kinda pisses all over this !

EPA, national parks, NASA and more have set up ‘alt’ twitter accounts, refusing to be silenced or screened.

Atempts to control and censor scientific thought would be hilarious, Americans turning their country into Soviet Russia etc, if it wasnt so worrying.

If the left did this, Ninfan and Jamby would be on here screaming their heads off.

http://theconversation.com/welcome-to-the-age-of-collective-narcissism-71196

Trump trying to censor science is a tragic indictment of trump and his administration, I see the hand of alt-right scumbag Gannon in this.

Still at least May isn’t walking into a huge shitstorm as the Mexican president cancels his trip to America.
What a ludicrous situation!

bigjim – Member

EPA, national parks, NASA and more have set up ‘alt’ twitter accounts, refusing to be silenced or screened.

TBH it’s not clear whether these are real or not

that reads like a stw poll 🙂

Mexicans (I assume) send $25bn per anum back to Mexico from the US, the vast majority in smaller cash amounts and often through money senders like Western Union that do not require ID. A charge of 5% (no more than money transfers already charge) would yield $1.25bn pa. Wall estimate is $14bn

And then people change to pay pal… Etc the first problem is asking Congress for 14bn to build it, the republicans turned down something like a 4bn border security increase I read due to the costs being too high. They are not a spending party they hate spending money on things. It’s going to be a fun debate when they have to ask to increase the budget they all campaigned to cut.

So what happens when he doesn’t get his wall budget? A nasty tweet about the ones who objected?

And the shut down of science and information continues
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEmC3qFXZ78[/video]

he is proposing a 20% tax on mexican products to pay for the wall .

like that american get to pay for it . 😆

that’s NAFTA torn up.

Informed, so well informed he is…
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38763689

Trump ‘will handle US-UK trade talks’
2 hours ago
US President Donald Trump has said he will handle trade discussions with the UK himself, ahead of a meeting with the British prime minister.

Which trade discussions? Can’t be having those with individual EU member states can you.

but I can’t face trawling back through the swamp.

No need, it’s been drained. To make room for Donald’s lizards.

that 20% trade tariff will get very painful for both nations.

Hello! Where are all the Trumpettes? The supporters are very quiet tonight. 😛

Like this – A promise tracker

Invest in American infrastructure
Mr. Trump wants to spend a trillion dollars to rebuild sagging infrastructure. He faces opposition from Republicans and enthusiasm from Democrats.

This is one of my favourites 😉
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/us/politics/trump-agenda-tracker.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

busy celebrating on the EU thread . 😀

Which trade discussions? Can’t be having those with individual EU member states can you.

What are they going to do? Chuck us out 😆

What are they going to do? Chuck us out

Not at all but it should show that these “talks” are nothing more than an actual meeting with a new president/pm the trade bit will be nothing more than a bit of PR/Spin so they can both declare they made progress and took steps etc.

Anyway the idea of 2 nations that claim to want to head into isolationism having trade talks is quite funny. If you don’t agree we can do some friendly waterboarding until you do.

Well duh 🙄

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GZVzvyZ07o[/video]

Bad Lip reading does Donald Trump, quite funny

[video]https://youtu.be/gneBUA39mnI[/video]

claim to want to head into isolationism

Really, where have May and Donald Trump that they want to be isolationist? Indeed, just look at what Trudeau has been saying the past couple of days, that discussions with the new US administration show they are perfectly happy to continue with the current trade deal, which they think is fair, balanced and mutually beneficial. Couldn’t be further from ‘isolationist’

we dont need to lip read

Wall will cost $20bn+ accordingly to a few building experts. So it’ll be paid for in about 400 years.

[quote]Are you including the increased maintenance and staffing costs, plus the boosted Coast Guard resource needed to stem the Carribean migrant route?[/quote]

And the cost of taking it down again in 4 years time. 🙂

Sorry for jumping back a few pages, but…

Wonderful Alpha, then you’ll know very well that GC don’t extend to domestic or foreign terrorists, and the importance of words like perfidious.

That’s not quite right though is it, unless you choose to believe those who are trying to find the wiggle room to justify torture? In an international armed conflict, the 3rd Geneva Convention protects combatants and affords them POW status when captured if they are lawful. If they are not combatants, then they must be civilians, right? So the 4th Convention applies. However, before you cry foul and remind me that terrorists are unlawful combatants so occupy a murky middle ground, and they are not taking part in an international armed conflict, it’s irrelevant: they are covered by Article 3 common to all of the conventions. Even the US Supreme Court, on four separate occasions, has found that unlawful combatants held at Guantanamo Bay are being held in violation of the Geneva Conventions. This is backed up by international consensus. In any case, it doesn’t matter: combatant or non-combatant (legal or not) they are all covered by international human law aka the Law of Armed Conflict which, like the Geneva Conventions, prohibits the use of torture.

Legal case aside, torture is ineffective, unreliable and most importantly morally wrong.

Moving on, as for your ‘perfidy’ comment, I am familiar with it in the context of war. Care to elaborate why you draw attention to it? Unless you’re trying to suggest that I am claiming to be something I’m not?

I have to say, that if “getting a better trade deal” for the UK with the USA involves, even implicitly, supporting Torture, degrading women, gross intolerance of basic human rights and failing to treat fellow humans with respect simply due to the colour of their skin or place or birth then I’M OUT

I’m happy to pay more for my can of coke, or my PC or whatever in order to maintain my morality.

I’m happy to pay more for my can of coke, or my PC or whatever in order to maintain my morality.

Most of which isn’t made in the US….

I have to say, that if “getting a better trade deal” for the UK with the USA involves, even implicitly, supporting Torture, degrading women, gross intolerance of basic human rights and failing to treat fellow humans with respect simply due to the colour of their skin or place or birth then I’M OUT

Can I ask how much effort you have made to avoid, for example, oil products from Saudi Arabia or domestic electrical items from China?

Can I ask how much effort you have made to avoid, for example, oil products from Saudi Arabia or domestic electrical items from China?

Work with what you have ninfan though, telling Trump that moving backwards will mean we are less keen to work with him is something that can be done.
Same as telling China/Saudi that we will be happier to do more if they clean up what they do.
If you continue to live in a world where you are paralysed by having to read through a hundred years of history to make sure you don’t appear hypocrital on something then nothing will ever change.
Is it better to green light Trump’s plans and grab is cock as a sign of affection or to suggest that he is taking his country backwards.

ninfan: you seem to have accidentally ignored Alpha1653’s response carefully explaining why torture is illegal.

Which is odd because you accidentally did the same thing with my response where I gave you links to the conventions it breached.

he has alternative facts 😉

What Mike said.

Ah yes, ‘alternative facts’: it must have been those alternative facts that I had heard of but didn’t understand that caused me to knee jerk mouth off earlier…. 😀

“Facts” in the US seem to be like the temperature on Accuweather . . . .

Current temp 5C, feels like -7

Well, no, I hadn’t really got round to it largely due to the fact that you haven’t actually said anything that we didn’t already know, and was openly conceded, that Torture was banned by international convention, but that it was not unanimously accepted or legally established that Waterboarding in all cases amounted to torture (on the question of whether it amounted to “severe”). You can bounce round contrary opinions on that, fewer facts.

(And to tackle alphas point, the relevance is of course that water boarding of those awarded protection under GC *would* be banned, (as it has been found to constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, rather than the higher test of torture) you usefully point us to examples where combatants from Afghanistan etc were judged to be combatants, but that’s in the past and does not necessarily bear relation to the cases where it may be used in the future (you’ll note that my point Was that GC didn’t apply to international or domestic terrorists))

Back to brass tacks, you both appear to be arguing with an extrapolation of what you think I said, that sometimes torture was legal, rather than wat I actually said, which was that nobody disagrees that torture is illegal (under US domestic and international law) but that there is less than complete agreement over whether waterbording necessarily amounts to torture (read it properly, necessarily, that not to say that it cannot be used in a way which would amount to torture, as can many other things, but that it doesn’t necessarily amount to torture)

@somafunk FYI that’s the third time it’s been posted here plus having its own thread.

but that there is less than complete agreement over whether waterbording necessarily amounts to torture (read it properly, necessarily, that not to say that it cannot be used in a way which would amount to torture, as can many other things, but that it doesn’t necessarily amount to torture)

Which list of people think it’s not torture? Or that it doesn’t fall under the definition of torture? Those that seem to like the idea of it fall into a catagory of ends to justify the means etc. In their case getting information is more important than the legality, usefulness or truthfullness of the information.
Most of the people who have actually investigated and studied it have come to the conclusion that torture doesn’t work, it provides unreliable information and is probably therefore more dangerous. A government investigation/inquiery in the US actually called Kiefer Sutherland to give evidence as during the making of 24 they wanted to be realistic with regards the torture scenes and commissioned a lot of research – all of which also came up with the fact it was a waste of time unless you just liked hurting people.

If you want to get into the argument that waterboarding isn’t torture or isn’t severe enough then I suggest you sign up to have it done to you.

less than complete agreement

The phrase of the #AltFacts generation.
A facebook meme I saw recently.
99% of climate scientists agree that climate change is a man made thing.
Gary has a picture of his truck as his facebook profile pic and doesn’t agree.
Tough choice there

Right, so let’s try get and this straight Mike

Do you accept that people can actually disagree on an issue, and that both sides of an argument can be valid and logically formed, but until there is a decision by an impartial arbiter, for example a court, then neither side is necessarily right or wrong, because it’s a complex issue with multiple shades of grey

or do you want to stick with a childish ‘anything I disagree with is an alternative fact’ standpoint?

It’s a reasonable question, that most adults could answer, so let’s see what you say and we’ll see where we go from there.

Back to the core issue:

a Facebook meme I saw recently

Oh, I bow down before your source materials.

Here’s some actually intelligent analysis on the issue from a former federal prosecutor involved in terrorist trials:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/222661/waterboarding-and-torture-andrew-c-mccarthy

There is overwhelming support and weight behind the waterboarding is torture side of the argument. To the point where very few people would actually advocate it (including people who used to do it)
The other view that it could/might be legal is a very minority view that does not carry anywhere near thw weight or standing that the other view does. Climate change is a good comparison. Just because some people disagree it does not mean there is equal weight to the 2 sides. There is near unanimous agreement that waterboarding is torture. Torture is illegal.

or do you want to stick with a childish ‘anything I disagree with is an alternative fact’ standpoint?

honestly it’s a safe bet with you ninfan.

Can you find me the lists of people/organisations etc. that will put their hands up to say waterboarding isn’t torture. Be good to know who these people are.

Given there is not “complete agreement” that the world is round doesn’t mean we should have to listen to or respect the views of the flat earthers.

The more interesting one was politicians from both sides of the floor were very keen to press all his cabinet appointees about their views on Trumps policies. In most cases they either skirted the issues or in the case of things like torture flat out refused to support it.