polling numbers are atrocious, but a sitting president gets a temporary bump from war because something something 'not changing horses midrace'. I'd expect the war to kick off in about a year to give the main bump (between 100-300 days from the start) during the 2020 elections.

Don't struggle not to see the US as 'the bad guy', we literally are.

[Gorefest]

Well, let's not see Iran as squeeky clean either, because they really aren't. It is a dodgy regime. Furthermore, there are some relevant and serious issues with the Iran nuclear deal that was made under Obama. Nevertheless, the way that Trump goes about this is the usual expected idiotic bullheadedness which, instead of trying to improve matters, will just drive things to a head with potentially horrendous outcomes.

[Cause]

 worry, on 19 June 2019 - 07:55 AM, said:

That's a very good question and tbh I haven't heard anything about the UN visiting sites or even asking to. That's potentially just a blind spot on my part. I know that a formal complaint was lodged by numerous orgs (unions, faith orgs, rights orgs, etc.) with the Human Rights Council last year but it was specifically about the family separation policy (link). But the US withdrew from the Human Rights Council last year (for unrelated reasons regarding Israel, IIRC) and I'm afraid has no interest in accountability.

Things like this always make me think. I don't want anyone to be treated like the above descriptions but at the same time I never know what the US (in this instance is supposed to do). There has to be a system, how much infrastructure and money should the US be expected to give to illegal immigrants. They have a legal right to seek asylum (apparently, I imagine its more complicated than some people seem to think) but when that law was written how many people were seeking asylum versus today.

I'm generally very pro-refugees. My family history demands that I be pro-refugee or I am a hypocrite. The family separation tactic was bullshit and a stain on the US. I'm not sure I can just agree with the idea though that the detention centers are overcrowded so we have no choice to let these people free into the US. The US has never really been the free for all 'give me your tired and poor' that some people think it was. I visited Ellis Island and if they thought you could not work, provide for yourself or were dangerously infectious they would send you back. During and just before WW2 they sent back ship loads of refugees.

I have learnt these things are never so clear. Zimbabwe has no economy so many of them flee to South Africa for work. For the most part I believe the stats show they do the work, get paid, send most of the money home and are not in fact going around robbing, selling drugs and murdering people. However unemployment is over 30% in my country. Is it right to the 30% of south Africans who cant find work to let Zimbabweans take jobs in SA? Is it right to form a blockade around Zimbabwe and just let the country starve to death?

So Ill admit I don't know as much about this issue as perhaps I should, and I am pro-refugee but I do see the case for not just letting anyone through at anytime. How much of the overcrowding is due to Trumps change of immigration policies? I remember reading that immigration to the states on the southern border was actually declining but I also seem to remember reading that in a perverse incentive situation because of Trumps hard line stance their was a spike, people were felling its now or never

In the meantime my favourite stastic is that by 2048 America's majority demographic will be Hispanics.

________________________________

The US withdrew from the HRC because they realized that if they allowed Israeli generals to be tried for warcrimes their own generals were next. The UN has a problem in which it too often works like a democracy and less like a body of laws.

[Abyss]

 Gorefest, on 19 June 2019 - 12:52 PM, said:

Well, let's not see Iran as squeeky clean either, because they really aren't. It is a dodgy regime. Furthermore, there are some relevant and serious issues with the Iran nuclear deal that was made under Obama. Nevertheless, the way that Trump goes about this is the usual expected idiotic bullheadedness which, instead of trying to improve matters, will just drive things to a head with potentially horrendous outcomes.

Taliban Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria ... none of them were remotely clean. Arguably Afghanistan was necessary post 9-11-2001, but any step against Iran right now seems closer to the other two.

[Obdigore]

 Abyss, on 19 June 2019 - 03:18 PM, said:

 Gorefest, on 19 June 2019 - 12:52 PM, said:

Well, let's not see Iran as squeeky clean either, because they really aren't. It is a dodgy regime. Furthermore, there are some relevant and serious issues with the Iran nuclear deal that was made under Obama. Nevertheless, the way that Trump goes about this is the usual expected idiotic bullheadedness which, instead of trying to improve matters, will just drive things to a head with potentially horrendous outcomes.

Taliban Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria ... none of them were remotely clean. Arguably Afghanistan was necessary post 9-11-2001, but any step against Iran right now seems closer to the other two.

It absolutely wasn't.

If we were going to invade anyone after 9/11, it should have been Saudi Arabia.

[Macros]

100% with Obdi.

it was the same as trumps "terrorist ban" the countries not on the list were the countries the terrorists actually came from.

Afghanistan was about lithium
Iraq about oil

[worry]

@Maark: I am not as great with FP as a lot of people on this board, but I agree with Obdi on the broad strokes (the dismantling Obama's achievements, the desire for war first and pretense second) and have to agree that the US is "the bad guy"/aggressor in this situation. I will add that in addition to John Bolton being a warmonger -- as are congressmen and senators like Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio, and by abdication of responsibility (at best) too many feckless Dems -- our Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is a particularly dangerous man because he is quite literally an End Times Soon and Perhaps In Our Lifetime true believer. His interests -- in Israel, in the broader Middle East, and in general -- do not lie with avoiding Armageddon. Not hyperbole.

[Illuyankas]

The US is still mad about the Shah


Also Saudi Arabia should be invaded for what they've done in Yemen, as should the UK and US for arming them

[Abyss]

Bin Laden, who did make 9-11 happen, was hanging out in Afghanistan with his Talibuddies. I can live with the notion that they felt the need to go in after him and take out the guys supporting him. Everything that happened after was as bad as anything else mentioned. We don't need to dig into that point tho, i suspect we'd agree on most of what went wrong.

Illy's point about the Shah is funny considering what's going on around Cuba goes back to the Batista days.

[Gorefest]

Thought he was great as Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy.

[Cause]

 Illuyankas, on 19 June 2019 - 07:21 PM, said:

The US is still mad about the Shah


Also Saudi Arabia should be invaded for what they've done in Yemen, as should the UK and US for arming them

Has anyone ever run the numbers. What would happen to the oil price if the US was not so cozy with Saudia Arabia? I mean at the end of the day the Saudis want to be rich, Iran wants oil money. I mean they wouldn't actually burn the oil fields overnight in an orgy of violence? The US is infact the number one oil producer? Is the US still so dependent on Saudi oil?

[Maark Abbott]

 Illuyankas, on 19 June 2019 - 07:21 PM, said:

The US is still mad about the Shah


Also Saudi Arabia should be invaded for what they've done in Yemen, as should the UK and US for arming them

Don't invade us, we'll hand our politicians over freely

[Gorefest]

 Illuyankas, on 19 June 2019 - 07:21 PM, said:

Also Saudi Arabia should be invaded for what they've done in Yemen, as should the UK and US for arming them

https://www.theguard...mens-deadly-war

"This could soon change. Three of Britain’s most senior judges are now mulling whether the government’s licensing of billions of pounds of arms to the Saudi Royal Air Force has been legal. The court of appeal’s judgment, expected this week, could force the government to suspend the licences that keep the bombs and spare parts flowing to Saudi Arabia, which would ground half of Saudi Arabia’s fleet in a matter of weeks.

The judiciary may now decide to curtail Britain’s ability to sustain Saudi Arabia’s doomed and destructive air war. The British and Saudi governments may also decide to send more aid to help the 24 million Yemenis now dependent on an underfunded UN relief fund. But a generation of Yemenis who have lost their families, their homes, educations and livelihoods will not get them back."


"The British government is keen to stress that it has no role in targeting, and insists that only Saudi Arabia chooses what to hit in Yemen. But there is no disputing the fact that British contractors enable Saudi Arabia to hit its targets – and that Britain is well aware of the nature of these targets."

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 20 June 2019 - 11:38 AM

[Gorefest]

And some more disturbing quotes:




"It is this commercial relationship that is keeping Britain firmly ensnared in the Yemen war. Its foundation is an multi-billion pound, government-to-government arms deal signed in 1985 called al-Yamamah. This guarantees British maintenance, training and rearmament of any British aircraft sold to Saudi Arabia, in war and peacetime. The deal is open-ended, which means that its terms, which in the 1980s applied to Tornado aircraft, now cover the export of BAE’s newer Typhoon jets.

In response to a recent parliamentary question, the government refused to disclose the total income from the Al-Yamamah contract because it “would, or would be likely to, prejudice relations with another State” – but former BAE CEO Mike Turner put it at more than £40bn in 2005. Nick Gilby, a researcher who has written a book on the deal, estimates the current sales figure to be “conservatively, £60bn” based on BAE statements and annual reports."

[Gorefest]

Apologies for the colours btw, I'm copy-pasting from the article but it turns the lettering unreadable on the black background here.