Comments by "wily wascal" (@wilywascal2024) on "VICE News"
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@Mon.M0TIVATION ~ And hacksaw blades are made for cutting metal, including steel up to 1/2" thick. Unlike hacksaw blades used years ago which were made of low alloy steel and therefore brittle and prone to breakage, modern hacksaw blades for cutting through metal are bimetal in composition and more flexible, and a 14tpi bimetal blade can cut through steel quite quickly----in less than half a minute with a manual hacksaw. An 18tpi bimetal blade only adds a few seconds to accomplishing the same task. Of course, it is possible to cut through steel thicker than 1/2" with a hacksaw, but that takes a bit more time and effort. However, the new sections of Trump's wall are often breached with a portable Sawzall reciprocating saw power tool. And, as demonstrated by rock climbers, the "impenetrable barrier" can be scaled and breached in as little as thirteen seconds.
Trump's wall only provides the illusion of security, and is a huge waste of our taxpayer dollars. Humanitarian organizations that put out water for immigrants have attested that the wall has not decreased the flow of immigrants; that they are still finding ways through, and they are still filling water stations along the border at the same rate as previous.
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'Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America' by Kathleen Belew (Harvard University Press, 2018)
The movement “brought together members of the Klan, militias, radical tax resisters, white separatists, neo-Nazis, and proponents of white theologies such as Christian Identity, Odinism, and Dualism” (ix). What was it about the movement that brought these ideologies together?
The promise of violence — rather, the promise that members would get to inflict violence on other people. Belew writes that as the white power movement matured, it became more violent, and “[as] violence came to the fore of the movement, distinctions among white power factions melted away” (60). Belew calls this process “violent community formation” (34). Yet as a social movement, Belew makes a distinction between the white power movement’s “revolutionary violence” and the Ku Klux Klan’s “vigilante violence.”
Vigilante violence “served to constitute, shore up, and enforce systemic power” (106). Given that the U.S. government has a long history of “defending vigilante violence by refusing to enforce the law” (99), law enforcement inaction and vigilante violence may be understood together as a case of one hand washing the other. Revolutionary violence, however, sought to overthrow the state. It is the white power movement’s goal of overthrowing the federal government that sets it apart in the history of white supremacy in the U.S.
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@uttcftptid4481 ~ Take it you meant "whole different conversation." But the supply and demand part is integral to the whole, to understanding the situation and crafting effective solutions. Pointing fingers at others while ignoring our own culpability only insures that problems will be perpetuated.
Not even Bezos and the Koch brothers should be lumped together. Bezos is giving $10 billion dollars to his non-partisan Earth Fund organization to combat climate change. Bezos is generally considered non-partisan himself, donating to both Republicans and Democrats, as has been traditionally done in American politics. Don't know the aggregate of Bezos political spending, but traditionally corporations used to only give nominal amounts to both parties, unlike now when we see some large industries, corporations, and wealthy individuals looking to tip the scales and essentially buy off politicians and political parties by pumping millions into elections and PACs. Unlike the Koch brothers, Bezos supports a corporate tax hike. The Koch brothers support only Republicans, donating large amounts that can significantly impact local, state, and national election outcomes.
Now, don't get me wrong----I'm a long-time opponent of Citizens United, a long-time advocate of getting dark money and big money out of politics. The same is true for most all Democrats and their party. More power to the people, less power to plutocrats. However, there is a distinct, appreciable difference between large corporations or wealthy individuals and drug cartels that commit all manner of violent atrocities.
There is a difference between legal campaign donations and bribery, too. We may not like how the wealthy have undue influence, but we would like it even less if it was bribery that went unreported, as with the cartels and Mexican government. Moreover, U.S. politicians don't always vote in favor of those corporations and interests that supported them----something which would be almost unthinkable for Mexican government officials on the take with the cartels to do.
But does that mean the cartels are the boss? No, because the Mexican government has the ultimate authority, and they play the cartels off against each other, picking winners and losers amongst them. Besides, if the cartels really were the boss, they wouldn't be paying bribes to government officials; they would be keeping that money for themselves. To conclude, while totally sympathetic to your position, the comparison is overly broad, and somewhat irrelevant to this discussion about immigration; let's not allow ourselves to get too far sidetracked.
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Israel knew full well that their actions kicking Palestinians out of their homes in East Jerusalem (Palestinian territory) and attacks on the al Aqsa mosque during an Islamic holy period would invariably lead to Hamas rockets in retaliation: Israel has a long history of repeatedly provoking such attacks. Unlike Israel, which has one of the most advanced militaries in the world and a its own substantial undeclared nuclear arsenal, the Palestinians have no army, no navy, and no air force to defend themselves and their interests. It is the Palestinians who are David in this conflict; it is Israel who is Goliath. Hamas and other groups firing of rockets without adequate targeting mechanisms indiscriminately is mostly symbolic, but it is also morally wrong, constitutes terrorism, and should not be condoned. Conversely, Israel's provocations, use of disproportionate force, and other acts against Palestinians constitute a form of state terrorism, and should likewise not be condoned. Both the right-wing in Israel and the right-wing in Palestine profit from this conflict, and both are equally responsible for the carnage caused.
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@MKUltraPill ~ An acronym and term I don't much care for. For one thing, because it's simply not true, and placing all law enforcement in the same basket is more counter-productive than helpful. For another thing, the term originated in England among the criminal class, but was subsequently adopted by neo-Nazi skinheads before being used by the BLM movement.
Thus, it's meaning can be misconstrued or distorted, conflating BLM with neo-Nazis or criminals, much the way "defund the police" has been taken wildly out of context by the Reich-wing to mean getting rid of police departments altogether. The term or acronym should be judged within the context used, but the Reich-wing Republican cult doesn't care about nuance and truth, so they will dishonestly distort its meaning where it suits them. The more you know, the better we all are!
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GOP = fascism + nihilism The few patriots in the Republican party are rejected by the vast majority of Republicans. Hard as it may be for some to believe or accept, it is to our own and our nation's peril to ignore, diminish, or dismiss that the GOP has become a fascist cult. Their fascism, nihilism and cultdom needs to be recognized, acknowledged, called out, condemned, and strongly opposed if we are to keep our democracy.
A third of America has been successfully Talibinized, thanks to Reich-wing plutocrats, Reich-wing media, Reich-wing demagogues, and Reich-wing politicians. Republican cult is the new ISIS. Call them Talibangelicals, ISIS-KKK, Y'all Qaeda, Vanilla ISIS, Reich-whingers (the original English word for whiners), or QaBomb----they're all part and parcel of the current lunatic Reich-wing GOP.
Republican politicians are appeasing fascist, seditious terrorists...because that's their voter base, radicalization and extremism is what they have cultivated, nourished, nurtured, exploited, and profited from for four decades. Reich-wing politicians, plutocrats, demagogues, media, white nationalist, Christian nationalist religious, sovereign citizens and Qanon leaders thought they could ride the tiger, too arrogant, greedy, and stupid to foresee that master would become slave, and the beast they created would soon come to consume them.
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With the Trump administration's immigration policy, it was always about the cruelty. Nevertheless, the title of this VICE piece is misleading and lacks objectivity. While ashamed of the way America has treated migrants, the responsibility for the massacre of these migrants lies with those who did the killings in Mexico, not any immigration enforcement action in the U.S. This VICE title is also picking out an arbitrary point in a chain of events during this Guatemalan's life that ignores earlier and later decisions made by the man that were illegal and which were equally or greater causality of his death. Furthermore, he was apparently the only victim in the massacre there because of the Mississippi ICE raid.
Overall, this piece as a whole was also found to be somewhat slanted in its presentation, designed more to appeal to emotion than reason. It conflated a number of things together, selective in choosing some things for emphasis and largely ignoring other aspects. This story would have been better had it been about the complete life of the one migrant father, Edgar Lopez, or about all the lives affected by the massacre, or all the lives affected by the ICE raid. Instead, it is presented as a menagerie of bits and pieces of all three that doesn't fully do justice to any of them. Was left conflicted, because was both appreciative of the coverage and disappointed in it.
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Because humans have neglected to take aggressive action to curb our hydrocarbon usage and emissions, have refused to take climate change seriously, now what we are witnessing is a snowball effect, where the problem is exacerbated by fires burning in the Amazon, in Greece, in the western U.S. and Canada, raising temperatures and adding more CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. As the frozen tundra thaws, methane gases are being released, and as water bodies warm, methane hydrates formerly trapped at the bottom rise into the air, releasing even more methane gas. As more and more surface ice is lost on land and in the ocean, less sunlight is reflected back into space, causing more heat gain. Humans have set into motion a self-perpetuating loop; a cycle which we may well be powerless to stop, and which will destroy life on Earth as it has existed for millions of years.
What we are witnessing and experiencing is only just the beginning of the reckoning for human stupidity, greed, apathy, and short-sightedness. Pretty soon, with so many suffering, empathy will be in short supply. I fear what is to come for the human race, for our children, for their children, and all who follow after, and the sorrow I feel for them and our planet, for all that will be lost, overwhelms. Because this didn't have to happen. We knew decades ago that we were creating our own apocalypse, and took no more than token measures to stop it. And humans continue to dawdle, fiddling while the planet burns.
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