Declaring the caravan of Central American migrants to be a “national emergency,” President Trump has indicated that he will order at least 800 Army soldiers to the US-Mexico border. The troops will attempt to forcibly prevent any migrants entering the country.
Trump has been riled by the prospect of the immigrants all week, accusing them of including Middle Easterners. Officials have subsequently admitted they have no evidence any Middle Easterners are involved, though Vice President Mike Pence has said he assumes that any crowd of more than 7,000 in Central America is bound to include some of them.
Pentagon officials are so far being vague on exactly what the troops will be doing, saying they can’t comment until final orders are issued. The indications are, however, they they will not take direct part in stopping immigration, but will focus on monitoring.
Trump has insisted he wants the immigrants stopped at all costs, and that he cares more about keeping them out than he does about trade. Though the National Guard has already been deployed to the border in a similar effort, some officials have questioned the benefit of such deployments.
Wonder how many of those troops are from recently immigrated families.
Relative to native Americans, we’re all from “recently immigrated families”, Dave.
Most of these Central American migrants are indigenous people, moving away from poverty and starvation, just like my folks did from Sweden in the 1800s and yours from Ireland, too, I would guess.
Well they came to avoid further “trickle down” from our fine civilized masters.
Which means, they don’t belong in the US, Thomas. Most of them are indigenous only in Honduras and some others are indigenous in Guatemala and still some more are indigenous in
El Salvador. They certainly not indigenous in the US, the Navajo, Comanche, Apache, Sioux and Cherokee tribes are the indigenous people in the US.
Ok, everybody go back where you belong….
I would be happy to go back to Hungary or France….especially if all the muslims were forced to go back to where they came from.
Interesting non- moderation…guess he would have to use “towel heads” or something….
Dave,
My reply to you is being held for moderation. I wonder who will be banned next?
I’m not sure, I think the David S comment is a tough moderation call in the context of immigration, which is normally filled with racist dog whistles. His comment was obviously prejudiced, yet, when state/race/religion become one, say for example, Israel, the nouns used, become, errmmm…complicated
I reposted David S’s comment and changed one word. I substituted
another ethnic group for “muslims” . The comment was immediately held for moderation and apparently deleted.
My position is that racist comments should be refuted, not censored by moderators. Certainly, the moderation on this site protects one ethnic group above all others and is so protective of that group that legitimate political points are often censored. The nature of power, even a power as trivial as moderating this tiny web site, leads to hubris and excess. Mission-creep among the moderation has now extended to deleting comments harshly criticizing Justin Raimondo or impugning his motives. This is the nature of power – it tends to accumulate and to expand.
In my view the only legitimate reasons for deleting comments are spam, illegal activity or threats to the peace. In my experience banning viewpoints drives them underground and makes the banned viewpoints more dangerous.
The clever Israeli state has spent money and resources to control the narrative regarding their policies. They have labeled the BDS movement anti-semite, federal crimes in many nations. They have joined all nouns describing them ethnically and culturally into one lump, and sue anyone who uses them to criticize their nasty policies. Clever. Perhaps there are legal issues for antiwar.com because of this. We all know what immigration discussions turn into on undermoderated sites, that said, I understand your point Skywalker.
Dave Sullivan,
It appears my attempted reply to you was deleted. The deletion proved my point which was that if David S. substituted another group for “muslims” in his comment above, the comment would have been immediately held for moderation and deleted.
The takeaway is that it is OK to diss some groups but not others on this site.
Immigration discussion will always reveal prejudices eventually. Our moderators are more neutral than a supreme court judge!
Yes, that’s the takeaway. If you have an IQ of, say, 50.
Since you obviously don’t have an IQ of, say, 50, why not stop acting as if you do?
Yes, he would have to use an ethnic slur or otherwise violate the guidelines, not just have an idiotic opinion.
David S,
For your information I substituted another ethnic group for “Muslims” in your bigoted post above. My comment was automatically held for moderation and apparently deleted by the thought controllers on this site.
Apparently you can diss Muslims on this site, but not certain other groups. Hooray for the moderators.
He did not “diss” Muslims. He expressed a wish for their deportation. Idiotic (in many cases, “where they came from” is, um, America) and abhorrent, but not a an ethnic or religious slur (those are deleted whether the targets are Muslims, Jews, or anyone else).
I deleted your “substitutions” because you don’t get to “test the guidelines” any more than you get to “test the windows” on someone’s house and then pretend it’s not burglary you have in mind.
Tom, I like you. But mission creep has gotten to you. Now you are saying you know what I “have in [my] mind” and are forced to preemptively delete a comment, not because of what it says, but because you claim to be able to see into my heart. Do you really believe that I want to deport the ethnic group you believe you are protecting from Europe? Or from anywhere based on their ethnicity or their religion?
Please remember that when any of us have power, even something as petty as moderating comments on a small news site, it is hard to resist using our power when someone without power disagrees with us.
And how can you say David S. “did not not diss Muslims” by expressing a wish for their deportation?” He advocates deporting a group based on their religious identity. But that is OK with the moderator as long as we don’t substitute the name of a certain other ethnic group for “muslims.”
Tom, I wish you would see that the standard you apply to comments is inconsistent and you or your bosses would rethink your criteria for deleting comments on this site.
I’m not sure where you think the “mission creep” is.
The only place where I’m saying what you say I’m saying is in your imagination.
It doesn’t matter what is OK or not OK with the moderator. It’s not the moderator’s job to be OK or not OK with anything. It’s the moderator’s job to enforce specific rules. When and if you’re the one making those rules, you can decide if you want me to be the one enforcing them (and I can decide if I still want the job). Until then, no amount of jaw-jacking about what you think the rules should be instead of what they are is going to change them.
PS: Yes, someone is claiming to know what someone has in his mind — and it’s you.
I am criticizing what you do, not what is on your mind. I frankly have no idea how much discretion you have in your job nor what your instructions are or why you are more sensitive about comments about Jews than about other ethnic groups. I only note that your moderation of forbidden viewpoints is not consistent. You repeatedly delete comments that make references to Jews while permitting the same comments made with respect to other groups.
The reason you have no idea why I am more sensitive about comments about Jews than about other ethnic groups is because I’m not.
Glad I could clear that up for you.
The reason you have no idea why I am more sensitive about comments about Jews than about other ethnic groups is because I’m not.
Glad I could clear that up for you.
The reason you have no idea why I am more sensitive about comments about Jews than about other ethnic groups is because I’m not.
Glad I could clear that up for you.
Tom, I am criticizing what you do, not what is on your mind. I frankly have no idea how much discretion you have in your job nor what your instructions are or why you are more sensitive about comments about Jews than about other ethnic groups. I only note that your moderation of forbidden viewpoints is not consistent. You repeatedly delete comments that make references to Jews while permitting the same comments made with respect to other groups.
David S., Thanks for your insightful and perceptive comment. I understand how you feel.
And for my part, I would be happy to return to my ancestral home in Fermanagh if all the Protestsants were forced to go back to where they came from.
This was a test post that served its point. And Tom Knapp is correct bvelow, some of my forbears were from county Fermanagh in Ulster.
Presumably by “ancestral home” you mean you’re not actually from Fermanagh, any more than a Muslim born in Florida is from Mecca or a Jew born in Tel Aviv is from Kiev, right?
Yeah, if Kareem Abdul Jabbar had been forced to go back to where he came from he would have had to play for my home team, the Knicks. So maybe David S. has a point.
But seriously, national reconciliation can be complicated. War criminals should not be free until they have reformed themselves, asked for and received forgiveness from their victims or their victims’ kin, and paid their debt to society by incarceration and compensating their victims. And last but not least, war criminals can only be free if their former victims can be secure living amongst their former oppressors.
That ultimately is a question the Palestinians will have to decide when the Zionist state is supplanted by a Palestinian majority state.
If it was up to me (and it is not) the IDF sharpshooters who have been killing and wounding Palestinian civilians at the Gaza fence and the officers and politicians who gave the orders to shoot need to be punished or exiled. That holds true whether the soldiers were born in Kiev, Tel Aviv or Ariel. So yes, Israeli Jews have the right to live where they were born provided they abide by the laws of the countries and communities they live in and pay the price for any crimes they may have committed against the indigenous people. That is my two cents. But it is the Palestinian majority who will ultimately decide the terms of reconciliation with the Zionists
My expectation is that when Israeli Jews recognize that the Palestinians will get the right to vote, many Zionists will emigrate rather than live in a multi national state. Since apartheid collapse in South Africa, the white population declined from 17.5% of the total in 1985 to only 7.8% in 2018 due to emigration, a lower birth rate and repatriation of Black exiles and refugees from apartheid. I expect the same thing will happen when Israeli apartheid collapses. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_South_Africans
It could work out that way.
Of course, more than 40% of Palestinians ARE Israeli Jews (of 6.5 million Israeli Jews, 70% are native Palestinians), and while the Arab population of Palestinians has been growing faster than the Jewish population of Palestinians, it’s not obvious that trend will hold forever.
Thomas, you are wrong to conflate geographic with ethnic identity. “Palestinian” connotes an ethnic as well as a national identity that has aspects of history, religion, language, culture and familial ties. As Elizabeth Warren, Rachel Dolezal, the Ethiopian Jews and the Black Hebrews learned, indigenous and oppressed people have the inalienable right to determine who is a part of their ethnic group. It is not about DNA or whether you were born on a reservation or off the reservation or whether you self-identify with someone else’s culture or religion or ancestral land. Neither you nor I have the right to determine who is a Jew or who is a Palestinian or whether Palestine will enact birthright citizenship extending to descendants of Zionist settlers. Upon liberation some colonized people expel or expropriate the settler population (e.g., Algeria or Zimbabwe) other regimes attempt to assimilate the settlers (e.g., South Africa). And very few countries outside the Western Hemisphere have unrestricted birthright citizenship.
Following WWII it was deemed necessary for the sake of a lasting peace to change the demographics of Eastern Europe by requiring millions of ethnic Germans to leave the homelands settled by their forbears in Eastern Europe.
The rise of neo-fascism among Israeli Jews makes it hard for me to envision how Zionist zealots could peacefully live in a state with a significant Arab voting block, let alone an Arab majority. Hopefully a significant number of Israeli Jews will accept responsibility for the crimes committed against the Palestinian people, make amends, and convince the Palestinians that they are sincere about living together in peace. Based on the history of Jews in Palestine for the past 70 years I can’t blame the Palestinians if they are skeptical.
But the Palestinians know who they are and it is not for us to define their ethnic group or what they will demand from their current oppressors.
“‘Palestinian’ connotes an ethnic as well as a national identity that has aspects of history, religion, language, culture and familial ties.”
True. But which connotation should we go with?
Prior to the 1920/30s, for hundreds of years, “Palestinian” meant “Jew born in Palestine.”
Then, as a way of countering the return of Jews to Palestine from Europe, Arab demagogues in Palestine started urging the people who had previously thought of themselves as Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians, et al. living in Palestine to start ethnically identifying with Palestine rather than with their own ancestral homes.
You seem to be saying that geography doesn’t matter. The Palestinian Arabs who are living in the West Bank or Gaza because they were dispossessed of land in what is now Israel might beg to disagree.
It is not either or, just as Jewish identity or Navaho identity is partially, but not exclusively, religious, ethnic, genetic, geographic, cultural, linguistic and associational. Generally it is none of my business who the Catholics or Jews determine is a member of their religion, who Muslims determine is a believer or an apostate, or who the Cherokee regard as a member of their tribe. I have the right and the obligation to oppose genocide and to intervene to stop war crimes. Otherwise, groups are free to self define.
As Tamika Mallory wisely stated, Jews were oppressed for centuries in Europe and the USA. After World War II they had the right to try to work something out with the Palestinians to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. They did not have the right to steal people’s land, to ethnically cleanse Palestine or to kill and persecute and dispossess the indigenous people.
Just when it looked like all hope of coexistence was lost, Oslo appeared to be an amazing concession by the Palestinians and a enlightened effort by well meaning Jews to reboot the Zionist enterprise toward something closer to what it should have been 1918-1948. But Oslo turned out to be a sham because the Zionist movement became high jacked by secular racists and religious zealots. .
The Palestinian are a persecuted people. The Israeli Jews are a persecuting population. The Palestinians have the right to be free on their own terms, as long as those terms are not inconsistent with the norms of civilized behavior. Part of self determination is the right to determine who is part of your nation.
In Algeria, the oppressed determined that for the sake of peace, they had to reduce the French population. So the grandfather requirement for citizenship defined the Algerian nation so that most French identified people had to leave. I suspect something like that will be worked out in Palestine because many Israeli Jews have committed too many crimes against the Palestinian people to be able to live in a state where Arabs are empowered.
Currently Israel defines citizenship as including any person recognized by the official rabbis as a member of the Jewish religion wherever they were born or reside. It excludes about 4.5 million Arabs in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza and about another 4 million Arab refugees exiled in the diaspora.
So to summarize, the Palestinians have to determine who is a member of their national group and who has a right to live in their country when it becomes theirs .
So your answer the problem of tribal collectivism is tribal collectivism.
That’s not an answer. That’s just kicking the ball of manure down the road.
Actually, Eileen, the Navajo and Apache are indigenous to what is now called Canada. People move around. It’s been happening for thousands of years.
I live in New Mexico, which used to be a part of what is now called Mexico. The only truly indigenous people here are the Pueblos. Maybe if their immigration policies had been more “enlightened” they would have figured out how to keep out the Spanish and those who are now called Americans, which includes me.
dont forget about the Hopi
I’ll never forget about the Hopi. Worked as a math teacher in Hotevilla many years ago. Always knew I was just an interloper there. Didn’t try to be Hopi. Got along with them just fine.
The Makah have lived in NW Washington for at least 3,800 years. But the Makah are recent immigrants compared to the Nez Perce people who had their winter camps in the Snake River valley for 8,000 years before they made their first contact with the USA when they saved the Lewis and Clark expedition from starvation in the winter of 1805.
See:
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/2017.218
Eileen,
International treaties which are the law of the land require the US to process the applications for asylum of anyone arriving at our border claiming to be fleeing a situation where they are likely to be persecuted in their home country. We can’t turn a refugee away until they have a due process hearing and it is determined that it is safe to return them to their country of origin.
But when our ancestors came, they were gainfully-employable, had skills, were sponsored by someone, or were helped ONLY by “mutual aid societies” or similar, and NOT through the FORCED THEFT from the pockets of taxpayers. No socialist/violence-funded schools, no free medical care, no free lunches, no free housing, etc. unless it was provided by others who gave voluntarily. Additionally, private property rights were still respected – a dead letter these days.
when your ancestors came here, they did so illegally,stole the land from the natives after their filthy diseases wiped out 95% of them so better get off your faux high horse and wake up
All 4 of my grandparents came to this county in the early 1900s. Way after the native populations had been screwed over by previous immigrants. They settled in already well-populated areas of Vermont and Connecticut. I will agree that native people’s were screwed over, but not by my ancestors. I will remain on the high horse, thanks.
Look, I agree we should limit who is in this country, let’s first deport those people who are organizing political entities that attacked and were at war with the US. That would be neo Nazis, and neo confederates. Deport them first, then I’ll take “America First” seriously.
Most Europeans who immigrated to the USA were economic losers or else they would have stayed in Europe. Take a look at the starving unskilled immigrants who were the majority of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Scandanavia and East Europe. The British impressed undesirables from their poor houses and slums to become unwilling immigrants exiled to the New World where many became indentured servants to the privileged few gentry who were given Crown charters. Georgia was originally a penal colony and the British exiled about 56,000 indentured servants mostly to Maryland and Virginia.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_colony
backblow-chickens coming home to roost….
It’s about law and order i.e. fairness to all the people who come here legally: a million immigrants per year on average, plus hundreds of thousands coming every day on non-immigrant visas. Are you saying that they’re fools for filing paperwork and waiting in line when they could just join a mob and cross the border illegally? If this mob does reach a US port of entry it’ll cause chaos for the CBP and the thousands of visa-carrying civilians. I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that an unruly mob just might lead to a violent situation exceeding the ability of the CBP and necessitating military assistance.
Nothing illegal about showing up at the border seeking asylum….
If they appear at a port of entry and claim asylum they must prove fear of persecution, and in this case there’s not even any mention of persecution much less any concrete evidence for it (that’s of course why many people in these situations attempt to cross illegally i.e. not at a port of entry). Asylum is not a game. People who actually are victims of persecution typically first obtain a temporary visa to enter the states, get an immigration attorney, and file an asylum application with supporting documentation; they avoid “showing up at the border” because the CBP can immediately deport them if they can’t demonstrate credible fear of persecution, and if the CBP suspects fraud then they can be further barred from returning for five years. That may not harm keyboard warriors who just care about their liberal causes and their own precious conscience, but it sure doesn’t help the wretched of the earth.
I see, so if I’m being assaulted, I should fill out the paperwork before I attempt to flee.
That’s right, if you’ve been assaulted then it really helps if you have evidence.
https://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/us-immigration/can-you-request-asylum-border.html
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/is-easier-the-us-apply-asylum-rather-applying-refugee-status.html
Easy for a “keyboard warrior” such as yourself to reccomend staying to gather evidence in a state, where the state is doing the persecuting, rather than fleeing for safety. I guess protecting family is a threat to your “trump nationalist” dogma.