the wall, part of trumps insanity

[ralis]

6 hours ago, dawei said:

We certainly can't blame Trump for the wall... the history and voting on it is easy to find.  He just wants to try and finish it, which will happen one of these days over the next 100 years.  The fact is, the sooner the better for several reasons, paramount would be costs and getting the problem under control so newer tactics can be decided on.

 

I'm not see much new in the charts as folks have talked about the decline... I think the caravans compound a major problem of resources.   

 

Both Bush's, Clinton and Obama send troops to the border, McCain pleaded for more troops and money as the border had 'greatly detoriated' adding that Congress needed to repeal the 2008 human trafficking law. “The message has to be, ‘If you cross our border illegally, you will be returned immediately,' ” he said.  Members were calling on  Obama to do something... Other members : “The reason we are witnessing the surge of unaccompanied alien children along our southwestern border is because the President and his Administration have refused to enforce existing immigration laws.  Time and again, this President has chosen to pursue his own policies that are in direct contradiction with U.S. law.  I’m calling on the President to obey the Rule of Law, and to quickly resolve the current situation at our southern border,”

 

Obama called it a 'crisis' and said, " Last month, 20,000 migrant children were illegally brought into the United States -- a dramatic increase," he said. "These children are used as human pawns by vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs."  A few years earlier he said, "I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration. And I am prepared to work with Republicans and Democrats to protect our borders, enforce our laws and address the millions of undocumented workers who are now living in the shadows,"" The Washington post called it 'epic proportions'.   The media as largely behind the idea of a 'crisis'.

 

The Huffington Post said the humanitarian crisis was 'shocking' (and provided photos).  NBC reported that flooding the border causes for the 'crisis'. there was no outrage when Obama said essentially the same thing that Trump has said.   They helped in much need apprehensions and drug seizures. 

 

There is a long history of agreement that the border becomes a crisis situation requiring military assistance... this is proof enough that an incomplete wall is a problem.   That we have to get the military to help in some form makes this an emergency as it means we don't have the man power to do the job in a normal fashion.   We should plug the holes and move on to better border security ideas for the next generations.

 

Trump can’t be blamed for the wall? I posted a link from Forbes awhile back and I guess you missed it or are ignoring facts. Alternative facts perhaps. 

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2019/01/04/where-the-idea-for-donald-trumps-wall-came-from/#5bb34dec4415

 

 

Quote

Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border did not come from security analysts following years of study or through evidence that a wall would reduce illegal immigration. Amazingly, for something so central to the current U.S. president, the wall came about as a “mnemonic device” thought up by a pair of political consultants to remind Donald Trump to talk about illegal immigration.

In 2014, Trump’s plan to run for president moved into high gear. His political confidant was consultant Roger Stone. “Inside Trump’s circle, the power of illegal immigration to manipulate popular sentiment was readily apparent, and his advisers brainstormed methods for keeping their attention-addled boss on message,” writes Joshua Green, author of Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising. “They needed a trick, a mnemonic device. In the summer of 2014, they found one that clicked.”

 

[dawei]

On 2/19/2019 at 7:58 PM, ralis said:

 

Trump can’t be blamed for the wall? I posted a link from Forbes awhile back and I guess you missed it or are ignoring facts. Alternative facts perhaps. 

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2019/01/04/where-the-idea-for-donald-trumps-wall-came-from/#5bb34dec4415

 

I appreciate the point you are making but EVERY president of the last 20 years has remarked to build it further...  It seems that more recently the connection to illegal immigration and drugs became more a campaign promise than in the past and it should not be held against a politican to try and fulfill their campaign promise which may of helped them get elected.

 

I'm for a smart approach to it which can include technology, terrain enhanced assistance, etc.   I've said somewhere, we're only at 30% covered on the border which is like trying to hold water with a sieve.    I'd like to see it finished so we can move on to better border security ideas.

[rene]

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: WE NEED A WALL !

 

[Spotless]

Trump is clearly and easily seen to be mentally ill.  And it is an extreme form of denial to not only follow the murky wanderings of a very clear pathological liar - but to then call his promise for Mexico to build a wall a commitment for US here in the USA to build a continuous wall when it cost is by Republican estimates north of 50 Billion - and it was not part of his campaign promise.

 

He promised a Free wall - from Mexico. (Bait and switch) And free lollipops for everyone. ANd yuuge fantastical things like over 8,000 lies in only two years!

 

The guy is a sleazy salesman - you may actually like what he is doing - but don’t put it through the dry cleaner - he an his thugs are lowlifes.

 

 

Edited February 23, 2019 by Spotless

[gendao]

On 2/19/2019 at 6:58 PM, ralis said:

Trump can’t be blamed for the wall? I posted a link from Forbes awhile back and I guess you missed it or are ignoring facts. Alternative facts perhaps. 

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2019/01/04/where-the-idea-for-donald-trumps-wall-came-from/#5bb34dec4415

Well, he is simply the spokesman for 81% of White evangelical Christian men...and following their Biblical sermons citing Nehemiah.

Quote

‘God is not against building walls!’ The sermon Trump heard from Robert Jeffress before his inauguration.
Donald Trump heard a sermon Friday morning from a Southern Baptist pastor who has history of inflammatory remarks about Muslims, Mormons, Catholics and gays.
The sermon was delivered by Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, who compared Trump to the story of the biblical leader Nehemiah who helped rebuild the city of Jerusalem and its walls after the people of Judah had been exiled from the land of Israel.
Israel had been in bondage for decades, Jeffress explained, and the infrastructure of the country was in shambles, and God did not choose a politician or a priest but chose a builder instead. The first step of rebuilding the nation, Jeffress said, was the building of a wall around Jerusalem to protect its citizens from enemy attack.
“You see, God is not against building walls,” Jeffress said in his sermon at St. John’s Episcopal Church in D.C.
Nehemiah, according to the biblical account, completed the project in 52 days. Why was Nehemiah so successful in building the wall and rebuilding the nation? Jeffress said that Nehemiah refused to allow his critics to distract him, noting how some people still don’t believe Trump will succeed in his agenda.
Nehemiah, Jeffress said, had two antagonists named Sanballat and Tobiah. “They were the mainstream media of their day,” he said. “They continued to hound and heckle Nehemiah and spread false rumors while he and the Israelites were building the wall.”
Jeffress was an early supporter of Trump, a Presbyterian who courted evangelicals during the election. Jeffress said in his sermon that it was one year ago this weekend that he was with Trump on his jet flying around Iowa.  After sharing Wendy’s cheeseburgers, Jeffress said, he believed Trump would be the next president and that it would be because God placed him there.
Jeffress has said in the past that Obama paved the way for the antichrist. He drew wide attention when he condemned Mormonism as a “cult,” telling Christians not to vote for Mitt Romney during the 2012 Republican primary (though he later support Romney over Obama in the general election). Jeffress has also said Islam is an “evil religion,” that the Catholic Church was led astray by Satan and that gays live a “miserable” and “filthy” lifestyle.

So, here is the REAL "DEEP STATE"...over 2 BILLION STRONG...with a total bodycount probably near 100 million...and just "hidden" in plain sight all along!

[thelerner]

A nation needs boarders.  And rules for immigration, citizenship and entry.  Compassion's needed too.

 

We are a nation of immigrants, and a nation of hypocrites.  Immigrants (legal and illegal) pick our food, mow our lawns, build our buildings, take care of our elderly.  We need them, for there work and there future taxes.. and there vitality; they tend to be better at the American dream, then the average American.

 

So I'm willing to be a hypocrite to make illegal immigration hard, but not impossible or deadly..  Build fencing, but also allow in more legal immigrants, perhaps a new tier of short term status.  Create a computer check in/probation program; saying where you are, what you're doing.  For those doing well, a path to citizenship.  For those not.. short term is short term.  

 

A real solution has to holistic.  Covering what they need and what we need.  Intelligence and compassion.  Imperfect but not mass criminalizing.  Part of that may be economic partnerships.   Government and Business seeing what can be grown and built better over there.  How those profits can be used and expanded to create better conditions so there's less need to risk everything to come to the U.S.  Hard but worthwhile.

 

We are too wealthy and need to be too good to allow our neighbors to live in hopeless dystopia.  For there sake and ours.

 

It won't happen overnight, it won't be perfect, but a long term plan can be made, without vilification or too much injustice and we can find a sweet spot where the most people will benefit. 

Edited February 4, 2020 by thelerner

[gendao]

Damn, these Christian Conservative Colonialist fokkers really never stop, do they???

Quote

Bringing Christ and coronavirus: Evangelicals to contact Amazon indigenous
As the coronavirus spreads around the globe, with more than 300 known cases already in Brazil, and members of Pres. Jair Bolsonaro’s staff infected, an evangelical Christian organization has purchased a helicopter with plans to contact and convert isolated indigenous groups in the remote Western Amazon.
Ethnos360, formerly known as the New Tribes Mission, is notorious for past attempts to contact and convert isolated Indians, having spread disease among the Zo’é living in northern Pará state. Once contacted, the Zo’é, lacking resistance, began dying from malaria and influenza, losing over a third of their population.
Ethnos360 is planning its Christian conversion mission despite the fact that FUNAI, Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency, has a longstanding policy against contact with isolated groups. Their so-called “missionary aviation” contact plan may also violate Brazil’s 1988 Constitution and international treaties.
Analysts worry Brazil may be about to overturn its “no contact” FUNAI policy. In February, Bolsonaro put Ricardo Lopez Dias in charge of The Coordination of Isolated and Recently Contacted Indians (CGIIRC), a FUNAI department. Dias was a missionary for New Tribes Mission for over a decade, doing conversion work.
The organization, formerly known internationally as the New Tribes Mission, and based in Sanford, Florida, USA, plans to use a newly purchased aircraft to contact and convert isolated Amazon indigenous groups — even though such contact is banned explicitly by FUNAI, Brazil’s indigenous agency, and implicitly under the nation’s 1988 Constitution.
The fundamentalist Christian group’s venture could also spread dangerous infectious diseases, like COVID-19, to isolated tribes utterly lacking resistance and immunity. 

At the end of January, Edward Luz, president of New Tribes Mission of Brazil, announced the acquisition of the “Ethnos360 Aviation R66 helicopter,” able to operate in the remote rainforests of Western Brazil, and he told a small group of Christian evangelicals assembled in Rio de Janeiro, that: “God will do anything to see to it that mankind hears His Word. If a helicopter becomes necessary, He provides it.”
The “mankind” to whom Luz referred includes isolated Amazon indigenous groups. Brazil has 115 confirmed indications of such groups — more than any other country in the world. All but two are in the Amazon biome. Many are concentrated in the west of Brazil near the frontier with Peru, which is the area targeted by Ethnos360Aviation.

Spreading the Word of God, and disease

New Tribes Mission, established in 1942, has a long, checkered history in Brazil. One case concerns its contact with the Zo’é, an isolated indigenous group living in the remote Amazon rainforest of northern Pará state. By 1980, small-scale goldminers and Brazil nut collectors were already gradually penetrating their territory, but the Zo’é fled contact. Then, in 1982, New Tribes Mission learned of the group’s existence and started dropping “presents” from the air on their villages. In 1987, the missionaries established a base camp and airstrip on the edge of the Zo’é territory.

Over the next two years, evangelicals made several forays toward the Zo’é villages, making sporadic contact with the tribe, who, according to the missionaries, remained “restless” and “withdrawn.” The definitive contact came in November 1987, when a group of about 100 Zo’é appeared at the base camp. Communicating through gestures, the missionaries offered gifts, but in turn were handed broken arrows — a clear message that the indigenous delegation wanted the missionaries to leave.

FUNAI learned of these events and forbade the missionaries from installing themselves in the indigenous villages. Instead, missionaries tried to attract the Zo’é to their base outside of indigenous land. According to the Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA), a Brazilian NGO, the missionaries’ objective was to learn the Zo’é language so they could begin the literacy process, translating the Bible and thereby conveying the Word of the Lord to the group.

The Zo’é began to die rapidly from malaria and influenza — diseases to which they lacked Westerners’ resistance. In 1989, FUNAI visited the missionary base and was shocked at the poor state of indigenous health. Relations with the missionaries deteriorated and in 1991 FUNAI took over, forcing New Tribes Mission to leave.

It is estimated that 45 Zo’é died between 1987 and 1991. Their population, which fell to 133 in 1991, is recovering and is estimated at 250 today. But they remain vulnerable as a people to disease and the loss of their ancestral land to invading cattle ranchers and soy growers.

Another notorious outcome of New Tribes Mission’s work in Brazil includes the case of Warren Scott Kennell, who served as one of their missionaries between 2008 and 2011, living with the Katukina in western Amazonas state. Over several years, he built a trusting relationship with girls as young as 12, then sexually abused them. Tipped off about these crimes, U.S. Homeland Security stopped Kennell at the Orlando, Florida International Airport and found he possessed over 940 images of child pornography.

According to prosecutors, Kennell identified himself in one of the photos as the man performing a sex act on a prepubescent girl. “Kennell represents the worst kind of criminal; one that preys on innocent children,” Shane Folden, deputy special agent in charge of the Tampa office of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement. In 2014, Kennell was sentenced to 58 years in prison.

A plan whose time has come?

The boldness of Ethnos360’s helicopter-contact and conversion plan may not be as brazen as it first seems. In February, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro administration made a surprise appointment, putting Ricardo Lopez Dias in charge of The Coordination of Isolated and Recently Contacted Indians (CGIIRC), FUNAI’s most sensitive department. Dias, an anthropologist and evangelical, was a missionary for New Tribes Mission for over a decade, doing conversion work.

In 2020, Epoca, the Brazilian news magazine, revealed that, starting in 2017, New Tribes Mission began circulating promotional videos, raising donations to pay for the R66 helicopter. In one clip pilot Jeremiah Diedrich explains why New Tribes Mission wants the aircraft: “This part of western Brazil is listed by Survival International, [an NGO], as having the highest concentration of uncontacted people-groups in the world … It is the darkest, densest, hardest-to-reach place in the whole of South America. This is why we need a helicopter.”

Survival International, itself, is vehemently opposed to the Ethnos360 initiative. Fiona Watson, Advocacy Director of Survival, told Mongabay: “The New Tribes Mission’s plan to use a helicopter to locate uncontacted tribes is dangerous and irresponsible.  They clearly have no intention of respecting these indigenous peoples’ clear desire to be left alone. Any attempt to force contact risks infecting them with deadly diseases. The NTM’s appalling history of forced contacts in South America in the last 60 years resulted in the death and destruction of many uncontacted peoples and should serve as a stark warning not to let them anywhere near these vulnerable tribes. The Brazilian government must act now to stop the NTM’s genocidal plans.”