Google employees were very heavily represented on the Never Again pledge a few weeks ago, more than any big tech company. I've been able to talk to several Googlers since then, several of whom are now directly involved with Tech Solidarity. Google takes a lot of shit, and some of it is probably deserved, but there seems clearly to be a moral core to the people working there.
I stick up for Google a lot --- nobody has done more to improve the security of the web than they have --- but they deserve credit for this kind of thing too.
Brin shows up at the protest at SFO. Kalanick makes a self-congratulatory post on Facebook [1].
No Google execs on Trump's "economic advisory group". Kalanick legitimizes policies of hate by joining the group.
People gave Google a lot of shit for their supposedly naive or hypocritical mantra of "don't be evil". Turns out it's genuine and not so naive after all.
People gave Google a lot of shit for their supposedly naive or hypocritical mantra of "don't be evil". Turns out it's genuine and not so naive after all.
I strongly disagree. Google, like other companies, is very opportunistic and 100% calculating. Standing up for refugees and against Trump is a no-brainer move in Silicon Valley culture, especially when 1000s of others are doing the same and the majority of the media is on your side. There's only upside and no downside for Google and its employees in doing so.
Sergey could have easily used his connections to get a 1:1 conversation with the president. That would have been 1000x more effective than joining a demo at SFO. He still chose the latter because he knew the effect it would have on social media.
Google could use their resources and power to help with other causes and problems whose negative footprint on American society outclasses the refugee problem by orders of magnitude. But why waste any resources on that, since it's not a hot topic in the media and Google's hiring plans aren't affected? Nothing to gain there...
Meanwhile they're getting close and cuddly with Trump's party to secure their political backing [1].
I'm not pro-Trump, in fact I think his refugee ban is beyond crazy, however I'm very deeply suspicious of people / organizations who tout themselves as the good guys ("don't be evil!") and then only stick their head out of their comfort zone when the cause is no-risk and it's ensured that the world is watching.
I'm surprised Sergey Brin's involvement in the no-hire collusion wasn't more deeply harmful to his reputation.
I tend to agree with the protesters here, but I absolutely agree with you that there isn't much downside for Brin in taking this stand.
I actually think that tech titans like Zuckerberg and Brin may be in a role similar to Hollywood stars in politics, but maybe even worse. Truth is, the H1B visa isn't really a visa that "allows" foreign workers to come to the US, it's a visa that allows corporate HR departments, largely in high tech, to decide who is and isn't allowed to come to the US - and the conditions under which they are allowed to stay. It's a remarkable power, an unacceptable one in my opinion. Although I'd be opposed to this kind of corporate control over the immigration system in general, I think that google showed itself very specifically unworthy of this power through its involvement in the no-poach collusion. But again, this is what I've come to expect - in fact, I'd say it's very naive to believe that handing corporations control over a big wing of th immigration system wouldn't lead to corporate mischief and an erosion of basic human rights for the workers whose lives they control.
If google, Zuckerberg, and so forth lobbied fiercely for greater freedom for immigrants - freedom to choose what they study, what companies they work for (if any), freedom to move... really, just basic human freedom, then I might be more interested in this sort of stand. Otherwise, I tend to be deeply suspicious of their motives the moment they start to speak, because I know they have a political agenda that involves gaining control over the immigration system.
But as it stands, I think that a lot of Silicon Valley "elites" like to wear the halo of being pro-immigrant while lobbying for a program that allows them to determine the circumstances under which would-be immigrants are allowed to come to the US and stay here. Just like the no-poach agreement, they use this to create a workforce that isn't allowed to participate freely in free labor markets, which I consider to be an essential component of basic human freedom.
As you can tell, I don't care for them much anymore. And yeah, this was a personal transformation that took place over decades - there was a time I admired them.
It would be highly illegal. And there's probably a black market for it. Immigration is supposedly watching for it as well.
I have heard in University one of my wives' friends wondering if she could marry an F-1 student to help him stay. Never inquired further what happened there...
The question I have is: Would SV be so pro-immigrant if they were forced to pay everyone a competitive wage? The H1B thing has been a scam for depressing wages for decades now. All of my H1B friends are exploited workers with no rights and no recourse. Ugly, ugly, ugly!
They way you ensure they must pay a competitive wage is by retaining free labor markets.
If immigrants are free to decide what to study, where to work, who to work for, what jobs they wish to pursue, and so forth, then SV will have to pay enough to convince them to become software developers in the valley, rather than lawyers, real estate agents, drywall installers, dental hygienists, registered nurses, physicians, and so forth.
It turns out we have an immigration system that does this. it's called, wait for it... immigration, and the US takes 1.2 million people into the country annually under just those conditions.
It turns out that immigrants who are free to pursue their own path in life aren't interested in working in loud, open offices and staring at computer screens for hours a day working on JIRA tickets for the salary that SV feels it should pay.
As a result, SV employers have lobbied for a system that allows them to control who is allowed to come into the country, and the conditions under which they are allowed to remain here. They certainly are not lobbying for any system that would preserve freedom for immigrants.
There's a desperate need for immigration reform, as right now, it's mainly based on family reunification, which leaves a lot of people out in the cold.
But really, seriously, don't look to SV, or Zuckerberg, or Brin, for meaningful solutions. They have an agenda, and this agenda runs through their very secretive HR departments.
I understand the "joining the protest is just keeping up with the silicon valley statusquo" argument. But, Sergey is an immigrant too, and i guess,for him it's personal. I am pretty sure he and Google in general are considering all the other avenues such as meeting the president, educating people. You can do both.
It was Uber's competition striking, right? Disabling surge pricing when they'd otherwise have it seems like a way of capitalizing on the strike. That kind of thing is generally frowned upon in the labor movement.
I'm speculating, though! I don't know much about the Delete Uber thing; I'm as curious as everyone else is about it.
Uber has turned off surge pricing in the past during unexpected events (such as the New York bombing), so as to not be seen as profiting off unfortunate events.
This seems to have been done under the same principles.
(Whether one agrees with the policy is not too relevant. The subject of price increases during disasters has always been a controversial one, even before Uber, and that's a debate for game theorists and ethicists.)
So by your logic, the strike in support of refugees is an unfortunate event they're trying to avoid profiting from. And they're trying not to profit from it by...breaking the strike and advertising that they're doing so?
Like I said, it's a matter of debate as to whether raising prices during an unfortunate circumstance is ethical.
Regardless of which choice Uber makes, they are open to criticism. There could have been articles right now about how Uber is profiting because of the strike by raising rates.
All I'm pointing out is that their action is consistent with how they've handled previous unexpected surges which had potential for bad PR.
How ethical raising prices is under these circumstances is not what is at question. I don't know why you keep raising this.
To be clear, Uber broke a strike in support of the immigrants and refugees, advertising that they were doing so. Taxis drivers stood in solidarity with the immigrants and refugees by halting service in and out of JFK. Uber sent drivers there. Surge pricing was just an implementation detail of their being scabs.
If you want to argue on behalf of Uber breaking this strike, please, go ahead.
Why should the taxi union's decision to strike impose an obligation to strike on others who are not part of the union and had no input in the decision to strike?
No, your assessment is correct. They also went on their NYC social media accounts to advertise that they were still running from JFK at reduced prices (since everyone expected surge pricing to be in effect). There was some initial confusion that Uber might be striking in solidarity with Taxi drivers, but they made sure to clear that up.
Isnt also having surge pricing active seen as capitalising on the strike?
It's long been Uber's policy to disable surge pricing during 'disasters' like this, so I'm not really seeing the need for outrage here. Sure, people can be upset that Uber isnt taking place in the strike, but I don't see anything wrong with disabling surge pricing.
So what? I don't think its entirely fair to criticise Uber for not participating in the strike when they never said they would. Busses and other transport operators still ran.
Sure, you can prefer that they did strike as well, but theres certainly no obligation for them to and the reaction was too much over the top.
Would not surge pricing encourage drivers to pick up more passengers at the airport? Therefore by disabling surge pricing, Uber drivers have less motivation to be "scabs" by picking up people at the airport?
The example you give is a clear logical fallacy: Some muslims are bad -> X is a muslim -> X is bad.
Trump isn't considered immoral because he happens to belong to some group of bad people, but because of words - and now actions – which are clearly immoral.
To claim that it is legitimate to associate with him is a farce. There is no policy proposal that could even theoretically offset the damage he is doing. Among those he has actually proposed, I'm having trouble of finding a single issue that could reasonably be considered "not evil" – maybe the infrastructure investments that aren't going to happen, and his notable lack of homo- and transphobia.
Being a muslim is different because it is vastly more complex. Even though it may seem strange for an American audience, a muslim growing up in, say, the Philippines is not going to primarily associate "islam" with "terrorism". A possible analogy in Trump-world may be his immediate family, who could, with some goodwill, be excused for their myopic world view.
>There is no policy proposal that could even theoretically offset the damage he is doing. Among those he has actually proposed, I'm having trouble of finding a single issue that could reasonably be considered "not evil"
Everything Trumps's doing is so evil that the damage, after one week, is already insurmountable?
This is quite the exaggeration, and it's precisely why the left isn't going to be able to move the needle with Trump voters: the left assumes everyone on the "other side" is a racist, sexist, ignoramus.
I could give Trump supporters some slack before. He'd said some racist and sexist things, but it could arguably be written off as bluster. But now he's put his bluster into action.
This ban clearly has nothing to do with terrorism, if it did the Muslim country that produces the most terrorists and from which the most terrorist funding comes from - Saudi Arabia - would be on the list. I'm not saying they should be on the list, I think there should be no list, but by not having SA on it the argument for the list existing at all is clearly null and void. It's just for show.
This order is pure racism and religious discrimination. It comes on the aniversary of a ship full of German Jews being turned back from the US. Hundreds of people on that boat went to the gas chambers. This order is tearing apart families. Husbands and Wives with partners and children in the US, who's partners and children are US citizens, with homes in the US, jobs in the US and fully valid visas and green cards are being prevented from joining their families. All they did was take a short trip abroad and now they are barred from entering the country where they and their family live. What are these people supposed to do? This attitude that it's ok to do this to these people just because of their religion or country of origin, that the damage to them doesn't matter and doesn't count. This is pure evil. Knowingly doing harm to people just for show. Trying to drive them out of the country to suit a racist and discriminatory agenda. It's done very cleverly to avoid targeting Muslim US citizens directly, but get them through collateral damage to their families and communities. But it's clear what he's trying to do.
I thought Hillary's comments about Trump supporters were excessive and counterproductive during the campaign. Not anymore. I'm done with Trump supporters. Supporting this man is supporting racism. It's supporting religious discrimination. I should thank him in a way, he's made this very simple.
Arguably it's a matter of terminology, as I understand it. If the ban is targeting Muslims, it's a matter of religion, not race. If it's based on country, while it may be some form of prejudice, it's similarly not racism.
That's my understanding of the argument, anyway. How would you describe it as being accurately described as "racism"?
Please note I'm not taking a position on the ban here. I'm just trying to understand why people are using the language they are.
It's perfectly clear he's doing this for the purpose of religious discrimination. How do we know? Because he told us so clearly and directly during the primaries. His current VP described that as illegal and unconstitutional at the time.
Arguably the specific legality of this precise formulation of the order avoids racism or religious discrimination. He's technically not targeting muslims. He's targeting people from Muslim majority countries and excepting christians. Whatever. Anyone arguing that is an apologist for racism and religious discrimination. Technicalities be damned.
I understand a lot of the politics regarding the issue, and am specifically trying to avoid bringing that into this particular slice. I'm not arguing whether or not the ban is targeting Muslims. The recent Fox News interview leaves little room for doubt.
The question 'euyyn had was "How is this ban not racist?"
You bring up racism and religious discrimination. Do you draw a distinction between the two? I've started to suspect that the definition of racism is currently widening to encapsulate more than strictly racial prejudice. Your comment "Technicalities be damned." leads me to believe that your understanding of the term racism is this wider one.
Personally I think racism is the wrong term; religious discrimination seems more apt. But I also understand language changes. I sincerely am not in any way trying to parse a way out of what the Executive Order represents or its intent. I just want to understand what people mean when they call it "racist".
Yeah, if religious discrimination had an adjective form, like racist or bigotted, I would have used that. But as the three (and others like xenophobic) have the same cause and characteristics, the specific term to use seems to be a distinction without a difference.
Thanks! I was beginning to fear I was going to be left hanging, as this is something on which I really wanted to get feedback.
I understand where you're coming from with respect to the distinction without a difference. I fear it's likely adding to miscommunication, as I don't think that's yet a widely-held understanding of the term, or at least held across some political divides.
That's not to say I have any great suggestions as to how to reconcile this. But I have seen a lot of likely unnecessary noise—at least here on HN—due to just this usage of racism around the topic of the Executive Order. There's enough other, meatier issues to discuss. It's too bad that this word is probably causing unnecessary friction.
I strongly believe that if people would be intellectually honest, they would admit that when they say racist, what they actually mean is culturalist. But they very much don't want to go down that path, because then they'd have to come up with some argument that there is no such thing as culture.
Obviously, there is such a thing as culture, but this in no way means that it's impossible for different cultures to peacefully coexist in the same country, neighborhood, etc.
Minor correction: he's targeting Muslims from seven specific countries, the very same seven countries the DHS designated as higher risk under the prior administration, if we're interested in trying to keep these discussions based in fact.
This isn't to say Donald Trump himself isn't actually an outright bigot though (I'm beginning to suspect so, but I have much more patience than others).
Well you can patiently wait while children and old people are refused boarding flights, or detained at airports, preventing them from returning to their homes and families in the US. How patient do you expect them to be? I have to say my tolerance for scenes like that is pretty low.
> Because if you're from those countries it doesn't matter what your race is?
> White, black, asian, latino, they are all banned if they originate from those countries.
Substitute my use of "racist" with "discriminatory based on religion".
> Same with religion. Christian, Muslim, Jewish, they are all banned if they originate from these countries.
What I've heard is that this is false and Christians are supposed to be allowed in.
> The ban is based on country of origin, not race or religion.
Even if that's the current implementation, what it's trying to achieve is pretty explicit and clear, as expressed during the campaign: a ban on Muslims.
Are you going to, with a straight face, tell me that if these people were blonde and blue eyed that it would still be happening and be as acceptable as it is to far too many Americans.
> This ban clearly has nothing to do with terrorism
> This order is pure racism and religious discrimination.
I personally believe these outright bans have gone too far, but I continue to believe that while it's near impossible to remove emotion from these situations, we should always be open minded to facts, and wary of propaganda from either side of the political spectrum.
Visitors from these countries were already designated as higher risk by the previous administration. So if it truly is "pure racism", then the former administration is guilty of the very same crime, but to a lesser degree. The ban is bad indeed, but the thinking behind the ban is the more important part in the big picture, is it not? Same thinking, different reaction.
"President Obama’s approach was to give a free pass to Islam in general and to any Muslims that were just minding their own business. But the unintended consequence is that Muslims have less incentive to police their own ranks. Trump changed that. Now if you want to stay out of the fight against terrorism it will cost you.
So Trump has created a situation – or will soon – in which the peaceful Muslims will either have to do a lot more to help law enforcement find the terrorists in their midst or else live with an increasingly tainted brand. Trump is issuing no free passes for minding your own business. His model makes you part of the solution or part of the problem. No one gets to sit this one out.
I’m not smart enough to know whether President Obama or President Trump have the best strategy in this regard. But both strategies are rational."
Call me what you want, but I believe that every individual has a responsibility to police their fellow countrymen. We are here on this planet all by ourselves and we have to make things up as we go. You are free to believe differently, our standards and ethics aren't directives passed down from a God, it seems to me a lot of people have forgotten this.
From where I sit, considering how many Muslims are still being killed on a regular basis in the last decade, the notion that trying a radical shake up of the status quo doesn't seem terribly "crazy" to me. I see so many pink elephants in the room, I'm not sure others are blind or I am crazy.
> I believe that every individual has a responsibility to police their fellow countrymen.
As in, if I'm from country A but live and work in the US, I have now to seek out people from my country to police them? That's beyond ridiculous. I rather choose my own friends and police anybody irrespective of where they're from, thank you.
I didn't mean fly home. I might happen to not have friends from my home country in the place I live? But according to your suggestion, I have some moral obligation to seek them and police them, and suffer discriminating measures until I and many others do.
Me too. I consider my fellow citizens those with which I interact, no matter in what country they were born. Not those that have my same sign of zodiac, my same eye color, or those that are Muslims because Mr. Trump promised a ban on Muslims and has delivered.
The majority of people do not leave the country they are born in. I am saying that in the cases where there is a pattern of people born in your country going to other countries and causing problems, maybe it might not be a terribly bad idea to consider whether actions can be taken to decrease the problem.
It shouldn't have to be said, but this is completely independent of which country, religion, gender, show size, eye color, or any other nonsensical conversational loophole. If no one will ever take responsibility, how will this improve? Hopes and wishes? How this is controversial is beyond me.
The only controversy here is that people like Trump and his voters, including Dilbert's cartoonist, have this belief that if I am Muslim, I have to pay some sort of cost, on account of group responsibility, that if I'm not a Muslim I don't have to pay.
Take this as just one example:
> Now if you want to stay out of the fight against terrorism it will cost you.
"You" here isn't "every person". Because the costs it refers to aren't being proposed for everybody. It refers to Muslims, or Muslims from certain countries. The implication is: if I'm Muslim, I've been staying out of the fight against terrorism. If I'm not Muslim, I've been fighting. So I have to pay that cost. And not until I personally join the light side, no: Until someone decides that enough Muslims have, I still have to pay. If I'm not Muslim, instead, I don't have to move a finger, and won't pay any of those costs.
Everybody has to take responsibility, as you say. That's not what Trump is saying nor doing. Everybody has to consider taking actions that can decrease the problem, no matter what country you were born in. If you're a man, you shouldn't have to pay any extra cost, nor bear more responsibility, on account of terrorists being all or mostly all men. Same with religion, country of birth, or eye color.
> The only controversy here is that people like Trump and his voters, including Dilbert's cartoonist, have this belief that if I am Muslim, I have to pay some sort of cost, on account of group responsibility, that if I'm not a Muslim I don't have to pay.
I'm Canadian - if my countrymen are causing problems in the world, I feel an obligation to do what I can, or at least try. It seems there's this near unanimous belief that the American government/military (and therefore people) are responsible for protecting the world, and get a very vigorous self-righteous scolding if they even hint at scaling that obligation back, but everyone else on the planet gets a pass due to their religion or some other group association.
> The implication is: if I'm Muslim, I've been staying out of the fight against terrorism.
You've manufactured that implication. A more accurate statement in my opinion would be: until the governments and people of countries can reign in their extremists, there will be travel restrictions. Now I'm not saying outright that this is a good idea, but it sure as hell doesn't seem remotely crazy to me.
> If I'm not Muslim, I've been fighting.
Absurd.
> Everybody has to consider taking actions that can decrease the problem, no matter what country you were born in. If you're a man, you shouldn't have to pay any extra cost, nor bear more responsibility, on account of terrorists being all or mostly all men. Same with religion, country of birth, or eye color.
Disagree, disagree, disagree. In fact, look at the various feminist directives, men are told on a regular basis that it is our collective responsibility to clean up the shortcomings of our gender. No one bats an eye at this, but if collective responsibility is asked of any other group, there's no end to the howls of moral outrage.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to your philosophy no one has any responsibility at all? These seven countries (and other not included as they are "allies") have no responsibility to the world, at all? If so, then the US government has no responsibility to encourage its citizens to burn less fossil fuels, right? That is the individual responsibility of each person who uses fossil fuels, and the appropriate reaction to any implication that there is a collective responsibility is moral outrage?
It is an extremely imprecise ban. I don't personally agree with it, but I do agree with the underlying principles of national responsibility, for lack of a better term.
The trinkets terms in which you can criticise this is that it's 'imprecise'? That's the best you've got? I have every reason to believe you're a decent and conscientious human being. But just look at the possition this man is putting you in.
It's almost a joke for people to sign a pledge about not collecting data that can be used against minorities then support either Google or Facebook in any way. They're probably the biggest threat to them that's existed in a long time if they're compelled to share their data. The billions made on their practices ensures they won't change them any time soon. If anything, they've both gotten worse over time in invasiveness and lock-in. Yet, Never Again people will continue making products/services for Google to help them maintain market share doing more of that Orwell shit they do. Quite the moral core [with associated pay, benefits, and fun job].
Whereas, the immigration claim is believable because it impacts them personally and financially if critical people are immigrants. They have quite a bit of skin in the game. It wouldn't surprise me if they'd fight that.
Your impression is that people who sign a pledge to leave their jobs before helping mass deportation or a Muslim registry have less moral authority than those that don't? That's, uh, quite the contrarian take.
There was no bait. I disagreed with people supporting surveillance companies on that pledge on Hacker News when it posted. I did on Lobsters citing that. I did again on Hacker News now when you brought it up with pat on back of surveillance, company supporters. I don't bait you back: merely debate with argument and evidence like when I first started doing that here. I try to avoid rhetoric and pure fights much as possible. I count those as failures to be honest.
My impression is that a Never Collect Data Usable Against Minorities Pledge shouldn't be signed by people supporting exactly that to tune of billions of dollars and nearly as many users under surveillance. Unless they're full of shit. Hell, even The Onion saw how helpful such companies are:
I remember watching it knowing it was satire but most of the benefits were still true. I bet the people against discrimination and such at those locations are still coding away at the algorithms and data stores to make it happen. Easier to put your name on something than to make real sacrifices. Do email me, though, when a story pops up that Google or Facebook got rid of all saved data that could be used to hurt unpopular groups all thanks to such people in the company.
These people have already helped in creating a Muslim registry, and a many-other-things registry, by way of their participation in Google's massive data collection efforts.
You feel so strongly and yet you use gmail (according to your profile), associating yourself with them, making use of the free storage space and services, and even augmenting their datasets to a small degree. Perhaps the people who find a way to work at Google and still be against collecting data for malevolent purposes make the same types of rationalizations you have.
Do email me, though, when a story pops up that Google or Facebook got rid of all saved data that could be used to hurt unpopular groups all thanks to such people in the company.
My post is about people who signed the pledge. I didn't sign it. It was too simplistic & unrealistic once I factored in surveillance companies with their massive, user base. I might actually have to work from within up the management track, in the Android/Chrome team, etc to get improvements. In the process, I'd have contributed to the surveillance tech to make possible the privacy-enhancing improvements to it. I try not to promise what I can't deliver working in moral spaces so complex.
Far as Gmail, I use it as an untrusted drop for potentially-malicious traffic with spam filtering and high-availability. Such a setup burdens them more than helps given free email is a loss leader. Dissidents can send me email from anonymous accounts or set up GPG exchanges where I just know them by a key and alias. I also have a private, Swiss-hosted email for users I've vetted to a degree. I pay for that under vote with my wallet concept. Thinking about moving drop address to Fastmail under same concept since I've heard enough feedback about it basically being as good as Gmail. Altogether, Google currently loses money to host my risky emails with anonymous, GPG-protected email available to those that want privacy. Looks morally neutral.
When you use Gmail, Google will try to identify you and identify the people who email you, and draw connections between you and inferences from your communication.
I really don't understand why someone like you who is evidently seriously against surveillance and who values privacy would give Google more ammunition to do that.
It's more complex than that. Almost everyone that emails me uses a surveillance-oriented email system since it's free, works well, and uses years of contact information. All of the providers in Five Eyes are currently under mass surveillance at the backbone level by the organizations that are the threat in this discussion. Many are also cooperating with the government in secret per the Snowden leaks. Those that run their own servers usually send the email openly over such backbones to surveillance-oriented providers. The default assumption should be that all free email is being analyzed as you describe by the NSA with a portion handed off to FBI, DHS, IRS, INS, etc.
So, we start there. I'm currently quite poor with a need for reliable email for business leads. Of the free ones, Gmail is the most reliable. Of the evil companies, Google does more beneficial things than most like with Android & Chrome which we can modify for privacy. My tradeoff, based on pragmatism, is to support the lesser evil to get what I need while going out of my way to ensure people worried about their safety can contact me anonymously & encrypted. This is until I find a Gmail equivalent. Fastmail is best alternative in terms of uptime & performance per comments I've read but also in Five Eyes territory under mass surveillance. I've gotten to the point, esp seeing turn of events in Switzerland past year, that it's best to assume all email is under mass surveillance by governments, that many cooperate on persons of interest, and possibly with any encryption keys compelled out of them. And we work from there with or without email as the medium with focus on anonymization or end-to-end crypto.
There's a difference between protecting yourself from government surveillance (good luck) and protecting yourself from Google's surveillance (possible, to a great extent).
There is. I just doubt it matters a lot in terms of NeverAgain pledge if the organizations they're concerned about still likely see the traffic anyway. Real concern should go further to make sure that's impossible with right choice of software and services like other organizations (esp Tor and EFF) promote. It all has to be encrypted, anonymized, and immune to FISA orders to be trusted. Leads to rational conclusion to not trust it.
Like I said, I'm currently evaluating better options that preserve Gmail's benefits without the surveillance aspects. I've seen a lot of inexpensive, private products (including email) disappear over time with trouble for their users. The recent DDOS attacks also factor into my decision where only the groups with the biggest pipes can take it. Hence, using one such provider as a temporary storage/relay for overall email process. I'm curious what providers you know of have long track record for great uptime, great privacy policies, low cost, and mitigate DDOS attacks we've seen recently. No startups because they disappear all the time.
I've used Fastmail for a long time and I like it. It's only had a couple of brief downtimes in the many years I've used it, and no spam has ever gotten through. But I don't get a lot of email, and I'm not super paranoid about privacy or security (or I'd just run my own mail servers and use anonymous remailers, at the very least). I just try to avoid the huge dragnets that are Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other "social media".
I've heard good things about ProtonMail, but have not looked deeply in to it.
I'm not sure if there are many good, truly privacy-respecting means of communication on the internet, that aren't a gigantic pain in the ass and don't severely limit who you can securely communicate with (such as, for example, using GPG with a fully vetted web of trust). I also don't have much faith in encryption in the long run. As long as there's a record of your communication, it could be cracked at some point by someone. So I wouldn't place much trust in even the most paranoid digital communication, unless I was forced to. For anything really sensitive, I'd prefer non-electronic, more traditional and primitive means of communication.
" It's only had a couple of brief downtimes in the many years I've used it, and no spam has ever gotten through."
Appreciate the feedback. Looking more and more like what I'll switch to as interim solution.
"For anything really sensitive, I'd prefer non-digital, more traditional and primitive means of communication."
This is what high-security engineer Clive Robinson and I been recommending for years now. The only exception is one-time pads on air-gapped machines if you can exchange and protect the pads. The OTP version of Tinfoil Chat combined with that would have very, strong INFOSEC. Still prefer personal communications or messages through trusted people.
Note: The elites that scheme against us all have kept their secrets using couriers and physical meetings with people of aligned incentives. Most effective model of private communication in history. Add bug sweeps or other mitigations these days.
It doesn't have to involve physical meetings. If you look at the history of pre-electronic secret communication, I think many of those methods could still be very effective -- as long as you haven't been singled out for surveillance by a powerful adversary, of course. I'm talking about security for ordinary, privacy-conscious people here.
Google's political grandstanding is a turn off. I can no longer trust that they aren't censoring search results based on their political leanings. It's a deal breaker, sorry. They best tread carefully or other companies that cater to a more moderate crowd will win out.
>They formally applied for their exit visa in September 1978, and as a result his father was "promptly fired". For related reasons, his mother also had to leave her job. For the next eight months, without any steady income, they were forced to take on temporary jobs as they waited, afraid their request would be denied as it was for many refuseniks. During this time his parents shared responsibility for looking after him and his father taught himself computer programming. In May 1979, they were granted their official exit visas and were allowed to leave the country.[12] At an interview in October 2000, Brin said, "I know the hard times that my parents went through there and am very thankful that I was brought to the States."[17]
>In the summer of 1990, a few weeks before his 17th birthday, his father led a group of high school math students, including Sergey, on a two-week exchange program to the Soviet Union. His roommate on the trip was future Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor John Stamper. As Brin recalls, the trip awakened his childhood fear of authority and he remembered that "his first impulse on confronting Soviet oppression had been to throw pebbles at a police car." Malseed adds, "On the second day of the trip, while the group toured a sanatorium in the countryside near Moscow, Brin took his father aside, looked him in the eye and said, 'Thank you for taking us all out of Russia.'"
I'm guessing that Brin like me came to the US as a refugee under the lautenberg amendment (which applied to religious minorities in the USSR, mostly jews, also protestants, ect.)
Before the USSR collapsed people had to first go to neutral Austria to apply. Afterwards you didn't.
In 2004 Iranian Religious Minorities(Christians, Bahai'i, Jews, Zoroastrians) were added, in the last few days the Austrian office shut down (for how long?) seemingly leaving these Iranians high and dry.
George W Bush once said, "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
I think the neo-nazi Trump supporters ("alt-right" is far too kind a term for them) would agree with Bush. They'd love to be in charge of a dictatorship, but at the same time fear a dictatorship of their opponents, like the "Obama is Hitler" meme that is prevalent among their kind, and the "FEMA concentration camps" and "UN world government" conspiracy theories that have long had currency among the far right. They really do fear those chimeras, but they'd love to see a Christian theocratic dictatorship, or one that would allow them to oppress their own enemies: minorities, immigrants, leftists, and liberals.
No matter how passionately you feel and how wrong you think they are, please do the utmost to keep things civil. It's hard enough discussing political issues on HN. Using inflammatory language like this makes it impossible.
If you're not interested in civil discussion, there are other places where you can do so. HN is not one of them.
What was starting to worry me is that many of the top CEOs were all kissing Trumps ass as to who can bring back more jobs. They were stumbling over themselves, "we are bringing 10000 jobs in the next 2 years".
There needs to be a lot of vocal people against this, immigrants are one the weakest groups in society. Trump just deomstrated and confirmed this.
What I don't get, and maybe someone can explain it, why isn't this un-constitutional? It feels like banning people, people who are perfectly legal not citizens but still legal, based on their religion is against the constitution. Am I missing something? Wasn't this country started by people looking to escape religious persecution?
Executive orders. When Obama rode somewhat roughshod with them, people were okay with them. They didn't complain. Congress hamstrung the president so, sure, why not let him have those powers. Now that the other guy is following suit, oh, no, executive power, abuse of power!
Nothing against Obama, I voted for him, but I find it a bit odd that because the new guy is the opposition suddenly it's a constitutional issue whereas before cuz it was our guy we let it pass.
It reminds me of the dissonance in some Calexiters --the same people who mourned Brexit. It's only good when you do it.
> When Obama rode somewhat roughshod with them, people were okay with them.
Accuracy of the characterization aside, no they weren't.
> They didn't complain.
Yes, they did. All the time. Even sued to overturn a number of them, in some cases successfully.
> It reminds me of the dissonance in some Calexiters --the same people who mourned Brexit.
It's only good when you do it.
More accurately, people think content matters (for legislation or executive orders), not just the style of action, and context matters (for exiting a larger union).
You'll have to kindly point me to all the execs writing "op-eds" about those times Obama issued executive orders, because I don't recall any.
It has not been uncommon for past presidents, incl. Obama, to issue immigration bans or pauses for certain groups of people. You can argue the immediacy or the reasoning, but the results to travelers were similar.
Obama did not ever ban hundreds of thousands of valid green card or visa holders from re-entering the country where they currently reside full time. Which has also -- effectively -- made those still in the US subject to an exit visa.
As a result, he also did not sow mass chaos by springing a poorly communicated status change on people in the air coming to a country that had already provided them with documents for entry.
I think it is worth specifically calling out one of the main points of the Twitter post you linked: people who are upset about Trump's executive order on immigration were not necessarily fine with everything Obama ever did.
If it meant we could get Trump out tomorrow, I would gladly vote for Obama a third time. Still, Obama did a number of things while in office that I strongly disagreed with -- and a lot of things that I strongly agreed with. It turns out that life is complicated.
Averaged across 2 terms, Obama issued the fewest executive orders of any US President since Grover Cleveland. (Assuming I didn’t miscount; data here http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/orders.php)
I don't understand this whole obsession about the evils of executive orders. The making of an executive order is simply the invocation of a power that is either constitutionally or legislatively granted to the President and the Executive Branch. There are plenty of areas where it is absolutely appropriate to grant the executive branch authority to make decisions, issue policy memoranda, make regulations/subsidiary legislation, and so on.
The problem is only when said executive actions are either a) ultra vires (beyond the power that the law grants to the executive to make these decisions) or b) completely insane. In the case of this particular executive order, it may well be both.
I think the parent agrees with you. The rhetoric around executive orders recently has spilled over from "I disagree with these particular executive orders" to "executive orders are inherently evil." In the Republican primary we saw people promising to repeal every existing executive order (because purple hearts and executive-branch pay scales are bad?). The parent was objecting to this, while certainly allowing that particular orders may be a problem.
Indeed! There's a tonne of things which rightly fall within the domain of the executive to make regulations, I happen to think that this immigration order goes way too far - and indeed even if it was made by the legislature it would still be immoral. I agree that legal != unobjectionable, of course!
Case law is based on "whatabout-ism" so there is little unusual about it. It's nice and quippy to say "whataboutism" and be dismissive but it's a really important principle in common law.
It's a constitutional issue in some sense (executive orders --but Obama was pretty much unchallenged) due process? Tell me which country will grant me (a foreigner to them) due process upon denial of entry into their ports of entry.
Its not unconstitutional to issue Executive Orders. It is unconstitutional to deny equal protection of laws to green card and work permit holders. Or at least, a Federal Judge thinks there is a strong enough case to issue an injunction to this particular Executive Order. I had no issues with the other orders that Trump issued, fwiw.
"The petitioners have a strong likelihood of success in establishing that the removal of the petitioner and others similarly situated violates their rights to Due Process and Equal Protection guaranteed by the United States Constitution"
It's a constitutional issue in every sense. The US Congress ALONE has the power to make policy. The POTUS can relax policy enforcement, but cannot enforce policy that was never made. What part of this is hard for you to understand??
Where did you get from? That's 100% wrong. The power to determine who is admissable to the US lies in the hands of the president when it comes to the security of the country.
Yes you are missing a lot. But you aren't alone. Everyone else is too. This is becoming a characteristic feature of the internet.
There is huge information asymmetry at play here that just cannot be communicated through the media, social media or a hn post.
Or as I would say to a second grader, if you want to understand things your cousin in college is talking about put in 10 years of work. If the internet gives you the impression that everything that you can't make sense of is one ted talk/one reddit ELI5 post away, that's just wrong.
This expectation has to change. Otherwise we end up with more and more people who don't understand the work it takes to know anything deeply.
I actually did put in the work, however, and I agree with parent. You also don't become an authority by pretending you're some mystic wise man without saying anything of substance.
It's unconstitutional for many reasons, one of which is that the executive has no authority to block the entry of legal visa and green card holders without due process.
And yes, it deals a massive blow to the rule of law and faith in the stability of the nation when legal visitors and immigrants are blocked from entry due to an arbitrary dictate from POTUS.
It's great to see someone with this much influence joining the masses to protest these injustices. I understand these companies have shareholders and tend to avoid politically charged topics, but in this case, it affects not only Google's employees but people all over the country.
Of the five largest tech companies in the world, the CEOs of four of them have come out against the Executive Order targeting specific immigrants: GOOG/MSFT/FB/AAPL.
AMZN and Jeff Bezos have strangely been absent even though he was the most critical pre-election.
>AMZN and Jeff Bezos have strangely been absent even though he was the most critical pre-election.
Trump on Bezos:
"Amazon is getting away with murder, tax-wise.
"[Bezos has] got a huge antitrust problem because he's controlling so much. Amazon is controlling so much of what they're doing," Trump said, describing Amazon as a "monopoly" and complaining that "the whole system's rigged."
"Believe me, if I become president, oh, do they have problems. They're going to have such problems."
Trump is targeting him specifically for this to silence WaPo and force it to "change its tunes" singing his praise turning into another Breitbart clone but I don't think that this is happening anytime soon.
Do you have any evidence Bezos is influencing the editorial direction of the WaPo? All statements I have seen of people working for or having worked for the WaPo say that there is a clear separation between Bezos and the editorial board.
I can't remember which ex-newspaper editor said this, but it was in regard to a Murdoch paper and it was a discussion about the influence of newspaper owners and editorial boards, his commment was along the lines of: If the Editor can't figure out the editorial line that the owner wants without talking to the owner, he would never have become the Editor in the first place.
Not to mention the man Bezos regards as his father, Miguel Bezos, was an immigrant from Cuba. Bezos is a pretty quiet individual in general, he always has been (but if you do some digging, he and his wife are active politically behind the scenes, giving money etc to causes they support). If you compared his public activities around interviews, it's a small fraction of that of other CEOs over his tenure. I'm not surprised he isn't saying much yet, but I'd bet on them issuing a statement at some point, once they sort out the political risks (also Bezos with Blue Origin, which is dependent on Trump and the Republicans now in various ways).
And? All these companies care about is their H-1 Visas being trampled on. They're worried about importing cheap labor, and being able to lock that talent in at below-market wages with their employees being physically unable to change jobs for fear of being deported.
Until we have reasonably well-connected people advocating against the ban, without having any ulterior motive, these PR stunts we're seeing are quite sad.
I don't understand anyone who sees tech CEOs as being central to this kind of debate, as if they have any pull with the general population. Their only followers are us geeks. They don't hold any major weight with the population at large. Sadly, you need "popular" politicians and Hollywood actors on one's side to make any kind of dent.
And median salary is only part of the equation at these large companies. After ~3 years at Google, 30-40% on top of this with yearly bonus + stock is fairly common. I doubt the situation is the same at Infosys and Tata.
Where were all these millionaires and billionaires when we were droning people in some of these countries? They all donated to Clinton's election campaign and under her watch as Secretary of State we dropped thousands of bombs. They supported the pro-war candidate.
Why is restricting our borders considered so inhumane as to cause an Internet-wide outcry, while killing people for years hadn't?
First, I would point out that bombings, drone strikes etc. have definitely been the target of criticism from sectors of the left. Although I would agree that the outrage has not reached this scale.
I can think of several reasons. I don't necessarily think they are all good reasons.
1) U.S. bombings are seen as a good-faith effort to stop terrorism, based on intel etc.
The current executive order seems more like a rash decision based on xenophobia and poorly implemented (in the early hours, border officials were giving confused and contradictory info on whether green card holders were affected, etc.)
2) The collateral damage from the bombings, added up over a decade, has probably been hundreds of innocent civilians' lives in some of these countries. This is upsetting but distant.
On the other hand, the collateral damage from this executive order is that 500,000 expats living in the US can't leave the country, or are stranded outside the country. For American "coastal elites", myself included, these are not remote people but our friends, coworkers, professors. Everyone in my social circle seem to have at least a second-degree connection to someone from Iran.
3) The current executive order threatens the standing of the communities "coastal elites" are part of: top American universities, Silicon Valley, the medical community, etc. These institutions are world-class due in no small part to how welcoming they are to foreign talent. That could change if the smartest around the world start heading to universities, hospitals, and companies in Canada or Germany instead...
Collateral damage from foreign policy mistakes is much bigger than from drone strikes, e.g. with "red line" for Assad, when West failed to act, or with the whole adventure in Libya, when Western coalition helped to ignite the civil war, but didn't help to stop it. Millions displaced, hundreds of thousands dead - these people are just not friends, coworkers and professors to care about them loud enough.
> Collateral damage from foreign policy mistakes is much bigger than from drone strikes
The core word here is mistakes. No one knows what the right way to react to a international crisis is (though the argument for complete military non-interventionism gets stronger every time a military intervention just makes things worse...).
You have to distinguish between decisions made in good faith that backfire (or perhaps the alternative would have been even worse?), and malicious decisions like what Trump is doing
What exactly is "good faith" is hard to tell here, so no, I don't want to distinguish between something which only sounds good and something which does not even pretend to sound good. Is it making good to people of another country? Or making good just to people of America and let the world burn in fire? Or making good for the party agenda, so that some politicians will be reelected in next cycle?
How did Obama make that decision not to follow his promise on crossing "red line" by Assad? What were the pros and cons for that decision? How can we be sure that it were not purely U.S. internal politics arguments for giving up? Questions like that do not allow us to forgive mistakes: they force us to hold the governments to account.
> How did Obama make that decision not to follow his promise on crossing "red line" by Assad? What were the pros and cons for that decision? How can we be sure that it were not purely U.S. internal politics arguments for giving up? Questions like that do not allow us to forgive mistakes: they force us to hold the governments to account.
And questions like that are asked and answered? Obama had good reasons for not following up on that threat. Read, for example, theatlantic's 'Obama Doctrine' article. It was never obvious that a heavier US intervention in Syria would help the people in Syria at all - in fact, history suggests that the opposite.
On the other hand, it's hard to imagine how the US refusing refugees would make the Syrian situation worse.
Forcing a pipeline through a sovereign nation is not in good faith. Alan Kurdi died because Obama wanted to help Saudi Arabia. None of the people on the left or right felt outrage on September 2nd 2015.
> None of the people on the left or right felt outrage on September 2nd 2015.
How not? Just the fact that it made news in outlets like nytimes and guardian means that people did care and feel outraged. Things that people don't care about aren't read.
But you're correct the outrage wasn't aimed at Obama. Why? Because there's a difference between a president that acknowledges there's complexities to immigration and refugees, and works on a compromise, and one that seems to treat anyone from the Middle East as of no moral value.
I agree with your points but "The collateral damage from the bombings, added up over a decade, has probably been hundreds of innocent civilians' lives" is not really true. One single drone strike during Bush era killed almost 100 children in a school. There's been much more than 1000 killed civilians and probably 10x that injured (and, as you can imagine, injuries from drone strikes are not usually soft ones).
It is completely another to attack your own country.
Right now American liberties and values are under attack from a rightist presidency. I'm selfish, give me the latter over the former any day of the week.
I have much more problem with killing so many innocents overseas than I do with some MIT student missing class or a researcher being kept away from their work. So that's why these protests seem really hypocritical to me.
A protest isn't hypocritical just because something worse in the past happened that wasn't protested. Maybe some issues with a human face to rally behind receive disproportionate attention, but that doesn't invalidate the issue.
Failing to stand up against egregious civil liberties abuses for eight years, then immediately springing into action again (on every possible topic) because your party is now out of power, is the definition of hypocrisy politically. This happens with every rotation, I watched it happen from Clinton to Bush, and then from Bush to Obama, and now from Obama to Trump.
At the same time the Democrats wanted my vote for Clinton against Trump (I voted for neither). One of the lesser reasons Trump is President, is that vast hypocrisy by the left on civil liberties. It does matter. Clinton was a war hawk that supported bombing only Muslim countries (she supported bombing something like eight different Muslim nations in the last 15 years; but I'm to believe she's not anti-Muslim) and overwhelmingly anti-privacy, she isn't getting my vote on the argument that she's the lesser of two devils. Sanders by contrast, has historically been very consistent on civil liberties for decades, and I'd have considered voting for him.
You care about civil liberties? You now have a large number of people who will act with you. Take advantage of it. If you truly care about these issues, work with whomever you can ally yourself with while not compromising your own values. Right now, there seems to be a lot of people motivated to change things. Work with them. It doesn't mean you're one of them.
Trump is not the problem, he is the symptom. Whilest I agree with your sentiment, it's hard to work towards solving the problem when there is not even an ability to understand what the problem is from those you suggest working with. Anyone who is out there protesting now but would have been cool with Clinton doesn't get it.
It's hard to argue what people would have been cool with under Clinton given Clinton wasn't elected. If you're determined that those who are protesting now just don't get it, you're absolutely right, you won't be able to work with them. You've already closed off that opportunity before you've even tried.
not even an ability to understand what the problem is
Do you really, honestly believe that so many people are completely unreasonable? If so, what do you think the path forward is? Do you write all of these people off? What do you do with them then?
I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that I think Trump is the problem. I think the problem is that people aren't willing to look beyond some of their differences to work towards the goals they have in common.
Though from you comment, it's not clear to me what you consider the problem to be. Would you elaborate?
Once you're at the point where you no longer consider others reasonable, you're effectively stuck. You can't reach them, nor are you open to being reached by them. This is a position from which no civil progress can be made. I'm willing to accept such a position with only the greatest reluctance.
I very well may have. Please elaborate so I may understand what you mean. I've already asked once before. Please point out every place you feel I've misunderstood or misrepresented you, explaining what you do mean so we can at least try to understand each other.
"About a little of a year ago, when I worked in a lab, some of my colleagues routinely laughed and mocked Trump and boasted how he had no chance in hell (as well as fueling fire with continued patronage of sites and news that gave them more of the same "entertainment" [in their words]), and no amount of me pointing out to them the environment that enabled a such a persona to exist/rise to fame/power should be the topic of conversation rather than on the team $x circus ring leader de jour."[0]
>Anyone who is out there protesting now but would have been cool with Clinton doesn't get it.
Part of me thinks that, just some (most?) people never will. It seems like there will always be those who are quick to believe those who will pander to them only to be sold out for later tbd date or possibly in the same transaction!
Faux diametric ideological battle field lines are being drawn stateside (and arguably globally) and led by the same people that have benefited and continue to do so from the status quo, and we are expected to Coke and Pespi this and most take up such role willingly…
I'm taking the wait and see approach: if people are as fired up and eventually willing to fight and kill each other, might as well take the practical route as P&G did during the civil war and sell metaphorical glyceryl trinitrate to both sides and wait for the dust to settle while lurking in the shadows of the madness.
None of us pointing out the hypocrisy are saying that we won't work with everyone else, nor are we trying to legitimize Trump's policies. The point is that if we get someone like Michelle Obama in 2020, we want people to still care about these same issues. Maybe pointing out the hypocrisy isn't the best way to do that, but what is?
Work with the people who are interested in working with you now. Once they're engaged, they're much more likely to stay engaged, don't you think? And more likely to be increasingly politically aware. Not everyone is at the same stage of their political development. No one is perfectly consistent. Humans just aren't built that way. You and I included. Continuing to hew along these binary political lines is doing no one any good.
Shit in my yard, I care a lot about that. There is nothing hypocritical about expecting your country to look out for your interests, while other countries can look out for the interests of their own citizens and residents.
This is nothing about "party". Bush would have never done this, neither would McCain and Romney have been so stupid if they were elected. No, this transcends republican and democrat to a new level of damaging politics unseen since the 1930s.
It is an interesting stand when you walked over to somebody else's garden and took a dump and than you say I do not care about that.
The mass immigration problem is there because of the consistent, bad, misguided, systematic intervention the US committed in the last 30 years in the middle east. Most of the immigrants this executive action is screwing over are leaving their country because of the results of US intervention.
The mass immigration "problem" started shortly after Columbus discovered the America's, and hasn't let up since. It is not of the USA's making, in fact, it made the USA.
See we are different. This is why I can dislike china so much for oppressing their own people even though they haven't killed any non-Chinese in almost 35 years. It is just a different level of bad to screw up your own country rather than others. America shouldn't become china.
I really can't judge why we do stuff abroad, but I can totally see what is happening in front of my face.
always click the profile before responding. can easily see this person does nothing but engage in flamebait posts to incite reactions as a trump supporter.
But the administration isn't directly affecting Americans -it's affecting some people who had legal residency (green cards) in the US and will for the time being affect potential visitors from select countries for 30 to 90 days.
When he ran, he ran on a platform to do good by America and Americans --none of the world shaping vision other presidents had (which then led them to foreign interventions which then lead to people calling America imperialistic and other tangling messes). So, it should be of little surprise he does not care very much about non-Americans (I think he takes that belief literally) and will try to deliver on it.
When the ACLU gets involved, I don't even see the "American" part of the civil liberties in there. I mean, good on them for caring, but at the moment it's doing work on behalf of foreign nationals, rather than Americans, directly.
While this may affect some friendships and relationships for Americans the impact is indirect.
Where is this policy affecting the civil liberties of American citizens? Obviously it's affecting some foreign nationals negatively.
ACLU defends the American civil liberties, not only the American civil liberties of American citizens. You seem to assume that the American civil rights apply only to citizens. That's a peculiar interpretation, and openly against Supreme Court doctrine. The Supreme Court, on the 14th amendment (Plyler v. Doe (1982)):
> "The last two clauses of the first section of the amendment disable a State from depriving not merely a citizen of the United States, but any person, whoever he may be, of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or from denying to him the equal protection of the laws of the State."
So, if I'm accused of something, the fist thing I should do is get married so my case will go away, I mean a prosecutor surely would not want to affect a spouse, right?
I thought this immigration ban was taking place independent of the visa process. I understood this ban to happen even for people with valid visas and even valid green cards. If this was "just" about visas not being granted the process would be much less of an issue. People would have found out long before they got to the border and people with existing green cards, etc. would be fine. But for some reason that couldn't happen and we had to rush into this half thought through mess.
Again, that happened in a far away land to people I don't know. The issue at hand is about people with green cards and H1Bs not being able to enter the country because Trump had a bad hair day. Completely different, I work with the latter people, while the former I don't know.
Wait, only one of those countries harbored one terrorist who was unsuccessful in killing anyone.
This order wouldn't have prevented 9/11 or any of the recent attacks. This order isn't designed in any way to protect our security. Frankly, I have no idea what it was meant for, but our country feels like it is under attack from the Trump administration.
This order shows Trump voters who are afraid of muslims, that Trump delivers. Meanwhile, it shows world leaders that Trump is prepared to change the rules governing immigration.
I don't think Trump is doing stuff at random here.
I completely agree. It's embarrassing to see how superficial our 'compassion' is. It always reminds me of Baudelaire's chilling poem, "To The Reader", where he so uncomfortably spells out ennui as the worst of all monsters. The last 3 verses;
>But among the jackals, the panthers, the bitch hounds,
>The apes, the scorpions, the vultures, the serpents,
>The yelping, howling, growling, crawling monsters,
>In the filthy menagerie of our vices,
>
>There is one more ugly, more wicked, more filthy!
>Although he makes neither great gestures nor great cries,
>He would willingly make of the earth a shambles
>And, in a yawn, swallow the world;
>
>He is Ennui! — His eye watery as though with tears,
>He dreams of scaffolds as he smokes his hookah pipe.
>You know him reader, that refined monster,
>— Hypocritish reader, — my fellow, — my brother!
(Of course not to advocate Trump, blah, blah, blah)
SFO is much closer than Syria. Anyone can go protest, anyone can go take pictures and post on social media.
The trouble that strikes at home always feels more important than the trouble that strikes far away.
Many people have friends who are immigrants or are immigrants themselves. Few people have friends living in those countries.
What worries me personally is what if this border closing stuff escalates further and further. I'm here on a visa and my country is not on the list, but who knows what they might come up with.
Especially considering the rumors that they're asking questions about allegiance to the regime and checking social media.
Please stop. It's not a binary issue, but unfortunately the elections are effectively a binary choice. And sometimes it takes a while for people to wake up. Encourage them to be consistent. Continually calling out hypocrisy isn't going to make people more likely to agree with you. Quite the opposite. Do you think the Executive Order should be opposed? If so, let people feel their oats now and engage. Once engaged, it's even more likely they'll be politically reflective and active in the future.
If you're fine with the Executive Order, fine, but please engage more constructively and civilly.
There is nothing wrong in pointing out hypocrisy. It is a pretty reasonable rhetoric technique.
I think his point stands, these refugees didn't appear in a vacuum. It is not a natural disaster or act of God. It was mostly due to destabilization efforts from the West. Wonder what the historical record is of these CEOs lobbying Obama to stop bombing or supporting "rebels" in those parts. I think it is worth having that discussion...
Now I think it a pretty bad decision to prevent Green Card holders to re-enter. I was one for many years, I can imagine how it feel being denied entry.
Why is it that people like scratching the hypocrisy itch? It's not even a logical fallacy. In fact, pointing out hypocrisy as a way of negating the merits of an argument _is a logical fallacy_: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
I think we as commenters on HN should hold ourselves to a higher bar.
Pointing out hypocrisy changes the conversation in a way that avoids discussing the relative merits of an argument. It doesn't invalidate the original argument - it's just that, rhetoric.
For example, I'm sure there were other hypocritical posts today. Isn't it hypocritical to try and fight hypocrisy by commenting on specific political points in a discussion but not others? (please dont take this argument seriously as I'm just offering it as an example of rhetoric)
Thing is, what guarantee does your opponent have that you will care about muslims when there is a democrat in the White House?
It's like a game theory problem. Rhetoric becomes meaningless: there needs to be a track record that shows that you cooperate.
That's why hypocrisy is invoked in the debate; rather than an argumentative tool, I see hypocrisy accusations as "flags" that say "I can't cooperate because of your low credibility"
People don't talk in first order predicate logic, it is just not how it works. Insisting on it is silly I think. Once in while mentioning "Ha! got ya, you just committed logical fallacy ${Latin_term}!" works. And is certainly very useful in rigorous arguments, but how fun is to converse with someone who throws that around after every sentence?
I had no suggestion that people converse in first order predicate logic.
I did suggest we are all smart enough here that we can have rich discussions without committing clear logical fallacies. HN is special in that the majority cares about thoughtful discussions and reasoning. Because of this I often read the comments in HN before the article, where historically the signal to noise ratio is quite high.
There are plenty of other forums for rhetoric or fun conversations.
I agree with all of your points. 'potatosoup has been making essentially the same comment throughout the day without engaging further in any nuanced way. It's one thing to point out inconsistencies in a constructive manner. It's quite another to repeatedly spout the same tired line. I'm not out to score rhetorical points. I don't think HN is a place for that.
As for the historical record, we can't do anything about what has happened in the past now. We can learn to do better. I know I'm not perfect and have things I can improve, which means I'm going to have to change and as a result be inconsistent with my past actions. It's true that some people are insincere and continue to be inconsistent and fair weather civil libertarians or what-have-you, but it's also the case that sometimes it takes a serious kick to mobilize people, and once mobilized they remain so. And if those that aren't consistent happen to align with me on an issue I care about, I'm not going to turn them away if it means that a temporary alliance helps a cause I care about. I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt as long as is reasonable.
You (and others) keep dismissing accusations of hypocrisy as "non-constructive", "non-arguments", "logical fallacies" or "rhetoric techniques". By deflecting this (perfectly valid) criticism, you're only confirming their (our?) point. Yes, the accusation of hypocrisy avoids debating the argument that immigration ban is immoral, but the point is, when someone accuses you of hypocrisy, they don't even believe your arguments - they think you're making the arguments in bad faith, making them up just to support your "side" (Democrats), as if you were truly moral, you would have been protesting for 8 years already. So, people see this protest merey as virtue signalling, protesting against Republicans that would have happened regardless of the issue at hand.
You might disagree with the logic above, but I don't think you'll be winning any arguments by pointing out that it's just "a rhetorical technique".
For one, there's genuine concern now that the next step will be action against "internal dissidents" or "malcontents" or "nonconformists" - or whatever language this administration decides to use against people who protest actively, or even just on FB and Twitter.
There's already an internal no-fly list. How happy will voters be when friends and family start appearing on it because they criticised the administration?
For another, freedom of movement - within the limits of immigration and the visa system - is a basic human right. With this action Trump has crossed the line from party politics to an attack on human rights in general. That's a protest-worthy step change in itself.
Finally, there has actually been quiet but steady agitation against foreign wars all the way back to 2003. (If not before.) It's never been as high profile, and it's been considered a "far left" effort.
The Democrats in the US are an unfortunate amalgam of incompatible interests, and there's always been a solid pro-war core of financial and political opportunists in the party who are consistently at odds with the ethical position of many mainstream D voters.
If "people see this as virtue signalling" that's up to them. I don't think they do, because this level of protest is unusual.
And also, to point out the glaringly obvious, it's not as if talk of building a wall or locking out people with green cards can't be even more easily dismissed as virtue signalling itself. For some reason the right seems to believe virtue signalling is purely a left wing pastime - which is a curious conceit, and is clearly incorrect.
People also feel it's "unfair" when they don't have any options for establishing their track record today. They don't have 8 years to build up credibility, and they hope to instead convince people of their good intentions verbally, mortgaging their supposed future protests against Democrat-era abuses.
One thing I want to get out of the way: I personally don't align very well strictly Democrat or Republican. I actually think it's unlikely that anyone aligns perfectly with one or the other. I also find this type of bucketing problematic because it reinforces this us versus them polarization that, among other things, prevents people from seriously considering that they may actually agree with some of the things people on the "other" side might believe.
As for deflecting criticism, as you call it, I'm not sure what realistic alternative there is. One would be to say, for example "oh, you're right! I was so wrong all those years! I should have been doing more!" That's tough for anyone to come out and say. How often do you hear someone actually say that? More likely people will shift their stance and act on it. It would be great if people would come out and say this. Accusing them of hypocrisy (as opposed to more constructive encouraging a change in behavior) makes it even harder for people to do so.
Another alternative could be to flip it around and point out where those who are accusing them of hypocrisy are themselves hypocritical. And assuredly there are cases of this. No one, much less a party, is so self-consistent to be immune from such criticism. But would that be constructive? I don't think so. That would only further polarization and increase the divide, each side thinking the other all the more unreasonable.
I'm sure I'm missing other alternatives here. Feel free to suggest your own.
I completely agree with you regarding the level of disbelief and bad faith that's currently abundant. How do we get beyond that? At some point if you're not willing to believe people at their word, can you at least believe their actions? You may, for a while, think they're insincere while they go about doing things that you might actually agree with, but if they continue to do so, even if you don't believe their sincerity, does it make sense not to work with them, at least on the projects that further your goals and don't require you to compromise on any of your other goals?
Serious question: have you noticed how there's no way to level that accusation without feeling like a jerk? It's because it's hard to accuse someone of doing something good for the wrong reason without behaving like a jerk.
There's more, and I think the whole thing is worth reading.
I honestly don't know how to bridge the gap, to reduce the polarization we're now experiencing. I do believe that continuing to act in bad faith, to obstruct and name-call is definitely not going to help.
If you don't think this gap can or should be bridged (and I don't mean "convince everyone to agree with me"), feel free to dismiss everything I say. If there were a way on HN to hide all comments from a particular member, I'd encourage you to block me, as that's really all I'm about.
So.. your thesis is: supporting Clinton (against Trump) is somehow anti muslim (how exactly? Never mind, let's just grant you that for arguments sake)
But demonstrating against Trump when he proves their worst fears (including being anti Muslim in the dumbest of ways possible) is "virtue signaling" somehow?
I think you need to take a break and work on your Logic 101.
Clinton's support of bombing numerous Muslim countries in the Middle East as Secretary of State and prior to that, would blatantly be considered anti-Muslim if it were Trump doing it, just as it was considered anti-Muslim under Bush. Hillary was an extremely aggressive supporter of the Iraq invasion, the war in Afghanistan, the US involvement in Libya, the bombing of Syria, and the drone programs that bombed numerous Muslim nations including Pakistan.
"...If we kept the oil you probably wouldn't have ISIS because that's where they made their money in the first place. So we should have kept the oil, but OK. Maybe we'll have another chance."
The US is still droning, that policy of assassination has not changed. It was wrong under Obama, and is wrong now (plenty of people condemned it), but is nothing to do with immigration policy.
This is whataboutery, and you're also trying to reduce serious issues to the shallow dichotomy of American political parties. Don't do that.
I can't speak for GP, but telling a guest that they are no longer welcome doesn't seem like a moral issue at all, while killing someone definitely is, regardless of how good or bad the people are.
If you're not a citizen, whatever the country, you're a guest. It would be absolutely terrible to be a resident for years and then told you're no longer welcome, but I don't think it is a moral issue.
If I invite someone to live with me and they stay for ten years, it is not evil for me to kick them out afterwards.
A "Permanent Resident" is permanent. That's not a guest any longer. And if kicking someone out of their home isn't a moral issue, I don't know what is.
> If I invite someone to live with me and they stay for ten years
If you sign a contract saying they're allowed to live with you for ten years, and kick them out after 3 years, I would argue that it is evil (not to mention illegal).
Well, at least they're doing something. I agree though, it's a horrible crime to see how nobody expresses any outrage at some of the horrible things the US has done before. Like all those 100s of thousands of people who died in Iraq.
And that is the real point.
Seizing on humanitarian issues to make political hay while ignoring the much larger humanitarian issues being caused by people you support is just unsavory.
edit: I'm being very aggressively downvoted in every thread that I point out the hypocrisy of only supporting civil liberties when your party is out of power, and suggesting that liberals should become consistent in their support of civil liberties. Fascinating echo chamber here.
---
Where were they during the 2006 Secure Fence Act? [1] Where were the vast protests when Obama pushed through the NSA data sharing policy during his last days in office? Violate the liberties of hundreds of millions of people, and they don't bat an eyelash.
It's not very productive of course, to only point out that so many liberals are extreme hypocrites on civil liberties. Democrats won't get my vote until they can act consistently on such, including against their own President. The effort now should be on encouraging the left to remold itself strictly when it comes to protecting civil liberties again, rather than turning a blind eye when it's convenient. There needs to be consequences for Dem politicians that support/ed the abuse of civil liberties, whether now or in the recent past (as so many of them have).
Something wrong with this world. I wish it to be vice a versa. Brin should be in the president chair, making America great as Google, and Trump should be outside joining protest against modernization.
They are very much not in the low-to-medium end sysadmin/"IT person" consulting business.
The mere fact that you don't already understand this honestly kind of makes me wonder what you are doing here.
Unless, of course you are really against importing very competent people that will have high salaries, pay a lot of tax and be great benefit to the US, just for the selfish reason that it doesn't drive up your own salary... even more?
Let's just say there are quite a few smaller wannabe "Silicon Valleys" outside of the US that are picking up steam. If your government will continue to behave this erratically they will be quite happy.
Of course I know the type of people Google hire. Google are irrelevant...Google campaign for an extension of H1B issuances full stop...not for more just for great companies.
The abuses and pitfalls of these visas are open for you to examine and you should be aware of them if you're in the industry...there have been numerous studies on wage suppression, graduate unemployment, numerous court cases, instances of mass-firings, large displacement, etc.
I'm not a US citizen and don't live in the US so my salary is irrelevant.
America's economy benefits from bringing some of the best brains in the world here. If America screws that up, other countries will be happy to accept smart workers and students.
So US should probably not take any immigrants, because 99 per cent is cheap worker. You are probably the cheap labor compared to some of these h1b googler.
I find your position disingenuous. When people bring up H1B = slaves they don't care about the poor immigrant's low wage, they care about the indirect impact they would have on their salaries.
I, for one, would(or would have before Trump) gladly worked even for 66000 $/year in the US, considering I'm currently making 1/5th of that in my home country. And it would be advantageous for me and would not see myself as a slave - people go there using H1B because it makes sense financially. And there you go, saying you're against H1B because you want to protect those people from what they want to do? The argument doesn't make sense! Just say already you want to protect your wages and don't hide behind "good will".
I'm in your position but even worse off, so I'm not a US citizen and am not just being exclusionary.
Of course it's rational for people to go to the US on H1b visas. I would be of the exact same opinion as you in this sense.
This isn't the issue though. One of the issue is the abuses that are occurring due to companies ability to hire many H1B workers at the expense of their own. Another issue is that large corporations are practically dictating government policy on visas. None of these are right imo.
> This isn't the issue though. One of the issue is the abuses that are occurring due to companies ability to hire many H1B workers at the expense of their own. Another issue is that large corporations are practically dictating government policy on visas. None of these are right imo.
And these are not the issues I'm attacking. I'm arguing against the self-richeous statements of some people that are against H1B visas because of the poor poor immigrants that come here[there] to earn such low salaries. They care about their own salaries, and that's fine, but just say so. In my post, I didn't take an issue with protectionism (although I don't agree with it either, even if I were either side of the border) but name that as your reason, don't hide behind a false one.
Of course it does. The H1B scheme isn't a Google scheme. They might campaign for certain parameters within the scheme, e.g. required skillset, minimum pay, but ultimately they're campaigning to extend the scheme. Which leaves it open to abuses by other companies, and continued worker displacement, and continued suppression of wages.
The H1B visa program already has different pipelines for different countries and education levels. Even if it didn't, that it does, there's no reason they couldn't be implemented.
The bucket companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon or Microsoft are trying to hire from is the highest skillset. The supply is so short that starting salaries out of college are 6 figures; the situation is gentrifying the whole Bay Area. There's no way random shady company X can abuse any of these candidates, nor treat them like slaves, rather the opposite.
The other end of the H1B spectrum, these companies aren't interested in hiring. Their shareholders wouldn't want to spend a dime lobbying to extend those buckets.
I know all this from my own experience going through the process.
I applaud this and very much wish to see more like this.
That's from someone who finds plenty of opportunity to criticise Google. Including presently for the company's support of the GOP, now a de-facto fascist party. Yes, I'm aware the situation's a complex one, and Google isn't a garage operation any more.
You all are aware that the past 6 U.S. presidents have done this sort of thing...right?
Obama last did it in 2011.
The hypocrisy here is that because Trump did it, it is wrong.
We are a nation of laws and in order to maintain law and order, we must follow those laws. The minute tech companies (let's not be obtuse here, corporations are in the business of making money and appeasing shareholders) decides they are either for or against certain laws, well...you have anarchy.
This has nothing to do with denying rights to immigrants and everything to do with the far lefts disproval of the elected president of the United States.
Obama Admin banned processing applications from Iraqi refugees during a 6 month period [1]. They did not ban approved refugees from entering the US.
Obama Admin never banned permanent residents aka greencard-holders married to US citizens from re-entering the US because they held Iranian passports. The current executive order does. Doesn't matter if they are completing a PhD in Computer Science at Princeton and flew to Canada for a conference. They can now be refused entry for not breaking any laws. The smartest, most-hardworking immigrants and non-immigrant student-visa holders will instead choose Switzerland, Germany, and other places because of blanket bans like this.
Obama's version of the move wasn't great either, but it's not nearly a direct comparison; he temporarily shut down immigration from one country directly in response to a known and immediate threat, for a set and predetermined period of time. Trump is trying to shut down immigration from seven countries, indefinitely, for no particular reason aside from a general sense of feeling threatened by them. He also, unlike Obama, did so amidst a sea of his own angry rhetoric implying that the ban was entirely due to Islamophobic prejudice.
So, yes, the POTUS can deny rights to humans in all sorts of ways and no one will complain- we're far from perfect. But that he's denying human rights from outright bigotry is especially unacceptable.
Meanwhile, tech companies can decide they're for or against whatever they want- according to the (heinous) Citizens United decision, corporations are people now, and entitled to their political opinions just like you and me. It's not anarchy, its capitalism!
>The minute tech companies (let's not be obtuse here, corporations are in the business of making money and appeasing shareholders) decides they are either for or against certain laws, well...you have anarchy.
Private companies can't protest about unfair laws? Really? That's not the same as disobeying laws.
You can find plenty of examples of more conservative companies opposing left-wing laws.
How can you not see the difference between ending the program due to institutionalized xenophobia and pausing it temporarily in order to work on its safety? Are you being obtuse?
Serious question: have you noticed how there's no way to level that accusation without feeling like a jerk? It's because it's hard to accuse someone of doing something good for the wrong reason without behaving like a jerk. It's a sort of intrinsically nihilist position to take. And we laugh when nihilists take a bowling ball to the stomach. Or maybe just when it's Flea.
It's very difficult to use the concept of "virtue signaling" as a rhetorical weapon without conceding a whole lot of personal credibility. There's a reason that only a certain strange subset of people, people you probably don't want to associate yourself with, toss that term around casually.
I know how patronizing I sound writing this, and I'm sorry, but I swear to Christ I'm serious about the morbid curiosity I hold for people who think "virtue signaling" is some kind of devastating online bon mot.
I'm confused why people think virtue signalling is a bad thing in the first place. "Hey, you're doing this very good thing just to show off how good you are!". Oh no, how terrible.
As I understand it, the problem is when people are focussing on doing what looks good (posting on Facebook) rather than what is good (writing letters to their representatives)
Virtue signalling is a term to describe people that are doing harm to a cause or providing no benefit to it, while also aiming to maximize the admiration they receive from others.
That is at least how it's meant to be used.
tptacek isn't wrong to point out that the Right generally uses it to denigrate people that are trying to do good just because there is a little 'show' with their 'action'. This is evil because people shouldn't be dissuaded from doing good things. In fact they should be celebrated. The Right have pretty much completely missed the point of talking about signalling, which is credible/costly vs. cheap.
I think you think there's confusion about the textual meaning of "virtue signaling". No, we all get what it means: in fact, it's such a pugnaciously vivid term that we probably all understood it the moment it was first used, without explanation.
What I think you're missing is the subtextual meaning of "virtue signaling", which is, essentially, "there is no virtue except virtue I condone".
Since that's obviously not the case, most --- maybe pretty much all, in fact --- of the time the term gets used, it's a nihilistic attempt to shut down the good works and careful thoughts of others, casually calling into question their good faith, solely because their broader intentions don't square with yours.
And, as I said, those are the kinds of people we laugh at when John Goodman hucks a bowling ball into their gut. I'm laughing a little bit right now just thinking about it. Again I caution though, it could be more about Flea.
I do not think I missed the subtextual meaning at all. I explicitly drew attention to the misuse of the term in my last paragraph.
The textual meaning is in my opinion more important, and more often than not completely lost on people. The term 'signalling' is a bit of biology/economics terminology and people aren't very familiar with it. The idea of cost-based credibility isn't expressed within the term, but must be learned beforehand. So they just say 'virtue signalling' because it sounds clever and it remains opaque to them...
Nobody need study biology or economics to immediately understand what people who casually invoke "virtue signaling" are communicating textually. And, as to the subtext, say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism...
Don't forget that 'virtue signalling' isn't an honest term, either: it's primarily used by the right to shut down the left without addressing the issues raised. (If anyone disagrees with me, take a look at [1] and keep a running tally of the sentence's subject.)
That, and the black and gray "striping" of whole threads that is now as predictable as it is annoying, is why I have started flagging. Never felt like flagging articles before.
It's not at all patronizing. If these people are going to brigade every post about this topic with the same hollow rhetoric, they could at least come up with some alternative phrasing.
Since this is Hacker News, they could also even learn how to automate the creation of new pejoratives. Just go read one of the seven "Intro to AI" tutorials posted this week.
>If these people are going to brigade every post about this topic with the same hollow rhetoric
I think the "these people" rhetoric you use is worse.
The same people who would be enraged at the usage of the term if it was in regards to, say, Muslims, are more than happy to use the term referring to Trump supporters.
> It's very difficult to use the concept
> of "virtue signaling" as a rhetorical
> weapon without conceding a whole lot
> of personal credibility.
It's telling that you drop three paragraphs in response to a throwaway comment. You're seizing the opportunity to take the weakest example of a 'virtue-signalling' comment so you can argue against it as if it is an exemplar.
You're unfortunately wrong. Virtue signalling is literally about credibility [0].
And there is nothing new under the sun here. It's been seen as virtuous for a long time to do good deeds with no ulterior motives. To give money to charity but not to proclaim to everybody that you are charitable, etc.
The reality is that people who have low credibility are those that feel they need to stop others from looking twice at anything. While it might not exist here, fraud is a real problem - and we need to be able to name it when we see it.
>And there is nothing new under the sun here. It's been seen as virtuous for a long time to do good deeds with no ulterior motives. To give money to charity but not to proclaim to everybody that you are charitable, etc.
It has traditionally been the case, but that view is wrong. This is exactly what incentivises 'empty signalling' - doing things that get your virtue acknowledged, rather than ones that get the most good done.
Instead you should do the most good, and talk loudly about it.
How does one distinguish between a person acting from genuine good intentions and a person who is merely "virtue signalling"?
(I say "merely virtue signalling" because there's nothing intrinsically wrong with virtue signalling if it's accompanied by consistently virtuous actions)
I'd suggest consistency as a heuristic. Is the person consistently "good". Are their actions and speech inconsistent or hypocritical? Brin, I think, would pass that test.
> How does one distinguish between a person acting from genuine good intentions and a person who is merely "virtue signalling"?
Not only is the determination usual just a reflection of preexisting bias in the determiner, but I think it matters less than people tend to portray, at least in pragmatic terms. Virtue signalling can do as much to reinforce the norm that those genuinely in favor of the message wish to advance as a social norm as honest advocacy.
It's always the same. You look at their prior beliefs (i.e. motives), actions so far, and incentives. A certain amount of consistency and self-sacrifice will happen if it's virtue. Whereas virtue signaling is often more about creating appearance of virtue for selfish gain. You might want to look into politics and marketing to understand more about that sort of thing. Those specialize in it. ;)
In case you weren't paying attention, the main reason for this round of protests is that Trump's executive order is causing legal permanent residents to be detained in US airports and/or deported from the country.
A visa does not guarantee entry into the country. It is a permit to travel to and to enter the United States. The citizens of certain countries - such as Canada - do not need to obtain a visa in order to enter the US. The Visa Waiver Program waives the visa application process for tourists and short term business visitors from a separate list of countries.
Regardless of whether or not a visa is needed, the border guard has final say on whether or not a foreign citizen is allowed to enter the country.
Nah, laws and their constitutionality as determined by our judiciary have the final say. ICE disobeying them, even at the behest of the president, is a constitutional crisis.
I'm talking about visas specifically, not green cards.
It is impractical for a foreign citizen living overseas without ties to the US to sue the US government for wrongfully denying them entry to the country even though they had a visa. It would be simpler and cheaper for an individual with the means to pull this off to simply apply for an investment-based green card[0] or to get a Maltese passport.[1] Malta is on the list of Visa Waiver Program countries.
Green card holders are not exempt from the order as per advice from the whitehouse itself. The DHS initially thought they would be exempt, but were later corrected by Trump.
A US citizen cannot be barred from entering the US. That is one of the key rights of citizenship.
A US citizen is also required to present their US passport when entering the US - even if they are a dual citizen and hold another passport.
The whole thing about dual citizens refers to citizens of the banned countries who also hold citizenship of a third country - i.e. one that is not the US and one that is not banned. e.g. an Iraqi-Canadian who presents a Canadian passport is still barred from the US by Trump's order.
Can you please stop saying "if you weren't paying attention" when you were the only person in this thread not paying attention?
Us leftists are willing to work with Trump voters and bridge the divide that wounds this nation. We're willing to listen to concerns about your jobs and communities that we clearly failed to listen to in this election cycle. But you have to be willing to say "I was wrong about Trump, I wasn't paying attention."
Right, and herein lies perhaps the best thing to come out of a Trump presidency: People obviously aren't prepared to discover exactly how much power has been slowly conglomerated and consolidated into the office of President. This stuff didn't just suddenly happen with Trump. He's just using the laws this country gave him. And perhaps there is a contradictory law somewhere on the books from fifty years ago. That doesn't mean much, because the kid going to MIT can't return to school after visiting family right now. The law might get sorted out by the courts later, but right now? Maybe after this, there won't be as much apathy about what's made law in the United States.
Edit: apparently I was mistaken. It applies to 'the people' of the US, which is anyone with 'substantial connection' to the US and under US jurisdiction. Green card holders would seem to be pretty clearly of 'the people' then.
Of course, it's a damn shame to treat any legal immigrant or legitimate asylum seeker this way. Seems to be absolutely against the long standing traditions of the country.
The vast majority of the constitution makes no distinction between citizens and non-citizens subject to American jurisdiction (the exceptions, of course, being for voting and holding office).
They are. My father owned several guns (we used to go hunting) before we were naturalized (in 2007). I think he owned a .30-06 rifle even before we had our green cards.
I believe the 4473 form for transferring a firearm asks residency status and requires an alien number if you are not a citizen. I'm 99% sure PR status is required...
Since Obama clearly isn't motivated by xenophobia, Brin had no reason to distrust the reasons for it because he's sophisticated enough to understand context.
The Obama administration paused the program temporarily in response to a specific weakness in it, see the article you linked. That's reasonable. Trump is ideologically opposed to accepting refugees. Brin understands the difference, do you?
Please don't spin things in the most inflammatory way. I realize that's what everyone else is doing everywhere else, but we're trying to preserve a sliver of civil discussion here, and comments this just shred all hope of it.
He didn't "pull out the same stunt". Trump's Executive Order bars Permanent Residents from re-entering the country, not just refugees, and was done not in response to a specific threat from the countries in question, but because he was fulfilling a deeply misguided campaign promise.
While pausing Iraqi refugee intake for 6 months in 2011 was almost certainly an overreaction, it was done in response to a case in Kentucky where it was shown that a number of Iraqi enemy combatants had been granted refugee status in 2009.
"I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order"
There are two clauses that have indefinite periods:
1. Immigration from Syria: "until such time as I have determined that sufficient changes have been made to the USRAP"
2. Acceptance of more than 50,000 refugees in FY2017 "until such time as I determine that additional admissions would be in the national interest."
> that targets seven countries
No countries are listed in the EO. CORRECTION: Only Syria is named. Otherwise it branches to 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12) which ( dating from 2015 ) names Iraq and Syria and further includes any countries or area of concern as determined by the SoS or the Secretary of Homeland Security. The latter list is reviewed annually.
i tried to find out where the source of this information came from. all i could find were far-right blogs reposting the same story from thefederalist, whose source was this ABCNEWS article[0]
Other than that article; in which it says federal sources have told them the State Department had stopped processing Iraqi refugees, I cannot find any other news site that doesn't link back to this very article.
At best there is another site that had some coverage of what happened back in 2011[1]. which only says there's been a large slowdown of approvals for Iraqi refugees due to the incident that occurred in 2009.
In all I can only find 4 EOs from Obama that "banned" immigrants and it was not a blanket ban on all Muslims in select countries. The 4 EOs he made were never targeting certain nationalities or people of certain religious faiths. The last one he made was in 2014 where he banned the entry of anyone who claimed to be a government authority in the Crimea region without authorization from the government of Ukraine.[2]
So I would like to find an actual government website that has a statement saying that they did bar all Iraqi refugees in 2011. I cannot find an EO matching that description. Maybe the State Department did it internally? I do not know.
specificially the articles cited says obama says banned only iraqi refugees for 6 months, not syrian, nor just immigrants. specifically it would have to be an order coming from USRAP or the State Dept or some kind of EO from Obama.
also the article you provided seems to be about visa waivers and not actual immigration law/orders.
i'm not an expert so i'm trying to sort out what exactly they are saying obama did.
I don't really deal in the gossip or alt-news, but with the law and actual orders.
The link I gave you is not an article. It is the legal code of the United States.
That is what is on the books. Ratified by Congress, signed by Obama, and the list of nation-states that were areas of concern were created by agencies of the Obama administration.
When you see headlines "Trump bans muslims from seven countries" and then look in the Trump EO and don't find the words Iran, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, etc it is drawing its authority from this which has been the policy of the US government for years.
> although it is mildly irritating that only half the country is able to find one at any one time.
Was the "other half" outraged about the Obama administration's freezing out of Iraqi refugees at the time? I don't remember that at all. And when I Google[1] for "obama iraq refugees" and limit the scope to the year 2011, about the only criticism of this policy that I can find was from liberals and the left.
Besides which, Trump's order — which prevents even permanent residents from entering the United States — is far wider in scope than the Obama State Department's policy in 2011. It's totally expected that the reaction is bigger this time around.
I'm sorry is Obama still president? No? Then let's talk about our current presidents actions and not live in the past. People are reacting to Trumps actions as he is president for now.
Obama never pulled the same stunt. His order never extended to lawful permanent residents or dual citizens from friends and allies. And you know as well as I that the tech industry people protesting this weren't spending their days writing drone software. Drones don't run on React and Node.
I don't think that delay stoped all Iraqi citizens from coming to the us, or people would have noticed. Still, Obama did lots of things I didn't like, such as the unending killing people from the air with drones thing. Yet I wish he was still president, or someone non-crazy. We should hold Obama to task for the things he did that were wrong. Just as we will hold Trump to task.
Would you have preferred that he kill people from the ground with troops or that he kill people from the sea with cruise missiles?
Obama conceded far more to reducing collateral damage than any president in our lifetimes, but some people loudly and continually claimed that he is just as bad as Trump would be. Those people are now finding out what false equivalence means.
I wasn't saying they were equivalent, and I think there is a huge difference between them. i was arguing that we should hold people responsible for what they did. I don't think it's better to kill people from airplanes than drones or whatever. But the big thing is we have to hold trump responsible for his activities, we can't allow it because 'he's the president'.
I was denied a entry visa into Paraguay left to be stranded in Brazil. I barely made it to my grandmothers funeral. I had to call the embassy and spend several days in limbo. I understood that I was powerless because I was not a citizen of Brazil nor Paraguay. I wasn't entitled to representation by either country nor would they provide it.
I was jailed in Mozambique for refusing to pay a bribe at the border. I did not expect nor receive any special treatment. This is the way things are.
I overstayed my visa in Chile by less than 24 hours, was forced to remain at the border between Argentina and Chile for the day and threatened with jail. I did not fight and riot nor protest. Why would I? I need to follow the laws of the country I am in.
What we have here is a nation so divided that you have people on the right who are for less government and rule, but respect the rule of law and people on the left who have no regard for the law and demand more regulations and laws.
The people being detained here have obeyed all of the rules (visa holders, permanent residents), and are still getting screwed. I skew right of center and am usually the last person to get pissed off enough to protest on the streets, but I went down to LAX tonight. The US got ahead in the world because we play by the rules and don't pull discriminatory ex post-facto stunts like this. As a nation, we should seek to keep things this way.
Protesting and reaching out to the people affected by actions like this is absolutely within the bounds of American civil society's responsibilities.
So your point of comparison for the US are Paraguay, Mozambique and Chile? Also, note that none of the people being detained under his EO right now is actually being accused of breaking the law: if they'd arrived two days ago, they wouldn't have faced any issues at all. So it's unclear to me how your experience informs any aspect of our current predicament.
> ... people on the right who are for less government and rule, but respect the rule of law ...
The right has just elected this guy into WH:
> "Hillary wants to abolish -- essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know," Trump said.
I think what he said was entirely appropriate. You don't have to look very hard to find pretty convincing evidence that Republicans are not the law and order party that they claim to be. Gerrymandering, obstructionism, racist and anarchist dog whistling. There's so much there it's hard to know where to start.
You've written a much more substantive and civil comment than did 'yongjik while raising the same issue. My point was not that the sentiment was unjustified, but that the manner in which it was expressed was uncivil. Especially with politics, we need to strive to be even more civil rather than less so.
Please stop bringing up every last thing you can think of, no matter how wrong you think others may be. These discussions are difficult enough as it is without throwing all variety of incendiary materials on the fire. It's not constructive and actively makes things worse.
That is a good point. Thank you for pointing that out! It's way too easy to lose perspective and often control these dayes.
I have to get better at what I actually set out to do and ignore politics and news for the next years and just donate s bunch to ACLU. That's really all one can do. I don't think there is anything one could say that would make this situation better either way.
I don't think there is anything one could say that would make this situation better either way.
Well, I'd like to think our little exchange made things a little better. I know it helped reinforce for me that people can step back and reflect, which it's easy to lose sight of. And figuring out ways to do so is increasingly important.
well, they're not following the Constitution and the law on this visa situation, so I would respectfully disagree ...
see e.g. - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigratio... . one can parse words but the whole thing seems clearly intended and specifically designed to make laws with respect to people of a specific religious faith, contrary to the First Amendment.
authorizing torture, proposing Muslim registries, intimidating the media, threatening to send troops to Chicago, bullying companies to score PR points ... all of these things, if Obama had done them, some would have said it was incipient dictatorship. it's plain as day that this Administration falls on the authoritarian end of the spectrum, not for 'less government and rule'.
Why couldn't we just change the rules for new visa that are being given out? People would have had ample warning before they get to the border and people with existing visa who randomly happened to be traveling wouldn't have been impacted. Arguably we would have achieved about the same security without the giant mess.
The only reason I can see why this was done in this fashion, side stepping regular process as if some disaster wag imminent is so that our new president can own this news cycle and make his fanatic voters happy.
Your statement vastly confuses me. Because things are laws they are just and moral and you should respect them? That's a really backwards way of thinking.
Vastly? Like the vast reaches of outer space? Wow...
Because things are laws is the reason the US has been able to maintain its democracy (constitutional republic) for as long as it has. So yes.
Picking and choosing what laws you want to follow based on how popular or pc they are is why Hillary lost and is why we have sanctuary cities and is why welfare wiped out the American family.
Tell that to the nut jobs who occupied the wild life refuge in Oregon after having had a previous police stand off.
It's a good thing not all laws are enforced equally. Otherwise most of us apparently would be on jail because of obscure, old laws that were never revoked.
Also, how did the welfare state destroy the Martian family?
Have you ever been outside the US? Edit: nvm saw you were the same poster who talked about their border experience in other countries. There goes that prejudice of mine.
It is not just morally right to resist laws that are unjust and immoral. It is a moral imperative. It's actually accounted for in jury trials in the US, see jury nullification.
So you weren't a permanent resident of Paraguay? You didn't have a job, a house, or a family in Brazil? You didn't spend years navigating the immigration system in Mozambique? I fail to see the relevance of your comparison.
People who are legal permanent residents of the US, with lives and jobs here, are being denied entrance.
Since we all love Godwin's law, those people who man the gas chambers in Nazi Germany were also respecting the rule of law. I'd rather be on side of good and decent than have respect for an unjust law.
You fail to see my experience (as anecdotal as it was) as relevant and yet, you compare what is currently happening to Jews being gassed in Nazi Germany. I really don't understand you leftist.
> you compare what is currently happening to Jews being gassed in Nazi Germany.
Poor reading comprehension; I did no such thing. It was merely a very strong counter-example to your idea that one should not question the rule of law.
I stick up for Google a lot --- nobody has done more to improve the security of the web than they have --- but they deserve credit for this kind of thing too.