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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Angels and Fools. Cyclefree on Trump’s latest Executive Order
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Angels and Fools. Cyclefree on Trump’s latest Executive Order
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Well, to judge by the commentary over the last 48 hours Trump is a fool – and a chaotic and illiberal one to boot. Whatever the many issues with his latest Executive Order, it could just as easily be said that only a fool would rush in to opine. But at the risk of looking foolish, one criticism of the Trump approach is that it looks at the issue from the wrong end. The risk of terrorism is not the primary problem and, paradoxically, a policy which appears rather crudely to discriminate on the basis of religion / birth place lacks effective discrimination, if its stated purpose really were to minimise the risk of terror (why no ban on Saudi nationals, for instance? Saudis were, after all, rather more prominent in the most deadly act of terror in the US than Syrians.)
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I followed the one from Jonathon Freedland here:
https://twitter.com/Freedland/status/825689782974050305
The link is a couple of hours old so the session id - and I couldn't obviously see one on the link - should have expired.
Feature not bug. The idea is that everybody critcises him so that when there's an Islam-related war or terrorist attack he can appear vindicated and they are temporarily cowed, clearing the way for a power grab.
The charge his critics have to make stick is incompetence.
I'm assuming Cyclefree from the style and the header but the signature seems wrong.
I used the wrong template when publishing this piece, you can tell I published this thread on my mobile.
Lord Lester and Roy Jenkins, the founding fathers of multiculturalism admitted it at the end of their lives. They just didn't get that people would continue to live as they did in their old countries.
I assumed it wasn't yours from the lack of Star Trek puns
The highest 21 constituencies for signatories are Labour
Hornsey
Tottenham
Walthamstow
Hackney N
Hackney S
Islington S
Islington N
Poplar
Holborn
Hampstead
Ealing C
Tooting
Streatham
Dulwich
Vauxhall
Bermondsey
Peckham
Deptford
Lewisham W
Greenwich
Hammersmith
as is the lowest, Dagenham, and five others (Barking, Edmonton, Feltham, Erith and Hayes) in the bottom ten.
"Engage" at this point means beg on our knees for trade scraps because we walked away from the biggest market in the World
Slightly apropos, I've been watching 'A Man for All Seasons', and reading along with the screenplay, which is just wonderful.
More died for his beliefs, when a more morally flexible man might have lived (though that flexibility didn't do Cromwell much good). Of course, More was also a fierce persecutor of Lutheranism, which the film elides, doubtless for brevity and to avoid obscuring the point.
More's death is likely incomprehensible to his descendants, some 500-odd years later.
Also slightly apropos, NATO's post-Kennedy doctrine was based on 'flexible response'. This assumed that a Soviet invasion of NATO countries would be met by gradually escalating countermeasures, including battlefield and (later) tactical nukes, with the idea that the USSR would also escalate in a similar way.
Post Cold War, it was chilling to realise that Soviet doctrine actually envisaged a full-on strategic launch, immediately after the first recourse to nuclear weapons.
We're in a very dangerous period where we in the West are similarly unable to grasp or comprehend that Salafism is likely (at least in part, I temporise) a reaction to Western culture which appears to value nothing but self-indulgence, individualism and accruing ever more consumer crap.
Ramble over
Cyclefree got the year wrong. 1932 was when the Wahabis got in, thanks to the British short-sightedness as usual. Since that date using the Hajj , the Saudis started to export Wahabism. The oil price increase greatly helped later.
I don't understand what the West has about Iran that 1979 is used. Here is a "liberal" state [ in Islamic terms ] where theological discussion is permitted unlike in Saudi Arabia. Artists are not killed or their hands cut off , if they draw pictures of Mohammad or Ali, for example.
I think just because the Saudis kept Western industry lubricated that they have been given a pass.
A non-Muslim can at least visit Qom. He cannot visit Makkah.
What is the threat? That the UK or USA will become fundamentalist Islamic countries?
That seems absurd. We are never going to vote to become an Islamic theocracy.
That we will be attacked by fundamentalist terrorists?
This is undoubtedly true - but I think we have to rely on our security services, with the collaboration of the Muslim community, to do their jobs.
The UK's system of laws, democracy, free speech, habeus corpus etc. are not going to be destroyed by some pathetic terrorist groups from the Middle East who think the world is going to become an Islamic caliphate.
The risk is that we will dismantle our protections and rights because we are scared. We shouldn't be so scared. Democracy is better and we will win.
Totally off topic, but does anyone else think it would be better to give the captaincy to Ali rather than Root?
Biggest "market"? The one which we buy more from, than we sell to? That one?
https://petition.parliament.uk/signatures/30681883/verify?token=4oH4SDLpbXeV52I1UPUp
If you click on the bare petition link it's fine:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/171928
This means Saudi Arabia citizens are exempt from the extra vetting procedures whilst Iranian and Iraqi visitors are not exempt as they have Sharia majorities.
And people clicking on the "session" link will keep refreshing it, so that it does not expire.
At some stage Islam will grow out of itself in the same way Christianity has in the first world, where sophisticated clerics describe the faith as a metaphor, and nobody has been judicially burned alive for ages. We must just hope this happens sooner rather than later.
I think we have been here before...
But you could say that of any player. Cook is out. Anderson and Broad are too old. Bairstow, Stokes and Ali all have multiple roles. Whoever bats at 2 and 4 will be inexperienced as will the 3rd seamer (presumably Woakes, also an all rounder) and possibly Rashid. Root has limited captaincy experience and seem so to be struggling already as vc batting at three.
Make Ali captain, bat him at five and make Rashid the main spinner so he only bowls in a holding role for a few overs? It could work.
It should have been James Taylor. Now that was a sad loss, mellowed only by the fact that it wasn't a tragic one.
Correct.
Canada I believe is also now strongly encouraging immigration as they have lots of space to fill. Apparently anyone on a student visa gets the automatic right to remain for 7 years after matriculation. I'm told peopl from the Far East are flocking there to university.
I am not convinced Ali can justify his place in the team as a primary batsman.
All of this was predictable and, indeed, predicted. Who could have guessed Trump would behave like this? Only people who spent any time at all paying any attention to what he said. America First? Up to a point. America disgraced? Undoubtedly. And, as Mrs May may now have reason to reflect, the lesson to be drawn from Trump’s business career is a simple one: caveat emptor. That’s doubly true of his political career. He is in the business of shaming America; May risks humiliating Britain.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/theresa-mays-embrace-donald-trump-humiliates-britain/
I do wonder what planet Jeremy Corbyn lives on firstly saying he is not going to oppose A50 in parliament then saying Trump should not have a state visit. You need allies in the world to assist in getting your countries agenda implemented across the western world. Corbyn seems to be advocating we upset the only country that can help us transition from the EU membership. I want to vote Labour at the next GE but I cannot vote for Corbyn, he seems to have no grasp of what to do so I am reconciled to vote Lib Dem partly out of protest and partly because I think Liberalism despite its detractors cries is much better than the authoritarianism that seems to have crept into the body politics of western countries of late.
Another interesting piece, Miss Cyclefree. Worth always remembering it's possible to jump too far in the other direction. It'd be intriguing to compare and contrast the outrage over Trump's foolhardy and unjust executive order on migrants to the reaction following political correctness and an unwillingness by authorities to tread into 'cultural sensitivities' leading to a prolonged delay (a decade, or so) into anything being done about the Rotherham disgrace.
We appear to have moved on (well... some have) from criticising those with genuine concerns over migration and social integration/cohesion as racist. It's important that we can have a proper, open and honest discussion about that. I do wonder if some will now (as Cameron tried to pair up Leave and Farage) cite Trump as the devilish associate of any who now express such views.
Incidentally, if/when there's more PB-sponsored polling, I'd suggest a comparison of public attitudes between the migration policies of Trump and Merkel. Could make for interesting reading.
WH: No mention of Jews on Holocaust Remembrance Day because others were killed too - http://CNNPolitics.com my God
Who's advising them? Ken Livingston?
Take the death penalty, alleged to be a feature of Sharia.
Under Sharia-based systems of various types, Djibouti abolished the death penalty in 1977, Algeria suspended the death penalty in 1993, Jordan last executed someone in 2006, Mauritania last executed someone in 1987 etc etc.
These are all members of the Arab league, and pretending that far more Muslim countries are uniformly evil medievalist bigots than is actually the case is not helping your argument.
If you are going to reject things out of hand because of stuff that used to be done, then you have to reject our tradition because the used to use ducking stools.
* sharia is Islamic religious law,
* the two main denominations of Islam are Sunni (most Arab Muslims follow this, as do the vast majority of Muslims in Pakistan, Indonesia. etc.) and Shia (big in Iraq, also in Bahrain - but not in the ruling elite there - and in the non-Arab countries Iran and Azerbaijan, and observed by minorities in Lebanon, Kuwait, and non-Arab Turkey and Pakistan)
* the large majority of Muslims are Sunni
* both Sunni and Shia have branches
* by far the biggest branch of Shia is the Twelvers; next are the Ismailis, led by the Aga Khan
* there is a minority branch of Sunni called Salafism, for which Wahhabism is a near-synonym
* Daesh (ISIS), Al-Qaeda and the Saudi regime are all Salafist
* some Salafists believe that all Shiites should be killed
* Donald Trump does business in
- Turkey (non-Arab, Sunni)
- Egypt (Arab, Sunni)
- Saudi (Salafist)
- Azerbaijan (Shia)
* Donald Trump does not do much business in the seven countries to which the ban applies
Why did a technologically superior civilisation lose its commanding lead?
(This question is often posed in the writings of the only Islamic winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics. He gives no good answer, but I think the answer is clear).
\Of course scholars with knowledge of the Orthodox may disagree, but is the hostility between the Eastern & Western Churches greater or less than that between Catholic and Protestant?
IMO neither Putin or Erdogan started out as they've become. I'm not sure they quite intended to in either case.
As I said immediately after his election, there are various warning signs to be watched with Trump. It'd very easy for him to try to set off down a similar route. After all, it's been fairly successful for them. Hopefully the American constitution can withstand him *if* he tries it.
Mr. Cwsc, China and Japan also had periods when they were relatively very advanced, only to fall behind (isolationism for fear of foreign influence could be the reason).
The latter day Ottoman Empire had many Christian bureaucrats, but some Muslims felt this was unfair. Policy changes meant competent non-Muslim civil servants were replaced by incompetent or less competent Muslims, to the detriment of the Empire (not unlike Ferrari sometimes stuffing its F1 team with Italians).
*edit* I appreciate that this doesn't account for the fall of Andalusia.
Sharia is a code of law, not a religious branch..
Just for the record, because I've met a few people who are getting this wrong: Clinton also won a minority of the votes cast, just a bigger minority than Trump's.