US Politics

Went to the US embassy last week to get a US passport for youngest kid.

When we get there we go through airport style security.

You have a laptop? You can't bring that in here.

What an I supposed to do with it?

Leave it at that cafe across the road.

Go to cafe. They charge me £10 to leave my laptop. Massive queue of others doing the same.

^nothing to do with politics but interesting their position on this. Probably means that they take laptops into other embassies all the time and hack stuff.

'twas ever thus.

the same cafe does a tasty side hustle in passport photos as well.

Wouldn't be surprised if the cafe was just a US front to install surveillance on laptops.

Trump probably owns it and redirects income towards it. Just like his golf course in Scotland

Welcome to the immigrant lyf, hope your son doesent steal jobs here

I know, I was making a joke about Trump's other favourite dictator.

You should have beaten up the embassy guards then stolen their ear-piece and run upstairs, out the fire escape and climb down the outside.

They're both British too. We're hedging our bets.

I did that with my 3. Didn't take any laptops though.

Disappointed they didn't have to pledge allegiance to the flag or something.

^nothing to do with politics

That £10 cash you handed over has been used to help fund the next Iran-Contra affair

Is the organisation training people to fight off gun violence before it even happens?

https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/frequently_asked

They campaign for tighter restrictions on gun ownership, social outreach to stop radicalisation of isolated teenagers and other things they hope will prevent mass shootings at schools from even happening.

The video is just about shootings at schools being the new normal, for the U.S.

I was stunned by this in the lrb:

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That article describing the camps in America needs to be distributed far and wide.

Is there anything as hard hitting written about the ongoing situation with refugees in Northern France?

Christ, that made me cry.

Here is that article online. https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n18/eliot-weinberger/one-summer-in-america

It’s so incredibly politicised it’s easy to switch off and ignore this but fucking hell, from this description perhaps Ocasio Cortez was absolutely right to call them concentration camps?

from this description perhaps Ocasio Cortez was absolutely right to call them concentration camps?

I don't intend this to come across in any way condescending, but I am surprised that anybody would doubt AOC calling them concentration camps given what we knew about those camps already. I'm puzzled how anybody could hear her say that, look at the facts and think otherwise.

As a wider observation, and I honestly am not aiming this at anybody on LFGSS, I encounter a lot of people who seem to dismiss what AOC says on account of her gender and age. Let alone her "goddamn commie marxist" politics.

It's not new information, is it? I mean, it's awful, and the LRB writing hits hard, but I feel like we knew it already.

I'm done with the USA tbh.

An old friend of mine who is raising a young family in Texas has had her car and lawn vandalised for being a liberal and/or a communist recently. Shes a fucking Tory in the UK. Not that long ago she would probably have been more of a Rees Mogg Tory than a Dominic Grieve one. I can't see things getting better in this regard any time soon. Its a race to the bottom.

admitting to know a Tory, "on here"?

expect to be told to get in the sea etc etc

A communist tory no less.

Land of the free, home of the brave

Mind you, I’ve never been in a detention centre here

Yeah she is unfairly dismissed. It’s easier to pick holes in her style of politics and PR than the content of her beliefs or policy proposals so that’s what happens.

The concentration camp comment did wind people up though. She didn’t say these camps are like concentration camps, she called them concentration camps. I suppose she made this distinction deliberately. When I heard her say that I though ‘oh, this is a shame, she’s going for the shock language’ as to me it is all part of the race to the bottom in US political discourse that Trump and Gorka etc love.

Do I blame her, expect different or think she has anything but good intentions... no.

You can have conservative or even very right wing policies without treating human beings like cockroaches, like lesser beings. No disrespect to cockroaches intended.

Its perfectly possible to lock down your borders, lock up refugees, deport illegals without putting them in concentration camps.

This shouldn't be a political issue. Whether we like it or not, its the nature of politics that from time to time a government will be in power that does policy shit you really disagree with. Whether it is ok to abuse human beings should not be subject to debate, whether you are on the left or the right. There is literally no need to treat these people this way, other than spite or hatred. The mind boggles.

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