I feel like I'm in a time warp here.

As far as I understand it that is exactly what they are saying about the Russian hacks too, they have no clear link to the Kremlin. I'm not saying they didn't do it but there is a clear smell of witch hunt going on.

What I find especially galling is Robert Mueller was FBI director at the time of the Iraq war and he was using the exact same language about how clear the evidence for WMDs was.

You know, and it gets into this whole issue of border security
You know, who's gonna say that the borders are secure?
We've got the House and the Senate debating this issue
And it's, it's really astonishing that in a country founded by immigrants
"Immigrant" has somehow become a bad word
So the debate rages on and we continue
And just like that it's over, we tend to our wounded, we count our dead
Black and white soldiers wonder alike if this really means freedom
Not yet
I got one job, two job, three when I need them
I got five roommates in this one studio, but I never really see them
And we all came America trying to get a lap dance from Lady Freedom
But now Lady Liberty is acting like Hilary Banks with a pre-nup
Man, I was brave, sailing on graves
Don't think I didn't notice those tombstones disguised as waves
I'm no dummy, here is something funny, you can be an immigrant without risking your lives
Or crossing these borders with thrifty supplies
All you got to do is see the world with new eyes
Immigrants, we get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
We get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants, we get the job done
It's a hard line when you're an import
Baby boy, it's hard times
When you ain't sent for
Racists feed the belly of the beast
With they pitchforks, rich chores
Done by the people that get ignored
Ya se armó
Ya se despertaron
It's a whole awakening
La alarma ya sonó hace rato
Los que quieren buscan
Pero nos apodan como vagos
We are the same ones
Hustling on every level
Ten los datos
Walk a mile in our shoes
Abróchense los zapatos
I been scoping ya dudes, ya'll ain't been working like I do
I'll outwork you, it hurts you
You claim I'm stealing jobs though
Peter Piper claimed he picked them, he just underpaid Pablo
But there ain't a paper trail when you living in the shadows
We're America's ghost writers, the credit's only borrowed
It's a matter of time before the checks all come
But
Immigrants, we get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
We get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants, we get the job
Not yet
The credit is only borrowed
It's America's ghost writers, the credit's only borrowed
It's America's ghost writers
America's ghost writers
America's ghost writers, the credit's only borrow-borrowed
It's America's ghost writers, a credit is only borrowed
It's America's ghost writers, a credit is only borrowed
It's America's ghost writers, a credit is only borrowed
It's
Immigrants, we get the job done
Ay yo aye, immigrants we don't like that
Na they don't play British empire strikes back
They beating us like 808's and high hats
At our own game of invasion, but this ain't Iraq
Who these fugees what did they do for me
But contribute new dreams
Taxes and tools, swagger and food to eat
Cool, they flee war zones, but the problem ain't ours
Even if our bombs landed on them like the Mayflower
Buckingham Palace or Capitol Hill
Blood of my ancestors had that all built
It's the ink you print on your dollar bill, oil you spill
Thin red lines on the flag you hoist when you kill
But still we just say "look how far I come"
Hindustan, Pakistan, to London
To a galaxy far from their ignorance
'Cause
Immigrants, we get the job done
Por tierra o por agua
Identidad falsa
Brincamos muros o flotamos en balsas
La peleamos como Sandino en Nicaragua
Somos como las plantas que crecen sin agua
Sin pasaporte americano
Porque la mitad de gringolandia es terreno mexicano
Hay que ser bien hijo de puta
Nosotros les sembramos el árbol y ellos se comen la frutas
Somos los que cruzaron
Aquí vinimos a buscar el oro que nos robaron
Tenemos mas trucos que la policía secreta
Metimos la casa completa en una maleta
Con un pico, una pala
Y un rastrillo
Te construimos un castillo
Como es que dice el coro cabrón?
Immigrants, we get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
We get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants, we get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants, we get the job done
Not yet

Because Libya and Syria are the same situation as North Korea, and put us on the brink of nuclear war. Fantastic logic there. While we're on it, why not bring up Iraq and Afghanistan? Clearly Bush also wanted to nuke NK.

So wait....are you saying we should overlook numerous war crimes and international kidnapping because it was done in the name of fighting an enemy we created that never posed the threat we claimed he did, but was a dictatorial asshole that killed and tortured thousands (making it ok for us to emulate him), and ignore that our actions also killed hundreds of thousands and destabilized the middle east, creating Daesh, starting numerous civil wars, now disastrously effecting all Europe?


Yes, I think you're wrong. Only a hand full of soldiers who were caught by their own stupidity of posting photos of them abusing prisoners were discharged, I don't think any high ranking officers who created and fostered the abusive practices.
https://www.salon.com/2006/03/14/prosecutions_convictions/

It wasn't a few bad apples, it was the "standard desirable practice"....a practice Bush strongly defended and Trump has said he wants to return to, and at least the 1/4 of America that brainlessly loves him agrees.
Personally, I think we should have left any American that participated in this in Iraq, especially the officers in charge...soldiers have a duty to refuse illegal or immoral orders, and ordering torture is absolutely illegal and immoral.

I must say I believe, and hope I'm right, that the crowd that sees this and says that looks great is a lot smaller than you believe.

Controversy might be more numerous around the anti-war crowd citing Abu-Ghraib as proof the Iraq war in it's entirety was wrong and evil. There are a lot of people who observe that Saddam did much worse, for much longer, and as standard desirable practice of governance, myself included. I dare say the number of people believing that greatly outnumber the pro-torture crowd.

Still important for America to hold itself more accountable on this. Am I not wrong but most of those involved who even were charged mostly got off with dishonorable discharges?

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Al Jazeera has a terrific visualisation of the Saudi war in Jemen:
https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2018/Saudi-Arabia-air-raids-on-Yemen/index.html

And to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq, the supreme crime for which none of those reponsible have been hanged yet, Jeremy Scahill outlines how the US have been piling up Iraqi corpses for 55 years:
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/us-war-iraq-legacy-of-blood/

In a way Scahill is like a less educated\refined version of Noam Chomsky. He does good investigative work, and dedicates enormous energy into exposing and spotlighting the bad things that America does. That has a place, but without a similarly harsh and critical light being cast on America's targets/enemies it becomes propaganda.

Jeremy says he wouldn't work with Charles Manson to oppose trump, fair enough. What about kind of working with Stalin to defeat Hitler? Say, at least agreeing not to attack Stalin while you both deal with Hitler?

The world is incredibly complicated and the singular and lone focus on American mistakes paints a deceptive picture. Pointing out the problems with America's war in Iraq, like torture and Quantanamo and declaring these as so immoral we needn't even look at Saddam's past is propaganda. Saddam waged two campaigns of genocide against his own people. When America saw the abuses at Abu Ghraib, they shut it down and attempted to punish those responsible. When Saddam's brother used chemical weapons to exterminate Kurdish civilians Saddam commended him for it. Guantanamo is bad, but it doesn't mean we should fail to acknowledge the concentration camps that Saddam operated during his genocide of the Kurds. It doesn't mean it's unfair to observe that conditions in Saddam's prisons across the country were far more cruel during his entire reign.

There's a nuanced place here that Scahill and Chomsky and pundits like them just fail to acknowledge and encourages inaction at times were the lesser evil may well be for America to do something, even if aborting Gadafi's genocide doesn't make Libya a paradise after.

Research better...$7.5 Trillion+- not $10, and mostly due to lost revenue and excess spending from the Republican caused depression. (Caused by lax and removed bank regulations, then bail outs by Bush with federal funds). Also, let's not forget the Iraq war, kept off the books by Bush, then added to Obama's deficit numbers.

Where was I? Here, stating it's ridiculous to raise the military budget by $100 Billion/year (what Republicans call a huge cut to the military) when our economy is tanked.

By percentage, republicans have consistently raised the deficit/debt more than Democrats, who actually lowered it under Clinton. Reagan was by far the worst.

How many of those fact checking organisations would have flagged Judith Miller's Iraq pieces in the NYT as "deliberatly misleading content"? Or what about the 16 hit pieces on Sanders within 24h at Bezos' rag of a newspaper? And let's not even start about the reporting on the recent night of the long knives in Saudi Arabia ("reform", really? fuck off)...

Point is, the effort to curtail "fake news" regularly goes hand in hand with the suppression of non-establishment views while leaving the main sources of deliberate misinformation untouched. Remember PropOrNot and how Bezos' rag, amongst others, jumped on it? That list included prominent left wing/anti-war sites such as TruthOut, Counterpunch, TruthDig, ConsortiumNews, etc.

Want some examples of "misleading content" or "deliberate misinformation"? Just browse through the articles at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting for a few minutes.

Try to stay on track. The USA isn't deemed racist or xenophobic because it has immigration laws, it's because those laws are based on pre-conceived notions and disproportionate paranoia regarding specific countries and (some would believe) countries with high populations of followers of Islam. Immigration laws exist to ensure those wanting to immigrate understand the requirements, and a process exists that in most cases treats folks fairly regardless of where they come from. As Donald Duck has singled out specific countries, thus establishing a priori that all the folks in those countries are bad asses, then yes, this is indeed xenophobia at best but not really racism as the countries on the list are (like the US) a mixed bag and Islam is not a race.

So, if you want to compare immigration policy that exists in the land of the free and the home of the brave, your comparison should be with countries like Syria, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen that all forbid (well, they used to ...) entry to folks from Israel (always getting the short shtick), Kuwait, Brunei, Kuwait, UAE, Saudi, Pakistan, Oman and Malaysia and there are a few others I can't remember. It's not policy. It's paranoia and xenophobia from The Most Powerful Man on Earth and the fuckwits that butter his toast.

Carry on.

Here's a Canadian example:

http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/aly-hindy-salaheddin-islamic-centre

A mosque who's former founder has gone off to lead a team of Al Qaeda linked suicide bombers in Iraq. The mosque Ohmar Khadr's father brought their family to before relocating them to fight for Bin Laden in Pakistan. The mosque attended by the leaders of the largest terrorist ring Canada has broken up thus far. Other members have gone off to join terrorists in Somalia and Egypt.

The question of should we be setting up some manner of legal accountability for an organization that is clearly idealogically supporting these things isn't a clear and obvious, nope, nothing can be done. At least not any more than nope, nothing can be done is clearly the answer to the Vegas shootings.

It's hard for me to know why Putin is doing what he's doing. When he moved on Crimea, was he doing it because of the advance of European influence closer to Russia's borders? He's short on good allies unlike 'the west', so can he let people chip away at his comfort zone? Or is he a crazed imperialist?

I don't know. Why don't I know?

Because my government have shown themselves over the years to be a bunch of twats who will literally tell bare faced lies, whilst smiling, and when confronted with the horrors of what they've done they throw their heads back and laugh like a fucking sea lion swallowing a fish whole. And that's what they've done to their OWN PEOPLE. To other countries countries we declare war and send in the multinationals to rape their resources. I consider the invasion of Iraq equally dodgy as the invasion of Crimea. So my moral compass for what's ok and not ok no longer has a baseline.

On the other side, a bunch of people who used to know how the world worked back in 1970 probably thought propaganda was the best way to whip up some nationalistic pride and resentment toward the reds, but in 2017 the majority of young people don't trust a single word they say. So these 70 year old media mogul billionaires can't even tell a believable truth anymore - even if Putin's tanks were half way down my street i'd have to clap eyes on them before i could be sure.

Plus Russia's leadership is Putin himself, he's the spearhead, and he's very cunning. Our leadership is spread across a set of democratically elected people, half of which are both incompetent and self interested, while half of those remaining are merely one or the other. It's easier for one person to look competent and assured. Someone like Merkel has to share the associated incompetency of whatever the German equivalent of her 'cabinet' is.

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@eric3579
agreed,and i suspect most people struggle with this,but i think he made a really important point that we all need to address,and that is our own bias.

too many people for far too long have sought information that aligns with their own narrative,their own,personal and subjective understandings.we see those who identify as conservative reject anything that does not adhere to their own,narrow worldview,and we see those who identify as progressive do the exact same thing.

and yet if challenged,BOTH will stubbornly declare that their information is solid and without reproach.this is statistically impossible.

another great point he makes is how some people have been conditioned to accept opinion and conflict as somehow being "news".

he also makes a point on how some news outlets have done shoddy and poor work,but we should not throw the baby out with the bath water.while this may be true,i feel he was far too lenient on those who profess to be journalists.he gives them a pass for doing mediocre work,because that is what many journalists do in this new climate of:partisan hackery,access and propaganda.

so when we talk about "mainstream media",we are talking about only a few,monolithic corporations who DO have an agenda,and that agenda is PROFIT.

so we can look back to the run up to the iraq war,and see how phil donahue was fired from MSNBC for being critical of the war.the highest rated show on that network at that time.so if PROFIT is the model,then donahue being fired makes no sense..UNLESS you consider that the owners of MSNBC were general electric,who at that time were heavily invested in military contracts on the dawn of a new war.

so the profit was not from advertising from donahue's show,but rather the billions in defense contracts general electric was poised to receive from the impending iraq war,and donahue's criticisms of that war had the possibility to affect the profits of general electric.

and that is the one point that is missing from mr green's take on the mainstream media:their inability or outright refusal to criticize the current corporate establishment,and how many journalists kneel at the altar of their corporate masters.

so while he makes a lot of great points.that particular glaring omission is disturbing.

speaking only for myself i tend to only consume independent media,and focus on journalists who have earned my trust.

ultimately it is up to us to decide who we trust and who we are suspicious of,and to discuss those important issues among ourselves to better refine our understandings.