Obama managed to deport more illegal immigrants than Trump. The difference is the local cities and states were working with ICE, rather than weaponising it to try and get a Democrat president.
You forget that Obama wasn’t an idiot and did everything above board. Sanctuary cities existed back then, federal agents still enforced immigration rules just without Gestapo-like sh*t stirring. Trump wanted to provoke Minneapolis with aggressive highly visible tactics, and he got what he wanted.
That is ridiculous, Republicans are sending in poorly trained masked federal agents "en masse" into liberal, being as rough and visible as possible. That is the very definition of sh*t stirring. This is just what MAGA wanted: to beat up and shoot some libs.
If it was really about illegal immigrants, ICE wouldn't be raiding immigration hearings, nor would they be kidnapping legal immigrants.
If it was about stopping violent criminals, they wouldn't raid restaurant kitchens and crop fields, where workers are trying to make an honest living for their family.
You can't reason someone out of something they clearly didn't reason themselves into. If they cared about the truth and evidence they wouldn't be holding that opinion right now.
Amusingly, a lot of rank and file on both sides ( and center ) of the aisle would not mind at all. However, somehow the political will in the upper echelons is just not there. Somehow.
If they really really wanted to deport 8 million illegal immigrants, there are surely more effective ways than grandstanding a bunch of masked thugs. Obama did it, surely Trump can figure it out also? I know, I know, you guys never would admit Obama was doing it because he was doing it so discretely, which is why you want Trump to make such a show of it, I guess.
Hey for audience, your numbers include asylum seekers who came here legally right?
Just want to point out that for conservatives the set “illegal immigrants” include, large numbers of legal ones because they generally thought the asylum process was too simple and shouldn’t count.
"The despondent faces and screaming, wailing and pleading from these men, women and children in cells will forever haunt me. But perhaps more haunting still was the sound of agents nearby laughing."
Yes, very not Nazi. And the press is not the reason people in Minneapolis are livid and putting their lives on the line, out in the freezing cold. Instead of getting angrier and angrier as "useful idiots" continue to do the same all across the country and in ever greater numbers, maybe take the chance to revisit your assumptions and pull yourself out of whatever dark propaganda pit you're in.
FWIW they were murdered in hot blood. A cold–blood murder is one where you plan the murder at home and execute it. A hot–blood murder is one where you kill someone because you are enraged in the moment, which is what happened here twice.
That’s not something which really happened: conservative groups screamed about it loudly but the investigation found that the IRS was looking at liberal groups, too.
Finneas (Billie Eilish's brother) isn't one for virtue signaling from what I've seen over the years from his posts. He keeps it very real and down to earth as far as celebrities go.
Since when is speaking out against fascism virtue signalling? Like, how bad does it have to get before it's just speaking out against the attrocities happening around us and not virtue signalling? Or are celebrities just flat out not allowed to do it?
> Because if it were actual fascism, like the Hitler/Mussolini kind, you'd be arrest/dead the moment you spoke anything against it.
It looks like you have paramilitaries roaming your streets - not wearing ID or proper uniforms, covering their faces to avoid identification, not answering to usual democratic controls - executing protestors.
In the latest incident, they seemed to be beating and spraying a woman with a chemical agent for filming them, and then executing a bystander who tried to help her. The regime then tried to deny reality and falsely claim that they'd attacked said paramilitary operatives.
In any Western democracy (and I'm not sure if the US is currently part of that category) there would be a public investigation, but they seem to have been squirrelled away and the politicians who have spoken out about it have been threatened.
This all seems to be fascistic by any reasonable standard.
> On top of which they have matching ICE issued vest with inscriptions.
It's a fascist theme to have paramilitaries not wearing uniforms. See for example the mukhabarat in Syria. It makes them more intimidating, because they look undisciplined, and adds confusion to protestors as to whether they are dealing with someone who is part of the legal system. Why on earth would they not be issued with uniforms?
> Yes, accidents like this will happen when you shove law enforcement officers with a gun on you.
Pretti did not shove any "law enforcement officers". The first physical contact is a shove on Pretti by one of them.
The first time they seem to be aware that he has a firearm is when they disarm him, and the execution happens after that, so I don't see how that is relevant.
>they disarm him, and the execution happens after that,
You're leaving the part out where a gunshot is heard right before they "execute" him. The officers with their fingers on the trigger pointed at him during detainment, got scared of that gunshot and jumped on the trigger by accident. It's an unfortunate accident but not an execution. Read up the legal definition of execution. This is not it.
I have literally never met anyone as delusional as you on HN. Your comments are just on the absolute edge of sanity, and the only hope I have is that you are an actual russian troll trying to sow discontent and not an actual real human that holds these beliefs earnestly.
It just leaves me wondering - how do you look yourself in the mirror each day? I guess it must be super easy if you just look at what happened there and think shooting a guy 11 times from close distance is an "accident".
You know what, I was thinking about it for the last few hours since I replied to you.
And I think - if I lived in 1930s Germany, I would also want to believe that my country isn't turning into a place where the rule of law isn't respected and where citizens are executed on the street without due process. After all, people are posting criticism of the government in the papers still, so it can't be that bad. That family next door that disappeared - they probably did something wrong. And the dude that got shot by the Gestapo on the street - he probably did something wrong too. Or maybe the officer made a mistake - it's just an accident after all. Nothing to worry about.
I think it's in our nature to gaslight ourselves, because otherwise we have to confront the horror of the world and also who we have become. You have become a person who goes on the internet and tells people that the shooting of Alex Pretti was an unfortunate accident. I hope that there is a day - maybe in 10 maybe in 20 maybe in 30 years - where you look back at yourself and think "damn why didn't I see what was going on".
>> everyone disagreeing with you is a russian troll.
You have your coping mechanism which is clearly just lying to yourself and others on the internet - every single comment asking you for evidence, proof, or in return - giving you those when you asked - you have ignored, because clearly you aren't actually interested in what is happening, you just want to stick to your point of view, something which you accuse others of doing.
For me, the only method of not going insane reading internet forums nowadays is assuming that either people like you are bots, or are doing this on purpose to elicit a reaction(kids call it ragebaiting nowadays?). If you really hold these views....then what I said above applies.
>>There's etiquette when dealing with police that people seem to have forgotten.
You are literally insane if you think this is a matter of "etiquette" or that it was an accident.
Essex police haven't fired a single bullet in the last 10 years, and they are able to provide effective policing anyway. But in US a bunch of gestapo officers have a man pinned to the ground, with his gun taken away, and then they shoot him?
At least the real gestapo had the decency to ask you to stand against the wall looking away before they executed you.
As I asked you in another comment - do you want to live in a Judge Dredd universe where officers can just execute someone like this? And I repeat, it's not an accident. If it was, they would have shot him once.
>Essex police haven't fired a single bullet in the last 10 years, and they are able to provide effective policing anyway.
Only if you misreport crime, ignore grooming gangs and arrest people for Tweets as "effective policing" in the UK.
>And I repeat, it's not an accident. If it was, they would have shot him once.
Police are trained to always fire multiple shots, as learned from firefight reports, people are left in capacity to fire back even when they have several rounds in them.
> people are left in capacity to fire back even when they have several rounds in them.
And when there are 8 people on top of them, they're facedown on the ground, their hands are stuck in front of their face with no way to get at the waistband in which they had a legally concealed firearm, which one ICE officer removes while another waits for him to be out of the way before another executes them?
You're assuming officers have the time to rationalize all this thought process in the split second when another officer shouts "GUN!" and then one starts shooting leading to everyone shooting out of inertia.
People got shot from police mistakes like these all the time. It's an accident, a bad one, but not an execution, as everyone on the left calls it.
Thanks, good to see great mental clarity and debate skills.
> includes "following unlawful orders."
Except the judge decides if the order was unlawful, not you.
You don't get to decide on the spot that the order you received was unlawful and can just resist arrest if you feel like it.
You cooperate with the orders, and then your lawyer will seek justice and compensation on your behalf is the way the officer handled himself was unlawful. That's the way it works.
> Because if it were actual fascism, like the Hitler/Mussolini kind, you'd be arrest/dead the moment you spoke anything against it.
This is... a pretty confused view of history, really. Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, and consolidated power over the next year. At this point there was a lot of criticism of the regime, both internal and external. Things got rapidly worse after, of course, but there certainly was a period where the Nazis were in power but that there was public criticism.
Even as late as 1938, there was significant public discontent RE Kristallnacht in particular.
Yes, but also the ones on the way to authoritarianism, as was argued the Trump regime is.
Thus, currently allowing some criticism is not enough to disprove the alleged march towards fascism. People with that viewpoint would argue that it's only allowed because power isn't consolidated enough yet.
>Yes, but also the ones on the way to authoritarianism, as was argued the Trump regime is.
Democrats/leftists/ANTIFA don't hate authoritarianism, They hate that they're not the ones in charge of dealing the authoritarianism on their opposition, as shown by the masked mob gestapo they set up in Minnesota doing "papers please, you're either with us or against us" on civilians passing by to confirm they hate ICE.
If Kamala-Walz would have won the election, they would have done the same to Trump and friends in republican states, and you would have called it "justice for Nazis", not fascism ,which is the justification ANTIFA use when they beat up innocent people.
> as shown by the masked mob gestapo they set up in Minnesota doing "papers please, you're either with us or against us" on civilians passing by to confirm they hate ICE.
[citation needed]
Also even if true, there's a vast difference between a rando on the street asking those questions vs a government agent. That's assuming the government agent isn't too much of a pussy to identify himself instead of hiding behind a mask.
Not if you label me as fascist, if I were to fit the definition of fascist.
Umberto Ecos Ur-Fascism might be worth a read.
Fascism isn't just "things I don't like". It's specific behavioral patterns that lead to the worst crimes in modern history and that must be stomped out at any cost. Words have meanings.
> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.
Fascism takes hold in stages; Nazi Germany didn't go from 0 to 100 in one day. You have to nip it in the bud before it grows up.
Right now, ICE goes out of their way to beat and arrest protestors and steal their cameras. They're not yet mowing them down but by that time it would be a little late to do something about their conduct. Remember that the current US president admires how the CCP crushed the student protestors in Tiananmen square with tanks and guns.
>You have to nip it in the bud before it grows up.
Sure, but if you use fascist tactics to fight fascism, are you not a fascist yourself?
And people conveniently focus only on the symptoms(rise of fascism) but not on the main cause that leads to it.
Like Hitler didn't just randomly get to power one day out of nowhere because the average German citizen was living such a good life. He was just one of the symptoms to a major problem that the Weimar republic didn't address and instead used fascist tactics to get rid of Hitler before he could gain power, and then guess what happened.
Similarly, Trump is also only but a symptom to a larger issue. Using fascist tactics to get him out of power, only makes the counter response greeter, and not make the core problem go away.
What fascist tactics did they use to get rid of Hitler? If you're referring to his time in prison, he was put there because he staged a putsch.
Beyond that, much of the establishment and industry tried to work with him using a softly, softly approach. They thought they could steer him, temper him, leverage his popularity for their own ends. Of course, that didn't work out for them
>What fascist tactics did they use to get rid of Hitler?
November 1921 (Munich): During a speech at an NSDAP rally in a beer hall, an unknown assailant fired shots at Hitler from the crowd amid a melee, but he escaped unharmed.
1923 (Thuringia): An unidentified person attempted to shoot Hitler during a rally, but Nazi supporters outnumbered opponents, forcing the attacker to flee.
1923 (Memmingen): Another unknown individual tried to assassinate Hitler with a rifle but retreated when confronted by his followers.
July 15, 1932 (Munich): An assailant fired shots at Hitler and SA leader Ernst Röhm while they dined at Cafe Heck, but both were unhurt.
1932 (Nuremberg): A bomb was planted in the lobby of Hitler's hotel, but it was discovered and removed before detonation.
1932 (Berlin and Munich): Two additional attempts occurred, one involving potential poisoning at the Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin (where Hitler and staff fell ill after a meal, suspected to be deliberate contamination), though details are limited and perpetrators unidentified.
Attempted assassinations by unidentified lone wolves, spread out over decades, are not "fascist" tactics. Obviously they are very bad for a political climate, but I think that's stretching the definition beyond any use.
You originally implied the Weimar Republic itself used fascistic tactics. But your examples show nothing of the sort (and are obviously just an LLM dump, which disinclines me to continue this conversation)
Yes, I'm sure they were lone wolves who happen to have massive resources for political assassinations, and not backed by hitler's political opposition. Please, let's end the conversation here since it's clearly not going anywhere.
You listed a handful of failed attempts that didn't come anywhere near to being successful. Where are the massive resources? What's the evidence for massive resources? And where's the evidence that these attempts were organised by political opponents at state level?
at what point do you start to question your worldview, when you are actively complaining about the "fascist tactics" used by people who tried to kill Hitler himself?
I wasn't, but thanks for proving my point: If everyone calls their opposition fascists in order to justify killing them, who's the fascist then?
As per history proves, the ones who lose the battle are the fascist, since both the allies and soviets were guilty of the same atrocities in their colonies that they accused the nazis of.
The fascist is the ultranationalist, authoritarian, and xenophobic side that operates under the rule of one strongman leader. That's all. These days the idea that "Liberals are the real fascists" runs rampant, or even more "Antifa is fascist". It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.
> As per history proves, the ones who lose the battle are.
What are you trying to say? Mussolini called himself a fascist. Hitler modeled his nazi party on Mussolini's fascist party, he openly admitted that and admired him. Fascism is not some word that was invented post-hoc to describe very bad people.
You think the appropriate punishment for interfering with a simple administrative act is gunshots to the back of the head? Are you even reading what you're saying???
Police have the right to defend themselves if they fear for their lives. It was terrible accident indeed that could have been voided if he'd not physically interfere or have a gun on him.
You have government-backed thugs with guns running around murdering people who take photos of them.
You have something that looks worryingly like the Ceaușescu's Securitate "disappearing" citizens - including a little 5-year-old boy - off the streets.
Justify that.
Justify kidnapping a terrified little boy who should be at school with his friends, and locking him up in prison.
Go on, justify those actions. Let's see if you can.
Thing is, his dad is not a criminal and did not run off, but was chased away by armed thugs, and his mum did not refuse to take him but was prevented from taking him by armed thugs.
You have armed thugs abducting and murdering people on the streets of American cities.
I mean, there is a victim of false propaganda here, but I think that's you, especially given your other comments.
"Stenvik said another adult living in the home was outside during the encounter and had pleaded to take care of Liam so the boy could avoid detention, but was denied. Liam’s older brother, a middle schooler, came home 20 minutes later to find his father and brother missing, Stenvik said. Two school principals from the district also arrived at the home to offer support."
" An agent had taken Liam out of the car, led the boy to his front door and directed him to knock on the door asking to be let in, “in order to see if anyone else was home – essentially using a five-year-old as bait”, the superintendent said in a statement."
I remember the days in the 90's when me and my wife could both carry back 5l containers of the local red wine in our carry on. I hope that comes back...
I know it's unconventional, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading that translation. It felt so alive, and other translations have never engaged me in quite the same way.
It was the only version I managed to finish, unless you count "Eaters of the Dead" by Michael Crichton (which is loosely based on it and mashed up with the story of Ahmad ibn Fadlan).
I think it's a good compromise between staying true-ish to the language, and also making it come alive as an epic adventure story.
"Kill Musk's Twitter" was literally a Centre for Countering Digital Hate agenda item on a meeting with Senators in the US. The CCDH was started by advisors of Kier Starmer (one who is now his Chief of Staff). It is 100% a left wing pressure group.
I don't see how anyone call it a conspiracy theory any more.
Just think its a geniunely important semantic note that only Americans and hard righters consider Labour + Kier left wing. If the CCDH is a pressure group, its a neo-liberal one.
As an American, most Americans are unable to distinguish between “liberal” (American left, non-specific), Liberal (Lockean traditional capitalism), neoliberal, Communist, socialist, Social Democratic, “progressive”, and the Democratic Party.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure I understand anymore, either. I really do feel like we’re entering a post-ideological tribal era. Ideological stances change minute to minute, mostly according to “who and whom.”
Because the police didn't want to upset the "local community" (which is predominantly Muslim), they hunted around for reasons to ban them as that was easier than EG enforcing the law and stopping people getting attacked by mobs.
Asian/Asian British: A very large majority, with some reports showing over 70%, including a significant Pakistani community (around 38% of the total population).
Black/African/Caribbean: The second-largest group, making up about 26%.
White British: Around 18%.
Foreign-Born: Over 44% of the population was born outside the UK.
Religion: Islam is the most prominent religion (around 54%), followed by Christianity (26%).
The local community near Aston Villa's grounds, Villa Park, is predominantly Muslim.
Take a look at this map of data from the 2011 census. The dark green lumps in the north-west (>70% Muslim) and the green lumps surrounding them (45%-70% Muslim) are Perry Barr. The whitish lump (0%-5% Muslim) immediately to the east of a dark green lump is Aston.
> But the decision has been welcomed by Ayoub Khan, the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, the constituency where the match will take place. He organised a petition calling for the match to be either cancelled, relocated or held behind closed doors [...]
> Khan is one of the five independent MPs elected at the last election wholly or partly because of their outright opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza and his petition suggests that his opposition to the match going ahead is motivated as much by the desire to make a political point about Israel’s conduct as by concerns about the risk of violence. The petition cites three reasons why the match should not go ahead. One is the “track record of violence by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans”, but the others are the “ongoing genocide in Gaza” and the “wider European context”. The petition says:
> As Israel continues its assault on Gaza, killing thousands and devastating civilian infrastructure, sporting fixtures involving Israeli teams cannot be separated from the wider political context. Hosting such teams sends a message of normalisation and indifference to mass atrocities.
With this in mind, perhaps you can see there was as much a political and sectarian religious element to WMP's decision as there was a security element.
Don't know what the "wider European context" is, but a public official campaigning to boycott and sanction a country carrying out a genocide is not in any way bad. That the UK authorised that match to happen instead of sanctioning Israel is the shameful part, not Khan's conduct.
And your opinion about there being a "religious sectarian element" is very subjective even though it's presented as fact. People from Arabic/Middle-Eastern countries (who are majority Muslim) are indeed especially sensitive to Israel's apartheid/killings, but that has much more to do with their own marginalisation and history than with their religion I'd wager. As evidence, I'm sure these matches were happily going along before Israel started killing 100 people per day, no?
In short, that a public official did the right thing when his country's government couldn't is, again, laudable.
This is I think the third reply I make to you, not because I follow you around, but because every time I read a post full of "implications" and concern for the innocent citizens having to deal with evil people, it happens to be you posting it...
The people of Gaza are a bit like a somebody that climbed into a cage with a lion, hit it with a cricket bat, and then start crying when it retaliated.
If the people of Gaza actually possessed the inclination to create a functioning state with a football team, that team would obviously have been banned after the mass rapes and murder on October 7th.
You seem to have chosen one specific viewpoint, and are lauding those that you already agree with.
Birmingham's Jewish community is under attack. That's not coming from nowhere, it's coming from people riled up about Gaza, finding an excuse to attack innocent people in the UK:
I have no love of football hooligans. But I'm not blind to the implications of a police force favouring one group of people over another. It's WMP's duty to protect all citizens, including from each other. They clearly failed in their duty here, especially because they were caught out with a hallucinated post-hoc justification for their decision.
I'll repeat what I said earlier: If you're angry about Israel and Palestine, don't take it out on Jews in the UK. Don't assume Jews support Israel or the IDF, don't assume Muslims support Palestine or Hamas. Thanks.
First: before speaking about the Jewish community, go to a protest, you'll find plenty of them there. The Jewish community is not under attack, the tired "antizionism/antigenocide = antisemitism" trope doesn't fly much nowadays. I'd be extremely certain that a lot of those who voted for that mayor, and who campaigned for the football match to be cancelled, and who got ready to bash the fans if need be were Jewish people (haven't been to a single protest without Jews being represented and very vocal about their protest of the genocide).
Second: believe it or not, but for hours after writing that comments, it kept popping up in my head until I realised what I was doing.
I'm arguing with someone who:
- during an ongoing genocide harps on about the great injustice done to genocide-celebrating football fans
- plays the moderate by saying we should all defer to the public authorities (the good ones, those that don't do anything, not the public authorities like Khan, who is a dishonest guy who wouldn't even have gotten elected if there hadn't been a genocide around in the first place)
- mentions that indeed, it's complicated, there are problems on both sides, etc. The sides you're equivocating being a group of pretty much Nazi football fans and the (gasp) the Muslamists!
- jumps into a comment about Muslims being the problem whipping out a Muslim map of Birmingham. Imagine any other discussion about risks of violence and someone helpfully jumping in with a "Jew map" or "Chinese map" and making dark innuendos about the Jewish mayor. And then has the gall to squeak out "and don't you dare be an islamophobe"!
- is all over the discussion, making disingenuous, weaselly arguments.
Again, stop reading opinion pieces on WP and looking at Muslim maps, go to a protest, you'll see you're imagining things.
Obama even gave Tom Homan a medal for his work.
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