These measures won't work. Any moderately intelligent person will just buy a new phone before they come here, and claim not to have a social media profile. Terrorists are evil; they aren't stupid.
Only a very naive person would think this is an effective way of keeping extremists out.
They are trying to show that Trump is the Antichrist while they choose to forget how Obama has destroyed half of Middle East and setted up a police State through NSA, secret laws, secret courts, indiscriminate droning of innocent people.
Hypocrites at its best, this is what the mass media have become.
Oh right, Trump hasn't received the Nobel prize for peace!
That Obama engaged in such activity doesn't suddenly mean that Trump's administration is justified, nor does it mean that things won't get much worse with Trump.
Why exactly did so many people magically become dead-set against all these government abuses on Jan 20, 2017, specifically?
Are they really here to help the fight for $CAUSE, or are they exploiting the cause for petty power games?
Can you really trust their judgement in the Fight Against Tyranny?
Can you trust them to push for durable reform against tyranny, or are they merely interested in install their own tyrant?
No it's not, it's to point out a clear logical fallacy in OP's post.
Why exactly did so many people magically become dead-set against all these government abuses on Jan 20, 2017, specifically?
They didn't; this is false. The same people who are angry at specific abuses after Jan 20 were also angry before. See the thousands of articles posted on HN about these issues over the past eight years. This is also true from major news sources - even the liberal ones haven't failed to criticize Obama over these issues.
That having been said, it should be expected that a president who is more severe in abusing his power would provoke more anger. It's not black and white.
Are they really here to help the fight for $CAUSE, or are they exploiting the cause for petty power games?
For the rest of your post, can you explain what you mean by "they", by "the fight for $CAUSE" and the "Fight Against Tyranny"? Also, can you give specific examples? This is too ambiguous to respond to.
maybe because in the very first press conference, the press secretary lied, blatantly, and acted like it was no big deal.
> Can you really trust their judgement in the Fight Against Tyranny?
"Fight Against Tyranny" just out of interest - what tyranny is that?
https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/what-do-european...
"Our results are striking and sobering ..."
The survey asked about limiting immigration from Islamic countries, not about a general travel ban for people from an arbitrary list of countries. Big difference. If the survey had asked about immigration in general (not just from some islamic countries), I expect the results would not have been much different. Yet by simply reframing the question slightly and the results could have been vastly different. It has been shown time and time again that by simply adding a subtext ('...except for people with a stable job, income and education', 'does that also apply to relatives of your friendly neighbor from Egypt who runs the islamic store at the corner') all of a sudden the majority isn't so certain what they think about immigration anymore.
Last but not least this is after a slew of recent acts of terrorism and a general discontent of the population of many countries with their government, the EU, the economy, etc. It says more about the sentiment of angry/disappointed people, than about what they really think about immigration policy.
I'm a little sad this is what people nowadays base their opinions on, and act on it when they vote. To me it seems the idea of democracy and asking people to choose their own government and policy is starting to fall apart by the stupidity and ignorance of people, and the ease by which they are played by feeding them half-truths and misinformation. It's scary to think about what this could lead to.
> To me it seems the idea of democracy and asking people to choose their own government and policy is starting to fall apart by the stupidity and ignorance of people...
I would argue that this kind of reasoning is precisely why many people are turning to the right. Instead of allowing them to voice their concerns and trying to understand them even if you end up disagreeing with them, they are shunned and labeled as stupid, ignorant, racist, sexist, islamophobic, homophobic, etc. Just put anyone you disagree with in the basket of deplorables and call it a day. Job done, right? Well it isn't. And if Brexit and Trump are not strong enough signals, there will be more and stronger.
This picture captures the sentiment quite well: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cw2Bx5bUcAAV2Of.jpg
The longer the high-horsing continues the more the pendulum swings to the right and society becomes more divided and on a path to catastrophic collision. Unfortunately, no lessons have been learned so far. The arrogance continues, and so will the response to it.
It's one thing to be angry, disappointed or concerned because of real, valid reasons that affect you, and I'm not arguing people have no right or reason for them.
If you translate those feelings to actions that are stupid, ignorant, racist, sexist, islamophobic, homophobic, etc, you deserve no sympathy from me though. You can label it 'high-horsing' or 'arrogance', but the fact of the matter is that innocent people living in islamic countries are not the reason there are no jobs in the midwest anymore, US jobs are disappearing mostly because of automation, not mexicans, coal mines are closing because better alternatives are getting cheaper, etc.
I don't know what the solution is, but I do know what is not: caving in to the kinds of sentiments you describe as 'right-wing', pretending they are justified and acceptable.
I live in Europe and I'm actually in favor of limiting immigration, because my feeling is that allowing unlimited immigration disrupts society and takes too big of a toll on our social security and welfare systems. I'm well aware our small country can not and should not try to solve all the worlds problems within our borders. There's nothing particularly 'right wing' or xenophobic about that. But to generalize that to a total immigration ban based on religion, or even more insane, a travel ban from some arbitrary selection of countries, makes no sense whatsoever.
> or even more insane, a travel ban from some arbitrary selection of countries, makes no sense whatsoever.
The ban is not based on a religion, if it was it would apply to 50, not 7 countries. Each of those 7 countries at the moment is riddled with terrorism and or has an active civil war going on. Yes we are talking about islamic terrorism, but the keyword here is the terrorism, not islam. Terrorist organizations active in those countries have made threats to and and already committed terrorist attacks by infiltrating migrant/refugee flows. Given this, why is it entirely unreasonable to temporarily stop immigration from these countries, for 90 days until the new vetting procedures that will attempt to address the terrorism threat are in place? How do you vett people coming from de facto failed countries using normal procedures? Why label someone as stupid, racist, islamophobic, and what not for disagreeing with you on this issue?
“From 1975 through 2015, the chance that an American would be killed in a terrorist attack committed by a refugee was 1 in 3.64 billion a year"
Before commenting on the large temporal window, please refer to figure 1 in the PDF. Table 1 is nice to read too.
You'll see how, in the light of actual data, your comment can be interpreted as fear-driven preposterousness.
source?
>>If the UK had been able to read the rants of Omar Bakri Muhammad beforehand, we could have avoided him immigrating from Syria.
On the other hand, recent terrorists in France, Germany, US, were all known to the police, and yet they weren't stopped. If you think that surrendering your privacy when crossing borders is worth it, then I think you are deeply mistaken.
Well documented all over YouTube. Here's one summary:
Let me quote the original statement:
"In the countries that Trump wants to vet, there were spontaneous street parties to celebrate 9/11"
so.....again, source?
15 were from KSA, two from Egypt, one from Morocco and one from Yemen.
The DHS and State Department determined that all but one of those countries (1) did not threaten the USA on a national-policy basis and (2) shared sufficient pre-travel information on their subjects attempting to enter the USA.
The made that determination prior to February 2016.
So indeed nothing curious.
Social media vetting has structurally the same argument as banning guns, BTW. If you ban guns, then only non-criminals will be without guns; if you require people's social media passwords, only non-criminals will be without privacy.
Once here, he fostered the notorious Hizb Ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun movements. Both these movements have made this country a less safe place to be.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Bakri_Muhammad
Sadly in these times, and from a handful of nations - we do need to consider who we're letting in, and what their real attitude is toward the West.
In the countries that Trump wants to vet, there were spontaneous street parties to celebrate 9/11. Let's not be naive here.