Trump Part VIII

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Each year, delegations from Africa meet with officials and business leaders in the US for the African Global Economic and Development (AGED) Summit.

This year's event took place at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles.

But unfortunately, one crucial aspect was missing from the summit - any Africans.

None of the invited delegates were able to attend, due to being denied a visa at the very last minute.

Mary Flowers, chair of the summit, told VOA that during the previous three summits around 40 per cent of attendees were denied visas.

"This year, it was 100 per cent. Every delegation. And it was sad to see, because these people were so disheartened."

https://www.indy100.com/article/afr...an-global-economic-development-summit-7637666

Because, if you want to make your industry great again it makes perfect sense to block people from an entire continent to attend a trade fair.
 
Everyone who keeps saying, 'I can't believe there hasn't been a terrorist attack, yet.' I just want to say to you, stop buying into this narrative that the US is inherently unsafe and prone to them. Trump can keep acting like we're under constant attack, but that doesn't make it true.



This, times a thousand.
 
because it's much harder to get rich american investors to travel to a conference in nairobi than it is to get the africans who are asking for the money to travel to los angeles.
 
Everyone who keeps saying, 'I can't believe there hasn't been a terrorist attack, yet.' I just want to say to you, stop buying into this narrative that the US is inherently unsafe and prone to them. Trump can keep acting like we're under constant attack, but that doesn't make it true.

Incorrect. The US and the West are under constant attack, or the threat of. If that is not plainly obvious to you then you must be living under a rock.

Trump is an immense, incompetent asshole, but on that point he has it right.
 
Incorrect. The US and the West are under constant attack, or the threat of. If that is not plainly obvious to you then you must be living under a rock.

this is objectively false. you must either be very young, or you are ignorant of the facts. before 9/11 there were constant aircraft hijackings all over the world, during the cold war domestic terrorist activities were absolutely rampant everywhere (black panthers, weather underground, ku klux klan bombings, the baader-meinhof gang and other militant socialist and communist groups all over europe), and international terrorism in the form of many, many airplane bombings by libya/iran/the PLO/sikh groups in the 80s, can't forget the attack on the munich olympics. the IRA. anthrax letters. the unabomber. the oklahoma city bombing was far worse than any other terrorist attack on us soil besides 9/11 and it was a white christian dude from upstate new york.

shit, "the us and the west" were under the literally constant threat of annihilation by thousands of nuclear warheads within minutes for at least 45 straight years.

this is objectively the safest the world in general has ever been, without a shadow of a doubt. to suggest otherwise is pure ignorance of reality. it is you who is living under that rock, my friend.
 
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this is objectively false. you must either be very young, or you are ignorant of the facts. before 9/11 there were constant aircraft hijackings, during the cold war domestic terrorist activities were absolutely rampant (black panthers, weather underground, ku klux klan bombings, the baader-meinhof gang and other militant socialist and communist groups all over europe), and international terrorism in the form of many, many airplane bombings by libya/iran/the PLO/sikh groups, the attack on the munich olympics. the anthrax letters. the unabomber. the oklahoma city bombing was far worse than any other terrorist attack on us soil besides 9/11 and it was a white dude from new york.

shit, "the us and the west" were under the literally constant threat of annihilation by thousands of nuclear warheads within minutes for at least 45 straight years.

this is objectively the safest the world has ever been, without a doubt. to suggest otherwise is pure ignorance of reality. it is you who is living under that rock, my friend.

yes Dave, that's right. The world's a much safer place now because voila! - love and peace and why can't we all just get along and just give peace a chance.

it has nothing to do with the extraordinary amount of investment we have made in homeland security, human intelligence and defense tools. The bad guys have just decided they love us after all! Yay for us!

whatever is in your peace pipe, I would be careful not to go overboard with it. My oh my.
 
actually, the end of the cold war was the primary reason.

but if you're going to act like a child and put words in my mouth and reply with this kind of chicken-little hyperbole, i don't want to have this discussion with you.
 
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The bad guys have just decided they love us after all! Yay for us!

whatever is in your peace pipe, I would be careful not to go overboard with it. My oh my.

Perhaps it would be better for the discussion if you didn't engage in straw man arguments. No one said or even came close to saying that the bad guys love us now and everything is a-okay.
 
actually, the end of the cold war was the primary reason.

but if you're going to act like a child and put words in my mouth and reply with this kind of chicken-little hyperbole, i don't want to have this discussion with you.

you started off - very first sentence - by saying I was either young or ignorant of the facts. That is how you started this 'discussion'.

So really dude - if you want to pretend to take the high road, at least make an attempt at finding it.

I'm happy to have a respectful disagreement but that's not going to happen with hypocritical behavior. Maybe your echo chamber friends won't call that out - but I will.
 
Perhaps it would be better for the discussion if you didn't engage in straw man arguments. No one said or even came close to saying that the bad guys love us now and everything is a-okay.

since you are a forum mod I would assume you saw the first comments to my post. I would also assume you saw the comment repeated that I am 'ignorant of reality'.

I am not engaging in any 'straw man' arguments, however you define that. this is simply a case of someone not liking my view of the world and responding by saying I am ignorant. are you going to admonish that as well?
 
you started off - very first sentence - by saying I was either young or ignorant of the facts. That is how you started this 'discussion'.

well, you first presented an objectively false statement as if it were factual and unquestionable (and then also stated that anyone who disagrees is not paying attention, point blank - is this not also an implication of ignorance towards bono_212 on your part? and wasn't this before i even got involved in the conversation?). this implies quite simply that you don't know the facts as they are, because your statement can be quite easily disproven. i wasn't trying to insult you, rather trying to give you the benefit of the doubt that maybe you don't know what it was like then, either by virtue of being too young, or just not knowing or remembering the history. there is absolutely nothing wrong with not knowing something, as long as you don't close your mind to being educated. if you want to pretend to be deeply insulted by someone pointing out a gap in your knowledge so that you can label me a hypocrite (and also backhandedly drive-by insult everyone else here while you're at it, which i'm sure they all appreciate) and shut down any chance at discussion, then go ahead. i honestly could not care less about your opinion of me.
 
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I am not engaging in any 'straw man' arguments, however you define that.

I disagree. I (and most others) would define straw man tactics as misrepresenting someone else's argument to make it easier to attack. That certainly seems to fit here.

With regards to being called out as ignorant on the facts - it may be a little aggressive, he didn't call you ignorant, full stop, and further clarified his comments to be about the specific topic being discussed.
 
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well, you first presented an objectively false statement as if it were factual and unquestionable (and then also stated that anyone who disagrees is not paying attention, point blank - is this not also an implication of ignorance towards bono_212 on your part? and wasn't this before i even got involved in the conversation?). this implies quite simply that you don't know the facts as they are, because your statement can be quite easily disproven. i wasn't trying to insult you, rather trying to give you the benefit of the doubt that maybe you don't know what it was like then, either by virtue of being too young, or just not knowing or remembering the history. there is absolutely nothing wrong with not knowing something, as long as you don't close your mind to being educated. if you want to pretend to be deeply insulted by someone pointing out a gap in your knowledge so that you can label me a hypocrite (and also backhandedly drive-by insult everyone else here while you're at it, which i'm sure they all appreciate) and shut down any chance at discussion, then go ahead. i honestly could not care less about your opinion of me.

Dave you are not understanding what I said. Quite simply my statement was: 'The US and the West are under constant attack, or the threat of.' How you can disagree with that is beyond me, given what we are seeing all over the world, most recently in London. However - we can have an honest debate about the root causes of these threats and the best way to deal with them.

But never did I say we are in more danger now than during the cold war, or any other time. You made that up and decided you could 'objectively' say my points were false. And then used that as the basis for saying I am ignorant of the facts. Believe me, I am not.
 
I disagree. I (and most others) would define straw man tactics as misrepresenting someone else's argument to make it easier to attack. That certainly seems to fit here.

With regards to being called out as ignorant on the facts - it may be a little aggressive, he didn't call you ignorant, full stop, and further clarified his comments to be about the specific topic being discussed.


If you are going to talk about straw man arguments, see my reply to Dave with respect to how he completely twisted my original post.
 
well considering the guy who attacked london was born in britain and we know he was a mentally ill and violent drug addict and petty criminal for decades, i think it's quite a stretch to link him definitively to this organized jihadi threat to us all that we should apparently be far more concerned with.

i think you are *vastly* overestimating the capabilities of middle-east based islamic terrorist organizations such as ISIS, hezbollah, al qaeda, etc to actually carry out attacks in the west. they're far more concerned with their own existence (or israel's) than anyone in the west's. making youtube videos of dirty college-age dudes with kalashnikovs and rpgs in the deserts of syria chanting "death to infidels" and trying to coax violent mentally ill western young men to go stab a soldier in paris, drive their car through a crowd in munich or set off a pressure cooker bomb in manhattan to kill or hurt a few dozen civilians in the name of your group is hardly an existential threat of "constant attack". it's just propaganda to make themselves seem more powerful than they really are, which is basically defeated at this point. keep in mind, if you're concerned about a major attack like 9/11, that took several years of planning, a stable and sovereign territorial base, logistical and financial support from a national government, a failed preliminary attempt that allowed them to study and avoid similar issues in the successful attack, and a security environment in the US that was not looking at or prepared at all for anything like what was being planned. there is no jihadi group on earth in a situation anything close to that today.

if "the west" really wanted isis gone, it wouldn't take much longer than a week or two of airstrikes, artillery, and ground offensives to wipe them right off the map militarily. the only reason nobody does is because it's more politically expedient to keep isis where they are rather than have assad, or the kurds, or the iraqis, or the turks, or the russians (depending on your point of view on the syrian civil war) become more powerful in the vacuum isis leaves.

if you want to split hairs then i guess you could say that the threat of some ideologically-fixated whacko stabbing you in the mall or running you down while you cross the street is pretty constant if you live in a major city. but that has nothing to do with "the west" or the times we live in, that's literally everywhere all the time. worrying about that kind of thing is pretty paranoid if you ask me. being under constant threat of attack to the level you seem to suggest is more like like living during the cold war, or living in poland in 1939 or london in september 1940. once again i stand by my assertion, that this is the safest in general individuals and society in the west have ever been.
 
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ok, there you go, just move on and construct your own narrative which is based on nothing I actually said. And ignore being called out for the hypocrisy in your previous arguments. Well done. :up: :up: :up:
 
i encourage you to provide any sources or citations that show that i'm constructing my own narrative.

please, if i'm wrong, i want to know. so go ahead and provide some real evidence rather than an evasive non-response.

edit: and for the record i ignored your sad attempts at trying to label me a hypocrite because it is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. i don't understand why you are taking any of what i said personally, and then acting as if you win points here simply because you decided to feel slighted.
 
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Dave you are not understanding what I said. Quite simply my statement was: 'The US and the West are under constant attack, or the threat of.' How you can disagree with that is beyond me, given what we are seeing all over the world, most recently in London. However - we can have an honest debate about the root causes of these threats and the best way to deal with them.

But never did I say we are in more danger now than during the cold war, or any other time. You made that up and decided you could 'objectively' say my points were false. And then used that as the basis for saying I am ignorant of the facts. Believe me, I am not.



By this lose definition; everyone everywhere is constantly under the threat of death, being attacked, or being slapped by a monkey.
 
So why is this thing held in the US? If there's been visa issues in 40% of the invitees before how about you move the summit to somewhere else? Maybe you could even visit the continent you're trying to fix.

They are not trying to "fix" the continent, they are trying to do business. Africa is not all about 'feed the world'.
It's an American organisation that organises this event in California so that African entrepreneurs and politicians have a chance to get in touch with American business leaders to discuss trade and investment opportunities. It certainly yields higher attendance by Americans if held in the US.

But that's besides the point. It's their choice to hold the event in the US, or in any African country. It's meant to bring business people together. That would be mutually beneficial. To deny all visa to the various persons from Africa (over a 100 persons who are neither poor nor do they otherwise not have good reason to return to their home countries) is very questionable.
 
I don't see why anyone is worried. Trump has a secret plan to defeat ISIS. He's going to get that done after he fixes health care so we have something really terrific. We just need to be patient.
 
They are not trying to "fix" the continent, they are trying to do business. Africa is not all about 'feed the world'.

It's an American organisation that organises this event in California so that African entrepreneurs and politicians have a chance to get in touch with American business leaders to discuss trade and investment opportunities. It certainly yields higher attendance by Americans if held in the US.



But that's besides the point. It's their choice to hold the event in the US, or in any African country. It's meant to bring business people together. That would be mutually beneficial. To deny all visa to the various persons from Africa (over a 100 persons who are neither poor nor do they otherwise not have good reason to return to their home countries) is very questionable.


Of course it's about fixing Africa. But don't get me wrong, I applaud and support the effort. I'm all for it, I just say it's ridiculous to hold it in a place where nearly half the delegations can't get to and this year none of them. If it's meant to bring people together, go somewhere where that can actually happen.

It's this lazy attitude of 'look we tried, but what can you do'. They're not going to overhaul visa policies (no matter how ridiculous and backwards they are) in the foreseeable future, so it's pointless to hold it in a place people can't get to. That's all I'm saying.
 
Just so it's clear, I am aware we are under THREAT of attack, but homeland security, the natural border of location of the US, and the number of actual attacks that have happened here in the last decade are far lower than countries that share a landmass with the majority of the world.

So, no, I don't expect a terrorist attack here on a regular basis.
 
Even in Europe, with plenty-o-land connection, the word "common" is an overstatement. I'm not accepting the "new norm," per say. More just... not giving in to what terrorists want. The whole point of terrorism is to incite fear into the lives of the people, as a means of guerrilla warfare. It's a tactic. It doesn't work. You can be scared... it doesn't change the fact that they can't win by those means. So, while attacks are tragic, it's important to pick your head up fast and not be phased.
 
all this talk about borders etc., people should stop looking to "outsiders" the whole time - most of the recent attacks in France and the latest one in the UK have been from nationals
 
all this talk about borders etc., people should stop looking to "outsiders" the whole time - most of the recent attacks in France and the latest one in the UK have been from nationals

the US is constantly under attack - from its own guns
I thought it was kinda clear we were talking about ISIS related terrorism, though. It doesn't do trump any good for a typical shooting situation in the United States. That doesn't fit his narrative.

This dark twisted scenario is a terrorist attack (probably related to ISIS) would BENEFIT the Orange One, as he would be able to say told you so... Since he's completely fucked in the head.
 
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