My Thoughts On A Bunch of Current Events
Jul 29, 2015 23:13:14 GMT -5
MarchingOn and Juggs like this
Post by DPNormanReturns on Jul 29, 2015 23:13:14 GMT -5
Hey, guys. I just wanted to discuss a few things which have been on my mind lately:
1) I must preface by saying that while I cannot understand while he has the support he has been getting, if there are any on these forums who do support Donald Trump in his nomination bid, I have nothing against you. It does baffle me, however, to see that he manages to be immune to gaffes. You'd think that a candidate for the nomination would be digging his own grave by asking questions such as "Who's doing all the raping?" and then arguing that John McCain is not a war hero, a claim which even MSNBC could not accept. Somehow, Donald Trump seems to have a much smaller obligation to watch his mouth than any other candidate in either party, and it's disturbing. Why do some people give him a free pass, and why does he somehow have even slightly better poll numbers now than before the McCain comments? My thing against Donald Trump's bid is that I believe any president in this election (and, given the way the world seems to be working now, all the foreseeable subsequent ones) must have, perhaps above all else, experience and ability to solve international and foreign policy problems. Handling Vladimir Putin's disturbing actions, as well as ISIS and counterterrorism, should be at or near the top of the priorities list for the top of government in the United States, and I find it almost impossible to imagine Donald Trump in a situation room contemplating foreign strategy and international affairs. I do believe that if Trump makes it to the general election, whether as a Republican or as a third-party candidate, that he will probably cost his party the election, because while he may have appeal to the extremely conservative base, I don't believe he can appeal to moderates and I doubt he'll win the swing states. He also has big issues getting minority votes.
2) Russia has made some disturbing headlines lately. One such headline was that bombers were spotted near Alaska and California early this month, with the likely tongue-in-cheek message of a happy Fourth of July to the American pilots. Putin has little to gain from just flying planes over California, but his strategy is somewhat concerning; it seems he is trying to play with the United States as much as possible just to see what it takes to get a reaction. While the airspace the Russians flew over this time was in fact international, and thus legal for them to use, this is not always the case with their international flights, and additionally it seems Russian pilots have a habit of not turning on their transponders, so their arrival is often unannounced and sometimes dangerous when there is a lot of air traffic. But regardless of the specifics, it is clear Vladimir Putin is playing a dangerous, and fundamentally alarming, game. International tensions have not been this high since the end of the Cold War, and while the United States has surely been involved in numerous foreign policy misbehaviors, I can't help but think that the way Putin have operated on the international scale in the last few years is the primary culprit. It is truly disturbing to hear Vladimir Putin tell his countrymen that he could "destroy the United States in thirty minutes or less", and it is also alarming to hear that Putin placed Moscow's nuclear arsenal on alert during his Crimea expedition. What are other world leaders supposed to do? Russia's new nuclear doctrines dictate that the threshold for nuclear attack has been dramatically lowered. Russia's conventional military might is not close to that of the United States, but Vladimir Putin's enormous arsenal of nuclear weapons enables him to play with fire in ways which could very reasonably lead to another Cuban Missile Crisis, or maybe a potential WWIII.
Among the new nuclear terms introduced by his doctrine is that of a "de-escalation strike", and my understanding of its potential use is roughly the following: Russia declares that if a conventional military attack poses any significant "existential threat" to the country itself, it has the right to drop a "tactical" nuclear weapon, which will not be large enough to cause major immediate damage, but will be deployed for the purpose of demonstrating Russia's willingness to use nuclear weapons and thus cause the enemy to back down. The idea of a "tactical" nuclear weapon or a "de-escalation strike" is honestly one of the chilliest ideas I have ever heard. While I have a hard time believing that any major, total-destruction oriented strike could reasonably occur without extreme circumstances, Russia's new doctrine indicates that this tactical strike could occur any time it feels threatened. The idea of tactical nuclear weaponry is alarming for many reasons, but perhaps chief among them is that any nuclear strike has enormous effects upon the planet. There was one study (mentioned in this article: www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8845913/russia-war#redline) which created a model for a hypothetical war between India and Pakistan in which 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs were dropped, which would be only about one percent of the combined Russian and American nuclear arsenals. If this happened, "the explosions, the study found, would push a layer of hot, black smoke into the atmosphere, where it would envelop the Earth in about 10 days. The study predicted that this smoke would block sunlight, heat the atmosphere, and erode the ozone for many years, producing what the researchers call without hyperbole 'a decade without summer.' As rains dried and crops failed worldwide, the resulting global famine would kill 1 billion people." A nuclear war, even one much too small to destroy the planet per se, would still ruin the world as we know it. If Russia continues its rampant abuse and disregard of international law, there will come a time when someone will need to enforce these laws upon Russia, and if Russia continues its disobedience, or gets into some international conflict (even by accident), force may be required. If a government led by Putin, or Medvedev, or any of their followers is still in power at this time, it will be able to decide for itself what force can push Russia to the brink. Everyone in the world knows that Russia cannot defend itself militarily from a NATO attack, but the best defense can sometimes be a good offense. If world leaders are given the choice between punishing Russia (i.e. risking provocation of a nuclear strike under the ever-changing Russian nuclear doctrine) and allowing Russia to proceed out of fear of its nuclear capacities, who knows what the result might be.
3) Let's now transition to a less destructive, but still extremely sensitive topic in America; that of the police and their treatment of African Americans. We have yet another case recently of a policeman killing a black man for dubious reasons- this time in Cincinnati, Ohio, where a University of Cincinnati policeman named Ray Tensing shot Sam DuBose in his car near (but not on) the University of Cincinnati campus. However, as many of you may have seen, there's now a new element involved: the body camera, which Tensing had turned on at the time of the incident. First, it is necessary to recall the way in which Tensing described the incident before the footage became public:
-He said he thought "[DuBose] was going to run [him] over."
-He said his hand was "caught in the steering wheel or something" and thus DuBose was purposely dragging him around in the vehicle until Tensing shot him.
Okay, before we even talk about what really happened, how the hell would shooting the driver of a car that's dragging you around help solve the problem? As you'll see in the video, if you fatally shoot a driver of a car while his foot is on the wheel, he then obviously dies and is then unable to lift his foot off the gas, and the car continues forward. So, to me, that already seems like a somewhat B.S. reason to shoot someone, because it wouldn't have helped Tensing defend himself much, but then I suppose if someone were dragging me around in a car at high speeds, I would be at least somewhat morally justified in shooting that person in retaliation.
However, upon examination of the video, almost everything Tensing says is complete garbage. His decision to pull DuBose over was reasonable. DuBose was missing a license plate on one side of his car (I think the front?). Tensing came up to DuBose and asked if he had the license plate. DuBose said yes but then could not locate it. Tensing then asked for DuBose's license, and DuBose, after some fiddling around for it, could not locate that either. This immediately caused Tensing to ask whether DuBose's license had been suspended, and DuBose insisted that it hadn't. The only other notable detail is that DuBose had in his car a bottle of some sort of alcoholic fluid which he claimed was a cleaning fluid of some sort, and which Tensing looked at for a bit. Tensing asked DuBose to take his seatbelt off, and when DuBose resisted (not violently or aggressively, just simply asking why Tensing was asking him to take his seatbelt off), Tensing leaned into the car. At this moment it seemed that DuBose put the car in drive (or something, the footage is not clear) but Tensing thought, reasonably, that DuBose was going to drive off. However, his reaction to this was to reach into the car and kill the man, well before DuBose had started moving forward.
This is particularly disgusting because not only did Tensing lie about it in complete contradiction to the film evidence, he also managed to get several of his associates to do the same thing. If this murder had not been caught on tape, we can be fairly sure that the case against Tensing would be completely different, and not half as compelling. While I believe privacy is evaporating today, and I lament this, I do believe that cameras are necessary on police officers for precisely this reason. They completely change the game, and I hope Tensing gets the sentence he deserves.
That's it. Just had a few things I wanted to discuss.
1) I must preface by saying that while I cannot understand while he has the support he has been getting, if there are any on these forums who do support Donald Trump in his nomination bid, I have nothing against you. It does baffle me, however, to see that he manages to be immune to gaffes. You'd think that a candidate for the nomination would be digging his own grave by asking questions such as "Who's doing all the raping?" and then arguing that John McCain is not a war hero, a claim which even MSNBC could not accept. Somehow, Donald Trump seems to have a much smaller obligation to watch his mouth than any other candidate in either party, and it's disturbing. Why do some people give him a free pass, and why does he somehow have even slightly better poll numbers now than before the McCain comments? My thing against Donald Trump's bid is that I believe any president in this election (and, given the way the world seems to be working now, all the foreseeable subsequent ones) must have, perhaps above all else, experience and ability to solve international and foreign policy problems. Handling Vladimir Putin's disturbing actions, as well as ISIS and counterterrorism, should be at or near the top of the priorities list for the top of government in the United States, and I find it almost impossible to imagine Donald Trump in a situation room contemplating foreign strategy and international affairs. I do believe that if Trump makes it to the general election, whether as a Republican or as a third-party candidate, that he will probably cost his party the election, because while he may have appeal to the extremely conservative base, I don't believe he can appeal to moderates and I doubt he'll win the swing states. He also has big issues getting minority votes.
2) Russia has made some disturbing headlines lately. One such headline was that bombers were spotted near Alaska and California early this month, with the likely tongue-in-cheek message of a happy Fourth of July to the American pilots. Putin has little to gain from just flying planes over California, but his strategy is somewhat concerning; it seems he is trying to play with the United States as much as possible just to see what it takes to get a reaction. While the airspace the Russians flew over this time was in fact international, and thus legal for them to use, this is not always the case with their international flights, and additionally it seems Russian pilots have a habit of not turning on their transponders, so their arrival is often unannounced and sometimes dangerous when there is a lot of air traffic. But regardless of the specifics, it is clear Vladimir Putin is playing a dangerous, and fundamentally alarming, game. International tensions have not been this high since the end of the Cold War, and while the United States has surely been involved in numerous foreign policy misbehaviors, I can't help but think that the way Putin have operated on the international scale in the last few years is the primary culprit. It is truly disturbing to hear Vladimir Putin tell his countrymen that he could "destroy the United States in thirty minutes or less", and it is also alarming to hear that Putin placed Moscow's nuclear arsenal on alert during his Crimea expedition. What are other world leaders supposed to do? Russia's new nuclear doctrines dictate that the threshold for nuclear attack has been dramatically lowered. Russia's conventional military might is not close to that of the United States, but Vladimir Putin's enormous arsenal of nuclear weapons enables him to play with fire in ways which could very reasonably lead to another Cuban Missile Crisis, or maybe a potential WWIII.
Among the new nuclear terms introduced by his doctrine is that of a "de-escalation strike", and my understanding of its potential use is roughly the following: Russia declares that if a conventional military attack poses any significant "existential threat" to the country itself, it has the right to drop a "tactical" nuclear weapon, which will not be large enough to cause major immediate damage, but will be deployed for the purpose of demonstrating Russia's willingness to use nuclear weapons and thus cause the enemy to back down. The idea of a "tactical" nuclear weapon or a "de-escalation strike" is honestly one of the chilliest ideas I have ever heard. While I have a hard time believing that any major, total-destruction oriented strike could reasonably occur without extreme circumstances, Russia's new doctrine indicates that this tactical strike could occur any time it feels threatened. The idea of tactical nuclear weaponry is alarming for many reasons, but perhaps chief among them is that any nuclear strike has enormous effects upon the planet. There was one study (mentioned in this article: www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8845913/russia-war#redline) which created a model for a hypothetical war between India and Pakistan in which 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs were dropped, which would be only about one percent of the combined Russian and American nuclear arsenals. If this happened, "the explosions, the study found, would push a layer of hot, black smoke into the atmosphere, where it would envelop the Earth in about 10 days. The study predicted that this smoke would block sunlight, heat the atmosphere, and erode the ozone for many years, producing what the researchers call without hyperbole 'a decade without summer.' As rains dried and crops failed worldwide, the resulting global famine would kill 1 billion people." A nuclear war, even one much too small to destroy the planet per se, would still ruin the world as we know it. If Russia continues its rampant abuse and disregard of international law, there will come a time when someone will need to enforce these laws upon Russia, and if Russia continues its disobedience, or gets into some international conflict (even by accident), force may be required. If a government led by Putin, or Medvedev, or any of their followers is still in power at this time, it will be able to decide for itself what force can push Russia to the brink. Everyone in the world knows that Russia cannot defend itself militarily from a NATO attack, but the best defense can sometimes be a good offense. If world leaders are given the choice between punishing Russia (i.e. risking provocation of a nuclear strike under the ever-changing Russian nuclear doctrine) and allowing Russia to proceed out of fear of its nuclear capacities, who knows what the result might be.
3) Let's now transition to a less destructive, but still extremely sensitive topic in America; that of the police and their treatment of African Americans. We have yet another case recently of a policeman killing a black man for dubious reasons- this time in Cincinnati, Ohio, where a University of Cincinnati policeman named Ray Tensing shot Sam DuBose in his car near (but not on) the University of Cincinnati campus. However, as many of you may have seen, there's now a new element involved: the body camera, which Tensing had turned on at the time of the incident. First, it is necessary to recall the way in which Tensing described the incident before the footage became public:
-He said he thought "[DuBose] was going to run [him] over."
-He said his hand was "caught in the steering wheel or something" and thus DuBose was purposely dragging him around in the vehicle until Tensing shot him.
Okay, before we even talk about what really happened, how the hell would shooting the driver of a car that's dragging you around help solve the problem? As you'll see in the video, if you fatally shoot a driver of a car while his foot is on the wheel, he then obviously dies and is then unable to lift his foot off the gas, and the car continues forward. So, to me, that already seems like a somewhat B.S. reason to shoot someone, because it wouldn't have helped Tensing defend himself much, but then I suppose if someone were dragging me around in a car at high speeds, I would be at least somewhat morally justified in shooting that person in retaliation.
However, upon examination of the video, almost everything Tensing says is complete garbage. His decision to pull DuBose over was reasonable. DuBose was missing a license plate on one side of his car (I think the front?). Tensing came up to DuBose and asked if he had the license plate. DuBose said yes but then could not locate it. Tensing then asked for DuBose's license, and DuBose, after some fiddling around for it, could not locate that either. This immediately caused Tensing to ask whether DuBose's license had been suspended, and DuBose insisted that it hadn't. The only other notable detail is that DuBose had in his car a bottle of some sort of alcoholic fluid which he claimed was a cleaning fluid of some sort, and which Tensing looked at for a bit. Tensing asked DuBose to take his seatbelt off, and when DuBose resisted (not violently or aggressively, just simply asking why Tensing was asking him to take his seatbelt off), Tensing leaned into the car. At this moment it seemed that DuBose put the car in drive (or something, the footage is not clear) but Tensing thought, reasonably, that DuBose was going to drive off. However, his reaction to this was to reach into the car and kill the man, well before DuBose had started moving forward.
This is particularly disgusting because not only did Tensing lie about it in complete contradiction to the film evidence, he also managed to get several of his associates to do the same thing. If this murder had not been caught on tape, we can be fairly sure that the case against Tensing would be completely different, and not half as compelling. While I believe privacy is evaporating today, and I lament this, I do believe that cameras are necessary on police officers for precisely this reason. They completely change the game, and I hope Tensing gets the sentence he deserves.
That's it. Just had a few things I wanted to discuss.