Photos of Katherine — or Katrine — the young Christian girl recently murdered with her parents in Libya were recently published by Al Wafd. They are as graphic as they are necessary to document the virulent hate that animates the persecution of Christians in Muslim lands. According to forensics, the girl was shot at close range three times: twice in the head (one bullet remained lodged the other came out) and once in the back, coming out from her chest.
sad but true
The American and European Left especially the media are the best friends in the world these murderous animals have. I’m less afraid of 7th century animals murdering in the name of their god than I am of 21st century humans infected with the squeamish impulse to aid and abet these animals.
The Leftists nor any other political party anywhere in the Western world have “the squeamish impulse to aid and abet these animals”. The reality is there is an inherent difficulty in ridding the world of this kind of jihadist violence and, sadly, it is simply a fact of life that in regions where these jihadis are active, civilians of other faiths and other sects are at risk. We’ve got to find ways of moving civilians to safety before they are engulfed and murdered.
We don’t have the time or money to help the truly oppressed peoples because we are too busy importing Muslim jihadist refugees into this country so they can set up shop here and do the same thing here. We now have a fifth column which is imposing Sharia law in certain areas and have set up training camps all over the country. We also allow foreign militant Imams, who preach jihad against Americans, to come in and preach hate in their Mosques. We not only need to stop taking in all these refugees that the Muslim dominated UN assigns to this country, and revoke their citizenship and deport all Muslims who have a family member involved in this seditious movement.
exactly. ACTION NEEDED!!
Ah, the uber dummy Pete has decided that what I’ve suggested is to have mass Muslim immigration to the U.S. Is that written anywhere in that post? Once again, he simply ADDS ON HIS OWN UBER DUMMY THINKING in order to produce his own particular brand of DISINFORMATION. He seems to think that one has to participate 100% in group think rather than think for oneself. So much for not being totalitarian. Cheers, dummy dhimmi dimwit!
I agree we don’t have the time or the money to help oppressed people everywhere. This kind of political/social outreach is a strange artifact of our original American outreach — the international proselytizing Christian ministry done by so many American Christian churches — that eventually became linked w/our foreign policy because it works as a means to communicate America’s foreign policy aims at the individual level.
Americana MarilynA 2 months ago
Ah, the uber dummy Pete has decided that what I’ve suggested is to have mass Muslim immigration to the U.S. Is that written anywhere in that post? Once again, he simply ADDS ON HIS OWN UBER DUMMY THINKING in order to produce his own particular brand of DISINFORMATION. He seems to think that one has to participate 100% in group think rather than think for oneself. So much for not being totalitarian. Cheers, dummy dhimmi dimwit!
Seems like the Saudis are always needing labor. Send their brethren in their faith THERE. No jobs here.
The UN is not on our side.
Here is the answer bellow, you BLIND DUMMY ENABLER
You must agree w/Marilyn that all Muslims are jihadists, is that about right? In that case, how is it that the vast majority of Muslims aren’t involved in jihad? Not from this country and not in other countries. The Leftists aren’t the ones making the decisions on their lonesome about the demographics of immigration.
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/report/2014/10/23/59040/the-facts-on-immigration-today-3/
From the above link:
Today’s immigrant population
Foreign-born population
The foreign-born population consisted of 40.7 million people in 2012. Broken down by immigration status, the foreign-born population was composed of 18.6 million naturalized U.S. citizens and 22.1 million noncitizens in 2012. Of the noncitizens, approximately 13.3 million were legal permanent residents, 11.3 million were unauthorized migrants, and 1.9 million were on temporary visas.
The past decade saw a significant increase in the foreign-born population. Between 2000 and 2012, there was a 31.2 percent increase in the foreign-born population. During this period, the immigrant population grew from 31.1 million to 40.8 million people.
The foreign-born share of the U.S. population has more than doubled since the 1960s, but it is still below its all-time high. The immigrant population was 5.4 percent of the total U.S. population in 1960. By 2012, immigrants made up 13 percent of the total U.S. population. Still, today’s share of the immigrant population as a percentage of the total U.S. population remains below its peak in 1890, when 14.8 percent of the U.S. population had immigrated to the country.
The countries of origin of today’s immigrants are more diverse than they were 50 years ago. In 1960, a full 75 percent of the foreign-born population that resided in the United States came from Europe, while in 2012, only 11.8 percent of the immigrant population emigrated from Europe. In 2012, 11.6 million foreign-born residents—28 percent of the foreign-born population—came from Mexico; 2.3 million immigrants came from China; 2 million came from India; 1.9 million came from the Philippines; 1.3 million came from both Vietnam and El Salvador; and 1.1 million came from both Cuba and Korea.
Immigrants today are putting down roots across the United States, in contrast to trends seen 50 years ago. In the 1960s, two-thirds of U.S. states had populations in which less than 5 percent of individuals were foreign born. The opposite is true today: In 2012, 61 percent of the foreign-born population lived in the West and the South—a dramatic departure from trends 50 years ago, when 70 percent of the immigrant population lived in the Northeast and Midwest.
Today, women outnumber men in the foreign-born population. In 2012, 51.4 percent of the U.S. immigrant population was female. Until the 1960s, immigrant men outnumbered immigrant women. However, by the 1970s, the number of female immigrants had surpassed the number of male immigrants.
The foreign-born population is, on average, slightly older than the native-born population. In 2012, the median age for all foreign-born people was 42, while the median age for all native-born people was 35.
There are almost 1 million lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LGBT, adult immigrants in the United States today. The estimated 904,000 LGBT adult immigrants are more likely to be young and male compared with the overall immigrant population.
Immigrants have diverse educational backgrounds. In 2012, 11.6 percent of immigrants had a master’s degree, professional degree, or doctorate degree, compared with 10.8 percent of the native-born population. That same year, 69.4 percent of the foreign-born population had attained a high school diploma, GED, or higher, compared with 89.9 percent of the native-born population.
More than half of the foreign-born population are homeowners. In 2012, 51 percent of immigrant heads of household owned their own homes, compared with 66 percent of native-born heads of household. Among immigrants, 65 percent of naturalized citizens owned their own homes in 2012.
Less than one in five immigrants live in poverty, and they are no more likely to use social services than the native-born Americans. In 2012, 19.1 percent of immigrants lived in poverty, while 15.4 percent of the native-born population lived in poverty. Of the foreign born, the two largest groups living in poverty were the 3.2 million people who emigrated from Mexico and the 1.4 million people who emigrated from either South or East Asia. Despite of this, studies have consistently shown that immigrants use social programs such as Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income at similar rates to native households.
The 20 million U.S.-born children of immigrants are significantly better off financially than their immigrant parents. The median annual household income of second-generation Americans in 2012 was $58,100, just $100 below the national average. This was significantly higher than the median annual household income of their parents at $45,800.
U.S.-born children of immigrants are more likely to go to college, less likely to live in poverty, and equally likely to be homeowners as the average American. About 36 percent of U.S.-born children of immigrants are college graduates—5 percent above the national average. Eleven percent of U.S.-born children of immigrants live in poverty—well below the national average of 13 percent. And around 64 percent of them are homeowners, just 1 percent below the national average.
Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes or to be incarcerated than native-born Americans. A 2007 study by the Immigration Policy Center found that the incarceration rate for immigrant men ages 18 to 39 in 2000 was 0.7 percent, while the incarceration rate for native-born men of the same age group was 3.5 percent. While the foreign-born share of the U.S. population grew from 8 percent to 13 percent between 1990 and 2010, FBI data indicate that violent crime rates across the country fell by about 45 percent, while property crime rates fell by 42 percent.
You are still failing at the dynamics of group psychology.
Lame
“You must agree w/Marilyn that all Muslims are jihadists, is that about right? In that case, how is it that the vast majority of Muslims aren’t involved in jihad?”
All muslims are on the jihad side: actively or silently. (!!!) Got it???
IF they wouldn’t, then they definitely mount endless protests, and more, against islamic barbarism until they are done with it. (Emphases added!) And
they would show respect to the hostess country.
They are the only ones who could solve this problem. BUT THEY DON’T!!!
“All Muslims are on the jihad side: actively or silently.
If they wouldn’t, then they definitely mount endless protests, and more, and they would show respect to the hostess country.”
Americana, the troll, will never admit this.
Her purpose is to be disingenuous & “off the chain” stupid!
All Muslims aren’t “actively or silently assisting w/jihad”. A certain percentage are actively pursuing jihadi aims, but it’s a statistical impossibility that 100% of Muslims are actively or silently assisting w/jihad. Your claim of participation en masse is belied by the fact so few Muslims are engaging in active jihad or are contributing financially to jihad. As far as showing respect to the host country, you overlook the history of immigration and just how much strife there has been between the host country and new immigrants regardless of the country and regardless of immigrant nationality. Have the Muslims posed particular issues for European host countries? Sure, and the fact there are jihadis who are in the Muslim population in most countries makes that Muslim immigrant friction even tougher to handle.
http://riotsfrance.ssrc.org
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/21/paris-riots-police-identity-check-muslim
As for Muslims dissuading other Muslims from jihad, Muslims likely realize how impotent they are in terms “of solving the jihad problem” from another country in another hemisphere. Even in countries where jihads are going on, I’m sure the Muslim population, heck the entire population regardless of faith affiliation, feels largely impotent and at the mercy of the jihadis and the armed forces. Recently, there has been a lot more vocal protest by Muslims about the viciousness of these jihads. The horrific murder of those 147 Pakistani schoolchildren who were shot point-blank in their classrooms isn’t going to be something that the Taliban is going to live down in Pakistan.
Norway: All Muslims agree Stoning is OK – Moderate Muslim Peace Conference (“Peace” Conference. “Moderate.” How comforting.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpeIS25jhK4 —
That is a very disturbing video. However, analyze it for what it is. The speaker couched the questions in a way that didn’t allow for ISOLATING the punishments one from the other. He worded his question about sharia such that all these sharia punishments were presented as a package and then he gave his remark the kiss of death by saying that Allah had chosen those punishments and they were perfect. Who’s going to raise his hand from the audience and say BS about stoning for adultery? It was also obvious he was aware there was a push about forcing the expatriation of all the Muslims on the basis they’re extremists and he played that card very effectively.
What should be the reaction to such a conference? Identify those imams who aren’t interested in imposing sharia and who don’t think sharia is the best legal system in the world. There are moderates who believe in fighting against 7th century concepts of Islam.
You are unable recognise that the muslims are actually telling us what is going to happen.
The politicians don’t want to listen for some reason and seem content to commit suicide.
I on the other hand listen and recognise that they are not kidding. Denmark is lost, demographically. The politicians are already trying to secure Danish rights to Danish culture when the islamic overlords finally take control. Sweden is not far behind, neither is France. When the muslim population exceeds 10% the trouble starts.
In the UK 1 in 10 kids under 5 are muslim. Not bad considering muslims only make up less than 5% of the population. You do the maths.
The point of no return is fast approaching.
I understand very well what the situation is. There is a certain proportion of Muslims who want their religion to become the world’s religion. There is a certain proportion of Muslims who in the meantime would like to impose sharia law because they find it preferential to Western law. In some cases, sharia might be preferential; in other cases, especially if one considers the punishments, Western law is preferable. As for imposing their religion on everyone, there’s a huge gulf between what the regular old Muslims say and what the extremists say. There’s also a huge gulf between what militant vs regular Muslims are willing to do in Western cultures to facilitate meeting the demands of their religion. Denmark is not “LOST DEMOGRAPHICALLY” though it has a large Muslim population and certain cities have reached large demographics of Muslims.
http://www.euro-islam.info/country-profiles/denmark/.
As for Muslims wishing to impose their religion on the entire world, that’s also something that is their vowed intention and I’d never disavow that. There are innumerable Muslims and Muslim clerics who state this. However, there are two things to be noted about these statements, it redounds to the CREDIT OF THE SPEAKER (the imams/Muslims) if he/she mouths off about how great his religion is and how fiercely he advocates for its adoption by the entire world population, but NO RELIGION HAS EVER ACHIEVED THIS GOAL. No religion has ever even COME CLOSE to this goal of 100% world adherence despite most of the mainstream, major world religions believing that theirs is the best world belief system and proselytizing for the adoption of their religion. Now, Muslims might eventually have a numeric superiority but there’s no sign of them coupling their numeric superiority w/a weaponized superiority that rivals that of Western civilization. They may eventually turn that corner of weaponry superiority but not in the foreseeable future. So what we are being sold is the concept that: 1) Muslims want to have the world under Islam; and 2) that they’re willing to do whatever it takes to bring the world under Islam without those points being offset by the fact those goals ARE NOT PRESENTLY ATTAINABLE.
You are therefore blind. The fifth element within our borders will only grow stronger, enabled by the leftist traitors. It happened in Lebanon and it will happen here in the UK.
Interesting that you’d bring up Lebanon which only became the home of the Palestinian jihad because those militant Palestinians needed a nearby location from which to launch their attacks on Israel. Once again, you’ve inadvertently mentioned a tie-in to the Palestinian jihad. There may be a fifth columnist element as a minor portion of Western Muslims but they’re only a fifth column because there’s an ongoing Palestinian jihad.
Im sorry but you cannot conclude that the global jihad is due to the Israeli/palestinian situation. It cannot all be pinned on Israel. Fundamentally islam is Jihad and Sharia.
No, certainly NOT ALL the global jihad can be pinned on the Palestinian jihad but quite a bit of it can be pinned on the Palestinian jihad. Certainly Osama bin Laden said that 9/11 was because of the U.S. support for Israel against the Palestinians. And Lebanon’s current situation came about entirely because of the Palestinian jihad.
Does that extend to the pogrom s in Jerusalem in the early 1900s funnily before the emergence of an israeli state.
What about the muslim brigade in the ss operating in the balkans.
Jihad is jihad and as old as islam. History does not lie
The Zionists were always seen as trying to take back Jerusalem and the Holy Land so, yes, the pogrom in Jerusalem was the direct result of Zionist reclamation of Jerusalem. It doesn’t matter that Israel wasn’t in existence because the Zionist Jews were known to be agitating for and laying the ground work for a Jewish seizure of a land parcel in the Palestine Mandate. It became increasingly clear after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after WW I that this collapse provided Zionists w/the most reasonable opportunity to persuade the British to relinquish some land to the world’s Jewish community.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/isdf/text/Maor.html
A description of the early time period of Zionist and the decision to resettle in Israel:
Practical Zionism
The idea that Palestine was essential to Zionism was not shared by all Jews. At the time of the First Aliyah, only a few agricultural settlements had been established in Argentina by Baron de Hirsch and the Jewish Colonization Association. One of the founders of the Lovers of Zion, Leon Pinsker (1821-1891), articulated the view of practical Zionists in his book Auto-Emancipation (1882). Pinsker argued that the Jewish national goal need not be Eretz Israel but rather a land large enough to include Jews who are deprived of their political, economic and social rights. Only later did Practical Zionists shift their stance and begin stressing settlement in Palestine. They refused, however, to embark upon major political offensives aimed at gaining a political commitment from the leading world powers in support of the Jewish national home. In the end, the core idea of Practical Zionism was the creation of a gradual process through which Jews, via immigration and settlement, would gain a large enough foothold in Palestine that world powers would have no choice but to grant them approval to establish a Jewish national home (Berlin, 1996).
____________________________________________________________
http://www.merip.org/primer-palestine-israel-arab-israeli-conflict-new
____________________________________________________________
As for the Muslim brigades operating under Hitler’s S.S. in the Balkans, that was in aid of Nazism and Muslim aims were somehow only vaguely addressed during the initial phase of the prosecution of WW II. Who knows what would have ultimately happened if the Nazis had successfully eradicated all European Jews and left the Muslim communities intact? I certainly don’t think the Nazis would have been able to keep the Muslims in check for century after century within Muslim enclaves in Europe unless they’d left them strictly alone. Heck, the Nazis couldn’t even keep the French Resistance in check for 5 years. And look at what happened when the Russians tried to keep their Muslim populations in check in areas where Muslim separatists are fighting for their freedom…? Jihad is jihad. No question about that. But history can be made to lie if one wants to misdirect the appreciation for what the HISTORICAL PICTURE PRESENTS AS INFORMATION and FACTS.
All very good information and i will wade through your tomes in time. But we are digressing from the original point which is violent jihad is part and parcel of islam. Not all muslims participate, but a significant minority does , supported by an even larger number of inactive jihadists be that financially, materially or just praising their actions
There are many instances where we have extra-legal judiciaries operating in other communities like the Jewish fundamentalists. It’s no shock that there is that sort of legal option for Muslims when there is an identical legal option for Jews — the rabbinical courts. As for “British children being force fed halal meat”, I’d worry about halal meat if there was something nefarious about the slaughter practice. The halal slaughter and the kosher slaughter methods are IDENTICAL aside from halal also requiring a prayer dedicating the animal to Allah. The “Muslim raping and grooming gangs” aren’t anything more than MUSLIM PROSTITUTION. These men aren’t raping girls and leaving them by the roadside w/their clothing torn. They’re befriending these young girls, then they’re seducing them and then they TWIST THEIR RELATIONSHIP into one of SUBJUGATION TO THEIR MUSLIM PIMPS. This is what PIMPS HAVE ALWAYS DONE TO THEIR PREY. As for Muslims being responsible for violent crimes in the U.K., of course immigrant groups that don’t have adequate means of livelihood will turn to crime. It’s the age-old pattern.
Liberal progressives don’t have a darn thing to do w/the fact prostitution is one of the cheapest business models there is. Nor do liberal progressives have anything to do w/the fact Muslim prostitution gangs have slid under the radar in the U.K. for so long. The reason they were able to do so is because most of these girls wanted the sexual contact w/their Muslim boyfriends and, afterward, when they were shown what their Muslim boyfriends were truly up to, they didn’t always take the most aggressive actions against these Muslim men out of fear and because of threats made against them and their families.
Sorry, I’m confused. Are you condoning all of this. You’ve not refuted any of what i said but rather reinforced it.
1. Halal/kosher slaughter is inhumane. I do not wish to have either foisted on me without my consent.
2. Alternative legal systems have no place here.
3. Grooming gangs are violently raping young girls some only 11. In the eyes of the law they are not capable of making the decision of wanting sexual contact or not. It is the responsibility of the adults not the child.
4. Liberal progressives have an awful lot to do with it. They protect their pet project in the guise of social cohesion. They are criminals
So again what exactly is your point?
I’m not condoning the jihadists or any of their actions nor do I believe in Muslim supremacy. But you are mighty confused as to what some of the cultural overlaps are between Judaism and Islam. The slaughter methods of the two cultures are identical when read about under Judaic law and Islamic law. The fact the jihadist Muslims are making a caricature of halal slaughter by murdering so many of their enemies via beheading is enabling propagandists to depict halal slaughter in a totally different light. There certainly may be less knowledgeable slaughterers but those animals who are slaughtered by the most humane halal slaughterers are using the identical technique that kosher slaughterers are doing. As for underage prostitution, underage sex crimes is a UNIVERSAL WORLD PROBLEM right now and it has been for decades. Surely, you’re not going to ignore what the sex tourism trade involves and has involved in Southeast Asia for decades since the war in Vietnam, are you? It should be pretty clear what my problem is w/various posters and various posted information. Information that is unimpeachably accurate is the way to influence situations and guide people to the correct solutions.
Kosher slaughter:
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/practices/Ritual/Kashrut_Dietary_Laws/Kosher_Food/Meat/Slaughtering.shtml
From the above link:
3. Shehitahmust be done by means of a swift, smooth cut of a sharp knife whose blade is free of any dent or imperfection.
4. Shehitah entails severing the trachea and the esophagus in accordance with the oral tradition, which requires that five improper procedures be avoided, lest they invalidate the shehitah and render the animal unfit to be eaten. They are (a) hesitation or delay while drawing the knife, (b) excessive pressure or chopping, (c) burrowing the knife between the trachea and the esophagus or under the skin, (d) making the incision outside the specified area, and (e) laceration or tearing of the trachea or esophagus, which would result from an imperfect blade. An animal or fowl that is improperly slaughtered (or, as already noted, that is not slaughtered, but dies of itself) is considered carrion(nevelah) and unfit for food.
_________________________________________________________________________
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-is-halal-slaughtering-done.htm#didyouknowout
From the above link:
Halal slaughtering itself is done via cuts to the jugular veins and also to the carotid arteries of the animal in question. This is done to both cows and sheep, but also to chickens. Any land animal, including birds, that can be eaten under Islamic law must be slaughtered in this fashion. This cut must be administered with a sharp knife and must be done by a son of Adam; meaning someone who is of Muslim, Jewish or Christian faith. The blade doing the cutting must be hidden until the last moment so the animal is not distressed.
The blood must be allowed to completely drain because Islamic law states that meat from halal slaughtering must be free of blood or blood products. For this reason, the animal is allowed to die at its own pace before being strung up so blood can drain. This process takes longer than non-halal methods of slaughtering and may also require more space.
Dhabihah does not apply to seafood, fish, camels and locusts. It does not include pigs either. This applies to fish and other seafood because laws have not been set out on how to kill them. The Quran simply states that all seafood is halal for Muslims, although some disagree. This means the seafood can be killed in any manner.
Will you remove your head from your sr$e!
I do not give a flying fig how halal is the same as kosher. I want neither. I disagree with it wholeheartedly. I choose not to eat it, therefore, establishments should clearly label if they use such products. Then i can boycott them.
Muslim rape gangs are a problem in my city. That’s my focus, not asia. They are able to operate with impunity due to the leftards inability to apply the rule of law regardless of colour or creed. The multi culti bs is hurting our kids, obviously not yours.
Muslim rape gangs don’t MAKE MONEY IF THEY DON’T HAVE JOHNS willing to BUY TIME w/their young girls. Don’t simply ignore the facts that: 1) underage sex is a worldwide plague right now, and 2) that johns are the crux of the issue. You want to put those Muslims out of business, go ahead and do it. But be prepared there might be a whole lot of your friends and neighbors who get put away right alongside the Muslim pimps.
Sorry you are misinformed. All the ‘Johns’ as you put it have been muslim men from many backgrounds, many married with children. They probably just see it as another temporary marriage.
So no, I won’t be seeing any of my friends being caught up in that.
This practice of sex enslavement is accepted within islam and you know it.
No Muslim would BOTHER pretending it’s a “legal marriage” if they’re aware the girls are SEX SLAVES and they’re paying cash for sexual services. Right then and there, they’re aware of the line they’ve crossed. There has been a certain push by Western anti-Muslim web sites to make the Muslim temporary marriage theory fit into prostitution only because this is the Muslim theological work-around to enable Muslim men and women in Muslim countries to get together. See where your theory begins to fall apart when all the moving parts don’t line up to keep the theory on the track?
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22354201
From the above link:
The temporary marriage, or nikah mut’ah, is an ancient Islamic practice that unites man and woman as husband and wife for a limited time. Historically it was used so that a man could have a wife for a short while when travelling long distances. So why are young British Muslims adopting the practice now?
“It allowed us to meet without breaking the bounds of Sharia [Islamic law]. We both wanted to date, to go out for dinner or go shopping and just get to know each other better before getting married, which we wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise,” says Sara.
She is a 30-year-old pharmacist from Birmingham, a Shia Muslim of Pakistani heritage.
‘It’s basically a contract’
Sara was temporarily married for six months before committing to a full marriage to her partner.
“It’s basically a contract. You sit down and stipulate your conditions – for a girl who hasn’t been previously married, you do need the father’s permission,” she said.
__________________________________________________________________________
It’s not sex enslavement if these men are seducing and then PROSTITUTING these girls, no matter what their ages might be. It’s simple prostitution and it’s prostitution that’s encouraged under the very same terms of engagement that white and black pimps have been using to acquire suitable girls since forever in the United States. The pimps look for suitable girls. They seduce those girls. They accustom them to thinking of themselves as their girlfriends. They introduce them to zexx and then they turn the tables on the girls and sexually humiliate and subjugate them by sharing them and/or raping them among the group of Muslim pimps. After that, it’s generally anything goes because the pimps make threats against the girls’ families and their families’ businesses.
**As for who the ‘johns’ are, please produce an actual web site that addresses those figures as factual and based on arrest reports.**
“There has been a certain push by Western anti-Muslim web sites to make the Muslim temporary marriage theory fit into prostitution only”
So you concede that it is used for prostitution, just not always?
All forced prostitution is sex slavery. All those girls thought they had A boyfriend, not many, before they were drugged beaten and raped. Your view is quite uninformed and quite disgusting to be frank.
For the Johns, search yourself, its all there. Not a single english name.
Type grooming gangs with any of those cities mentioned. Rotherham, oxford and manchester will be good bets.
Keep on defending islam, it makes no difference to me. I know what we are up against.
Do you just not know that ALL PIMPS have grooming gangs and grooming behavior and tactics? So, when you SPECIFICALLY CLAIM THAT this is MUSLIM SEXUAL SLAVERY, you are crossing the line between fact and fiction. This is prostitution and it’s being prosecuted as prostitution and crimes against children where and when it’s appropriate. Give us a listing of the johns. That’s what you were asked to do. Provide facts that prove the majority of the johns are Muslims and are not citizens but instead are unwelcome immigrants. You can’t get away w/assertions like “this is Muslim sexual slavery” when it’s PROSTITUTION. The fact it’s underage prostitution being committed by Muslims doesn’t change the character of the crime overall.
Muslim sexual slavery is when one man takes a woman for his own sexual pleasure. These Muslim immigrants are raping and having sex w/their marks a few times to break them in and then the girls are being treated like walking cash machines. Muslim sexual slavery is nowhere described as a cash on the barrelhead type of deal where a woman is sold multiple times daily to other men… It’s one man who gets a hankering for one woman or more than one woman and he takes them into his household for sexual pleasure whenever he desires. He doesn’t send them out on the street to make money via prostitution for him. As for my attitude being disgusting while your attitude is laudable, it may be laudable to disparage prostitution but it’s ridiculous to buy into the whole Muslim sexual slavery claim. That propaganda is simply dredging up inappropriate and inapplicable Muslim sharia tenets in order to create another black mark against Islam. There are plenty of black marks against Islam that Western societies don’t need to lie and make this sort of spurious cultural claim. This is a lot like the claims about halal and kosher slaughter where the identical methods are used by
I’d like to believe that you are just a naive soul trying to pass themselves off as some sort of intellectual. Seeing as google is obviously your best friend considering the speed at which you dredge up your durge, look up the names yourself. I’ve given you some cities where this is occurring. Fill your boots.
You then have the audacity to define what you think muslim sex slavery is giving me the impression you condone it. I suppose you think it’s the childrens fault for letting themselves be taken in. Call it propoganda if you wish but whilst you try to deflect any criticism of islam, i am quite aware what is going on around me. You are obviously not in a northern town in England are you? It is predominantly muslim men, mainly taxi drivers and takeaway workers. I’ll leave you to explore the background.
OK, I read that entire story. All the data referred to those WHO WERE THE PIMPS. There were no references to the JOHNS, the men who buy time w/these girl prostitutes. so, please, when you’ve got time, dig up the names of the JOHNS, the men who PATRONIZE THESE PROSTITUTES. Because as far as I’m concerned, the crime is PROSTITUTION and the people who are responsible for it are the PIMPS WHO PROVIDE IT and the JOHNS WHO BUY TIME w/PROSTITUTES.
Just FYI, but you do know that prostitution is illegal in Islam, right? And that the jihadists who took over Mosul raided a house of prostitution and killed all the girls and several of their johns? So, there most certainly are Muslims who hate prostitution and there most certainly are Muslims who intend to profit from prostitution. Gee, sounds just like the rest of humanity; some are for it and some are against it.
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/07/14/At-least-31-killed-in-raid-on-Baghdad-brothel-.html
As for blaming the children for being taken in, I’ve NEVER said anything like that. What I have said is that they are captivated by the fact they’ve got an exotic BF and they like being given trinkets and thinking they’re going to have a shot at a snazzy adult life w/these men. That ends once the stuff hits the fan and they’re raped by the pimp’s friends and cohorts and then told that they’ll be working for a living. That’s PROSITUTION. It’s not Muslim sexual slavery.
https://kafircrusaders.wordpress.com/muslim-grooming-paedo-map/
Here you go for starters. Can you not see they ate not following your classic model. The pimps are often the johns, there are that many of them.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-21125565
What is clear they lovingly keep it in their own community. It is a big muslim problem my friend. A sex lust as well as a blood lust. Everything is cheap in islam, life, women. But then again they are only following the way of Mo.
You wade through that first link that someone has kindly collated and tell me there is not a pattern. Thats just the UK. Search for similar in Sweden, Denmark, France. It is irrefutable regardless how much you will try.
Good night
PIMPS ARE NOT JOHNS. Why do make that claim? I thought you’d get around to making such a facetious claim but that doesn’t change the dynamic of pimp and prostitute. You’re claiming they’re JOHNS ecause they’re having zex w/their girls? Ah, but that’s what pimps DO around the world. So, either you’re terribly, terribly, woefully, dreadfully ignorant of the dynamics of prostitution or you’re going to keep trying to pitch this insane business model of Muslims running prostitution gangs because they’re NOT INTERESTED IN MAKING MONEY IN THE SEX TRADE.
Sorry, I’ve gotta go grab a beer and have a good laugh over that claim of yours…. Muslim pimps don’t want money. Heck, I bet you’ll claim that these Muslim pimps are PAYING their OWN prostitutes for sex. Yep, they’ve got sooooo much money lying around, they can afford to pay their prostitutes for the zex that they get for FREE WHEN THEY RAPE THEIR PROSTITUTES. Please, get back to us when you’ve straightened out your business model.
Firstly in you rush to reply you really need to learn how to read. I said the pimps are often the johns, for their own pleasure. Of 45 links i gave you only 8 had any mention of payments made received or offered. Your assertion therefore, does not stand up. They may not be following the business model you use in your enterprise but they are all muslim nonces all the same
Oh, believe me, when I read posts like yours, I read them very, very carefully. Pimps in every prostitution culture around the world have sex w/their girls. That doesn’t make the PIMPS into JOHNS. Just FYI, that’s the business model of prostitution right there, to make money off the sexual exploitation of women and girls and men and boys. Let’s have you call up those newspapers where the stories didn’t mention the profit angle and ask the journalists why they didn’t say whether there was any money that changed hands. They’d laugh you off the phone. Prostitution involves payment. The fact most of the stories are focusing on the GROOMING and how many men did the grooming and who’s being prosecuted doesn’t mean the journalist wouldn’t eventually get around to talking about the cash flow. The fact is the stories don’t have to mention the cash flow because it’s a given since the Muslim men were running prostitution gangs.
Your assertion is simply designed to ignore the fact that once this is seen for what it is — GOOD OLD FASHIONED PROSTITUTION — then the whole Muslim sexual slavery thing falls apart.
FFS I’m not even sure what your argument is anymore. You obviously don’t believe this is a rape jihad emulating sex slavery in muslim battle. I really don’t care. It’s fairly obvious there is a problem in the muslim community whether you like it or not. I don’t give a toss if they are pimps or johns paying for it or not.
Obviously you don’t feel the need for clarity on the issue. However, clarity is what’s important here. Muslim sexual slavery is what’s being done in Nigeria where Boko Haram has begun to sell non-Muslim women as slaves and sex slaves and has even gotten around to declaring that non-Muslim women can be raped.
What’s being done in the U.K. and elsewhere in the E.U. is MUSLIM GANG PROSTITUTION. It’s been adopted as a business by the Muslim community because it makes MONEY, it’s INEXPENSIVE to set up such a business, and it takes no real “training” to get the workforce up and running. So, you might not care if they’re pimps or johns but there’s a difference between the two, and so you can’t write whatever the heck you want and expect anyone else to take it seriously if you outright lie about what’s happening where and why.
I don’t need clarity. Both are happening. Some a sex traffickers, some just do it for the hell of it. Regardless of your opinion it is a form of sex slavery, whether working for a pimp or not. Just because it doesn’t fit your academic thesis, doesn’t mean it isnt true. The rape jihad is real
No, it’s not MUSLIM SEXUAL SLAVERY which is what you persisted in calling it through this entire conversation. Now that you’ve been called out on that, you’ve changed your tune and decided that you CAN STILL GET AWAY w/calling it something that’s attributable to Muslims and so it’s still heinous. Well, prostitution may be heinous but it’s legalized in several countries in the E.U. including in the U.K. There are a few stipulations that must be followed which I won’t get into here. Is the lowish risk why the Muslims decided to try to run these prostitution gangs? I doubt it. To me, it’s far more likely that they know prostitution is a relatively minor legal punishment if you’re prosecuted but it’s got a pretty substantial payoff if you’re NOT PROSECUTED.
You’ll also get an argument from me about the whole “rape jihad” BS. There is NO RAPE JIHAD going on in Western societies, it’s PLAIN OLD FASHIONED RAPE. A rape jihad could certainly happen if we were conquered by a Muslim jihad horde but since that’s unlikely to happen for at least say 75 years and only if and when our population is so aged, we don’t have a respectable standing army. There are a few other scenarios but I won’t get into those. Regardless, you can rest assured the rape jihad is not happening for a long, long time and it’s not happening because these Muslims are anxious to perform jihad rape. They want sex and they’ll get it however they can get it. It’s sad this situation exists but it’s the reality.
Have you heard of any of these LEGITIMATE JIHADIS being identified as being PIMPS on top of being SUICIDE BOMBERS? You called it Muslim sexual slavery for a very pertinent reason because it further degrades the reputation of Muslims and of Islam viz women which is exactly why Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer ALSO try to demonize it w/a particular Muslim attribution and use the Muslim sexual slavery texts to confirm it. However, that’s a significant theoretical flaw on their part since the Muslims are selling these girls and women on a daily basis so it’s not Muslim sexual slavery. It’s prostitution.
In fact, Robert Spencer foolishly has the nerve to continuously include the Muslim sexual slavery texts in every story that’s he writes about this “Muslim sexual slavery” issue but then it turns out the column is ACTUALLY ABOUT the Muslim prostitution gangs. THEY’RE NOT IDENTICAL CRIMES. THEY’RE TOTALLY DISTINCT ANIMALS from each other. You won’t get an argument from me that it is a “form of sexual slavery,” which in that case can’t be attributed just to the Muslim demographic since it’s practiced everywhere in the world.
Whilst i really can’t wait for your next essay i find it quite funny thst you think that forced prostitution is not sex slavery. You have your opinion in which you are trying dismiss my argument, bit i also think your opinion is total bollox so i guess we are at an impasse.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest this is more than run of the mill prostitution as you seem to think.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2325185/The-Oxford-sex-ring-preachers-teach-young-Muslim-men-white-girls-cheap.html
And here’s a snippet.
In the misguided orthodoxy that now prevails in many mosques, including several of those in Oxford, men are unfortunately taught that women are second-class citizens, little more than chattels or possessions over whom they have absolute authority.
That is why we see this growing, reprehensible fashion for segregation at Islamic events on university campuses, with female Muslim students pushed to the back of lecture halls.
There was a telling incident in the trial when it was revealed that one of the thugs heated up some metal to brand a girl, as if she were a cow. ‘Now, if you have sex with someone else, he’ll know that you belong to me,’ said this criminal, highlighting an attitude where women are seen as nothing more than personal property.
The view of some Islamic preachers towards white women can be appalling. They encourage their followers to believe that these women are habitually promiscuous, decadent and sleazy — sins which are made all the worse by the fact that they are kaffurs or non-believers.
Also this
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3846/britain-child-grooming
highlighting an attitude where women are seen as nothing more than personal property.
Smacks of slavery to me.
And this
http://m.nationalreview.com/corner/391814/isis-and-rape-jihad-andrew-c-mccarthy
And this
http://m.christianpost.com/news/islamic-rape-gangs-a-global-phenomenon–126107/
Sounds like a rape jihad to me.
Can I have 2000 words this time?
I’m pretty sure you need to read at least 2,000 words to rectify your knowledge of just how recently it’s been that women were chattel in the U.S. and Europe. There is much reprehensible behavior under Islamic law, but I think you forget that we Western societies abided by many of those very same gender-related rules of a patriarchal society. Where we differed w/Islam viz women’s history was that we in Western society didn’t force our women to remain cloistered in their homes (although some religious sects DO insist on this such as extremely orthodox Jews), purdah murders have never been an accepted part of our culture though they do occasionally happen, education was **eventually extended** to girls as well as boys after activists agitated for it, and our dress was not as stringently enforced under religious edict as is dress for Muslim women, etc. but you seem to fail to understand that it was ONLY AFTER THE EUROPEAN ENLIGHTENMENT that women in Western society even came close to being considered as sharing the equality of rights w/men. I may hate what’s going on under Islamic law but I consider their conditions to be mutable just as women in Western societies changed their situations. It will take as much social activism as it did in the West, likely at different levels of society since these are religious edicts. However, there is enough diversity in dress among all Muslim societies that it’s clear that ONE FORM of dress is not the only dress code to be allowed. Indian Muslims don’t dress like Saudi Muslims and so on. In that cultural diversity lies the seeds of reformation and change.
__________________________________________________________________________
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1097.html
From the above link:
In 1840, the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London may have been the spark of a blaze, when two American delegates,Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, were refused permission to speak. Stanton said later, “We resolved to hold a convention as soon as we returned home, and form a society to advocate the rights of women.” Eight years later, Stanton and Mott organized the first women’s suffrage convention in the United States at Seneca Falls, New York; the proceedings provoked much public discussion. The meeting’s Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, spelled out many demands for equality.
That declaration spread the fire of a revolution that would reach every facet of society. With reason, women regarded themselves as second-class citizens; in addition to not having the vote, they had few property rights, faced educational andemployment barriers, and had no legal protection in divorce and child custody cases. Women’s rights leaders were convinced that suffrage would be the most effective means to reconstruct this unfair social structure. In 1850, Lucy Stone organized the Women’s Rights Convention at Worcester, Massachusetts; its distinction lay in being a national assembly of women and men.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_education_in_the_United_States
From the above link:
Coinciding with the beginnings of the first wave of feminism in the 19th century came the attempt by women to gain equal rights to education in the United States. Women’s rights organizations focused on adjusting and increasing women’s place in the public arena by arguing that the only fundamental differences between women and men were socially created ones, and thus women should be offered the same extensive and practical education that was offered to men. After long battles against gender oppression women finally obtained the right to be educated through several government acts/conventions, the opening of facilities willing to educate them, and the opportunity to continue into higher education.[1]
1930s[edit]
Coeducation was a controversial topic in the 1930s,[3] and sex-segregated school systems protected “the virtue of female high school students.”[4] Home economics and female industrial education were new elements of the high school curriculum designed for unmistakably female occupations.[5] These classes taught women practical skills such as sewing, cooking, and using the new domestic inventions of the era; unfortunately, this “formal training offered women little advantage in the struggle for stable work at a liveable wage.”[6]
The 1930s also saw tremendous changes in women’s education at the college level. In 1900, there were 85,338 female college students in the United States and 5,237 earned their bachelor’s degrees; by 1940, there were 600,953 female college students and 77,000 earned bachelor’s degrees.[7] This increase was partially explained by the “contemporary discourse that reinforced the need for higher education for women in their positions as wives, mothers, citizens, and professionals.”[
http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/murder-in-purdah
From the above link:
In Pakistan, men kill their wives, mothers, daughters and sisters with impunity while women wait on death row for killing their husbands in self-defense. Women simply suspected of sex outside of marriage or who are merely disobedient are burned, tortured and murdered—justifiably, say their own fathers, brothers and sons—in the defense of family honor. Murder in Purdah, presented by BBC News’ superb Correspondent series, bears witness to the tragic stories of these women in stark detail. BBC reporter Olenka Frenkiel and senior producer Giselle Portenier traveled throughout Pakistan to reveal the terrible injustices perpetrated upon these women and to interview the men who committed the acts. Everywhere it is shownMurder in Purdah is making a major impact on so-called “honor killings.” In Britain, lawyers used the film as evidence to help prevent the deportation of two women to Pakistan. The European Union officially condemned the practice. Most important, the government of Pakistan announced new measures to protect women, including a proposal to finally treat honor killing as a crime and a promise to set up a commission for human rights. For a television news report causing change at the international level, a Peabody to BBC News forMurder in Purdah.
___________________________________________________________________________
http://www.heretication.info/_womensrights.html
From the above link:
As Gratian put it “The woman has no power, but in everything is subject to the control of her husband”.) In the words of the marriage service a married couple were one flesh and the canon lawyers held them to be a single person: erunt animae duae in carne una.
The very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of her husband.
It was this legal doctrine that gave rise to Dickens’ observation, put into the mouth of one of his characters, that the law is an ass . The doctrine enabled an Englishman to lock up his wife and not be liable for the tort of false imprisonment. He could beat her and not be guilty of assault. The same principle permitted him to rape her without the law recognising it as rape. A wife could not proceed against her husband, nor be called to give evidence in court against him. Most such constraints were done away with in Britain by Acts of Parliament in 1935 and 1945 in the teeth of fierce opposition from the organised Churches. In England it remained impossible for a man to be charged with the rape of his wife until the 1990’s. Civil remedies are still in general unavailable to wives against their husbands. Thus for example, a wife who is locked up by her husband would have to rely on a writ of habeas corpus, like a medieval vassal .
Unmarried women were also inferior beings, or as the Bible puts it weaker vessels (1 Peter 3:7). Fathers were free to treat them as their personal property and swap them for other goods or for political advantage, which is what arranged child marriages often amounted to. Unmarried adult women were not permitted many of the privileges allowed by law to men, nor thought capable of fulfilling the duties expected of men. Like married women, they were prohibited from practising all professions and all but a few trades. In 1588 Pope Sixtus V even forbade them to appear on the public stage within his dominions. Soon the whole of western Christendom had banned actresses and female singers.
Well into the twentieth century women were debarred from sitting on juries, and were permitted only a few selected jobs such as school teaching and nursing, and even these they were generally obliged to give up when they got married. Women were so little regarded that until this century they were often excluded from Church membership rolls. No one knows with certainty how large some denominations were until recently because they did not count women in their membership statistics.
Throughout their histories, the Churches have consistently opposed women’s right to the franchise. Only after the Church’s influence had seriously weakened did women obtain the vote. In England this happened in 1918, when the franchise was extended to women over the age of thirty. Even now women do not enjoy equality in all spheres of life. In England, for example, the taxation laws and laws of inheritance still discriminate against them. At the time of writing there are areas of Europe where traditional Christian values prevail and women still do not have full voting rights . There is one area in the European Community, Mount Athos, where for religious reasons women are not even permitted to set foot.
The traditional position of the Church, that women were mere chattels of their husbands was challenged by the usual selection of freethinkers such as Thomas Paine (1737-1809) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). The atheist Mary Wollstonecraft published her Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. Her husband the philosopher William Godwin (1756-1836) was a campaigner for women’s rights, and so was their atheist son-in-law, the poet Shelley. Other prominent proponents included the unbelieving Mary Anne Evans (George Eliot, 1819-80), and Harriet Law (1832-97). The Utilitarian J S Mill launched the women’s suffrage movement in England with a petition to the House of Commons on 7 June 1866. He attempted to amend the 1867 Reform Bill to extend the franchise to women, and to stop discrimination under the infamous Contagious Diseases Acts. He published the Subjugation of Women in 1869. Other active campaigners included the atheists Holyoake (1817-1906), Bradlaugh (1833-91) and Besant (1847-1933). In France the argument for women’s rights was led by enemies of the Church like Denis Diderot and Condorcet, and much later in the USA by atheists like Ernestine Rose, Matilda Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Anthony.
Ah, the but look at what you non muslims have done argument. You really did step up to the challenge. What a nob.
Forced prostitution is sexual slavery. It’s not rocket science.
The only saving grace is i must be wasting far more of your time than you are of mine.
The only saving grace is that you’ve finally given up your shameful attempt to roll everything about Muslim sexual behavior into this whole Muslim sexual slavery business.
Nope, you couldn’t be further from the truth. I wholeheartedly disagree with you and stand by my assertions. I couldn’t care less if it doesn’t fit with your textbook business model. Muslims are targeting non muslim white girls in the UK for sexual slavery.
If you want to sit up until 4am arguing the toss that’s up to you. Maybe you’d see a similar pattern in Dearborn, Michigan seeing as that has a high muslim population.
The Muslims may be targeting white girls but why are they doing so? Because white girls are accessible, they’re seducible, they may feel an attraction to a foreigner as opposed to a British male, etc. There are many sociological factors that play into the ability of the Muslim men to seduce these girls into a life of prostitution. **That doesn’t change the ultimate aim of their endeavors which is to have a stable of white girls engaged in prostitution.**
If you want to change the description to being sexual slavery rather than prostitution, fine, do so because it’s somewhat applicable. But calling it Muslim sexual slavery that applies in very specific situations and has explicit theological language and ramifications is NOT OK. Prostitution is theoretically forbidden in Islam so though this Muslim sexual slavery appears to be a form of subterfuge, of hiding the intention of the action, it doesn’t cross the line into providing prostitution services for long lines of customers.
Sorry, i beg to differ again. If you care to go through those links again. Of course some are being pimped. But others are being used by a group repeatedly for their own gratification was i think the term used. You may want to neatly put everythinig in its iwn box but i think that says more about your own ocd personality than the reality of what is actually happening.
You’ll be telling me next that islam is the religion of peace
Nope, none of the instances I’ve ever read about have been other than Muslim pimps. You produce a SINGLE LINK to a SINGLE GUY who’s indulging in Muslim sexual slavery. If that guy then follows a TREND where multiple Muslims are doing the identical thing, then and only then, would I consider that Muslim sexual slavery has come to the West. As it is, we’ve had how many instances of sexual slavery at this point by a German man (Natalie Kampusch), an Ohio man (three different women entrapped and kept enslaved and incarcerated in his home, etc. so I’m very sure I know what it is. Need I write more about cases where the distinction is clear between what sexual slavery is and what Muslim sexual slavery is?
It’s got nothing whatsoever about me wanting to put things in their own box but rather it’s the factual reality. You are trying harder than I am to make the claim stick that it’s Muslim sexual slavery. It’s simply NOT. It’s PROSTITUTION. What’s being done in Nigeria by Boko Haram is Muslim sexual slavery. What we’ve got here are Muslims who’ve found they can sit around while they make women work. On their backs and in sundry other positions.
I will not concede to you I’m afraid, just because you swallowed a few textbooks and stay up until 4am regurgitating them
http://www.religiousfreedomcoalition.org/2014/03/26/muslim-child-slavery-gangs-rampant-in-uk/
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4226/uk-child-sex-slavery
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=ZA-0VP6sJ6ev7Ab_z4DQDg&url=http://lawandfreedomfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Easy-Meat-Multiculturalism-Islam-and-Child-Sex-Slavery-05-03-2014.pdf&ved=0CDAQFjAC&usg=AFQjCNFMVKit7KPemp9DNrUWzF8n4sPA7Q&sig2=fLkALBjjaB1zlRiCTwDS9w
Like I said muslim sex slavery.
I’m not sure you can make the claim that you are. The fact these Middle Eastern and Asian men are being tried for sexual exploitation of children might be hampered by the fact the girl was coached by her pimp to say something that would make her actions more legally acceptable, from your link: “She told jurors the man said he was going to “bring another man in”, adding: “They told me if they ask, to say I was 16.”
As for them “not following your classic model”, oh, on the contrary, I’d say they’re merely following the latest craze in prostitution which is the younger the better. Oh, and w/that statement of yours, you’re basically making an admission that they are adhering to the prostitution model of yore.
The girls was also force fed alcohol and force injected heroin to make them compliant. So the responsibility stll rest with the men not the girl. Cannot believe you are suggesting she had a choice.
These girls are GROOMED to eventually enable the man/men to SEDUCE HER and then use techniques to ultimately make her compliant whether that be gang rape or drugs or alcohol or beatings or whatever else they feel is needed to control each girl. This is what happens in prostitution. And it happens often enough in prostitution situations that the process was named to describe its purpose — GROOMING BEHAVIOUR.
Don’t PRETEND that this is not STANDARD PIMP BEHAVIOUR just because you want to put the emphasis on the fact the pimps are Muslims. The sex is the same, the demands for payment are the same, the way the girls are forced to work are the same. Voila, it’s child prostitution. The fact the pimps are of a particular religion doesn’t change the rest of the equation.
This seems to be what happens when you allow uncontrolled muslim immigration. That is all. They are all dirty dirty muslims
I’m not blind at all just as you’re not blind to the fact it serves your purposes to make the claim that there is a fifth column of Muslims in the U.S. And, wow, those traitorous Leftists are in league w/those Muslims. Not only is this not the case NOW, it’s also not likely to be the case EVER IN THE FUTURE.
As for Lebanon, you make the mistake of bringing up yet another instance of the Palestinian jihad creating an international aspect to Palestinian irregular warfare against Israel that proves that Israeli aggression and militarism aren’t always the solution some Israeli factions would like to believe they offer.
__________________________________________________________________________
Here’s a description of some of the background on Lebanon (the Israeli invasion and the actions and reactions among the various players are fairly clear in terms of what the Israelis hoped to gain; the fact their efforts backfired is notable):
The invasion had several goals. By expelling the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), removing Syrian influence over Lebanon, and installing a pro-Israeli Christian government led by Bachir Gemayel, Israel hoped to sign a treaty which Menachem Begin promised would give Israel “forty years of peace”.[13] Ariel Sharon, who had planned the invasion a year earlier and ran the campaign, aimed to destroy Lebanon’s refugee camps and bring about the mass expulsion of 200,000 Palestinian refugees.[14][15] Begin and Sharon thought a successful operation would give Israel a free hand to secure or gradually annex[16] the West Bankand Gaza for Greater Israel by depriving Palestinians there of the symbolic presence of a Palestinian army in a contiguous country, and thus a basis for their nationalism, which, it was imagined, could be solved by creating a Palestinian state in Jordan.[17][18]
The long occupation that followed Israel’s 1982 invasion had repercussions for Israel, since Hezbollah arose as a Shiite rebellion against the Israeli occupation. It may also have, unexpectly, pushed the PLO into entering into the peace negotiations that, from the 1990s, revived Palestinian national aspirations in the West Bank.[18]w/realistically by avoiding the realities of the political circumstances of the relevant parties.
Issues in Lebanon started before the Israeli invasion. In the mid 70s persecution was along religious lines against christians, culminating in tit for tat sectarian violence on both muslims and christian sides. The persecution against christians continued and increased in the 2000s when Hezbollah started cleansing the region of christians. So whilst the israelis may have had a hand in providing the conditions for this to occur, once again the muslims used this smokescreen as an opportunity to persecute and ethnically cleanse the region of non muslims.
https://www.globalpolicy.org/security-council/index-of-countries-on-the-security-council-agenda/lebanon.html
There was persecution of Christians because of penetration of the government by Muslim Lebanese who wished to support the Palestinian jihad. So, your view that (LRRH) “Israelis may have had a hand in providing the conditions for this to occur, once again the Muslims used the smokescreen as an opportunity to persecute and ethnically cleanse the region of non-Muslims” is INCOMPLETE. Because you’re refusing to acknowledge the Christian Lebanese would have prevented Lebanon remaining a stronghold of pro-Palestinian forces. Therefore, those Christian politicians and the Christian political faction were seen as being a political obstacle that must be removed from political power as well as perhaps purged from Lebanon.
Whatever you say.
Nothing further to claim? Misrepresentation doesn’t change the total sum of the equation.
How am i misrepresenting anything? Muslims are slaughtering non muslims, mainly christians across the middle east, south asia and north africa. Lebanon happened to be one place which may have a more complex political situation but it still happen there non the less.
Evil prevails when good men do nothing. Now when will the good muslims stand up and be counted?
They won’t. It’s not in their best interests.
The good Muslims are already standing up and trying to be counted. Obviously, in Western societies, it’s to their best interests to stand against this Caliphate jihad movement that is responsible for the killings of so many innocents otherwise they look like savages. You likely aren’t delving into enough media to become aware of those Muslims. Mainstream media are only one source of information for knowledge, you must avail yourself of the other conduits available. Interact w/Muslims on social media, post your opinions on their web sites rather than simply posting your opinions on web sites that are ALREADY AGAINST JIHAD. Make them see that they must assist in fighting jihad.
As for those poor children, the insanity of these unspeakably inhumane and idiotic ideologues killing such children simply because of their religion is sickening. Justice usually catches up to those who so abominable and their fate is already written because of these crimes.
Sorry no. It is not worth conversing with muslims on their own turf because they persistently lie. History does not lie even though muslims are constantly trying to rewrite it. I’m afraid the history of islam has been nothing if not consistent.
I trust my instincts on this and my instincts tell me that islam needs to be consigned to the historical dustbin. What we are seeing now is just the beginning unless we wake up and take action.
http://www.islam-guide.Com/ch3-16.htm
“The Five Pillars of Islam are the framework of the Muslim life. They are the testimony of faith, prayer, giving zakat (support of the needy), fasting during the month of Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Makkah once in a lifetime for those who are able.”
http://www.shariahfinancewatch.Org/blog/2010/10/25/great-work-by-money-jihad-blog-on-the-zakat-terror-finding-nexus/
Hmm yes but muslim first and everything else second. Between 15 and 25% of muslims have a fundamentalist view that is not compatible with civil society. Your own government figures.
The muslim fundamentalist wants you as a non muslim dead. The “moderate” muslim will stand and watch you die.
You must not have read the book “Lone Survivor,” or watched the movie “Lone Survivor” which was based on the book. The headman of an Afghan village came across a wounded American SEAL who was hiding from the Taliban forces who were in hot pursuit of him. The Afghan took the SEAL to his village and hid him. The Taliban show up shortly afterward and the Afghan headman must threaten the Taliban at gunpoint in order to make them leave and surrender the American SEAL to the Afghan villagers. The Afghan headman then sends one of the village elders to go to an American army outpost which is miles and miles away to tell them they have a wounded American they must rescue. The village is subsequently attacked and the Afghan villagers put a vain fight against the better equipped Taliban who have RPGs and so on. Read the book, watch the movie… Either way, there are Muslims in the world who have a higher human calling than to be simply a Muslim.
Wow, you found one. Cancel the war, it’s all going to be fine.
Since most of the village men took part in the firefight to defend this American SEAL, there was definitely more than one Afghan Muslim who qualifies as having honor. You think this SEAL would have written this book if he felt less than grateful to all those villagers who helped to save his life?
That battle didn’t involve “just one Afghan Muslim”. The entire village protected that badly wounded U.S. SEAL at the risk of their lives and the risk of continuing Taliban targeting of their village as being American-sympathizers. Let’s not have you refuse to acknowledge the guts that took for those Afghan villagers to act when the Taliban commander said to them they were all going to die for having prevented the Taliban from beheading that SEAL.
Granted I was being a little flippant and i know there are plenty of peaceful muslims out there. However, it does seem to me that when/if they are significant minority/majority they are still likely to stay silent whilst atrocities transpire around them, even when the ‘moderates’ are in the majority. Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Sudan, Bosnia, Albania, Lebanon, the list goes on. Only the muslim community in these areas can stop the nutters, we can’t. But they don’t and i can’t fathom why.
You can’t fathom why poor villagers can’t fight a vicious army of zealot militants? You can’t fathom (LRRH) “why atrocities transpire around them, even when the moderates are in the majority”? This is similar to all situations where a well-armed military faction takes control of a region and forces the compliance of civilians. Those civilians who see their existence tied to allying w/the victor will do whatever they have to to remain alive along w/their families. Use some reason and you’ll understand perfectly well HOW and WHY this has happened. The civilians in these areas that have been overrun need someone to come and organize them and teach them how to fight against ISIL and ISIL fighters.
You make it sound like overnight radicals turn up in the community with guns. The radicals were there before the guns but were unchallenged. They then progress to guns
Why is it the world has been following the INVASION of ISIL across Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria if they’re not invaders but are the regular old population of these Iraqi villages and Syrian towns, etc., etc.? Why is it there are European Muslim sympathizers who have been taking planes and trains to get to the Middle East to fight jihad in Syria and Iraq if the radicals “were there before the guns but were unchallenged”? Of course, ISIL radicals are MOBILE INVADERS and they are INVADING these countries.
You are looking in the short term. The radical narrative has been propagated for decades if not centuries
Sure, the underlying ideology of jihad “has been propagated for decades, for centuries really” and NO MUSLIMS had been taking it seriously. Gee, you’ve got to wonder why not, RIGHT? Or are you going to say simply that because the Palestinian jihad has finally reached the stratospheric size it has where there are individuals who’ll act anywhere in the world on its behalf that it’s “just Islam”? If you say it’s Islam then there has to be a greater number represented as jihadis for your premise to hold water. If there aren’t enough jihadis then your premise — that ALL MUSLIMS are JIHADISTS at heart — simply falls apart on the face of the evidence.
The person who really started popularizing the Palestinian jihad (and the international jihad in support of the Palestinian jihad) was Osama bin Laden and he only dedicated himself to it as a cause after familiarizing himself w/the Palestinian situation and what was going on in Afghanistan against the Russian forces. Most Muslims are content to simply allow the normal working out (or not) of regional issues and national issues in the context of their countries’ systems.
You are talking rubbish. Jihad is not a recent thing. Try 1400 years of it with a body count of several hundred million. Over 80 million hinus alone. The jews are not reaponsible for everything you know.
No, that’s right. The Israelis and the Jews are only responsible for the proliferation and further flowering of the Palestinian jihad. They broke it, they should fix it.
It’s the joooooos.
No my friend, its the muslims. It always has been.
Although you’d like to rewrite history I’m afraid you can’t. Life is cheap in islam, it always has been
Your statements are only part of the truth. Like your sales pitch that Muslim prostitution is Muslim sexual slavery, you’re willing to misrepresent the Palestinian jihad because that’s your world view. Well, your world view is not the historical perspective.
My God, palistinian jihad is current yes, but if you want to deny violent jihad is as old as islam thats fine, but it in the real world it is a historical fact. End of conversation.
Ah, so you’ve given up trying to claim that Muslim prostitution is Muslim sexual slavery and you’re going to shift your tactics and simply condemn all Muslims on the basis that SOME OF THEM are committing jihad? There are quite solid reasons for seeing the initial Muslim expansion as being the most self-serving expression of jihad but that is not the sole definition. There’s no reason to distinguish between the early Muslim conquering and expansion and what’s going on now in Palestine other than the Palestinian jihad is what the concept of jihad as a military endeavor is meant to address — the defense of one’s homeland.
http://islamicsupremecouncil.org/understanding-islam/legal-rulings/5-jihad-a-misunderstood-concept-from-islam.html?start=9
From the above link:
In a religious sense, as described by the Quran and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (s), “jihad” has many meanings. It can refer to internal as well as external efforts to be a good Muslims or believer, as well as working to inform people about the faith of Islam.
If military jihad is required to protect the faith against others, it can be performed using anything from legal, diplomatic and economic to political means. If there is no peaceful alternative, Islam also allows the use of force, but there are strict rules of engagement. Innocents – such as women, children, or invalids – must never be harmed, and any peaceful overtures from the enemy must be accepted.
Military action is therefore only one means of jihad, and is very rare. To highlight this point, the Prophet Mohammed told his followers returning from a military campaign: “This day we have returned from the minor jihad to the major jihad,” which he said meant returning from armed battle to the peaceful battle for self-control and betterment.
In case military action appears necessary, not everyone can declare jihad. The religious military campaign has to be declared by a proper authority, advised by scholars, who say the religion and people are under threat and violence is imperative to defend them. The concept of “just war” is very important.
The concept of jihad has been hijacked by many political and religious groups over the ages in a bid to justify various forms of violence. In most cases, Islamic splinter groups invoked jihad to fight against the established Islamic order. Scholars say this misuse of jihad contradicts Islam.
Examples of sanctioned military jihad include the Muslims’ defensive battles against the Crusaders in medieval times, and before that some responses by Muslims against Byzantine and Persian attacks during the period of the early Islamic conquests.
Nope i haven’t, but there is no point in arguing with you.
Oh, you can argue w/me. But you’ll have to produce actual Muslim pimps (doesn’t matter their nationality) who make no money from their prostitutes and instead maintain a vast stable of underage prostitutes just for their own personal use. You’ll also have to prove that there are no JOHNS among the host populations taking advantage of these girls. There’s a reason the girls were coached to say “they were older than 16” if they were asked by the johns about their age. (That detail was from your original story link.)
What the hell are you talking about. ‘produce muslim pimps’? Have you bothered to read the 45 links i sent? Some are groups trafficking girls as prostitutes, some are just the groups of muslim men abusing the girls themselves. Others are just you opportunist rapists. Makes no odds they are ALL muslim.
Prove there are no non muslim johns, well no non muslim johns are mentioned in ANY of the articles.
Your last point may be true in some cases. Still dirty muslims though
I’ve never read a story where the Muslim men are abusing the girls just among themselves. It’s always been for purposes of PROSTITUTION. You produce some stories that say what these men are doing w/these girls and if the story link EXCLUDES OTHER MEN from paying for the privilege of dallying w/these girls, then I’ll be willing to entertain other concepts. “Opportunist rapists” are JUST RAPISTS. They may be Muslim rapists but they’re not likely to be rapist jihadis. If there were such a thing as a RAPE JIHAD, we likely would have heard the jihadis boasting about being selected for the rape jihad because they’re “really good at getting girls into bed” or they’ve “got a big tool” or something… The jihadis wouldn’t remain mute if there were a rape jihad going on. They’d be overrun w/volunteers considering the risks are a lot less in a rape jihad than what they’d be facing in Iraq and Syria where they might have all their equipment blown off their bodies. There may be demographic reasons for these crimes to be high among the Muslim demographics but they’re likely unemployment and business reasons. Till you prove otherwise, it’s PROSTITUTION and it’s RAPE.
You obviously haven’t looked at the 45 links i. Sent.
See my other response, i really have better things to do than trawling through parallel tomes from you in the same thread.
I didn’t see 45 links; I saw some story links, NONE of which cited the Muslim men as being other than pimps who were prepping these girls for prostitution. You seem to think that ANYTHING done by Muslim men as regards sexual trafficking or sexual exploitation somehow makes what they do RADICALLY DIFFERENT THAN WHAT WHITE MEN or ANY OTHER ETHNICITY DOES. It’s NOT.
To produce a prostitute, the pimp has to overcome the natural inhibitions of the girl or appeal to her sense of wanting to become a mature woman w/a man of her own. After he’s begun that seduction process, it’s only a matter of the pimp deciding which is the most effective way to ensnare the girl further so she won’t back out of the relationship. Some pimps seduce their women slowly and carefully, other pimps seduce the girls/women fairly rapidly and then force other men on them to degrade their sense of self-worth so they won’t back away from a life of prostitution. This is a KNOWN PROCESS in PROSTITUTION, in GANGS of various ethnicities around the U.S. and that’s why it’s called ‘grooming.’ So, I’ve read your links and none of them so far have proved anything like what you claim — that these Muslims are seducing girls simply for their own use. That is what Muslim sexual slavery is. Seducing women in order to sell them sexually to clients is what prostitution is. There’s really no need for all the confusion you seem to trying to produce around the issue. Produce a list of Muslims who’ve seduced girls and kept them only for themselves and I’ll be fine w/calling it Muslim sexual slavery. Until you do that, if those girls are SERVICING A BUNCH OF CLIENTS as a MONEY-MAKING OPERATION, it’s PROSTITUTION.
I can summarise in fewer words than you.
Forced prostitution, is sexual slavery, full stop.
You should watch a uk doco called undercover mosque from 2007. See what is being preached in UK mosques.
(LRRH) “Forced prostitution is sexual slavery, full stop.”
Well, you won’t find me disagreeing w/that concept you just presented in many cases despite the fact there are women who work as sex workers of their own volition. However, that concept is not what you were selling as your original premise. Since you seem to have absorbed the distinction between what is prostitution vs what is Muslim sexual slavery, I don’t expect in future that you will confuse one for the other or vice versa.
My, aren’t you up late.
On your last point I still disagree with you. You are looking for a textbook answer, there isn’t one. Very few if any if the girls in these cases worked as sex workers through their own volition. Virtually all the girls targeted were non muslim and just because they haven’t been sold to a person to be married or whatever does not mean this is not muslim sex slavery. All the users were muslim from the evidence so far.
So no I’m not letting get away with it either.
Muslim sexual slavery has one man acquiring one or more women for HIMSELF for his PERSONAL USE and they are maintained as part of his household retinue.
Prostitution involves a pimp acquiring a stable of girls to sell off as many times daily as he can find them customers.
They’re different animals. You’ve admitted as much by finally deciding to call it only “sexual slavery”.
I’ve not admitted any such thing. A number of those articles highlighted that the girls were groomed and enslaved to share amongst the group. The same group. Not random johns muslims or otherwise.
Muslim sexual slavery is still on the agenda im afraid.
You’re a little confused. The “sharing” that occurred was to prepare the girls to go out and perform sex acts on strangers. That is part and parcel of the grooming behavior they undergo; in order to roil their emotions and disconnect them from their real lives, they are raped by friends of their pimp.
Oh is it now, sounds like another of your opinions. Or do you have evidence that it was just a preparation phase.
Muslim sex slavery. End of story love.
If the girls are seduced, have a short interlude where their Muslim BF brings them up to speed sexually and then he turns them over to his friends for the final coupe de grace of stripping them of their dignity before selling them to multitudes of men daily on the street, then it’s PROSTITUTION. The fact you are such a worshipper of Pamela Geller or Robert Spencer that you choose not to understand the difference between Muslim sexual slavery and PROSTITUTION is your problem. But I’ll certainly point it out each and every time you attempt to argue they’re engaged in Muslim sexual slavery because in that case, any pimp is engaging in WHITE SEXUAL SLAVERY or BLACK SEXUAL SLAVERY or FILIPINO SEXUAL SLAVERY or THAI SEXUAL SLAVERY…
Or MUSLIM SEXUAL SLAVERY.
At last we agree. All is right in the world.
TTFN
No, you’re hopelessly dedicated to the Pam Geller/Robert Spencer trope that EVEYRTHING and ANYTHING SEXUALLY ABUSIVE is Muslim sexual slavery. It’s not. Either have some honesty about the realities of prostitution or don’t. But if these Muslim men from Europe were in Mosul w/their merry bands of girl prostitutes, they’d be executed for PROSTITUTION. The fact extremist Muslims would readily identify the crime and you cannot because you’ve pulled your black shades down over your eyes and your intellect doesn’t mean anything in the scheme of things.
I wonder what LRRH thinks about “Christian” sexual rape: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_Bosnian_War
Boy! We should certainly stop Christian immigration into this country. Wouldn’t want those Christians coming in this country and trying to implement the Law of Moses, with stoning, slavery and all. Oh, but only the Muslims “follow” their religion when they rape, and the Christians don’t. That is patently false. The Serbs, like the Nazis, were drawing inspiration from their faiths and felt that God was on their side.
Americana, the difference between you and LRRH is that you can see beyond the social constructions. To you, rape is rape. For LRRH, there is Muslim rape and non-Muslim rape; the former is an urgent issue which is taking over the Free World, whereas the latter is just an awful part of everyday civilization that we should deal with calmly and rationally – without tacking on a religious label even if the person claims religious inspiration like Joseph Kony of the DRC.
Where are all those silent Christians on Joseph Kony? I haven’t seen any protest in my side of town of Christians condemning Joseph Kony. That means either there are either rotten Christians like Kony, or silent ones who are secretly complicit. Did LRRH ever follow a protest march in my side of town where I can see her? Guess she’s then one of those secret Christian fifth columns in our Free American Society, and that’s why it’s an urgent issue to stop Christian immigration! I heard those coming through the South of our border are a particularly nasty sect called Catholics, that are anathema to the Real Christians who follow the Bible – The Protestants. This is an urgent issue taking over the Free World. Wake up people!
Obviously this line of reasoning is extremely simplistic and foolish. But it is precisely the line of reasoning of those like LRRH.
The Muslim world is in turmoil. It doesn’t know where it will go, but the medium-term future is certainly not for ISIL or their ancestor ideologues (who also happen to be our best friends): The Saudis.
Until the Muslim World finds its place in the modern world, no one can really speak for it, and this is especially true of Spencer and his ilk. It is on Muslims like myself to battle against ISIL, and we need the help of our non-Muslim brothers and sisters. The only problem is that our government is getting in the way by protecting the Saudi Monarchy, which proselytizing the Wahhabi ideology, which is the ideology of ISIL. They do this for geopolitical reasons. A quick buck and medium-term control of oil, if I’m allowed to simplify things so crudely.
Anyway, I really do not wish to debate as I see debate is pointless. The monsters of ISIL and their Saudi co-ideologues are wreaking havoc in the ME (so are the Israelis) and “speaking” for Islam. That’s all we the Westerners hear. There are many who condemn them, and refute them using the texts of Islam, but it’s certainly an uphill battle.
Yes, I’d agree w/your assessment. What branch of Islam are you, JS? if you don’t want to answer, don’t. I’d fully understand why you wouldn’t want it to be known. My sister taught in Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka and several other places in the Middle East and she found all the Muslim cultures to have different but similar problems. I do feel modernity is looming but I worry that it won’t come soon enough and that it won’t necessarily grapple w/all the interrelationships of civic and religious life. I’ve always wondered when the first push for an Islamic Reformation would come from and from whom it would come and whether or not the right person(s) would come along to champion a Reformation w/enough persona to carry it through to fruition.
Well, I did overlook one link that she had put up that involved a Muslim paedophilia ring. But I still believe that the Muslim sexual slavery trope is being abused by many thanks to the publicity efforts of Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and other bloggers who’ve become fascinated w/the concept. This may not be Muslim sexual slavery they’re practicing in the one link that she reposted (please check those links out) but it is paedophilia and they deserve long sentences.
It’s as if they’ve never heard of the Interpol Sex Crimes Unit. Here’s just ONE INVESTIGATION into an international paedophile ring:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42108748/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/massive-online-pedophile-ring-busted-cops/#.VLWxB15M68o
From the above link:
An Internet pedophile ring with up to 70,000 members — thought to be the world’s largest —has been uncovered by police, a security official said Wednesday.
The European police agency Europol said in a statement that “Operation Rescue” had identified 670 suspects and that 230 abused children in 30 countries had been taken to safety. More children are expected to be found, Europol said.
It said that so far 184 people had been arrested and investigations in some countries were continuing. Most of those detained are suspected of direct involvement in sexually abusing children.
They include teachers, police officers and scout leaders, AP reported. One Spaniard who worked at summer youth camps is suspected of abusing some 100 children over five years.
Europol director Rob Wainwright said Wednesday the ring, which communicated using an Internet forum, was “probably the largest online pedophile network in the world.”
Getting a little snippy? I don’t follow either of those people you mention. The sexual slavery I am talking about is based largely on the mentality of the muslims in our communities (using that word loosely). What they are taught in the mosques and what they do on our streets. They believe they hold the whip hand over our girls and can do anything they want with them. Some do for money, others shared amongs friends and often brothers. The mentality is exactly the same when it comes to white non muslim girls. The same mentality spouted in the quran when it comes to muslim sex slavery, i.e. take them, you posses them.
So you keep on wiling away the wee small hours believing you are of superiour intellect. I know what I mean. If it does not fit your preferred definition of muslim sex slavery.. Sorry love. Tough sh!t.
I’m sure it will be coming to America soon.
These Muslim men believe they hold the whip hand only because they’re able to seduce these girls. If parents took care to warn their children sufficiently, these men, Muslims or not, wouldn’t be able to seduce them. As for your baloney about these men seducing them just to “share amongst themselves,” I’ve never heard of such a gang and I’ve read anything about such a gang so I question what your sources are. So far, NONE of your sources have produced a gang that uses these girls solely among themselves. These girls are treated just like any other prostitution ring’s girls and women around the world.
You produce sources that say unequivocally that many, many Muslim men are indulging in “Muslim sexual slavery” where they kidnap/seduce women (or even buy them) and keep them in their homes solely for their own use, I’ll certainly be intrigued to hear more about it. Until then, you, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer and all the rest who are flogging this “Muslim sexual slavery” trope are simply not accurately representing the situation.
At least one of those cases was described by the judge as using these girls for their OWN gratification. I sent the links i suggest you check again.
It’s interesting in your previous comment that you mention ISIS. Their treatment of the Yazidis is not exactly your textbook definition of muslim sex slavery, yet sex slavery it is.
“Some are sold to individual men. Others are kept by [Islamic State] in rest houses and face multiple rapes by fighters returning from the battlefield.”
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Yazidi-women-dragged-by-their-hair-sold-into-sex-slavery-by-ISIS-for-25-385394
So not sold to individual men but just fcked by whoever whenever they like.
Kinda fails your own test eh?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10061217/Imams-promote-grooming-rings-Muslim-leader-claims.html
Clearly says driven by race and religion. Therefore, muslim sex slavery. Who gives a sh!t if money changes hands.
If you want to maintain that everyone is wrong unless it fits your definition fine. But you are wrong or sick or both.
It’s pretty sick that sex slavery is enshrined in islamic law fullstop.
Where is the link to the case you claim where the girls were SOLELY for PERSONAL USE?
As for your claim about ISIL and their abuse of Yazidi women, why wouldn’t that fall under Muslim sexual slavery? They were seized under Muslim edict by Islamic forces and they’re being used as sexual “comfort women” under that very same Muslim edict though there is no money changing hands because they’re captives. I’d say that’s simply a TWIST on Muslim sex slavery by the ISIL forces. I’ve never denied there are instances where these jihadists are reviving the practice of Muslim sexual slavery to suit themselves. In fact, I was the ONE WHO FIRST MENTIONED those instances of Muslim sexual slavery in Nigeria by Boko Haram so even though I didn’t mention the Yazidi women, it should be obvious where I consider those women to fall within the parameters of Muslim sexual slavery.
sigh.
I knew you hadn’t read them
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-20046781
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2235658/Sex-abuse-gang-suspects-held-dawn-raids-High-Wycombe-girl-tells-police-attacked-years-age-12.html#ixzz2Cobs2Lmt
https://kafircrusaders.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/2-muslim-nonces-on-trial-for-repeatedly-raping-1-girl-and-the-rape-2-others-in-keighley/
Prosecutor Michelle Colborne QC told the court on Tuesday: ”They acted together travelling from their various home addresses in Leeds and Halifax to the Keighley town centre where they specifically targeted vulnerable girls, all underage.”
……..
Miss Colborne said Mr Rehman boasted to a woman they could get any girl they wanted and described them as ”fresh meat”.
”He said they had no reputation and if they got them young enough they could KEEP THEM FOREVER,” she told the court.
https://kafircrusaders.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/thames-valley-police-arrest-4-for-child-exploitation-more-paedostanis/
The men, aged 19, 20, 21 and 22, are alleged to have committed “various sexual offences” against the girl and are currently in police custody.
https://kafircrusaders.wordpress.com/2014/02/15/middlesbrough-grooming-gang-jailed-victims-harassed-by-paedo-defenders/
Passing sentence Judge John Walford told Shakil Munir, 32, 19-year-old Sakib Ahmed and Ateeq Latif, 17, that they had regarded the girls – all aged between 13 and 15 – as objects for their own sexual pleasure.
https://kafircrusaders.wordpress.com/2014/04/26/another-muslim-grooming-gang-found-guilty/
Four Buckinghamshire men have been found guilty of twenty sex offences against one girl.
https://kafircrusaders.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/another-muslim-grooming-gang-busted-12-perverts-from-leeds-to-appear-in-court/
There. From the links that i supplied before. All for personal use. Now please shut the door on the way out.
I thought I had read all the links you provided. But, I’ll say again this is not “Muslim sexual slavery” just because it’s committed by Muslims. You must live a very sheltered life if you’re unaware of the enormity of the child sexual trafficking and porn businesses. From the article, this is a paedophilia ring similar to what happened in France…and Belgium and the U.S. and elsewhere around the world 70,000 individuals are involved w/this ONE SINGLE WEB SITE which shared child porn among their members. Members would create videos from children they were abusing and post the videos on line. Interpol would disagree w/your characterization of this abuse as Muslim sexual slavery and they’d also like you to know that not all sex crimes against children are committed by Muslims. I don’t disagree this is a sex crime but it’s paedophilia.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jan/25/worlddispatch.dutroux
From the above link:
The victims’ parents think they have an answer – a cover-up and many Belgians agree with them. Dutroux was not acting alone, they say, but was part of a wider paedophile ring which included policemen and senior members of the establishment. Why else would there be such a delay in going to trial?
This week Dutroux himself said as much although possibly for his own reasons. “A network with all kinds of criminal activities really does exist,” he told VTM, a Flemish TV station. “But the authorities don’t want to look into it.” And there is no doubting that things do look odd.
The original investigating magistrate was dismissed after sharing a meal with one of the victim’s families and several prosecutors, policemen and crucial witness have committed suicide. Important evidence has also disappeared.
So maybe Dutroux is being protected from on high. What other explanation can there be for such a disgraceful chain of events? But one thing is certain – the entire credibility of the current reformist government of Guy Verhofstadt and Belgium’s very reputation as a normal civilised country is on the line. Further delay is unacceptable.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42108748/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/massive-online-pedophile-ring-busted-cops/
From the above link:
The European police agency Europol said in a statement that “Operation Rescue” had identified 670 suspects and that 230 abused children in 30 countries had been taken to safety. More children are expected to be found, Europol said.
It said that so far 184 people had been arrested and investigations in some countries were continuing. Most of those detained are suspected of direct involvement in sexually abusing children.
They include teachers, police officers and scout leaders, AP reported. One Spaniard who worked at summer youth camps is suspected of abusing some 100 children over five years.
Europol director Rob Wainwright said Wednesday the ring, which communicated using an Internet forum, was “probably the largest online pedophile network in the world.”
Cori Bassett, a public affairs officer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in an email that there had been five arrests and four convictions in connection with Operation Rescue in the U.S.
“Arrests so far have been made in Georgia and Connecticut. ICE continues to pursue the leads provided by Europol,” she added.
The website was shut down following the three-year investigation, Europol said.
“The website operated from a server based in the Netherlands and, at its height, boasted up to 70,000 members worldwide,” it added.
“It attempted to operate as a ‘discussion–only’ forum where people could share their sexual interest in young boys without committing any specific offences, thus operating ‘below the radar’ of police attention,” Europol said.
“Having made contact on the site, some members would move to more private channels, such as email, to exchange and share illegal images and films of children being abused. Computers seized from those arrested have harvested huge quantities of child abuse images and videos,” it added.
___________________________________________________________________________
So, does the above sound similar to what is written below? Sex crimes are sex crimes. There is official Muslim sexual slavery and then there is pedophilia and sundry other forms of sexual abuse. There is pedophilia in white European society as well as Muslim societies. If you’d like to claim that the Muslims are the worst, well, the international sex crimes unit of Interpol likely would beg to differ w/your opinion.
From your very first story link: “She told how she was groomed by a man who she believed to be her boyfriend before he callously passed her to other men in the paedophile ring.”
And the other stories? Don’t try to broaden the scope of this. I’m sorry you cannot admit that these cases reflect a attitudes across the whole muslim world to non muslim women and girls and I’m specifically focussing on muslims because they are a significant problem in the Uk. They are not dirty old men sitting behind their computer screens looking at kiddie images. These are muslim groups specifically targeting predominantly white, non muslim girls based on race and religious lines.
They are making it clear that they consider themselves supreme over non muslims and abusing our girls is a way of reinforcing that. They believe they own these girls which is slavery, muslim sex slavery and an act of supremacy over the kuffar.
4% of the total uk population are muslim and they make up 13% of our prison population, over represented? Ya think?
In the uk we rarely heard of child sex crimes before the massive influx of muslims in the country. I’m not saying it never happened, but no where near as often.
This surge in sex crimes in the UK is clearly linked to muslim immigration.
You may be sheltered from the muslim onslaught on our society and unwilling to accept that this is a serious problem, but I’m not and for the sake of my daughter I will call it as it is. Muslim sex slavery as outlined in those links.
I’m not “broadening the scope of this”, I’m merely pointing out that there is a VERY EXPLICIT DESCRIPTION of Muslim sexual slavery and this does not fit. It fits the description of paedophilia. I well understand the attitude toward non-Muslim women and girls and how some Muslim men do treat kaffir/infidel women. But there are far more sociological elements to this than you’re willing to analyze. The fact i put things in a far larger number of categories than you do isn’t me avoiding the issue of Muslim sexual slavery; it’s me adhering to a . I had no issue w/the Yazidi women or the Boko Haram captives being called Muslim sexual slaves if that’s what became of them.
You thought the paedophile ring I posted about only LOOKED AT IMAGES of child porn? Then you didn’t read the story closely enough. These men and women were CREATING THE CHILD PORN by having sexual relations of various kinds w/children and videotaping themselves. They’d then post the videos on line. The paedophile ring had all sorts of aspects to it from linking men up w/children they could abuse (in their own countries as well as internationally) to inviting people to ask for what they wanted to see a la carte to serving as a conduit for all sorts of information about how to avoid being entrapped by the police. There were 70,000 plus individual from all around the world on that site. What percentage do you possibly think could have been Muslim? You’d like to see the sexual degradation that’s currently running rampant world wide and attribute it much of it to Muslims. That’s hardly the case. I see our present state of affairs as being a function of the internet and its immense trove of endless sexual titillation as well as the fact that Western societies have made many third-world countries sex tourism destinations. We’ve got a WORLDWIDE Sodom and Gomorrah going on.
Rape in India:
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/03/16321396-india-gang-rape-victims-father-hang-the-monsters-responsible?lite
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/09/01/india-guru-rape-bapu/2752709/
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/13/world/asia/india-gang-rape-sentence/
For instance, there’s been an enormous gap between the number of girl babies and the number of boy babies born in India which has resulted in an enormous lack of marriageable young women. You don’t recall the multiple horrific Indian rape cases that have made the news? The young woman who was out for a movie w/her BF and she was savagely gang-raped on a bus, suffering perforated bowels and internal bleeding. She subsequently died of her injuries.
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/03/16321396-india-gang-rape-victims-father-hang-the-monsters-responsible?lite
Here’s a little Hindu hanky panky by a guru who likes young teenage girls:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/09/01/india-guru-rape-bapu/2752709/
You are broadening the scope. I am talking about a specific issue in the uk, where, as i provided in my last links evidence that YOU REQUESTED showing how these groups if men were using the girls for themselves rather than pimping them.
They mention nothing of trafficking for money or pimping for money, the girls are classed as property. I’m sorry this doesn’t fit your explicit description but because this is targeted based on race and religion this is nothing but muslim sex slavery.
I’ve provided the evidence. If you don’t like it or disagree that’s your prerogative, i can’t change that.
This is reaching epidemic proportions, never seen before in the UK. These are muslim men using and abusing non muslim white girls, largely underage. They are not pimping them on the streets, they are for their own use.
I am not denying the wider problem of peadophile rings or online titillation as you put it, but this is not what I am referring to here, of which you are well aware.
I will not concede so I see little point of us continuing
Well, I disagree it’s targeted on race and religion in the sense you seem to mean rather than on EASE of PREDATION. White girls are not veiled, so the attractive girls are readily identified. They’re out and about and readily approached and you can tell instantly if your tactics are working and you’re going to be able to likely seduce the girls because you can see their facial expressions and body language. That’s not targeting someone because they’re Christian for the sake of screwing an infidel. That’s targeting a girl that you have a reasonable chance of seducing. As the Muslim male, you’ve got certain things on your side, possibly you’ve got an exotic appeal, you’ve got your willingness at least initially to lay out money for a few seduction sessions of eating out or movies, and then you’re in like flynn. I’d hardly call it what you’re calling it which is Muslim sexual slavery and rape jihad. Most of the guys who are doing this don’t come across as devout Muslims who’d do something like this on behalf of their faith vs doing it because it’s for their own pleasure or their own bank accounts. I think we’ve both had our say. I certainly don’t need to write more. But if more is posted along these lines then I most certainly will speak up again.
As is your right. It’s your opinion and seeing you don’t even live in the UK I really don’t see how you can comment on the psyche of muslim men here. The problems haven’t reached the same levels in the US as they have here and other parts of Europe. Although, it is only a matter of time, if Obama gets his way. I’m afraid this is what you get when you import misogynistic inbreds en masse from failed muslim states, backed up by their backward belief system
It’s laughable and somewhat arrogant that you make the assertion that they are not very devout muslims. Who are you to say who is devout or not? That is the crux of the so called religion of peace isn’t it? The difficulty of finding a correct interpretation. They follow the example of Mo who seemed to have a revelation to suit his latest lust, and since no one is allowed to question and there is no higher authority at the head if that abomination of a religion is it any wonder you get wildly different interpretations about what constitutes a devout muslim.
But we’ll leave it there. I’m quite sure any Brits who live in cities with a significant muslim population will agree with me rather than you.
I have hundreds of relatives in the U.K. My mother was British and I both visit frequently and have lived there in London, in the northwest in Lancashire, and in Scotland.
Who am I say whether they are devout or not? Because there are plenty of Muslims who ADMIT THEMSELVES they are not very devout or they don’t take their religion seriously and are basically secular. Somehow I very much doubt that Muslim pimps are all that different from American or French or Italian or Yugoslavian pimps. Pimps are likely to exhibit pretty much of a muchness of the same character flaws. People are people and human flaws will out. The fact you’d attempt to describe the differences among the different Muslim sects as being the source for the Muslim pimps which likely wouldn’t have ANYTHING to do w/sexual instruction is quite funny and telling.
Like I said, conjecture. Devoutness cannot be determined from any of these articles. It is purely your opinion. It would be difficult for you to define what it is considering the spectrum of interpretation.
Oh, it’s not conjecture. There are lots of secular Muslims who are Muslim by birth only. They’re not interested in being a functioning devout Muslim and THEY ADMIT IT. I don’t have to “conjecture anything” if that’s what they’ve said. They no more want sharia than the rest of us. Just as it would be your opinion as to them being functionally “Muslims” or not. The fact you claim this is either Muslim sexual slavery or sex jihad when jihad is a moral imperative in Muslim warfare when these men are satisfying carnal desires makes your thesis laughably inaccurate. Where sexual slavery and sex jihad are applicable is when they’ve been declared and they’re being practiced as in Nigeria and Iraq et al.
There are Muslims who are heinous in their behavior. However, this is human behavior and for you to claim that the Muslims are exclusively the worst of the worst is either ignorance or something else speaking. The fact you claimed I was unfairly broadening the discussion by mentioning that 70,000 people have been caught by Interpol in an international paedophile ring is you not wanting to recognize just how universal these sexual crimes against children are. There are an enormous number of sexual crimes going on amongst all ethnicities and cultures. There have to be larger sociological explanations for those rates of sexual crimes and reasons for the different categories of sexual crimes and their rates. I attribute a huge amount of this growth to SEX TOURISM and the SEXUAL GRAB BAG that one can find on the internet.
Oh but it is conjecture with regard to the links I provided and therefore, just you being opinionated. I provided the info, showing what you stated couldn’t possibly be the case and now you are trying to talk your way around it.
So as i said before it’s pointless continuing because you’ll just attempt an alternative angle to try to disprove the evidence I have already provided.
I think we’re done. Over and out.
I’m “not talking my way around it” at all. You claim that is Muslim sexual slavery OR sex jihad. I forget which you eventually thought was more compelling and more “provable” but Muslim sexual slavery is a VERY SPECIFIC term and it requires that ONE MAN seize one woman, claims her for his own and takes her into his home for his own sexual pleasure or perversion or whatever you want to call it.
That is NOT what those men were doing. They were operating a paedophile ring. It’s a well-known sex crime that’s reportable and is prosecuted UNDER THAT TERM. There are tons of paedophiles around the world who are doing exactly what the latest man I posted about has done. The fact they may be Muslim or Christian is immaterial to the nature of the crime. You simply refuse to think outside the ethnic and religious boxes.
Ha, you accuse me of not being able to think outside the box while you cling to your specific definition of what muslim sexual slavery is.
Pot, kettle , black
We’re done.
Goodnight
Not at all. I’m quite willing to say that there’s Muslim sexual slavery going on. I’m just not willing to confuse it w/paedophilia. Nor should you.
Americana LittleRedRidingHood • 5 minutes ago: “Not at all. I’m quite willing to say that there’s Muslim sexual slavery going on. I’m just not willing to confuse it w/paedophilia. Nor should you.”
Moron,
Pedophilia is a part of Islamic sex practices according to sharia and our definition of pedophilia. Two different worldviews. You’re the one that’s confused.
Paedophilia is a part of HUMAN SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR as shown by the 70,000 individuals alone from all around the world who were caught in that Interpol sting. EVERY SEX BEHAVIOUR is represented in all branches of humanity. We have Warren Jeffs and a bunch of LDS guys who are practicing paedophilia on a grand scale here in the U.S. right along w/polygamy. You’re going to attribute that to the LDS guys secretly being Muslims?
You’re an idiot. You can’t handle nuanced conversations.
People resist doing bad things all the time because they recognize that these things are wrong. It’s much harder to resist human impulses when your totalitarian religion has created a framework for organizing those horrible behaviors with Allah’s approval. That is (arguably) unique to Islam at least in terms of what Westerners consider to be bad behavior.
It’s humans combined with religions and idealogical frameworks that we’re looking at.
Oh, I see, you like to believe that religion plays the largest part in control over one’s behavior. Well, I pretty much beg to differ. The components that play the greatest role in pushing someone toward paedophilia would be emotional and sexual and I dare say most people would ignore their religious upbringing entirely in order to allow their emotions and sexuality full play in exercising their sexual desires. As far as I know, Christians, Hindus, Muslims and all religions have the full range of sexual behavior being demonstrated. They also all have issues coping w/tolerating certain sexual behaviors. Why? Likely because most human constructs are always choosing the MEDIAN BEHAVIOUR as being the CORRECT, MOST DESIRABLE BEHAVIOUR and attempting to encourage that within the societal framework through every format of influence: home life, religion, etc.
“Oh, I see, you like to believe that religion plays the largest part in control over one’s behavior. ”
No dumbass. I never said largest part. It can be influential. Dismissing this idea is more than childish. It’s totally idiotic.
“Well, I pretty much beg to differ.”
Because, as we have clearly established after reading all of your poop droppings, you are a robotic neo-Marxist propagandist.
“The components that play the greatest role in pushing someone toward paedophilia would be emotional and sexual and I dare say most people would ignore their religious upbringing entirely in order to allow their emotions and sexuality full play in exercising their sexual desires.”
It’s way too complicated to discuss comprehensively here, but essentially what you have are the ordinary human factors before cultural effects, cultural effects on behavior, and ideological (including religious influence). All of these work together when people are dealing with controlling impulses. Nobody said that Islam, by the act of praying to Allah 5 times a day or something like that, makes people want to rape young girls. The claim is that the set of values and exhortations in Christianity and Judeo Christian societies create frameworks for impeding those impulses before actually acting on them. Whereas in Islam you have stories about “the prophet” and many others that go ahead and partake as long as sharia is respected. Therefore Islam and Christianity are at opposite ends of a scale if we want to look at how higher thought processes help people to control their own base impulses.
Obviously some Muslims restrain themselves and some Christians don’t. Pretending that therefore there is no reason to look for differences is to deny the value in pretty much any kind of analysis of human behavior at all. In the case we’re discussing, it looks like pious Muslims were ignored when they should have been investigated. Somehow these institutions concluded that Muslims are lower risk than others.
These things need to be discussed objectively. Your knee-jerk defense is just more cow poop like you drop everywhere else you go.
These things DO need to be discussed objectively. That’s why you don’t ever qualify for discussing them objectively. If you discussed things objectively, none of us would find quite so much that is objectionable in your diatribes. The fact is religion seems to be one of the last signifiers of what someone’s sexual history will be based on the worst mass murderers and the worst sexual criminals we’ve had in the world.
“The fact is religion seems to be one of the last signifiers of what someone’s sexual history will be based on the worst mass murderers and the worst sexual criminals we’ve had in the world.”
You retard. That seems that way to you because “we” in the West focus most of our analysis on people we have the best access to in the Judeo Christian world. We’re far more critical, especially since the “atheist enlightenment,” of our own civilization, groups and individuals. We have a lot more information and “we” tend to think it’s more appropriate to focus attention where the dominant culture will theoretically learn and lead by example. It’s not because religion and culture don’t matter at all. It’s because you don’t understand civilizational views versus global views and how those views can be easily distorted, especially since Marx and his oppressor oppressed paradigms. You just blindly accept “explanations” that feel right to you because that’s how you were programmed in your own cultural bubble.
And the word you’re looking for is deterministic. We don’t really fully understand how deterministic any of these things are, but clearly it’s not just about ideology, religion and so forth. There will be materialistic factors too. Nonetheless, investigators need to have a very clear understanding of the spectrum of possibilities when they decide if they want to rule out investigating “pious” religious people on the assumption that suspicions and accusations are driven by “unjust Islam-o-phobia” and so forth.
That’s why we’re discussing it here. We’ve been doing the opposite form what we should be doing. We’re treating them like an “oppressed class” that need to be left alone when in reality, if we do solid, objective work on looking at risks and profiles it seems (based on what I’ve observed so far) that pious Muslims are at higher risk as a group for sexually abusing minors than just about any other religious group I know of. But in many communities in the West they’re protected by stupid PC pressures.
“That’s why you don’t ever qualify for discussing them objectively. ”
Shut up. Communists are hardly considered objective or able to judge non-communists. I understand your ideas and their origins infinitely better than you do.
I DID NOT WRITE THAT SENTENCE which you chose to PRETEND is my thinking. Retract that quote and don’t you DARE PRETEND AGAIN that you’re quoting me when you’re quoting someone else. You scumbag. I cannot believe how low you’re willing to stoop.
Idiot, this is your comment. Own it:
Americana objectivefactsmatter • 17 minutes ago: “These things DO need to be discussed objectively. That’s why you don’t ever qualify for discussing them objectively. If you discussed things objectively, none of us would find quite so much that is objectionable in your diatribes. The fact is religion seems to be one of the last signifiers of what someone’s sexual history will be based on the worst mass murderers and the worst sexual criminals we’ve had in the world.”
I don’t have a problem w/that quote about objectivity and sexual behavior. What I do have a problem w/is the quote about evaluating cultures against one another. That is not my quote.
Americana objectivefactsmatter • 17 minutes ago
I DID NOT WRITE THAT SENTENCE which you chose to PRETEND is my thinking. Retract that quote and don’t you DARE PRETEND AGAIN that you’re quoting me when you’re quoting someone else. You scumbag. I cannot believe how low you’re willing to stoop
Who wrote it? Sure looks like you.
Americana objectivefactsmatter • 3 hours ago
“These things DO need to be discussed objectively. That’s why you don’t ever qualify for discussing them objectively. If you discussed things objectively, none of us would find quite so much that is objectionable in your diatribes. The fact is religion seems to be one of the last signifiers of what someone’s sexual history will be based on the worst mass murderers and the worst sexual criminals we’ve had in the world.”
I mistakenly replied to a post of yours where you’d inserted two quotes, one of mine and one from someone else. Why didn’t you identify the author of the second quote?
Americana 26 minutes ago: “I mistakenly replied to a post of yours where you’d inserted two quotes, one of mine and one from someone else. Why didn’t you identify the author of the second quote?”
You need to map out what you’re talking about. It’s on you if you F’ed up.
It’s up to you to acknowledge that you did this and you do this as a regular practice. It’s not legitimate and you’ve been told it’s not legitimate to do it. Stop the practice.
Prove it or shut the F up.
Crazy, delusional psychopath.
It is proved by virtue of the two quotes appearing in a POST under YOUR BB HANDLE. If you can’t find the post containing the second quote you claim is mine w/my BB handle on it then I didn’t write the second quote. Capisce?
Retard,
I wrote what I wrote. The question is why anyone would believe your comments about what I wrote? There is no good reason to believe anything that YOU write.
There is “now no good reason to believe anything that YOU write”. To be absolutely CLEAR, THIS SENTENCE BELOW BELONGS TO objectivefactsmatter (because, after all, objectivefactsDOMATTER):
“We can’t judge other cultures according to the same values we use to judge our own.”
Stop spamming or I will report you.
You’ve already made it enough of a habit that you don’t like being called out about it. You pull more of that spamming jamming w/me and I will more than return the favor. Just so things are absolutely crystal clear between us.
I don’t give a flying F what you do. I have never reported anyone as a spammer. You’re the worst spammer around. If I do report anyone I’ll warn them – and you are warned. I’ll clearly weather the storm better than some argumentative moron that does nothing but spam users by following Jerry around.
I think we should discuss it over and FPM. I’ll see how others feel about your “contributions.” It seems like you are a nuisance and nothing else. If anyone sees any value in your contributions then I’m OK with it. If you only have the support of other hostile trolls because they support you creating chaos, that’s another story.
Oh, that’s big of you! Once again, objectivefactsmatter is trying to close ranks so he doesn’t have to listen to anything besides himself and his own opinion. Bringing this possibility up again because you’ve been proven to be an underhanded debater by the woman you keep claiming is the dumb bunny in the crowd?
It is big of me. It would be selfish to just try to take you out for my own selfish reasons. Maybe someone actually gets some value from your cow pie comments.
You don’t actually recognize altruism when you see it. That’s why you lobby for government mandated altruism.
“Bringing this possibility up again because you’ve been proven to be an underhanded debater by the woman you keep claiming is the dumb bunny in the crowd?”
I think I’ve reached my limits when you accuse me numerous times of marking your comments as spam and then you start spamming my comments with repetitious replies all on the same day.
You’re a hybrid between a spammer and a troll. Although I know you think you’re just another “helpful” member of “MENSA” spreading your forum fertilizer.
To be honest I would (if I was involved in moderated the site) look seriously at other conversations and then probably just block you. I don’t see any value in what you offer. I’m being sincere. And there are other pretty nasty trolls here that seem useless but at least they’re expressing their views without trying to get up in anyone’s face that calls them on their bullshit. And I understand that you have mental issues but that’s for you to solve on your own. You can’t expect a web site to tolerate crap like yours just because you’re ill.
Those aren’t “spamming replies” from me. I don’t want you posting a DIFFERENT EXCULPATORY EXPLANATION multiple times as to how that QUOTE got into a post of yours. The more you deny the purpose of that quote, the more I’ll point out its purpose. You want to let this controversy die a natural death now that you’ve ADMITTED WHAT YOU DID — you INVENTED A QUOTE and then RESPONDED TO IT as if you were responding to me — that’s fine by me. Just stop posting your supposed CLARIFICATIONS as to HOW and WHY it happened and we’ll be done. You continue to play devil’s advocate when you know you’re in the wrong and I’ll have you for breakfast all over again. Over easy.
“Those aren’t “spamming replies” from me. I don’t want you posting a DIFFERENT EXCULPATORY EXPLANATION multiple times as to how that QUOTE got into a post of yours. ”
So…you can read the future too, and you preempted my comments from the future. That’s interesting. Why not just reply to…you know…what you’re replying to?
This comment has nothing to do w/”reading the future,” dumbkopf, and everything to do w/”reading the present” and demanding that you stop inventing bogus explanations about how it is that you wrote that quote and inserted it into a post of yours in the hopes it would be seen as having been written by me. Sheesh, your behavior simply beggars belief and it’s getting funnier and more wacky in successive post.
Americana a few seconds ago: “This comment has nothing to do w/”reading the future,” dumbkopf, and everything to do w/”reading the present” and demanding that you stop inventing bogus explanations about how it is that you wrote that quote and inserted it into a post of yours in the hopes it would be seen as having been written by me. Sheesh, your behavior simply beggars belief and it’s getting funnier and more wacky in successive post.”
You wrote an identical, simplistic reply 5 times within a few minutes. That’s spamming.
And furthermore, you integrated in to your wild accusations about my intentions the additional accusation (how many times?) that I reported your comments as spam. Which is false. Knowing that it’s false helps me to gauge your delusional paranoia as you continue to repeat the false accusations.
Listen, Bubba Bizarro, if you create “identical posts denying what you did, then I’m going to feel compelled to rebut most of those posts of yours. You keep your denials to the minimum and I’ll keep my rebuttals to the minimum. You keep spewing out excuses for your craptastic cheating debate behavior and, yup, I’m going to continue to shoot those replies down. You’ve threatened to label my posts as spamming, one post about the Elders of Zion WAS LISTED AS SPAM when IT WASN’T. I’d say your threats are being carried out. Not sure why you feel you’ve got to defend that kind of behavior by yourself.
“You’ve threatened to label my posts as spamming, one post about the Elders of Zion WAS LISTED AS SPAM when IT WASN’T. ”
Moron,
URLs are automatically classified as spam. I don’t consider relevant links to be spamming. Spamming is pointing to irrelevant links and or repeating incessantly to dominate a page.
“I’d say your threats are being carried out. Not sure why you feel you’ve got to defend that kind of behavior by yourself.”
Because you’re stupid and perpetually confused.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/21/boko-haram-claims-baga-massacre-and-threatens-nigerias-neighbours
If you’re talking about an URL on this site, evidently they don’t want to point to notorious libels against Jews.
Well, then that’s a pretty selective perspective, isn’t it? **You can throw** the Elders of Zion label at someone but the person cannot respond by outlining their perspective and allowing others to compare it w/the Elders of Zion crud which is MARKEDLY DIFFERENT than what is contained in the Elders of Zion bullpuckey BS.
As for your claim of not having URLS be permitted at all on this site… Doh, this site allows some URLs and doesn’t permit other URLs which are, or SHOULD BE, entirely legitimate if there weren’t Zionists who didn’t want those URLs and that information in circulation. Of course, that then gets back to whether or not there are those who are misusing the spamming function for their own purposes.
Retard,
Elders of Zion is about taking historical characters and events and revising them to create a cast of characters in the background as puppet masters to explain, for example, the success of the “Jewish Banksters” and other stereotypes.
You riffed off of that form of narrative by taking a single character that any rational person would identify as an oppressed freedom fighter and made him some kind of puppet master in your stupid narratives. You followed the same form.
It’s just a relatively modern form of malicious gossip. You don’t have to quote from the Elders of Zion to see that unless you’re totally unfamiliar with it.
I’m not accusing you of plagiarism – you dipshirt. I’m accusing you of the same kind of paranoid, nasty, anti-Semitic (due to envy) bigotry.
Oh, so Ze’ev Jabotinsky was merely “an oppressed freedom fighter”? The man who devised the new form of political terrorism — the bombing of buildings, the bombing of public facilities, the bombing of buses, the bombing of markets? That guy was just an “oppressed freedom fighter”? It wasn’t even his country in which he could be an “oppressed freedom fighter” and it certainly wasn’t within his religion’s tenets that he was allowed to kill and maim in order to facilitate the revival of a Jewish state in the Middle East. Or is it?
Nobody here cares about your mendacious libel narratives.
Oh, yes, your spotless-as-the-driven-snow narratives about Jewish freedom freighters are so much more historically accurate. Not quite, the white is not snow, rather it’s 3M WHITE OUT THAT YOU USE TO DELETE the nasty, incompatible historical details that don’t quite match up w/the narrative as you’ve written it.
I simply started with the timeline you silly moron. You tried to demonize groups and individuals and I kept reminding you how stupid you are.
Yes, you did suggest the timeline on which there was a mention of Ze’ev Jabotinsky founding a militia in 1925 that was organized in order to seize territory for a Jewish state. That indicates that the Zionists didn’t intend for diplomacy to continue to its rightful end; they were going to do whatever suited them and their desired aims viz seizing land in Palestine. That’s not demonization; that’s history. Live it up a little and celebrate the history of Israel.
Again, retard, it indicates what it indicates in context. Not what you say. First and foremost they organized to defend themselves when British “rule of law” and promises failed to protect them. That happened years earlier.
Is this more of your parody of an imbecile? Because what’s funny about you is how stupid you are. Is that intentional?
Ze’ev Jabotinsky announced his militia w/its aim being forcing the British to transfer land to the Zionists by military force or seizing land by military force, if necessary. The fact the militia also served a defensive purpose is neither here nor there viz the other reason for the formation of Jabotinsky’s militia. The first aim doesn’t prejudice the second aim but neither excuses Jabotinsky’s announced plan that he would take territory in Palestine by force of arms. That’s a pretty cut and dried expression of militarist aims toward land that the Jews did not have the right to claim. Given that he announced this militia and this plan for forced land seizure in 1925, it makes it even less likely that it was anything but an opportunistic move because of a power vacuum in the region and fears that the British wouldn’t find a way to placate the Palestinians and the other Arabs and follow through on creating a Jewish homeland.
Americana 6 minutes ago: “Ze’ev Jabotinsky announced his militia w/its aim being forcing the British to transfer land to the Zionists by military force or seizing land by military force, if necessary.”
Independent sovereignty. Not “stealing land” from legitimate owners. Gee…how many times have we discussed this distinction? Agitprop writers hate inconvenient precision.
You and your evasion! The Zionists merely wanting “independent sovereignty” certainly took a strange turn then what w/borders and all and refusing to share Jerusalem w/the Palestinians. Whatever the case, the Zionists didn’t have the right to ramp up their terrorism or their colonization in order to force the issue of Israel’s creation.
Agitprop writers such as yourself hate inconvenient precision.
The original offer from the 1940s does not remain frozen. They could perhaps in the future have sovereignty over part of Jerusalem. But these people asking for it have not earned it. They don’t deserve it in any sense and still the Jews are trying to share sovereignty with them. I sure would not.
These are not really even the same people. It’s just been about jihad with a few dupes thrown in. Not to mention moronic dupe liars like you. But that’s another story.
The Jews are NOT WILLING TO SHARE JERUSALEM. I love how you suggest — (objectivefactsmatter) “They (the Palestinians) could perhaps in the future have sovereignty over **part of** Jerusalem. But these people asking for it have not earned it.” That’s one of the biggest bugaboos of the entire diplomatic brouhaha. The fact that you make this entirely facetious claim that the Palestinians “must earn the right” to use Jerusalem as their capitol when it’s just expected by the Israelis that they’re entitled to use Jerusalem in its ENTIRETY as the JEWISH CAPITOL is one of the most ridiculous sovereignty claims the Israelis could make.
I don’t care what you think. You’re a nasty communist jew hater. The Jews are absolutely justified in everything they do to protect themselves from the jihadis. It’s unfortunate that the jihadis are able to hurt individuals all over the world, including innocents in their own camp. Attacking and lying about Jews only enables the jiahd.
You’re a moronic communist jihadi. It’s common for communists to cultivate groups with “revolutionary potential” so it’s clear to see why your programmers installed those scripts in your memory banks.
See: United in Hate by Jamie Glazov for examples.
I’m not a Communist and I’m not a Jew hater and I’m certainly not a jihadi. Lordy, but you do begin to go off the deep end when your little world gets some shaking! But I don’t see any point in Israel persisting in the colonization she seems intent on completing. Israel has citizens who are advocating a two-state solution and they’re not ignorant of the situation on the ground or the necessity of coming to grips w/the Palestinians. You obviously believe you can forestall any diplomatic solution until that colonization is complete by trying to label everyone in opposition to you w/any and all fear-mongering labels you can possibly throw at them. As for me “cultivating groups w/revolutionary potential”, nope, I’m fine sticking w/my status of Independent and I’m certainly not interested in driving a Communist agenda. Jamie Glazov is not an authoritative voice who is broadly educated in various relevant fields. He holds an opinion. That’s the extent of it.
You’re a confused, scared moron. Your ideas come from communists. The communists use groups of allegedly persecuted people to foment revolution. Some of those “oppressed” people outsmart people like you.
In the end, you are fighting the communist jihad because you think it will make housing prices more “sustainable” or something like that. You’re a confused twit that has nothing but nonsensical narratives that do not actually make sense as you use them.
It’s not my fault that you’re so confused and have no idea where these “narratives” come from. It is what it is.
Are you simply INCAPABLE of discussion without conflating all the various bogeymen you believe in from infesting each and every single issue? They’re not all related and, besides, some of the boogeymen are your own highly vaunted capitalists. We wouldn’t have had a housing bubble if the financiers at the mortgage companies had suggested homes that WERE AFFORDABLE for the people who were given the opportunity to purchase homes courtesy of the U.S. government. If the mortgage brokers had insisted that a janitor in Chicago only look at homes that were in the neighborhood of $50,000 rather than $350,000 then would we have had the same housing bubble? I don’t think so.
The government may have mandated extending mortgage support to an underserved demographic in the U.S. but the government didn’t say what the PARAMETERS of the loans should be nor did the government suggest that a janitor should buy a home fit for a CEO. Those sorts of decisions were the PURVIEW OF THE MORTGAGE LENDERS and the BANKS and they did it because they COULD PROFIT FROM THE ORIGINATING of the loans. But you don’t want to discuss that PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ASPECT OF THE HOUSING CRISIS BUBBLE, do you? Because that doesn’t fit into your narrative. Well, one way or another, I’ll be bringing it into ANY and EVERY mention of the housing bubble because that is part of that event just as much as the UNSUITABLE NEW HOMEOWNERS.
“Are you simply INCAPABLE of discussion without conflating all the various bogeymen you believe in from infesting each and every single issue? ”
Of course I’m capable of making many choices that may not meet your expectations.
“They’re not all related and, besides, some of the boogeymen are your own highly vaunted capitalists.”
OMG. Everyone involved in capital can be characterized as “capitalists.” Even the interventionists.
“But you don’t want to discuss that PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ASPECT OF THE HOUSING CRISIS BUBBLE, do you? Because that doesn’t fit into your narrative.”
What? Wow. In essence everything that I’m saying is that it is down to the lender and borrower to determine what is best and to take care of their own mistakes. Don’t be surprised if interventions cause many people to do the same stupid things in waves that cause bubbles and crashes because stupid people like you vote for demagogic pols that reward stupid behavior.
I’m for EVERYONE being held accountable for stupid behavior. Even stupid voters like you.
“Well, one way or another, I’ll be bringing it into ANY and EVERY mention of the housing bubble because that is part of that event just as much as the UNSUITABLE NEW HOMEOWNERS.”
You are shockingly stupid. The interventions are what draw virtually all “unsuitable” homeowners. That’s the essential point. You’re unbelievably dense.
You’re unbelievably dense if you believe that the “unsuitable homeowners” weren’t finding the REALTORS who helped them falsify their applications and the BANKS that accepted the ludicrous applications in order to take the money from the transaction. ANY ONE of those professionals could have shut down inappropriate homeowners at ANY POINT DURING THE TRANSACTION by checking on their bona fides. Voila, no inappropriate homeowners make it through the system, no inappropriate homeowners would have had to be evicted at the other end of the crash and no inappropriate packages of DERIVATIVES would have been sold around the world. But, no, none of those professionals wanted to do that because they BENEFITED from each transaction that they completed.
Stalin could have made the policies work. Anyone too weak won’t be able to. We need a stronger police state and more control, not less.
Because Utopia is possible if people >>just stop being greedy<< and let the spiritual ancestors of Uncle Joe take over our nation. Heck, take over the world. Just be nice.
What a jerk brain you are… Who’s talking about Stalinists making this tactic work? We had capitalists who made it work because it would work as a capitalist scheme until it DIDN’T.
What? The early problems in “capitalism” in the USA were “legitimate” interventions like the government investing in new technologies. If they planned that better they would not have had to turn to fascism and they would not have crashed markets and banks.
Oh, you’re not getting off that easy. Let’s see some legitimate proof of your above claims and the specific time periods about which you’re writing. As for fascism playing any role in the U.S., again, let’s see your proof. I am not finding such in the list of the greatest busts the U.S. has faced. Here’s a list of the U.S. greatest busts and the factors influencing them:
http://247wallst.com/investing/2010/09/09/the-13-worst-recessions-depressions-and-panics-in-american-history/
From the above link:
One of the features in recessions since the Great Depression, which is not common with those that came before, is government protection of bank deposits. Banks would become insolvent along with their depositors in many cases during “runs on the banks”. The creation of the FDIC shifted the burden of insolvent financial firms from depositors to member banks, with the federal treasury as the last backstop. The pattern was extended further by the creation of TARP during the current recession. It placed almost the entire burden of the rescue on the American financial system with those who pay taxes.
Most economists believe that recessions are started by discreet events. These are very often based on asset bubbles. Rapidly rising values of gold, land, real estate, or equities draw an increasing number of investors into whichever market is experiencing a boom. Those investors call on banks and other institutions for credit to increase both their ability to invest and the scope of their investment. That draws both investors and banks into assets or commodities which are rapidly rising in value. More often than not, the late-comers find that they have borrowed to buy at the peak of a boom, after the value of whatever created the boom has begun to fall. Too much money has chased too little opportunity. Investors and banks suffer as the once-promising market deflates, or “deleverages” as economists have enjoyed saying recently.
Read more: The 13 Worst Recessions, Depressions, and Panics In American History – 24/7 Wall St. http://247wallst.com/investing/2010/09/09/the-13-worst-recessions-depressions-and-panics-in-american-history/#ixzz3PoFgosUd
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Americana an hour ago: “Oh, you’re not getting off that easy. Let’s see some legitimate proof of your above claims and the specific time periods about which you’re writing. As for fascism playing any role in the U.S., again, let’s see your proof.”
http://www.amazon.Com/Three-New-Deals-Reflections-Roosevelts/dp/0312427433
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal is regarded today as the democratic ideal, a triumphant American response to a crisis that forced Germany and Italy toward National Socialism and Fascism. Yet in the 1930s, before World War II, the regimes of Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler bore fundamental similarities. In this groundbreaking work, Wolfgang Schivelbusch investigates the shared elements of these three “new deals”–focusing on their architecture and public works projects–to offer a new explanation for the popularity of Europe’s totalitarian systems. Writing with flair and concision, Schivelbusch casts a different light on the New Deal and puts forth a provocative explanation for the still-mysterious popularity of Europe’s most tyrannical regimes.
OMG, so now, you’re going to claim that Roosevelt implemented FASCIST tactics in order to keep America going through an intensely dark economic period simply because what he chose to do for economic redemption bore similarities to what was done in Europe. We didn’t have the same social dynamic going on nor did we pursue Fascism as did the Fascist parties in Europe other than in some smaller demographic outlier groups. There will always be similarities in systems and structures, it doesn’t mean they are what another consists of right down to the bone.
Americana 9 hours ago: “OMG, so now, you’re going to claim that Roosevelt implemented FASCIST tactics…”
You’re a joke.
You’re an idiot whose intellectual bias doesn’t allow him to grasp straightforward facts.
That has to be it. Thanks.
Americana objectivefactsmatter 23 days ago
You’re an idiot whose intellectual bias doesn’t allow him to grasp straightforward facts.
Your posts are needed for context. But that’s not the point of this exercise of yours, is it?
“There will always be similarities in systems and structures, it doesn’t mean they are what another consists of right down to the bone.”
Oh, the old “down to the bone” conundrum. I see. So we should not worry that FDR set up the same kind of market controls as the other fascists and we should not worry that some of the same problems are being caused.
Don’t worry. Be happy! Because really the problem with the Germans was iNsaNe NATIONALISM – said every communist that ever lived. Kill the nationalists and economic fascism is just fine. Or put them in labor camps. Problem solved! Nothing like those cray-cray Germans!
There were problems that arose in entirely free markets in the early years of the U.S. Free markets DON’T SOLVE ALL FINANCIAL ISSUES. Free markets facilitate specific aspects of capitalism but that’s about it. The fact the government has handled an issue in such a way as to facilitate a shorter recovery doesn’t mean the government has handled the problem in a fascistic manner. What makes the difference is the intention behind the solution.
Americana a minute ago: “There were problems that arose in entirely free markets in the early years of the U.S. Free markets DON’T SOLVE ALL FINANCIAL ISSUES.”
Free markets make sure that only unwise people suffer from ill-advised behavior.
“The fact the government has handled an issue in such a way as to facilitate a shorter recovery doesn’t mean the government has handled the problem in a fascistic manner. What makes the difference is the intention behind the solution.”
The Germans, Italians, Japanese, Soviets, Chinese, all had good intentions. Huh. No more fascism. Weird.
(objectivefactsmatter) “Free markets make sure that only unwise people suffer from ill-advised behavior.”
Oh, really? Where did you get that little bit of wisdom? Certainly not from those early Americans affected by the ill-advised behavior or the pre-ordained behavior of others in the system whose ripples eventually rocked the entire system. What free markets do is allow for the setting of prices and the unfettered flow of goods and services based on the financial evaluation of those people involved in the transactions. That’s it. But since there have always been economic boondoggles that have affected every single complex society and that these same boondoggles have migrated through the different tiers of various global societies until the economic purge is completed, I have to believe it’s nearly impossible to design an economic system that operates without flaw.
http://www.usagold.com/reference/panicsmaniacrashes.html
“Oh, really? Where did you get that little bit of wisdom? Certainly not from those early Americans affected by the ill-advised behavior or the pre-ordained behavior of others in the system whose ripples eventually rocked the entire system.”
It’s not Utopian. Do you know what Utopian means?
“But since there have always been economic boondoggles that have affected every single complex society and that these same boondoggles…”
You can pass laws against fraud and so forth without restricting free markets. Free markets are like free people. It doesn’t mean you’re free to break laws. It means you’re free to compete on a level playing field, not without a referee. Get it? Make laws, but don’t screw with the scoreboard once the games begin.
Get it?
Referees and rulebooks are good. Selectively interfering with the scoreboard, handing out deflated footballs, putting tar on baseballs, those kinds of things are bad.
Get it? Do you? Tell me if you get it…
Americana objectivefactsmatter 23 days ago
(objectivefactsmatter) “Free markets make sure that only unwise people suffer from ill-advised behavior.”
Oh, really? Where did you get that little bit of wisdom? Certainly not from those early Americans affected by the ill-advised behavior or the pre-ordained behavior of others in the system whose ripples eventually rocked the entire system. What free markets do is allow for the setting of prices and the unfettered flow of goods and services based on the financial evaluation of those people involved in the transactions. That’s it. But since there have always been economic boondoggles that have affected every single complex society and that these same boondoggles have migrated through the different tiers of various global societies until the economic purge is completed, I have to believe it’s nearly impossible to design an economic system that operates without flaw.
Boondoggles, it’s what happens.
Americana objectivefactsmatter 23 days ago
“There were problems that arose in entirely free markets in the early years of the U.S. Free markets DON’T SOLVE ALL FINANCIAL ISSUES. Free markets facilitate specific aspects of capitalism but that’s about it. The fact the government has handled an issue in such a way as to facilitate a shorter recovery doesn’t mean the government has handled the problem in a fascistic manner. What makes the difference is the intention behind the solution.”
Obviously, you’ve got a problem w/this.
Americana objectivefactsmatter 24 days ago
OMG, so now, you’re going to claim that Roosevelt implemented FASCIST tactics in order to keep America going through an intensely dark economic period simply because what he chose to do for economic redemption bore similarities to what was done in Europe. We didn’t have the same social dynamic going on nor did we pursue Fascism as did the Fascist parties in Europe other than in some smaller demographic outlier groups. There will always be similarities in systems and structures, it doesn’t mean they are what another consists of right down to the bone.
Can’t argue w/you when you pull this kind of stunt.. But, that’s not the point of this entire exercise, is it?
The analysis you refer to doesn’t contradict anything that I wrote. If you just assume that historical interventions are “reality” or if you comment from the perspective that there is no question that interventions are part of modern life and the thing to do is to figure out how best to intervene you’re not going to be looking at the entire issue. Interventions are seen as absolutely necessary by some for the good of the collective. For those people, one just does not question whether but only how.
In that context there are some interesting observations but they’re not looking at the criticisms of interventionism itself and how some of the assumptions might be both risky and something that needs to be considered when putting together education policies for example. But the whole culture of our country is shifting towards elitism where the little guy is not expected to really understand the big picture. Someone like me is just as welcome as atheists are in Catholic Communion. These people are faith believers in interventionism.
If you want to understand the non-Marxist arguments and ideas you have to read Thomas Sowell or Milton Friedman if you want someone from the modern era. That’s the only way you’ll ever hope to have a comprehensive understanding of economics and the criticism / caveats of interventionism. You’re too far gone in reading nothing but various flavors of Marxists and progressives. I’m actually not quite as “liberal” as Friedman. But he’s smarter than anyone else aside from Sowell. Both of those guys are brilliant. Just about everyone else that you read about today is a dunce compared to those two. Seriously. There is also Friedrich Hayek but you might see him as dated. Read him last after you get a primer from Sowell.
This might be easier to digest. It features Friedman and Sowell also sits in for discussions within the series.
http://miltonfriedman.blogspot.Com
https://www.youtube.Com/watch?v=f1Fj5tzuYBE
Americana an hour ago: “What a jerk brain you are…”
Obviously I am a jerk brain.
You know you’ve hit a nerve when the target tries to hit a nerve.
That’s right.
What a Catch-22 in which we find ourselves!
My reading is that it’s more along the spectrum of a Catch 31 to 35 or so. But as always I defer to your much better judgment.
It would be great if you developed some judgment never mind look up to me for mine.
Americana objectivefactsmatter 23 days ago
“It would be great if you developed some judgment never mind look up to me for mine.”
Clear? Not clear?
“You’re unbelievably dense if you believe that the “unsuitable homeowners” weren’t finding the REALTORS who helped them falsify their applications and the BANKS that accepted the ludicrous applications in order to take the money from the transaction.”
Again, morons don’t learn no matter how patient you are when trying to teach them. The interventionist policies led to lowering of lending standards. Those people would not have gotten loans without the interventions. And if they (a few) did. they would not be in such great numbers to cause a bubble and burst cycle. The bank could not point to the laws forcing them to lower standards and they’d have no choice, it would be just ordinary business, other than to eat their own failures.
Of course the banks had a choice. The bill to enable homeownership didn’t MANDATE THE FINANCIAL TERMS of what these homeowners were supposed to be able to qualify for as far as loans. The loans themselves was something that was left up to the REALTORS, to the BANKERS and to the INVESTMENT HOUSES to determine how to manage these lower income homeowners. Certainly, in Detroit and many other rust-belt cities, there were plenty of lower priced realty up or grabs. There was no need to encourage people to take out ARMs and/or go well outside their income bracket in order to become a homeowner. Except for MONEY, of course. All those folks were making money hand over fist by selling these homes to unsuitable buyers and they weren’t looking further down the pike than the deposits they were making in their own bank accounts. Certainly, plenty of people in the investment houses were aware they were not being above board when they first created the international investment packages of derivatives.
“The loans themselves was something that was left up to the REALTORS, to the BANKERS and to the INVESTMENT HOUSES to determine how to manage these lower income homeowners. ”
They could develop their own policies but they had to solve the “disparate outcomes” claims with those policies. They absolutely were forced to lower their standards even if they were allowed to come up with their own “magic” policies to achieve the end that was demanded. And that’s only the most recent set of interventions.
No, that’s a dishonest assessment of the program. The program was meant to include more people in homeownership but the program didn’t encourage people to buy homes beyond their means. The point was not to have everyone be in expensive homes that didn’t suit their income level. The mortgage banks weren’t supposed to lower standards by mismatching the price of homes w/the incomes of individuals purchasing those homes.
“No, that’s a dishonest assessment of the program. The program was meant to include more people in homeownership but the program didn’t encourage people to buy homes beyond their means.”
Of course the point is to attain Utopian standards of social justice. At least nominally. That’s what most constituents expect. But…you are completely unfamiliar with the criticism of Marxism and interventionism. So all of my comments sail way over your head.
“The point was not to have everyone be in expensive homes that didn’t suit their income level.”
Again, the driving factor ended up becoming how to remedy the collectivist accusations of redlining and disparate outcomes. Some times the policy “worked” if you just cherry pick for case studies. On the whole it caused this bubble and explosion.
So the fact is that either they needed to attract “unqualified” people or they would be in violation of their settlement agreements. The hope was that overall, unqualified people would more or less manage the storm based on historical real estate pricing and that everyone would be OK. Everyone doubled down on this idea of (relatively smoothly) ever increasing real estate prices and wages to pay for everything.
But the critical point that you need to understand is that interventions homogenize policies and place the government in the market as a partner. It doesn’t really matter how good the intentions are.
You and other “communists” cause moral hazard problems and then the blame game starts just like now. In fact you’re playing the blame game now. You want people accountable but you’re actually working as a dupe to cover up stupid policies. You want some people accountable but you’re not willing to do enough research (other than neo-Marxist analysis) to understand the most important criticism that would allow you to see the true costs of interventions. Interventions are going to be necessary at times, but not for social justice aims. It doesn’t matter how sincerely you want to help people if you don’t know truly how to do it. And you do not know.
Watch or read the Milton Friedman series or books that I linked to. Otherwise following you is like sitting and watching a hamster on a wheel. It gets very boring.
(objectivefactsmatter) “Again, the driving factor ended up becoming how to remedy the collectivist accusations of redlining and disparate outcomes. Some times the policy “worked” if you just cherry pick for case studies. On the whole it caused this bubble and explosion.”
There was no need to push for these prospective homeowners to be encouraged to take on homes w/mortgages or types of mortgages they could not afford. There was plenty of housing in their income bracket available in the areas hardest-hit by the bursting of the bubble. They could have been suitably housed in far less costly homes for prices which might have allowed them to weather the economic downturn. It was the price of the homes and the types of mortgages they were given that really sunk their boats.
(objectivefactsmatter) “So the fact is that either they needed to attract “unqualified” people or they would be in violation of their settlement agreements.”
Again, their agreement was to no longer automatically discard lower-income homeowners out of hand. That doesn’t suggest in any way that the realtors and banks should turn around and red-line them into demographics w/ludicrous claims of income brackets they’ve never reached in their lives. This was CRIMINALITY on the GRAND SCALE by PROFESSIONALS who knew exactly what they were doing and they did it w/CAPITALIST AIMS of PROFIT MOTIVES before their eyes. Social justice schemes can work if they are not abused by criminals.
“There was no need to push for these prospective homeowners to be encouraged to take on homes w/mortgages or types of mortgages they could not afford. There was plenty of housing in their income bracket available in the areas hardest-hit by the bursting of the bubble.”
Oh Lord. Help this woman.
“Certainly, plenty of people in the investment houses were aware they were not being above board when they first created the international investment packages of derivatives.”
Yes, and when doing rational risk assessment that is how this “too big to fail” formulation came to be. It was because the government was in bed with the “the market.” That’s why the derivatives were bundled the way they were. I’m not alleging conspiracy, but simply crunching numbers led to those logical conclusions about risks. IOW, the government would have to act to keep things from going too wobbly because the government was in effect the major partner.
But it really is boring talking to stupid people that pretend to be smart by reading stories that they don’t understand.
The government DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO w/the CHOICES OF THE INVESTMENT FIRMS as to the packaging of those derivatives investments. As for the government being aware that the realtors and the banks were mishandling mortgages and then the investment industry was having to find some way to swallow those bad investments, as far as I can tell, it was more of a classic clusterf*ck than anything else. Certainly, everything that was done was improvised at each new step in the process until the system reached breaking point. Still, if the realtors and the mortgage bankers had behaved ethically, there would have been no bubble of this nature.
“The government DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO w/the CHOICES OF THE INVESTMENT FIRMS as to the packaging of those derivatives investments. ”
Yes. It did. The government was seen as on the hook and this became part of the risk calculations.
“As for the government being aware that the realtors and the banks were mishandling mortgages and then the investment industry was having to find some way to swallow those bad investments, as far as I can tell, it was more of a classic clusterf*ck than anything else.”
Again, it doesn’t matter because the root problem is shift of moral hazard or shift of accountability. If people do stupid things in a free market they soon learn to change their behavior. As it is now it’s just an endless cycle of stupid behavior with blame and accountability shifting. What I want you to know is that you’re helping propagate blame-shifting narratives.
“Still, if the realtors and the mortgage bankers had behaved ethically, there would have been no bubble of this nature.”
You mean if we equip them all with magic forecasting crystal balls and teach them criticism of Marxist economics that they all support at the polls? Um…that will not happen. I mean…>if< we do teach them to behave ethically the very first thing they'll do is vote out all of the Marxist morons from office. I'm all for that. That's actually what I'm trying to do here. You're in my way.
(objectivefactsmatter) “Yes. It did. The government was seen as on the hook and this became part of the risk calculations.”
Ah, then it was a CAPITALIST ECONOMIC RATIONALE that was underlying the whole scheme — I will profit if i do this — and the criminality became more and more popular through word of mouth. That’s got exactly nothing to do w/Marxism and everything to do w/professionals acting in the most unscrupulous manner. The fact the government was “on the hook” should have made them act even more scrupulously but they didn’t. They were acting exactly like the capitalists who choose to charge the government $1,500 for toilet seats than can be bought for $125 at Home Depot.
“Ah, then it was a CAPITALIST ECONOMIC RATIONALE that was underlying the whole scheme — I will profit if i do this”
We should outlaw “capitalist rationale.” That should work.
It’s got nothing to do w/outlawing capitalism. It’s recognizing illegal, criminal intent within the capitalist framework of which we must be beware. If there had been no realtors and bankers who’d facilitated inappropriate home sales, would we have had to face the housing bubble in the shape that it took? We wouldn’t have seen the grandiosity of the housing bubble reach the heights it did. There’s nothing wrong w/recognizing there was criminal intent and criminal actions undertaken by capitalists who happened to be realtors and bankers. I’m sort of surprised you’re so reluctant to admit ALL ASPECTS of THIS EQUATION. It’s as if you’re drawing up an equation and you’re leaving out half of it because you don’t like to see the proofing of the equation happen. But the fact is, you can’t avoid the proofing of the equation. Without the illegal, criminal actions of the realtors and the mortgage bankers, those quasi-qualified homeowners wouldn’t have gotten anywhere in the system. It’s kind of bizarre you wish to put all the blame on the government. I guess to you there really is no private sector and there is no such thing as PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. I thought that was a big mantra of the Republican party though — PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY — it isn’t one of their big mantras?
“It’s recognizing illegal, criminal intent within the capitalist framework of which we must be beware.”
Sue 0’Bama.
“PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY — it isn’t one of their big mantras?”
I don’t have mantras. I have principles and you have confusion.
You have principles you obviously believe are highly flexible given the right opportunity. As for not having mantras, “PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY” is the mantra of the Republicans and theTea Party.
I suppose you think that makes sense.
Oh, it does “make sense.” You’ve claimed that these people shouldn’t have bought houses above their price range. Or bought houses at all, perhaps. If they had not bought houses, that would have been an instance of taking personal responsibility as I understand you to be claiming personal responsibility. The Republican party is always trumpeting about taking personal responsibility for one’s life. In fact, most conservatives of all stripes across all continents have echoed my sentiments about personal responsibility and ethics as they must intersect w/one’s business endeavors.
___________________________________________________________________________
http://conservamerica.org/conservativequotes/
Here are some quotes from Edmund Burke, British statesman and philosopher:
(His bio introduction: Burke was an Irish-born English statesman who is generally regarded as the founder of “true” conservatism and the greatest of all modern conservative thinkers. Burke’s intellectual criticism of the French Revolution entitled Reflections on the Revolution in France provided conservatism its most influential statement of views.)
“One of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and its laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to those who come after them a ruin instead of a habitation…No one generation could link with another. Men would become little better than flies of a summer.”
Reflections on the Revolution in France, page 44
“Society…is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
Reflections, page 96 (114)?
“Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit.”
Reflections on the Revolution in France, page 335
“Knowledge of those unalterable Relations which Providence has ordained that every thing should bear to every other…To these we should conform in good Earnest; and not think to force Nature, and the whole Order of her System, by a Compliance with our Pride, and Folly, to conform to our artificial Regulations.”
A Vindication of Natural Society, 1757
“Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all.”
Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs: In Consequence of Some Late Discussions in Parliament, Relative to the Reflections on the French Revolution, 1791
Americana 8 hours ago: “Oh, it does “make sense.” You’ve claimed that these people shouldn’t have bought houses above their price range.”
Trying not to call you a moron…
The point here is that we can only say it was “wrong” when we look back and we failed. Lots of people in the exact same circumstances are living well and have enhanced positions. It’s only “wrong” when you fail. Who determines what their price range is? It’s not you. I can offer an opinion but I have zero moral or legal authority to tell others how much they should pay for a house. As long as they don’t lie…
But it’s like voter fraud. People pretend it does’t exist and then if (when) it turns out that it does…watch the blame games begin.
And none of your URLs support your point. You’re arguing against a straw man of your own creation. You’re trying to defeat my alleged position that diminishes personal responsibility when what I’m talking about are government policies that cause moral hazard complexities beyond what most people can possibly comprehend. We create systems that compel people to do stupid things. We have a web of legislation, policies and case precedents that force these corrupted frameworks. These are not flawed “capitalist” frameworks. They’re flawed legal frameworks. The “immorality” is rewarded. People are legally entitled to partake, unless you have clear examples of illegal misrepresentation.
But you only know narratives. You don’t understand them. You recite. You don’t comprehend.
Americana objectivefactsmatter 23 days ago
“Oh, it does “make sense.” You’ve claimed that these people shouldn’t have bought houses above their price range. Or bought houses at all, perhaps. If they had not bought houses, that would have been an instance of taking personal responsibility as I understand you to be claiming personal responsibility. The Republican party is always trumpeting about taking personal responsibility for one’s life. In fact, most conservatives of all stripes across all continents have echoed my sentiments about personal responsibility and ethics as they must intersect w/one’s business endeavors.”
Burke and more Burke…and more BURKE!
Americana objectivefactsmatter 23 days ago
You have principles you obviously believe are highly flexible given the right opportunity. As for not having mantras, “PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY” is the mantra of the Republicans and theTea Party.
Flexible principles. Good in principle, bad in practice.
Oh, no, I’ve got some clarity on “personal responsibility” as it intersects w/society from a long ago conservative thinker. Though he is British, I’d hesitate to say this first quote of Burke’s admirably strikes at the heart of the sub-prime crisis.
http://Conservamerica.org/cons…
Here are some quotes from Edmund Burke, British statesman:
(His bio introduction: Burke was an Irish-born English statesman who is generally regarded as the founder of “true” conservatism and the greatest of all modern conservative thinkers. Burke’s intellectual criticism of the French Revolution entitled Reflections on the Revolution in France provided conservatism its most influential statement of views.)
“One of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and its laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to those who come after them a ruin instead of a habitation…No one generation could link with another. Men would become little better than flies of a summer.”
Now you’re pretending that I’m arguing against personal responsibility. You can’t actually follow what people say to you.
Interventions create complex webs of real and theoretical accountability. They create massive confusion on moral hazard.
http://www.investopedia.Com/terms/m/moralhazard.asp
Moral Hazard
DEFINITION OF ‘MORAL HAZARD’
The risk that a party to a transaction has not entered into the contract in good faith, has provided misleading information about its assets, liabilities or credit capacity, or has an incentive to take unusual risks in a desperate attempt to earn a profit before the contract settles.
INVESTOPEDIA EXPLAINS ‘MORAL HAZARD’
Moral hazard can be present any time two (local edit: or more) parties come into agreement with one another. Each party in a contract may have the opportunity to gain from acting contrary to the principles laid out by the agreement. For example, when a salesperson is paid a flat salary with no commissions for his or her sales, there is a danger that the salesperson may not try very hard to sell the business owner’s goods because the wage stays the same regardless of how much or how little the owner benefits from the salesperson’s work.
Moral hazard can be somewhat reduced by the placing of responsibilities on both parties of a contract. In the example of the salesperson, the manager may decide to pay a wage comprised of both salary and commissions. With such a wage, the salesperson would have more incentive not only to produce more profits but also to prevent losses for the company.
——-
You still might not fully understand the point, but if you wanted to learn, this would give you a path to understanding. Will you drink the water offered? I doubt it.
Americana objectivefactsmatter 23 days ago
“Oh, no, I’ve got some clarity on “personal responsibility” as it intersects w/society from a long ago conservative thinker. Though he is British, I’d hesitate to say this first quote of Burke’s admirably strikes at the heart of the sub-prime crisis.”
Burke and more Burke…
“It’s recognizing illegal, criminal intent within the capitalist framework of which we must be beware.”
Among the problems with this sentence, you don’t even know what capitalism is.
Oh, please. If you had any real gumption, you’dve taken on the papers and reference material we all supplied you with but, no, you’d rather simply sneer at me again. That’s the simpleton’s approach to the discussion.
I’ve already discussed all of those points with people here. More than a few times. In significant depth. I owe you nothing. I certainly am NOT going to encourage nasty, moronic filibuster behavior.
Americana objectivefactsmatter 23 days ago
Oh, please. If you had any real gumption, you’dve taken on the papers and reference material we all supplied you with but, no, you’d rather simply sneer at me again. That’s the simpleton’s approach to the discussion.
And???
Americana objectivefactsmatter 24 days ago
(objectivefactsmatter) “Yes. It did. The government was seen as on the hook and this became part of the risk calculations.”
Ah, then it was a CAPITALIST ECONOMIC RATIONALE that was underlying the whole scheme — I will profit if i do this — and the criminality became more and more popular through word of mouth. That’s got exactly nothing to do w/Marxism and everything to do w/professionals acting in the most unscrupulous manner. The fact the government was “on the hook” should have made them act even more scrupulously but they didn’t. They were acting exactly like the capitalists who choose to charge the government $1,500 for toilet seats than can be bought for $125 at Home Depot.
Can’t argue w/you when you pull this kind of stunt.. But, that’s not the point of this entire exercise, is it?
I’ve never suggested the interventionist policies didn’t lead to lowering of lending standards. What I’ve written is that NONE of those involved in facilitating homeownership by these less capable earners needed to encourage those people to look at INAPPROPRIATE HOMES. If they’d kept those less financially-well off folks looking at lower category house prices, they would never have gotten them into deep water. Nor would the banks and the world investment markets have gotten into deep water.
“…INAPPROPRIATE HOMES.”
That’s right. We need a central plan to decide which homes are appropriate. We need more wisdom from the top. No more housing bubbles. No more misery and injustice.
Must you always play the idiot in each and every scene? If the realtors had said, “This is the house price range for which your income bracket makes you eligible. You don’t want to find yourself house rich and cash poor,” it would have gone a long way toward dissuading people from taking on more than they could feasibly handle. You really think people would have looked at $400,000 homes if realtors didn’t say they could handle the mortgage? And you call that “intervention”? That’s more like ETHICAL BUSINESS PRACTICE, to me. That doesn’t require any wisdom from the top. That’s BASIC WISDOM that’s ALREADY SUPPOSED TO BE IN PLACE IN THE TRENCHES in those professions.
Americana 26 minutes ago: “Must you always play the idiot in each and every scene? If the realtors had said, “This is the house price range for which your income bracket makes you eligible. You don’t want to find yourself house rich and cash poor,” it would have gone a long way toward dissuading people from taking on more than they could feasibly handle.”
Priceless advice from Ms. CC.
“You really think people would have looked at $400,000 homes if realtors didn’t say they could handle the mortgage? And you call that “intervention”?”
Well, no, but…never mind.
“That’s more like ETHICAL BUSINESS PRACTICE, to me. That doesn’t require any wisdom from the top. That’s BASIC WISDOM that’s ALREADY SUPPOSED TO BE IN PLACE IN THE TRENCHES in those professions.”
I think we need a stronger police state to keep people from doing bad stuff. Obviously.
No, we just need people to realize that when they’re in positions that require them to perform ethically, they perform those jobs ETHICALLY.
Behaving ethically means refuting Marxism and running Marxists out of office. That’s what I’m doing.
You’re not helping the good cause. You’re on the side of bad ethics and personal sovereignty attacks.
Behaving ethically means IDENTIFYING THE FULL TRUTH and RAMIFICATIONS OF FAILURES in our neck of the woods. We would not have had the housing bubble crisis if ALL THE BUSINESS SECTORS INVOLVED HAD BEHAVED ETHICALLY and SENSIBLY.
As for not helping the good cause, oh, I’m pretty sure I am. I’m not letting you get away w/blaming the government for something that is equally the fault of the people who are governed and who chose to undermine the intent of the government in order to ENRICH THEMSELVES.
“As for not helping the good cause, oh, I’m pretty sure I am.”
Naturally.
Yes, and, naturally, you leave off assigning any personal ethics and responsibility in assessing blame to the realtors and the bankers. Because, after all, they were only trying to maximize their profits and the government was screaming eff the government and take what you can off the government dime. However, anyone w/their head screwed on and facing front knows that those professions were 1/2 the equation, IF NOT MORE.
“However, anyone w/their head screwed on and facing front knows that those professions were 1/2 the equation, IF NOT MORE.”
You’re taking a “radical” approach. You can look superficially and assign half the blame. They worked the system as they were instructed. It was not up to them to “discriminate” if the polices allowed high risk borrowers to buy property. It would be “white supremacy” (seriously) to say that you can’t buy this house because only whites are allowed highly leveraged positions. You’re black so we must act like your parents while defending your “rights” to “equality of outcome.” They could have been sued as well. I bet I can find cases were lawsuits were filed for exactly that reason. They have fiduciary duties in a lot of cases, but they don’t have crystal balls.
You just don’t see that your expectations are delusional. You don’t really understand these realities coherently. Or even at all.
These prospective homeowners were not “instructed to work the system” beyond their level of FEASIBLE participation. There were plenty of affordable homes for them to buy that were within reasonable range of their incomes. Small ranch homes are everywhere in the U.S. because they were the largest housing sector being built after WW II.
I’m not taking a “radical approach,” rather, I’m taking the approach that it takes two to tango. This was a perfect instance where the American financial services thought they could create a new financial vehicle and make a bundle for themselves in the process right alongside the corrupt realtors and the suspect banks. As for there being instances you could find of “blacks suing because they weren’t allowed to buy particular house”s, I DOUBT IT. Everyone knows that buying particular houses is dependent on having a particular level of income. NO ONE CHALLENGES THAT PREMISE. What these prospective black/Latino/etc. homeowners were challenging was whether they were to be allowed to buy any homes at all. My expectations are that you argue honestly and you appreciate ALL THE INGREDIENTS TO THE SUB-PRIME CRISIS and the GREAT RECESSION. It was not just the fault of the demographics you’d like to blame. The financial services from stem to stern played a role in the downturn that is second to none.
Stalin would have been your hero if you hadn’t been informed he was a tyrant.
Stalin was never a hero of mine. Neither have any of the other communists or fascists ever been heroes of mine. Political concepts arise because of human circumstance. Political concepts are abused by individuals for various reasons but where there have been extraordinary abuses, as in the case of Stalin or Hitler, there have been other underlying, contributing reasons for the extremity of their individual manipulation of a particular political schema in order to achieve their aims. Your syllogism is not tenable as applied to me.
syl·lo·gism
ˈsiləˌjizəm/
noun
an instance of a form of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn (whether validly or not) from two given or assumed propositions (premises), each of which shares a term with the conclusion, and shares a common or middle term not present in the conclusion (e.g., all dogs are animals; all animals have four legs; therefore all dogs have four legs ).
You miss the point again. The point is you can’t come to logical and rational conclusions on your own. You respond to propaganda. You learn by memorizing scripts and you try to riff off of the scripts rather than deeply understand WTF you’re talking about. Therefore I can rationally make comments about what someone like you would support in a particular time and place in history even though today, decades later, those people are now “demons” according to the dominant views that are propagated today. That’s only a minor point though.
The major point I was making was that you’d need a strong tyrant to enforce the kind of unified vision about what certain people can afford for housing and so forth. You’re promoting this idea of “ethical” centrally planned federal interventions. You can’t do that by committee. You need a Stalin or someone like him with a nice big smile who is politically correct. But you need his behaviors, whether you can see that or not. I know that you can’t see it. That’s why it’s amusing to point it out. You think there is only one view of affordability and ethics beyond rule of law. You think it’s possible to actively intervene with a coherent vision of “social justice” so that you can parse who acted unethically.
You need Stalin. Go ahead and object, forever. Go ahead and miss the point. But make an appointment with your doctor and talk about Zoloft. Please.
Americana objectivefactsmatter 23 days ago
Stalin was never a hero of mine. Neither have any of the other communists or fascists ever been heroes of mine. Political concepts arise because of human circumstance. Political concepts are abused by individuals for various reasons but where there have been extraordinary abuses, as in the case of Stalin or Hitler, there have been other underlying, contributing reasons for the extremity of their individual manipulation of a particular political schema in order to achieve their aims. Your syllogism is not tenable as applied to me.
Don’t tell me you need clarity on this?
“There were plenty of affordable homes for them to buy that were within reasonable range of their incomes. Small ranch homes are everywhere in the U.S. because they were the largest housing sector being built after WW II.”
Stalin could have made it work. The capitalists are at fault.
Your problem might be in not understanding that we’re all capitalists.
“The financial services from stem to stern played a role in the downturn that is second to none.”
Yes. As slave to the fascist policies if its governing masters.
Americana objectivefactsmatter 23 days ago
Yes, and, naturally, you leave off assigning any personal ethics and responsibility in assessing blame to the realtors and the bankers. Because, after all, they were only trying to maximize their profits and the government was screaming eff the government and take what you can off the government dime. However, anyone w/their head screwed on and facing front knows that those professions were 1/2 the equation, IF NOT MORE.
Principles. It’s funny principles can affect principal in such a radical fashion.
I just want to make sure I preserve this:
—
Americana 9 hours ago
Behaving ethically means IDENTIFYING THE FULL TRUTH and RAMIFICATIONS OF FAILURES in our neck of the woods. We would not have had the housing bubble crisis if ALL THE BUSINESS SECTORS INVOLVED HAD BEHAVED ETHICALLY and SENSIBLY.
As for not helping the good cause, oh, I’m pretty sure I am. I’m not letting you get away w/blaming the government for something that is equally the fault of the people who are governed and who chose to undermine the intent of the government in order to ENRICH THEMSELVES.
Good, it’s worth preserving.
You might want to have a look through this report. It might help you resolve some of your confusion.
Of course you can look back and blame people for doing what they’re told. That’s the Marxist way. Otherwise you have to accept accountability for your own stupid policies and ideas.
This has been >throughly< covered before. I never accused her of inventing anything.
This has to be psychological projection on your part:
“It might help you resolve some of your confusion.”
You seem to have so much respect for human institutions that it never really occurs to you that they can be wrong and still retain popular support – even with elites. You really have an arrogant approach to history and can’t appreciate the lessons we discussed from the pre-Luther Enlightenment…er…excuse me…early roots of the enlightenment when people started to look beyond the dominant institutional dogmas of the day…you might have been one of those who advocated arresting and punishing Luther. That’s what your thinking reminds me of. You might consider yourself a child of the Enlightenment, but you do not have the spirit of enlightenment. You have the spirit of a rigorous and disciplined student of “great” human institutions. Which is not a horrendous attack on you. The glass is mostly full. It’s just not full enough for you to be helpful in a lot of the places where you try.
There were lots of “elite” thinkers on the side against Luther. Obviously.
It’s foolish of you to trust institutions as much as you seem to. As long as they’re “secular” institutions, you’re all in.
I do appreciate the effort though.
And to show some measure of respect for critics, if you just assume that social justice interventions are essential, the next logical step is to focus on the next stage of things that are supposedly controllable. The criticism is understandable from that POV. It’s legitimate as POV when placed in proper context but does not refute ANYTHING that I said.
“… but does not refute ANYTHING that I said.”
The link to the report is to help your research or refresh your memory on the significant elements of the crisis that you seem to be leaving out of your viewpoints when you focus on “Marxist” interventions as the root of the problem. You seem to attribute the subprime crisis to interventionist policies resulting in a larger number of loans to bad prospects in pursuit of social justice (which I read as CRA and related policies), but there are a couple of points that need to be considered beyond that limited viewpoint. In re-evaluating your position, should you choose to do so, you can take a sharper look at the performance of CRA loans in the subprime market and note that they actually performed well, both in the decades prior to the crisis, and in comparison to other subprime loans in the decade of the crisis.
Of more significance is the shift in institutional behavior that seems to have been largely a function of Gramm-Leach-Bliley. In a nutshell, this allowed commercial banks to behave more like investment banks, and encouraged a sharp increase in the bundling and sale of mortgages. When a traditional commercial institution intended to hold a mortgage for the life of the loan, it tended to vet its borrowers carefully. However, once the bulk of mortgages were bundled and sold immediately after they were issued, the incentives became perverted, and far from being encouraged to vet customers carefully, commercial institutions were encouraged to increase the volume of loans and to make as many and as large loans as possible. After all, any risk of default was assumed by others and diluted among them. When these institutions were mailing out mortgage fliers that read “BAD CREDIT? NO PROBLEM!!!” they were not being driven by CRA, but by financial incentives to write more loans.
It’s certainly fair to examine the effects of interventions such as CRA, but your ‘lessons’ as offered so far suggest that you are either unfamiliar with, or choosing to ignore, a parallel dynamic that resulted, not from more intervention but by deregulation, and consequent faulty risk-taking on the commercial side.
In short, instead of deriding Americana, you should be considering that she’s made some valid points, and that unethical behavior within the financial institutions played a significant role in the crisis, and that it’s not at all obvious that the interventions you cite were more significant.
At any rate, enjoy the reading material.
“The link to the report is to help your research or refresh your memory on the significant elements of the crisis that you seem to be leaving out of your viewpoints when you focus on “Marxist” interventions as the root of the problem. You seem to attribute the subprime crisis to interventionist policies resulting in a larger number of loans to bad prospects in pursuit of social justice (which I read as CRA and related policies), but there are a couple of points that need to be considered beyond that limited viewpoint. In re-evaluating your position, should you choose to do so, you can take a sharper look at the performance of CRA loans in the subprime market and note that they actually performed well, both in the decades prior to the crisis, and in comparison to other subprime loans in the decade of the crisis.”
Fundamental point number 1) My view is not limited when I see how all of the pieces fit together and you don’t. You don’t have a comprehensive understanding of what a bubble is. A bubble is something that is overinflated and subject to correction. Anything that contributes artificially to higher prices contributes illicitly to the “bubble.” It doesn’t matter whether those transactions were “ethical” or not. It’s a matter of being aware that those policies lead to instability that is not predicted by investors. An example here would be lots of “successful individuals that didn’t hurt the market” when they artificially raised prices and brought speculators in? I’m not the myopic one here. I’m not saying you’re stupid, but I’m not offering the myopic view.
Fundamental point number 2) The general area of intervention is intended to move people up from lower economic positions. And then because the early interventions statistically helped whites more, that was deemed “unjust” based on “disparate outcomes” arguments, which are underpinning by historical materialism arguments. So ways “had to be” found to remedy that. Therefore lending standards had to be lowered overall in order to balance competing, contradictory laws protecting both individuals, equally, and classes, with favoritism. See the conundrum? Therefore when you discuss “ethics” it comes laughable because there is no consistent, uniform set of ethics that can be applied beforehand in order to get what you want and then allow you to apply afterwards to make law abiding people the good guys according to this Marxist worldview. IOW, it Marxist theories fail in the real world but people resist seeing that because the Marxist ethic is to assume that progress is organic ans solutions can be found with new thinking and new technology. Focus on criticism of the status quo, not the fundamental ideology. Because criticism of Marxism is driven by the need of the oppressors to stay in power and false consciousness of the oppressed. Ignore criticism of Marxism itself. That’s the circular logic built in to Marxism.
Fundamental point number 3) When the government imposes rules that shift moral hazard around, they become a partner. If you have X number of banks that all know they’re not forcing this bubble creation, and you know that the banks are in compliance with regulations, that puts the government on the hook and changes risk assessment which also means that derivatives become more valuable and more speculators are going to be drawn in. This is NOT unethical! The government created this “synthetic ecosystem.” If the government changed gravity somehow, would you blame this guy over here for adjusting to it because the government didn’t think he needed this new level of force? If he gets hurt will you blame him for his “unethical” adjustment?
Supporting point: Value judgments beyond the law, especially when it comes to economics, need to remain theoretical. They’re purely POV. You can’t regulate against people looking after their own interests without making it explicitly against the law. You can’t say “we want better ethics” when writing interventionist policies and then later when it all goes belly up saying “see what those greedy people did?” You’re counting on people looking after their own interests adn then blaming them when you’re incentives framework turns out to be ill-advised.
“Of more significance is the shift in institutional behavior that seems to have been largely a function of Gramm-Leach-Bliley. In a nutshell, this allowed commercial banks to behave more like investment banks, and encouraged a sharp increase in the bundling and sale of mortgages.”
That’s an amplifying factor, not a root problem. We’re driving recklessly here but you need to put your seatbelt on. If you get hurt we’re going to try to make you forget about the reckless driving.
“When a traditional commercial institution intended to hold a mortgage for the life of the loan, it tended to vet its borrowers carefully. However, once the bulk of mortgages were bundled and sold immediately after they were issued, the incentives became perverted, and far from being encouraged to vet customers carefully, commercial institutions were encouraged to increase the volume of loans and to make as many and as large loans as possible.”
It doesn’t matter that they bundled and sold the paper. What matters is that their risk assessment was grossly distorted by government policies and moral hazard shift. Therefore toxic loans were considered having greater value than they should because the government was ultimately seen as on the hook should some great disaster happen.
And guess what? They called it. Didn’t they? the government created “too big to fail” long before the term was propagated widely. These investors are not stupid. Being smart in a complex system is not the same thing as being “unethical” just because some policy wonk wants to blame them. And if they behave “ethically” like they were retroactively chastised to do, they’re competition would destroy them. They’d be out of business. Get it? The government, intentionally or not, forced these professionals to perform their fiduciary duties in seeking profits for investors. That’s another contradiction in “ethics” that I think you don’t appreciate. You’re asking a defendant’s lawyer to be loyal to the judge before his client just because some guy (you allege) got away with murder. That is not how our system works. Most people know that. You find the same kinds of “conflicts” in economics.
You guys just don’t understand the “collective” groups because you don’t have a comprehensive understanding of the various systems and obligations of the individual actors. You just chalk up bad results to “greed” if that seems to sum it up. And that is a very popular method of blame-shifting. We just need some scapegoats now. Where do we turn for that?
“It’s certainly fair to examine the effects of interventions such as CRA, but your ‘lessons’ as offered so far suggest that you are either unfamiliar with, or choosing to ignore, a parallel dynamic that resulted, not from more intervention but by deregulation, and consequent faulty risk-taking on the commercial side.”
I gave lessons before that apparently never stuck. I said many times that the official reports do accurately discuss amplifying factors but they (for political reasons) are not looking at the greater scope of criticism.
“In short, instead of deriding Americana, you should be considering that she’s made some valid points, and that unethical behavior within the financial institutions played a significant role in the crisis, and that it’s not at all obvious that the interventions you cite were more significant.”
The points can be valid in the right context. She’s just not following what I’m saying. If I say 7 is greater than 5 and you respond with, “No way, 5 is greater than 3 and here is my proof!” and similar kinds of illogical presentations of popular narratives, I’m going to be objecting to that kind of bad logic.
“When these institutions were mailing out mortgage fliers that read “BAD CREDIT? NO PROBLEM!!!” they were not being driven by CRA, but by financial incentives to write more loans.”
Yeah, it sucks. But this was virtually required. Perhaps not verbatim, but it’s like objecting to the space programs for using rocket fuel. They had to get the job done or face penalties.
As a matter of fact in my family the very first thing that sparked these discussions about the danger of bubble was seeing these ads start to pop up. My brother and I more or less tracked it in ~real time. He was counseling hyper-vigilance with home real estate purchases even in prime areas of California (SF Bay Area). I was slightly more bullish. He was closer in terms of accurately predicting overall market performance but I had a better handle on local markets. It’s not to say we’re geniuses – it’s just that our maternal grandfather taught us to pay attention to these things when we were kids. He didn’t force us – we just sat at his feet showing obvious interest when he offered lessons. He had a lot of holdings in one of those “too big to fail” institutions and sold most of it. But my brother and I gained broader experience that allowed us to track risks more closely and accurately. It’s interesting but sad that so many people get hurt and there’s so much controversy about even trying to learn the true fundamentals of real world economics.
“But this was virtually required. Perhaps not verbatim, but it’s like objecting to the space programs for using rocket fuel. They had to get the job done or face penalties.”
Most reports and studies I’ve read suggest that the surge in subprimes, and more significantly, the surge in poorly vetted subprimes, far, far exceeded anything remotely demanded by CRA, and tended to occur in markets where CRA wasn’t really an issue.
Again, it appears that the relevant shift in moral hazard was not based on the government’s apparent willingness to back CRA loans, but the deregulation-fueled market in bundled mortgages, which shifted risks to others. In a broad sense, it turned the real estate market into a giant Ponzi scheme, with the last purchases of the securities being the last line of suckers.
This is still debated, of course, but my point is not that your position can’t be argued, but that it can’t be argued authoritatively. You should back off of your “teaching the morons” rhetoric and acknowledge your biases.
“Again, it appears that the relevant shift in moral hazard was not based on the government’s apparent willingness to back CRA loans, but the deregulation-fueled market in bundled mortgages, which shifted risks to others. In a broad sense, it turned the real estate market into a giant Ponzi scheme, with the last purchases of the securities being the last line of suckers.”
It doesn’t seem like you’re quite following here. Did you look at the various policy changes and lawsuits following the CRA?
“This is still debated, of course, but my point is not that your position can’t be argued, but that it can’t be argued authoritatively. You should back off of your “teaching the morons” rhetoric and acknowledge your biases.”
It can be debated. Morons can also make nuisances of themselves with narratives that are non-responsive to the actual debate. I’m not saying your a moron, but you’re heading ever so slightly in that direction when you simply double down on this repetitive (albeit nuanced) “no it isn’t” tactic. You have not dealt with the policies and lawsuits (see “red lining” to get started on that) that caused the worst of what people identify as “unethical” loan making. It was not the banks idea to throw out lending standards.
I get your point. But you actually need a far more complete understanding of the issues and an objective, complete tracking of this absurd conversation I’m having with her before you can decide to offer judgment on just how over-the-top my reactions are.
“In a broad sense, it turned the real estate market into a giant Ponzi scheme…”
That’s a very good point to end on. The policies that created this “scheme” were all shaped by government action and lawsuits based on alleged requirements and “rights” granted by various existing laws.
This also ties in by my frequent refrains about the need to interpret the Constitution more rigorously, paying attention to all slippery slopes…not just worrying about people that might want to marry a rock. Believe it or not, it’s the same underlying controversies in some cases.
“Most reports and studies I’ve read suggest that the surge in subprimes, and more significantly, the surge in poorly vetted subprimes, far, far exceeded anything remotely demanded by CRA, and tended to occur in markets where CRA wasn’t really an issue.”
I said not explicitly. I covered this a few times.
Full Definition of IMPLICIT
1 a : capable of being understood from something else though unexpressed : implied
b : involved in the nature or essence of something though not revealed, expressed, or developed
Start here:
http://en.wikipedia.Org/wiki/Redlining
Then search: redlining lawsuit implications
What you end up with is that combining all laws, regulations and consent decrees, it turns out that strict credit standards are “racist” and de facto illegitimate. You can’t take collectivist approaches to justice and then fix with surgery. You have to throw out collectivism entirely or you’re going to conflict with various laws of some kind and every remedy will cause unlawful injustice to some other group. What you conclude is that credit standards in housing are “racist” (disparate outcomes) until you find some equilibrium, which means unnaturally low standards. This shifts moral hazard and puts the government on the hook along with inviting in a lot of people who would not otherwise participate.
Their incompetence and lawful (as well as totally understandable) “greed” are some of the natural consequences that can somehow supposedly be massaged out of the policies?
Think about this…
“…they were not being driven by CRA, but by financial incentives to write more loans.”
Look at the various policy changes as people started complaining about “red lining.” Red lining is an allegation that sounds a lot like irrational racism. But red lining is just as much about rational risk assessment. In order to comply with various policies and legal agreements, they ended up being more or less forced to put out signs with declarations along the lines of”no credit, no problem.” They needed those clients in order to comply with the laws, regulations and bindign stipulation agreements because they were required to get the certain specific demographic results.
“But red lining is just as much about rational risk assessment.”
Robbing banks may be the rational way for a given individual to make money. It may have the highest cost to risk ratio of his available choices. Doesn’t mean that we condone it.
“They needed those clients in order to comply with the laws…”
Part of the point of posting that first report, and in encouraging you to read further, is to challenge the easy answer that the CRA was responsible for those mailers.
By way of response to this and your much lengthier comment, you insist that CRA set the conditions and shifted the moral hazard, and that Gramm-Leach-Bliley, other deregulation, and mortgage bundling merely ‘accelerated’ the problem. However, that’s not obvious from the timelines – CRA loans performed well over most of the life of the CRA, and the surge in bad subprime loans correlates with deregulation, not with implementation of CRA. Correlation is not proof of causation, of course, but that makes it singularly bad form to assert that “Marxist” government policies are the cause, and the other elements merely exacerbating an existing problem, when it seems likely that those roles are reversed.
Now, if we take the view that deregulation is the primary driving factor, one can still argue that it is government policy-making and interference that is shifting the playing field and causing the disturbances, and we still can’t fault the players for seeking their maximum line of profit according to the rules of the game. Two short comments there:
1. Laissez faire doesn’t work, either. Some degree of regulation is necessary. We learned this from the various panics of the 19th century, as successive panics swung more widely from the norm and private capital and private intervention proved unable to calm the markets. It’s important to note that after regulations were put into place after the 1929 crash, there were no threats of similar crashes – until those regulations were diluted. That’s not a partisan-politics observation, by the way – the deregulation, as I recall, might have got underway under Reagan, but really hit its stride under Clinton. So from a policy perspective, if you’re claiming that any sort of government involvement is bad, history doesn’t support that. If you’re suggesting that what you call “Marxist” intervention – by which you seem to mean any legislation intended to address social or racial discrimination – was harmful in a way that other regulation or intervention was not, that’s a remarkably controversial statement, and an argument you make, not history you “teach.”
2. It doesn’t follow that any route to profit one can find withing the ‘rules of the game’ are ethical. As a specific example, anyone writing a mortgage was responsible for ascertaining the borrower’s ability to pay. That government ‘intervention’ made it profitable to write as many mortgages as possible, and reduced or shifted the impact of default, doesn’t relieve the writer of being truthful and complete. If you’re arguing that it makes it understandable that he would choose to behave unethically, sure – but that doesn’t make the behavior less ethical.
It’s a bit like arguing that CBS and NBC are responsible for Jose Conseco taking steroids. After all, if television receipts didn’t make baseball so profitable, then the incentive to hit more homeruns wouldn’t be so great. Increasing the stakes increases the likelihood of cheating, but it’s still cheating.
So if your argument is that we need to find a better balance of regulation, enforcement, and socialization, such that all players are more likely to fulfill their responsibilities, I’m with you. If you’re arguing that the government should abandon any attempt to address social or racial problems because it’s hard to do right, I can’t agree with that. And I particularly disagree with your attempt to paint any of the latter as “Marxist.” That’s just silly.
“So if your argument is that we need to find a better balance of regulation, enforcement, and socialization, such that all players are more likely to fulfill their responsibilities, I’m with you.”
Not only do we need to do better, we need to refute the most dangerous bad ideas that make people feel live victims without any basis.
“If you’re arguing that the government should abandon any attempt to address social or racial problems because it’s hard to do right, I can’t agree with that.”
We need to reach consensus on what justice is and what it is not.
“And I particularly disagree with your attempt to paint any of the latter as “Marxist.” That’s just silly.”
That’s because apparently you do not understand the implications. Which is, again, one of the fundamental problems we’re having. You’re not hardcore, but you do help the evangelists without realizing it.
“1. Laissez faire doesn’t work, either. Some degree of regulation is necessary. We learned this from the various panics of the 19th century, as successive panics swung more widely from the norm and private capital and private intervention proved unable to calm the markets. It’s important to note that after regulations were put into place after the 1929 crash, there were no threats of similar crashes – until those regulations were diluted.”
I’m not arguing for zero regulations. I’m trying to fight this worship of elites that bundle regulations that are part rational and part pandering to Marxist sentiments and just plain old populism. Progress comes from continually advancing education, not bending ever more complex systems in ways that get the support of the broadest cross section of voters.
Now this point about how things went well up until regulations were peeled away, that’s an OK place to start a conversation. But it’s a very simplistic (and please don’t be offended when I add ignorant) view. The economy expanded at such a fantastic rate for reasons completely unrelated to regulations. This is why you have to have a comprehensive view of history >and I demand evidence when anyone suggests coercive interventions.
And PS: I’m huge on saving energy and cleaning up the environment. It’s probably what sets me apart. I try to take a comprehensive approach and bring together all of the various professionals to teach them how to work strategically together for better business strategies and compliance with the need to work on “sustainability” and cost / quality control issues. I also point out that this allows them to build a brand for themselves as the “Mercedes of_____.” Mostly what we need are leaders who are willing to try to lead by example, and smart, well-informed and vetted consensus not “smart” (pandering to populist worldview) ideas. It needs to come mostly from grass roots movements and it would be most helpful IMO if we debunk some of the dumbest ideas from Marx.
“Robbing banks may be the rational way for a given individual to make money. It may have the highest cost to risk ratio of his available choices. Doesn’t mean that we condone it.”
It was not illegal activity that led to these trends of getting people in to houses that they previously would not have qualified for. It is illegal to rob banks. It is not illegal to ignore credit risks. It is arguably —>illegal,— to enforce strict credit standards according to rational risk assessment at this point. Where are the thresholds? It depends more on how “inclusive” the standards are, not how rational it is to lend to any given applicant.
Let me try another way. If organic credit standards are used and banks are the ones that decide, you will have established clients that do well and people with less developed skills and lower access to resources will be left out. That’s natural. But it can also be characterized as racism when you use statistics in certain ways. Therefore organic, rational formulas to determine who qualifies for a loan are racist. Lowering standards only for certain demographics would also be racist. Lowering standards without regard for race up to the point that somehow the standards are deemed properly “inclusive” is the only legal choice they have. Therefore the implications of rule of law in the USA required them to lower lending standards. They were even compelled to advertise these lower standards in certain markets because failure to do so would expose them to lawsuits and penalties. Unless of course they had some magic economics available.
And now you know why I scoff at people about their magical expectations. Because when we take all of your expectations, it would require magic to make you happy in every respect that you demand. What you’re agitating for is equality of outcome, which is delusional. People are not organically equal. In America, they are equal before the law. The law is not here to make them equal in every respect or even ever economic aspect. Collectively (by ethnic class) or individually.
That’s the downside of collectivism. And whenever I mention this word you have a visceral reaction to it, just as you don’t want to discuss why some people are tainted by Marxism while strenuously denying it.
I don’t believe in magic. A lot of atheists do. Which is weird. Because…never mind.
• We conclude there was a systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics. The integrity of our financial markets and the public’s trust in those markets are essential to the economic well-being of our nation. The soundness and the sustained prosperity of the financial system and our economy rely on the notions of fair dealing, responsibility, and transparency. In our economy, we expect businesses and individuals to pursue profits, at the same time that they produce products and services of quality and conduct themselves well.”
Hello? Why do you think wise economists discuss moral hazard so frequently? You Marxists corrupt accountability to pursue “the agenda” thinking that you can legislate altruism and “economic justice” of some kind that doesn’t exist. Then you’re shocked when people look after their own interests…just as you in fact told them to do. As collectives. But no, see, the “rich” are supposed to know who they are and help “the poor” just like the policy intended.
Hey, you didn’t not conduct yourself well! We will legislate “doing well” next. If those stupid conservatives weren’t so greedy our laws would be just about perfect by now! Stupid banksters! Stupid 1%! Stupid Zionists!
https://www.google.Com/search?client=opera&q=wall+street+zionism&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
That may not represent perfectly what the elites and policy makers think. But it does represent the common ethos of their constituents. Think about it.
” You Marxists…”
Oh, dear.
I don’t understand this reaction of yours. What is your objection? I’m not accusing you of being “pro-Soviet” or a Chicom plant, or planning a violent revolution. It would be like me objecting to you referring to my thinking as influenced by Christianity. I never said that I was a Christian! How dare you demonize me in that way!? You’re trying to shut down the conversation, aren’t you!
You’ve said before that you think certain words are used to shut down conversations. I think the opposite. I think this reaction, like yours, is intended to shut down examination of the validity of the terms.
Marxism protects itself from criticism in a number of ways. Among them is this idea that accusations or even just “use of labels” is all about “irrational demonizing” and the ones who use these words are trying to shut down conversation? Really? Why is it always the “accused” that are running away from the rational examinations?
If you’re sympathetic to “social justice” arguments distinct from Constitutional justice arguments, that makes you sympathetic to Marxism. Unless we’re talking about slavery or Native American reparations of some kind there really is no other framework to organize a legitimate complaint regarding “social justice” today. When you start talking about government policies that deal with “income disparity” and similar issues, especially if you start talking about remedies as entitlements….oh boy. There is no other way to come up with that. You’re attacking personal property rights (which are in the Bill of Rights) in order to satisfy a nebulous and Utopian vision. Where else could it come from?
I agree with a few things Joseph Smith said about God and Jesus and stuff, but I’m no Mormon. Don’t call me a Mormon. I don’t agree with Smith – I mean not really – but – he wasn’t exactly wrong and it’s OK, perhaps even good some times, to take his ideas and use them for improving governance.
OK, fine. How about “Smithist?” Is that better?
“Oh, dear.”
Neo-Smithist?
The Pope just hinted that Jesus was divine. Joseph Smith thought that Jesus was divine.
The Pope is a Mormon! No?
He’s a Neo-Mormon! But the Pope doesn’t accept any of Smith’s departures from or additions to the Catholic canon.
The obvious problem with your sloppy use of language – and let’s note that your use of the term “Marxist” included neither lowercase or scare-quote escape clauses – is that a Marxist is not merely someone who taps into a viewpoint or philosophy to which Marx was sympathetic. The world is not divided into laissez-faire capitalists and Marxists.
“…a Marxist is not merely someone who taps
into a viewpoint or philosophy to which Marx was sympathetic. The world is not
divided into laissez-faire capitalists and Marxists.”
I
would agree. You must of course also consider that I don’t address you as
Marxist unless you’re defending an explicitly Marxist worldview. It’s just that
simple. If I consider your “personal identity” or some fundamental
aspect of your being to be “Marxist” I would instead refer to you as
a communist. But what you do is (probably without awareness) defend some
Marxist views. I could also modify my labeling by using “dupe” a lot
more, which in theory softens the accusation, but tends to get people even more
upset. And that’s the real issue. People get upset when they’re challenged. And
that’s a shame. It’s an imperfect world in many ways. And anyone that
argues interventions are needed to dynamically boost (make constant corrections
in) social mobility in America
is a Marxist or is a dupe of his flawed thinking.
And
while Marx was inspired by others (and I have said this to you before, very
clearly) none of those other thought leaders had any kind of complaints that
would make sense in terms of rectifying today’s social problems in the USA.
Only Marx came up with a framework for constant agitation towards destruction
of private property rights, up to 100%, that allows followers to ignore any contrary
evidence. And if you slip in to that habit (or are attracted to those tainted arguments)
I’ll say that’s Marxist. If you align yourself with Marxist views for a
particular argument, I’ll refer to “you Marxists” and then you’ll be
the one to decide of the shoe fits.
By the
way I have some sympathy for Marx’s ideas, a few of them at least, in terms of
dealing with nations that clearly have a lot of public property held in the
name of cultural preservation, or as in the UK with a monarch that retains vast
holdings. Saudi Arabia
(as just another example) gets so much wealth from oil that really they should
have some kind of active offset program because the oil wealth drives their
economy and creates an oligarchy no matter what political system they arrange.
Those are truly legitimate issues for demanding some kind of >rational<
offsets. Because preserving those institutions actually does limit social
mobility. The key to any meritocracy is a system that makes social
mobility possible for those willing to contribute and compete against the
establishment to become part of the establishment.
I just
remembered something I've tried a few times to test whether anyone can define
thresholds of Marxist thinking. I ask people if they can identify rational
reasons for asking for adjustments other than slavery or Native American
claims. Nobody has ever come up with anything. Nobody mentioned the railroad
land grants giveaways or anything like that. The
next go to citation after slavery is almost always “banksters” who allegedly
create this oligarchy. Nothing could be further from the truth. It takes
Marxism to demonize banks unless you’re leaning on ancient Christian prejudice regarding
money lenders (essentially Jews). So…I’m actually being very kind to people.
They just can’t appreciate it without understanding it.
The
bottom line is that I demand a rational approach. And because Marx created this
comprehensive, circular theory that really proves itself based on its own
testimony -and while some of it valid – it's dangerous that it also teaches
that people who argue against Marxism are either trying to maliciously defend
their dominant oppressor status or are caught up in some mysterious "false
consciousness." IOW, this Marxist worldview propagates the idea that
dissenters are stupid or malicious. To me this also explains why people are
often far more interested in repeating accusations than learning more about how
non-Marxists see the world. You very rarely find very talented entrepreneurs
that lean towards Marxist thinking. Even guys like Bill Gates consider
themselves to be extraordinarily lucky rather than understand that there are
lots of humans that could have done the same thing, and it's probably better in
my view to stand up as a role model than sort of lean too much on fatalism as
an explanation for success.
As for
Marxism, it's not like I'd like to see his utterings stricken from history. I'd
like to have him seen as a critic that raised important points but for whatever
reason went a little nuts in trying to turn his criticism in to a worldview or…almost
a religion.
Once
everyone is clearer about all sides of these criticisms I think we can come up
with MUCH better solutions to these controversies. The USA should be a
model for the world for political and economic institutions. And here we are
apologizing for being greedy thieves. I know that's not verbatim from any
particular professor or politician (though it probably is) but that is how a
lot of people hear it by the time it get's translated. Domestically and around
the world. Americans should be evangelizing Americanism. But at least half
don't even know what that means.
“He’s a Neo-Mormon! But the Pope doesn’t accept any of Smith’s departures from or additions to the Catholic canon.”
Then there is no rational reason to refer to that pope as neo-Mormon. And they don’t agree on much of anything aside perhaps the English spelling of Jesus.
There you go.
Believe me, I hear what you’re saying. But…I don’t think you’re fully grasping the criticism. What is your discrete label for yourself? Maybe that will help sort this out.
“The world is not divided into laissez-faire capitalists and Marxists.”
If you believe that historic materialism is justification for government interventions rather than allowing organic social mobility in America, you’re testing strongly for Marxism. If you believe that the establishment as a class is somehow organized to restrain upward mobility (in America or without citing evidence), you are almost certainly a dupe of Marx. If you believe that American citizens have legal entitlements for the sake of social justice remedies, you’re also testing strongly for potential Marxist taint.
Your complaints strike me as parallel to a guy that objects strongly to a Geiger counter registering indicators of contamination because he doesn’t feel sick. Well, there’s more to it than that.
Your complaints strike me as parallel to a guy who diagnoses people with radiation poisoning every time he hears a click because he once read about Geiger counters.
Look, your posts are studies in misplaced condescension. You seem to have read a book or two on Marxusm, perhaps some Ayn Rand, and you have sunsequently convinced yourself that it is Dr OFM’s job to sniff out and expose Marxism wherever it lurks.
First off, your basic underlying logical structure is ludicrously flawed. “If A, then B” does not in any way imply “if B, then A.” Marx employed historic materialism, but historic materialism is not unique to Marx. There are Marxist and non-Marxist approaches. You are, as you mentioned in another context, both simplifying to the point of ignorance, and basing your entire approach on fatally flawed logic. “If Marxist, then historic materialism” didn’t support “if historic materialism, them Marxist.” It doesn’t even support a weasel end-down “if historic materialism, then probably Marxist.”
Marx also employed a very specific sort of historic materialism, in which he filtered all historical events through the lens of economics and class struggle. It’s flawed reasoning to imply that any worldview that takes into account material effects on politics is therefore equivalent to a Marxist class-struggle orientation involves misunderstanding Marx’s version of historic materialism or distorting your opponents’ positions.
One example of the flawed direction your background drives you in would be in misdiagnosing most schools of IR theory. You are concluding, for example, that if one does not share your view of the primacy of ideology in motivating and shaping human events, that you have found evidence of Marxist materialism. The realist, on the other hand, almost universally reject ideology as cause. Most Realist schools of thought see the state as a black box, driven to act variously by the national interest or by geopolitical necessity, depending on the approach. Similarly, in conflating any material approach with Marx’s, you essentially condemn any positivist approach to IR as “Marxist.” That’s simply silly.
I’m afraid I must be off to work. On your latter points, I don’t think that anyone has discussed limitations on upward mobility in the U.S. without providing evidence, and I don’t think anyone here has provided a class-structural framework for analyzing it.
Bottom line: your “testing for Marxist taint” strikes me as the approach of an individual with an obsession. To the man with the hammer (!), every problem is a nail.
Yes, I know. I understand you. The question is whether you know how to run the Geiger counter. I’m thinking that you don’t.
“First off, your basic underlying logical structure is ludicrously flawed. “If A, then B” does not in any way imply “if B, then A.” Marx employed historic materialism, but historic materialism is not unique to Marx.”
You’re forgetting that all of these things were said in context. If you read all of what I wrote and you digested it, you’ll notice that I do acknowledge rational “historic materialism” claims. Which is why I mentioned older European countries.
“If Marxist, then historic materialism” didn’t support “if historic materialism, them Marxist.” It doesn’t even support a weasel end-down “if historic materialism, then probably Marxist.”
If you apply historic materialism to claims made today regarding “wealth disparity” in America, I can think of no non-Marxist logical framework for that to make sense. Can you? If you can, you’re simply not aware of Marx’s influence. I guess you could be inspired by the same people he was and come to the same conclusions, but I’m still entitled to put you in the same class if that’s the case. For God’s sake, it’s not a penalty. It’s for opening conversations. Justify your positions. Justify your worldview. If you don’t care where your ideas come from then you should not care if people associate them with Marx. What’s the complaint really about? You’re not being rational here.
“You are concluding, for example, that if one does not share your view of the primacy of ideology in motivating and shaping human events, that you have found evidence of Marxist materialism.’
No. All of the feedback is considered in context. I was a non-Marxist materialist for most of my life so you just gave a bad example.
“I’m afraid I must be off to work. On your latter points, I don’t think that anyone has discussed limitations on upward mobility in the U.S. without providing evidence, and I don’t think anyone here has provided a class-structural framework for analyzing it.”
The evidence is based on certain formulations. I won’t say more because you’re freak out. The evidence is based on assumptions like materialistic determinism. They hit all of the “evidence” Marx would use and then they don’t want to listen to “oppressors” explain the errors that arise from their flawed economic models.
But you know what? You’re trying to look at the logic form the top down. You’re confusion is to you evidence that I’m wrong. You haven’t absorbed and processed the implications of what I’ve been telling you.
You’re way to sensitive about these associations like you’re being assigned a permanent label. And you’re resisting it impulsively rather than considering all of these things.
“Bottom line: your “testing for Marxist taint” strikes me as the approach of an individual with an obsession. To the man with the hammer (!), every problem is a nail.”
How can you say that the Western world is dominated by cultural Christianity? No way! These are all discrete movements. Secular humanism has nothing to do with Christianity! Nothing!
If that’s how you want to look at the world, that’s for you. But remember I’m not alleging that you’re some kind of radioactive heavy metal. I’m saying you are showing signs of radiation exposure. And we’ve all been exposed. You just don’t know how to isolate it. I’m helping you isolate it but you don’t want my help.
“If you apply historic materialism to claims made today regarding “wealth disparity” in America, I can think of no non-Marxist logical framework for that to make sense. Can you? If you can, you’re simply not aware of Marx’s influence. ”
Or you’re unwilling to acknowledge influences other than Marx. For example, the Freiburg School and Germany’s later ordoliberalism are rooted in Catholic social teachings, and call for government intervention in specific circumstances while rejecting socialism. The ordoliberals, for example, are convinced that laissez-faire capitalism leads to monopolies, and that the government has a legitimate role in intervening to prevent that sort of accumulation of power. That’s not inherently Marxist.
“I’m helping you isolate it but you don’t want my help.”
I’m sure you think you are. When I consult a doctor, it’s because I’m sick, and because I have checked his bona fides and am convinced he knows his business. When some fellow comes along, tells me I’m not feeling well, and tries to shove a pill down my throat, I’m not going to thank him, regardless of how many times he shouts “you’re welcome!”
“Or you’re unwilling to acknowledge influences other than Marx.”
Why would you think that? The term “neo-Marxist” was coined to group these ideas while acknowledging that they are built on the implications of Marxism though not taken directly from his writings.
“I’m sure you think you are. When I consult a doctor, it’s because I’m sick, and because I have checked his bona fides and am convinced he knows his business. When some fellow comes along, tells me I’m not feeling well, and tries to shove a pill down my throat, I’m not going to thank him, regardless of how many times he shouts “you’re welcome!””
Well, the sad thing is that you don’t really have the ability to establish credentials along these lines because you’re trying to perform surgery on yourself already convinced you’re the best surgeon. You’re too busy hacking and defending yourself to even pay attention to the validity of what you’re being told.
If we had the time and inclination, I could take you through your disqus history and tell you where you register as “neo-Marxist.” You might not acknowledge it for whatever reason, but just because some intermediary thinkers are the ones you got your ideas from doesn’t purge the Marxist fallacies. You have to have a truly comprehensive understanding of the implications of your ideas before you’re actually qualified to defend any of them as unaffected by Marx’s ideas.
Mostly it’s how these various ideas are combined. Most of the neo-Marxist ideas are valid in proper context. It’s when they’re used inappropriately to promote the Marxist worldview that people start emitting “radioactivity.”
I think I said yesterday (maybe this morning for you) that Jared Diamond’s work could be considered neo-Marxist only because it is used by lots of neo-Marxists. But I don’t consider that he’s done that because he hasn’t crossed that threshold in my mind. In the end I’m a lot more rigorous than you realize, it’s just difficult to show my work here on these comment pages. Especially to hostile interlocutors. Especially when I’m juggling so many conversations…but it is what it is.
When you suggested that I had read Rand’s books, that reflected your conscious or subconscious assignment of a tag to my thinking. That’s all I’m doing. I did not object to you characterizing my thinking as “Randian” because it might have some validity. It’s OK.
I don’t think she’s very impressive and on one level it’s slightly insulting…but it’s rational, and it makes sense for you to organize your thinking in this way at least as part of an ongoing process. What I’m basically suggesting is doing it more consciously.
“Look, your posts are studies in misplaced condescension. You seem to have read a book or two on Marxusm, perhaps some Ayn Rand, and you have sunsequently convinced yourself that it is Dr OFM’s job to sniff out and expose Marxism wherever it lurks.”
I’ve never read any of Ayn Rand’s books. I they’re like fairy tales for adults. Or something. They don’t work for me. It doesn’t bother me that some people get something out of them. Other books critical of Marx? I’m not sure I’ve read any. My criticism comes from reading Marx and reading how people have built on his theories and experience through my working life. My brother is an economist. We grew up discussing the theories and until a few years ago I thought Marxism was dead except to lunatics. I thought the allegations against this president were silly too. When he made some foreign policy moves that I thought were stupid and reminiscent of Jimmy Carter, I revisited the Carter years (historically) and read books critical of him. I suppose it would have been natural for me to assume that he was just looking to Carter for inspiration.
Anyway, I don’t have time to take you step by step. But I started 2009 and even 2010 as a guy interested in history way more than politics of the present. But as I saw stupid things I began to take the “right wing” critics more seriously. And I thoguht back to my sister, now an MBA, and the bouts she had with this silly Marxist ideas that my brother and I used to laugh about. The thing is that my sister is not stupid and there are lots of people like her. When I started challenging 0’Bama supporters in subtle ways to defend his policies, I paid attention to the patterns without looking for anything. I wanted to see if they could come up with better than “racism.” Their arguments were weak and based on circular logic with a lot of ignorance. My brother and I (who votes DP) at least acknowledges my observations and kind of shrugs. He’s somewhat fatalistic about it. We are all fatalistic about things we feel have no control over.
I need to cut this short. I’ll try to think of some other way to explain but my sense is that you’re too defensive to consider these ideas. Maybe I would be too. Just saying. But how about if you make your own Geiger counter for Marxism. What are the thresholds you would use to identify people that are influenced by Marxist thinking? It seems like you are totally opposed to this idea of making “hostile ID” on someone. But really I don’t want to turn this in to an accusation that I care about. The major motive is to force people to talk about the fallacies. And Marxism leads people to build closed worldviews that rely on false assumptions. It’s a problem that needs to be dealt with. The label thing is just a rhetorical tool. It’s just using language to get things done.
“But how about if you make your own Geiger counter for Marxism. What are the thresholds you would use to identify people that are influenced by Marxist thinking? It seems like you are totally opposed to this idea of making “hostile ID” on someone. ”
I am. I believe that the best way to approach an issue is on its merits. Getting “hostile ID” on someone, trying to apply a label, is a transparent shortcut to ad hom by association. Under the guise of “trying to understand where they’re coming from,” or “trying to explain to them the source of their ideas,” you’re basically trying to shift the argument away from the topic and onto the person.
You seem to approach the topic with the zeal of the converted, not the confidence of the master. I cringe whenever I hear someone (including myself) preface a set of comments with “I used to believe X…” or “I used to do Y…” Whether it’s smoking cigarettes, coming to Jesus, leaving Jesus, or, in your case, discovering the Perils of Marxism, such individuals bring to their pet topic a fanaticism that will not rest until their partners in conversation are as enthusiastic as they.
Since you’ve revealed something of yourself, I’ll explain one thing as well. You asked in another post what label I’d apply to myself, and the short answer is that I wouldn’t. I’m the sort of person who is brought up short when people, simply making small talk, ask “what’s your favorite X?” I don’t have a favorite color, a favorite movie, a favorite book, a favorite city. I have colors I like in certain circumstances. I have books that speak to me for different reasons. I don’t trust labels and I don’t trust facile answers. I’m conscious enough to identify the threads or strands of my thinking that are common to various schools of thought, but I don’t feel that any useful purpose is served by announcing that I am most nearly a neoliberal or a structural realist.
“I am. I believe that the best way to approach an issue is on its merits. Getting “hostile ID” on someone, trying to apply a label, is a transparent shortcut to ad hom by association.”
It’s not like that. I know it feels that way.
Humans are not machines. People operate with unspoken and even unconscious motives and assumptions. The reason we as a society are still so divided in spite of what a few decades ago would have been considered Utopian communications capabilities is that “we” (flawed humans) don’t really understand how to be fully truthful about our own thinking.
I’m not trying to gratuitously attack anyone. I’m trying to attack fallacious ideas that are often subconsciously expressed. Now if I’m wrong I’m exposing myself to counterattack and also helping advance the discourse by looking at these issues. If I’m right, I’m doing all of that in an even more valuable direction. Cooperative discourse is good and progressive. It’s always my preference to have cooperative conversations.
So this “hostile ID” is not the same in discourse as in war where the enemy must be immediately destroyed if he threatens you. In discourse, it helps to identify hostile, hidden >ideas< that are preventing the discourse from actually progressing. The fallacies are the ultimate target.
And this is also my only motive for being brutally truthful about Islam. I make friends with most Muslims that I meet. Almost all of them. I'm not against the people until they become an explicit threat as individuals. But I see it as crucial to understand the implications of holding certain worldviews base on theistic religion like Islam or any other hostile worldview like theistic or atheistic Marxism.
One more parting thought:
Again, these are not discrete labels. They're meta tags. If you talk about X, it's part of the larger discourse on Marxist worldview. It matters that you don't like it in polite society. But…it doesn't change the reality that you're promoting Marxist fallacies, or fallacies that are part of the larger discourse on Marxism. That's how people get tagged if not collated. You're not assigned to a bucket. You're file is marked with a little note. It's really OK. You can take it.
“Again, these are not discrete labels. They’re meta tags. If you talk about X, it’s part of the larger discourse on Marxist worldview. It matters that you don’t like it in polite society. But…it doesn’t change the reality that you’re promoting Marxist fallacies, or fallacies that are part of the larger discourse on Marxism. ”
You’d do better to identify the specific ‘fallacies’ that you allege to have arisen in conversation as they arise and show them to be such.
I’ll assume that you are being forthright about your intentions, but the effect is still that of an ad hom by association.
“Since you’ve revealed something of yourself, I’ll explain one thing as well. You asked in another post what label I’d apply to myself, and the short answer is that I wouldn’t. I’m the sort of person who is brought up short when people, simply making small talk, ask “what’s your favorite X?” I don’t have a favorite color, a favorite movie, a favorite book, a favorite city. I have colors I like in certain circumstances. I have books that speak to me for different reasons. I don’t trust labels and I don’t trust facile answers. I’m conscious enough to identify the threads or strands of my thinking that are common to various schools of thought, but I don’t feel that any useful purpose is served by announcing that I am most nearly a neoliberal or a structural realist.”
I understand. If I have to assign you to a “bucket” I would simply put you in the materialist category. Structural realist works. I don’t like “buckets” or discrete labels that exclude nuanced views. I’m assigning meta tags to indicate cross-relevance, not putting you in a discrete container.
My brother is a lot like you in personality but he has different life experiences. Plus he lived with me most of the time as well. Even today you would get along perfectly with him. It takes him a long time to understand me when I push him. In the end, he always agrees with me. He just doesn’t have an intuitive confidence in the kind of ideas I suggest.
He also recognizes that personality-wise, I’m a much more successful leader. He won’t admit that out loud. But when he has problems I’m pretty much the only person he can trust.
He’s my brother. I recognize that he doesn’t intuitively trust what I say. We have to hash things out over long periods of time. Some times weeks or months. He’s an economist and CPA and he still, in the end, gives me credit for understanding business operations and market realities better than he does. I have a wider scope of experience and training and it doesn’t hurt my depth. That’s what I’m told. He got a few of his clients from me, his “little” brother.
How much do you really have in common with him? I don’t really know. But the style of discourse, the rigidity, is almost identical. I’m used to it. For the most part it’s good. I’m not attacking you personally.
“He also recognizes that personality-wise, I’m a much more successful leader. He won’t admit that out loud. ”
Sounds like an interesting family dynamic you fellows have.
“I’m not attacking you personally.”
I’m not worried about that. I like to keep conversations topical, and metaconversation is rarely so.
“…metaconversation is rarely so.”
I think most people come here to understand connections. Which of course includes debunking false ones. So even if you don’t appreciate (some specific aspect of) the process, you probably would appreciate the progress once you have seen it. Ultimately it is a humanizing process. I realize that it appears to be the opposite at times.
Kind of an aside this, but all that kind of reminds me of a conversation I had some time back with a friend who asked me if I was an atheist. My response then as now was that I thought there was an excellent case for atheism and that I hadn’t as yet encountered any compelling arguments for the existence of gods: end of the day however I had simply no way of knowing that there was no god & what does it matter anyway. (think I may also have ventured the Sagan-esque approach of ‘well give me a definition God first’) To which I got the impatient response “so….what- you ARE an atheist then?…or just an agnostic…or what?” Having had a highly structured & compatmentalised view of the world, he seemed annoyed that I hadn’t ‘ticked the box’, so to speak. “Why do you have to be any one of those things” was my own response. On the question of metaphysics I still veer occasionally from dogged certainty (there is nothing beyond the physical world) to deep uncertainty: all depending on the mood of the day.
Good to see you’re still around!
Still around & in good health! Good soldiers never die 😀
My Disqus activity is generally confined to reading rather than offfering comments. I’ll occasionally pipe up if I feel I’ve something worthwhile to add.
“First off, your basic underlying logical structure is ludicrously flawed. “If A, then B” does not in any way imply “if B, then A.” Marx employed historic materialism, but historic materialism is not unique to Marx. There are Marxist and non-Marxist approaches. You are, as you mentioned in another context, both simplifying to the point of ignorance, and basing your entire approach on fatally flawed logic. “If Marxist, then historic materialism” didn’t support “if historic materialism, them Marxist.” It doesn’t even support a weasel end-down “if historic materialism, then probably Marxist.””
Even Jared Diamond is not someone I would classify as Marxist unless he tried to argue that his findings are evidence that interventions are needed in order to…etc. Or depending on how he defended accusations that his views on materialistic determinism. But I’m open minded. I didn’t see anything from him that I considered explicitly Marxist even though Marxists love to use this kind of analysis.
“It’s flawed reasoning to imply that any worldview that takes into account material effects on politics is therefore equivalent to a Marxist class-struggle orientation involves misunderstanding Marx’s version of historic materialism or distorting your opponents’ positions.”
You’re the one making flawed assumptions about my analysis. It’s not if A or B or C. It’s if A and B and C. It’s how you formulate solutions. None of the Marxist analysis is inappropriate as a paradigm for certain kinds of limited analysis.
If you start to use those flawed paradigms inappropriately, and or for planning or predicting the future—>>> Marxist radiation exposure.
The test is just more complicated than you apparently understand. You are the one jumping to conclusions. Calling large, powerful corporations “corporate fascists” is definitely an indicator, but it takes more than that.
“The test is just more complicated than you apparently understand. You are the one jumping to conclusions. “‘
So you keep saying. I just work off what you post, not what you intimate you could post if you had time.
“So you keep saying. I just work off what you post, not what you intimate you could post if you had time.”
You don’t take the aggregate of what I say over time. Which is understandable. But…some people find it useful to ask clarifying questions before jumping to conclusions.
I don’t always have time to repeat at any given moment everything that I’ve said already. Although I try to cooperate with ad hoc recaps when I sense that it will be worth the time.
In any event, language disputes aside, the report is about blame-shifting. It’s not the policies that incentivized these transactions, it’s the flawed character of our citizens.
Don’t policy shapers think about those things as they’re coming up with their plans? Of course they do. Some times. But it doesn’t really matter because it’s useful for scapegoating to suddenly remember that you can always look back and accuse someone or some group of bad faith even when those actors in most cases had fiduciary duties to do exactly what they ended up doing. But wait, find a few criminals to represent the entire class and then the policies won’t be blamed by the gullible constituents.
That’s the driving ethos: Defend the policies based on political considerations.
OTOH, put in proper perspective, the report is not useless. It’s just incomplete.
“In any event, language disputes aside, the report is about blame-shifting. It’s not the policies that incentivized these transactions, it’s the flawed character of our citizens.”
Well, no. It’s isolating which policies incentivized which transactions. You take it as a given that intervention has a particular effect, but you can’t make that claim without more rigorously testing that. Rather than ‘testing for Marxism,’ you should be offering the evidence that a particular policy had the effects you claim.
For example, if I’m not mistaken, you recently posted to someone an article asserting that Obama had submitted a lawsuit on behalf of something over 150 individuals; the article then asserted that over half had defaulted as of 2012, and some small number were current on their debts. This sort of thing is nearly meaningless at the offered level of detail. Of those who defaulted, when did they default, and for what reasons? If they defaulted before the crisis, then that suggests that such borrowers contributed to the crisis, and if the lawsuit can be tied to the CRA, you could form a chain of logic to that effect. On the other hand, if they defaulted as the recession took effect, one would infer that their defaults were effect, not cause.
It’s hard to argue that anyone had fiduciary duties to poorly vet loans or fail to properly turn over mortgages during the securitization process. The extent of the robosigning scandal demonstrates that the executives and employees of the institutions in question were decidedly not committed to carrying out their responsibilities. The falsification of documents during the foreclosure crisis is prima facie evidence that banks were willing to ignore their duties in pursuit of income. Those problems arose as a result of the volume of mortgages being securitized; the mortgage documents were supposed to be transferred with the changes in ownership, and these companies were so eager to increase the volume of the transactions that they were unable or unwilling to commit the resources to properly execute them. Hard to claim that this represents those who “had fiduciary duties to do exactly what they ended up doing.”
“Well, no. It’s isolating which policies incentivized which transactions. You take it as a given that intervention has a particular effect, but you can’t make that claim without more rigorously testing that.”
You doubt the fundamental laws of supply and demand? Agreeing to write more risky loans to people that had not been in the market (due to bad credit and or insufficient funds to establish equity) will have what effect on pricing? And if the quality of those loans is lower than before, what does that do when prices start to collapse? Even if we can isolate something like increasing retail gasoline prices as a main trigger for loan default, you still can show that these toxic loans and moral hazard shift caused craziness in the derivatives market. You can blame any of that. But who has the right to do what? You either have to go back and restore accountablity where it belongs or you have to establish more government control over what all humans do if you want to help people that have fewer resources with top down planning.
“Rather than ‘testing for Marxism,’ you should be offering the evidence that a particular policy had the effects you claim.””
It’s not hard to do. It’s just clumsy and time-consuming to go over every fundamental law and theory of market economics along with presenting sample data – all here on disqus.
“For example, if I’m not mistaken, you recently posted to someone an article asserting that Obama had submitted a lawsuit on behalf of something over 150 individuals; the article then asserted that over half had defaulted as of 2012, and some small number were current on their debts. This sort of thing is nearly meaningless at the offered level of detail. Of those who defaulted, when did they default, and for what reasons? If they defaulted before the crisis, then that suggests that such borrowers contributed to the crisis, and if the lawsuit can be tied to the CRA, you could form a chain of logic to that effect. On the other hand, if they defaulted as the recession took effect, one would infer that their defaults were effect, not cause.”
That was just a sample. Banks across the country changed their policies in response to the settlement. That settlement was used as a precedent to indicate how the various laws might be interpreted in other claims.
It would be interesting to drill down. But the point is clear that the government policies first drew more people and more funds in to the marketplace, driving up prices, and then it turns out that the quality of borrower was worse than expected, contributing to instability and fear as prices started to crash.
Why would you think that people with poor credit history and low equity were at the tail end of a crisis that was driven by toxic loans? That’s a weird assumption. The point is not to blame those people. The point is looking at policies and consequences. Generally speaking, anything that drags down the quality of borrowers and thus quality of the loan contracts is going to drag down assessments.
I mean all of these conversations involve assumptions. Assumptions are driven by worldview and fundamental knowledge about the subjects. This is why worldview matters and also why when discussing complex analysis there has to be some fundamental agreement on these assumptions.
If you can’t wade your way through at least a little of this on your own you probably need to start over with some kind of primer on market economics and then build on that. I already suggested this to Americana and I doubt she bothered to take me up.
Milton Friedman did a video series with PBS in the 1980s and then updated it in the 1990s.
http://miltonfriedman.blogspot.Com
You really should get through something like that or it’s equivalent or we’re going to be going in circles here for a long time. Especially since you seem more interested in playing Devil’s advocate than in actually understanding what the major forces have been that carried us to this point.
“It’s hard to argue that anyone had fiduciary duties to poorly vet loans or fail to properly turn over mortgages during the securitization process.”
Again, you miss the point. Every transaction has factions dealing with each other with conflicting interests. Taken as a whole, you can’t just look back and say there was a failure of ethics without meticulously looking at each deal, especially since the government directed banks to loan to high risk clients in high risk neighborhoods and with high risk financial backgrounds. Why is this point so difficult to understand?
The government has this entire program designed to get people in high risk situations in to homes. Now you’re blaming professionals after the fact because they didn’t save your favored policies? That’s not how it works. This is exactly like blaming OJ’s lawyers because you feel some injustice was done or the system failed. Some blame the judge. Who is right?The system didn’t fail. It worked as designed.
“The falsification of documents during the foreclosure crisis is prima facie evidence that banks were willing to ignore their duties in pursuit of income. ”
Yeah, but to what extent is that the cause? And again we have moral hazard issues. But what you need to remember is that fraud did not suddenly come in to existence recently. Unless you want to blame the rise of nihilism or something how can fraud / risk management not be part of the risk calculations and policies? Part of the policy objective was to “be nice” so that applicants would be “more honest?”
It’s very naive thinking. It just seems like a convoluted narrative that in the end goes back to blame “capitalism.’ Because “capitalism” is messy and not Utopian. Yes. I know. You’ve either got to blame “humanity” or “Americans” or just blame “capitalism” which really means blaming private property rights.
“Those problems arose as a result of the volume of mortgages being securitized; the mortgage documents were supposed to be transferred with the changes in ownership, and these companies were so eager to increase the volume of the transactions that they were unable or unwilling to commit the resources to properly execute them.”
So the government did “good stuff” and that brought out more “bad people.” Well that’s shocking. It sounds like this archaic private property paradigm has to be strongly revised. Oh, what should we do?
“Well, no. It’s isolating which policies incentivized which transactions.”
That’s almost right. Some times we call it cherry picking and deflection away from root causes.
Yes, you do, more often than “some times.”
It’s a special focus of mine. You’re in favor of “cherry picking?”
That question was an excellent demonstration of the real rhetorical purpose behind labeling.
Language is not Utopian. I’ll go along with that.
Generally speaking cherry-picking as a pejorative in an analytical context means inappropriately avoiding context and using isolated facts to draw erroneous or incomplete conclusions.
Yes, it does mean that. Very good.
What is your question? Why are you supporting this idea of “cherry picking” and then, from my POV, implying that I’m the “cherry picker” and you’re the “rectifier” when I’m the one trying to place facts in proper or rational context?
I think this is why people some times accuse you of being obtuse.
“I think this is why people some times accuse you of being obtuse.”
If by “this” you mean completely failing to follow the conversation, then I agree.
“Why are you supporting this idea of “cherry picking””
That’s your narrative and your posture. If you’re being sincere, then you’re the one being dense. If you’re not, I don’t really have the energy to play that sort of game – which, perhaps, is the extent of your intent.
OK then. One final point: The interventions affect the entire market on a dynamically unstable and persistent basis! Hey, that’s ok though. Social justice and stuff.
It’s not mendacious rhetorical cherry picking for me to describe unstable soil conditions if >you< only look at the spoiled cherries and blame the farmer for something you see because you don't want to deal with more important factors that are beyond your understanding.
But have it your way. It's a free country.
Good lord – did you say something about not being as smart as one believes? You really are struggling with this one, so let me help you.
OFM:” Some times we call it cherry picking…”
H: “Yes, you do, more often than “some times.””
[Read that carefully; it agrees that you ‘call it’ that. Think about it.]
OFM: “You’re in favor of “cherry picking?””
[note that your response is a non-sequitur; the response to which you respond doesn’t indicate that any such thing is favored, simply that you do, indeed, call it that.]
H: “That question was an excellent demonstration of the real rhetorical purpose behind labeling.”
[Your response indicated that your comment was intended to discredit, rather than analyze]
OFM: “Generally speaking cherry-picking as a pejorative in an analytical context means…”
H: “Yes, it does mean that.”
[You offered a gratuitous definition; it was acknowledged as correct.]
OFM: “Why are you supporting this idea of “cherry picking” and then, from my POV, implying that I’m the “cherry picker” and you’re the “rectifier” when I’m the one trying to place facts in proper or rational context?”
[Nobody has suggested that you are a cherry picker. What began as an observation that you ‘calling’ something cherry picking doesn’t make it so has now somehow become a counter-accusation. Such an argument wouldn’t be without merit, but it wasn’t advanced.]
You habitually accuse others of being unable to track conversations, but you’re not displaying a great deal of that skill yourself. Perhaps a bit of sleep is in order.
Because in your mind I’m just supposed to accept this without forcing you to articulate WTF you’re talking about:
hiernonymous objectivefactsmatter • 16 hours ago:
“Yes, you do, more often than “some times.”
So spit out your objections more clearly. No rational person expects others to read minds. You’re deliberately obtuse so that you can then complain about poor conversation tracking.
The term’s meaning (cherry picking) is very clear. You’re acting like a child.
“The term’s meaning (cherry picking) is very clear.”
Nobody has suggested otherwise. You’re acting like a moron.
You said “we call that cherry picking.”
I agree – you call it – that is, make the claim – frequently. Calling something cherry picking doesn’t make it so. The problem is not uncertainty about the definition, but the inappropriateness of the application.
“No rational person expects others to read minds.”
No, I expect you to read posts, not minds. It wasn’t a terribly difficult implication to follow.
Evidently you’re deluded about things you that you think you’ve made clear. It’s fascinating. Or you’re just full of crap trying to make a point.
Still interesting.
Some times you end up behaving like some of the folks Orwell warned us about. You have a tendency to get very upset about violating your rules on language. Rather than just arguing for another view, it actually upsets you when people don’t conform to your expectations.
No wonder you’re so worried about incitement. You seem overly-sensitive to that kind of effect.
“You have a tendency to get very upset …”
Oh.
“No, I expect you to read posts, not minds. It wasn’t a terribly difficult implication to follow.”
I should have just ignored it. But there was always a possibility that you were trying to make a relevant point. Now I know that you were not.
“I agree – you call it – that is, make the claim – frequently. Calling something cherry picking doesn’t make it so. The problem is not uncertainty about the definition, but the inappropriateness of the application.”
I explained why I used the term. Your objections and fussiness point to some kind of instability on your part or an agenda separate from discovering how all of the pieces of the puzzle fit in terms of macroeconomics and causes. You’re not going for illumination of the relevant facts and consensus based on rational analysis.
But that’s the problem with hostile interlocutors. Some times you just have to break out the fillet knife.
Anyway, if you support the interventions rationally, you must use “social justice” arguments that attack private property rights. That’s why so many people squirm and look for magic “win win” situations that don’t in fact exist.
I’m trying to expose these fundamental issues. If you’re for “social justice” interventions, support them with your eyes wide open and do it honestly.
“[Your response indicated that your comment was intended to discredit, rather than analyze]”
No it didn’t. That’s your reading. And it’s also deflection. You don’t like taking “rabbit trails” (which is a term you use) then you shouldn’t manufacture fake controversies to deflect while discussing complicated topics. If at all.
“[Your response indicated that your comment was intended to discredit, rather than analyze]”
And look how much effort it took for me to get you to actually articulate (and commit to) your false accusation.
“[Nobody has suggested that you are a cherry picker. What began as an observation that you ‘calling’ something cherry picking doesn’t make it so has now somehow become a counter-accusation. Such an argument wouldn’t be without merit, but it wasn’t advanced.]”
It’s pretty obvious that the guy that is pointing to fundamental causes and who accuses the other guy of fixating on proximate events only is not “cherry picking” or looking at a narrower data set. If that (excluding my explanations) is justified, go ahead and explain why you think so.
It’s almost like you don’t understand the relationships between the various changes. So you think that your narrow focus is more rational. And I upset the entire apple cart with the term “cherry picking?” When it wasn’t even the first, second or third time I pointed out the fallacies in your thinking?
Are you really clueless about how all of this fits together?
You are focused on proximate causes. I don’t deny proximate causes. I deny that the proximate causes that you cite are the ultimate cause. None of that could have happened with much simpler and easier to understand interventions that didn’t force banks to play around with credit risk and so forth.
Sure, in theory, you can come up with the magic mix of policies so that derivatives won’t be allowed to amplify toxicity in the way that they did. That’s just a distraction from the needed discussions we need to have about social justice interventions.
Flipping out because I rotated the term “cherry picking” in to the conversation is not productive.
And I have since given you URLs to a Thomas Sowell article that might make it easier for you to understand the other causes I’m trying to explain. For weeks now.
Here it is again:
http://www.nationalreview.Com/articles/227468/housing-boom-and-bust/thomas-sowell
And I only just read it today. He says many things that harmonize with what I’ve been saying for weeks.
If you want to understand more, you should pick up a copy:
http://www.amazon.Com/The-Housing-Boom-Bust-Revised/dp/0465019862
The guy is pretty smart. It doesn’t seem that hard to understand to me.
“And I upset the entire apple cart with the term “cherry picking?””
Why, no. Though it’s interesting that you think so.
“When it wasn’t even the first, second or third time I pointed out the fallacies in your thinking?”
It must be terribly frustrating when people don’t accept your arguments as correct the first three times. (I can only sympathize with the frustration you’re about to endure as it takes you five or six patient explanations before I realize that I didn’t find the adhan beautiful, after all.)
“Sure, in theory, you can come up with the magic mix of policies so that derivatives won’t be allowed to amplify toxicity in the way that they did. That’s just a distraction from the needed discussions we need to have about social justice interventions.”
No, it’s a distraction from the discussion you want to have about social justice interventions. Don’t get frustrated because the framework you want to impose on the topic isn’t universally accepted.
“The guy is pretty smart. It doesn’t seem that hard to understand to me.”
I don’t think anyone has accused Sowell of being stupid. He’s got a pretty strong bias, of course, and as it coincides with yours, it’s not hard to understand that you’d find the book sympathetic. I’ve read the Sowell article, thanks.
“It must be terribly frustrating when people don’t accept your arguments as correct the first three times.”
It’s one thing to demonstrate competence and understanding and then articulate your disagreement in a rational way, and another to just pivot away as if you have some undeclared reason for avoiding dealing with it directly.
“No, it’s a distraction from the discussion you want to have about social justice interventions. Don’t get frustrated because the framework you want to impose on the topic isn’t universally accepted.”
That’s what they are. It seems like you want to avoid that discussion for irrational reasons. The framework I try to impose is rational analysis. It’s not easy to do without some measure of cooperation.
“I don’t think anyone has accused Sowell of being stupid. He’s got a pretty strong bias, of course, and as it coincides with yours, it’s not hard to understand that you’d find the book sympathetic. I’ve read the Sowell article, thanks.”
That’s some nebulous dismissiveness that goes along with precisely the problems I’ve been complaining about. His “bias” is towards a methodical, rational and comprehensive analysis. This leads to the next series of questions regarding what you might dispute about his explanations. If you disagree with him you might find it helps your cause by actually explaining why.
Is he a “demagogue” or something because he also tries to make this comprehensive and rational analysis understandable at retail level?
” It seems like you want to avoid that discussion for irrational reasons.”
I think that you have a topical and conversational comfort zone and try to steer most conversations in that direction, and you get frustrated when others won’t ‘cooperate’ with that.
“His “bias” is towards a methodical, rational and comprehensive analysis.”
Oh, nonsense. That’s a bit like suggesting that Krugman’s only bias is toward rational and comprehensive analysis.
“If you disagree with him you might find it helps your cause by actually explaining why.”
My “cause” is no more or less than demonstrating that your certainty that CRA and related interventions were the primary cause of the subprime crisis is not a universally accepted explanation, and in fact represents a specifically conservative position. It’s not clear how citing a famously conservative writer who agrees with the CRA-as-cause model contradicts that argument, or requires any elaborate counterargument.
There is no question at all that without the CRA the banking crisis would not have happened. There might have been some other banking crisis, but without the CRA it would not have happened with these excessive quantities of toxic loan contracts. Without the forced changes in response to the CRA, it might have been OK.
——–>>>The point is to try to understand the implications of each change. The point is to recognize the actual risks of these kinds of ideas and demands. But never mind because guys like me are just selfish oppressors trying to stop social justice and stuff.
For others, the agenda is to salvage certain policies with the idea that the right mix of regulations is going to somehow lead to greater “justice” beyond how our Constitution defines this concept. So really we’re not even having the same conversation. Your agenda truly is different than mine.
“Oh, nonsense. That’s a bit like suggesting that Krugman’s only bias is toward rational and comprehensive analysis.”
Krugman and others are biased towards magic solutions and experimentation, thinking that progress is innate to passage of time if you just keep trying “scientific” things and they don’t really understand what science is versus speculation and agenda driven analysis. If you’re stuck in the middle not really understanding the issues I guess I can see why you consider them all biased because you don’t really know how to identify when they’re talking about complicated but verifiable formulas versus plain old speculation that can often be debunked because they’re not including factors known to easily refute their suggestions.
At this point this is just useless argument because you don’t want to spend the time or energy proving it one way or another. And this is not a forum that I can use to force you to acknowledge anything. There are probably other more useful things I can do with my time anyway.
“Oh, nonsense. That’s a bit like suggesting that Krugman’s only bias is toward rational and comprehensive analysis.”
You’re willing to refer to a guy as “biased” on the basis of your disbelief that you don’t even understand. That’s just lame. It’s sad.
Krugman’s popular too, so they must both have biases because there really is no such thing as objective reality. That’s really smart. Truth is when everyone agrees. Like when 97% of all scientists believe we need international socialism to keep the planet from melting this summer. Or political correctness. PC is “unbias.”
Got it!
“Got it!”
You say that far more often than you demonstrate it.
If you don’t recognize that Sowell and Krugman both have some very strong biases, and that both write to influence, rather than simply to analyze or inform, then you don’t read or think as critically as you pretend. Not my problem.
Everyone can be characterized as biased. Of course anyone can have a view different than your own. The point is that you hypocritically used a (subtle) pejorative term without qualifying it in any useful way.
If I say this car is “biased,” what use is that? If I say it pulls to the right at speeds above 35 MPH then we can look at suspension damage, tire wear and so forth.
So Sowell is biased. Great. That’s just deflection.
“If you don’t recognize that Sowell and Krugman both have some very strong biases, and that both write to influence, rather than simply to analyze or inform, then you don’t read or think as critically as you pretend. Not my problem.”
You mean when they write columns they’re “biased” in selling their own view? Well, yeah. The columns are not their actual work. The columns are not even primers really. I just don’t know what you really expect to figure out if you’re not willing to spend the time investigating. They’re callings are at best a low resolution map of their thinking. Just a starting point.
Is it your point that Krugman and his ilk have “valid” views because it’s hard to isolate and expose their fallacies? I know that! They’re valid in the sense that they are popular. When it comes to policies at a high level, especially at federal level in the world’s largest (maybe) national economy…we should try to do better. We should try to isolate and expose fallacies rather than blindly supporting (or coopting) populism and pandering to it.
I’m not against “the little guy” at all. I’m against the liars that try to coopt their interests.
The best analogy I can think of is that Krugman and others think that it’s OK to learn to fly and use experimental ideas without learning how to land because if you’re really good and really positive about it you won’t have to worry about landing. If you crash, you blame the subcontractors and so forth to draw attention from the fact that you never even considered that flying something means you will eventually have to land it.
But future interventions can always fix it, evolution determines that we’ll be smarter, it’s “selfish” or “negative thinking” that causes those biased conservatives to worry so much about all of the forces of nature and assume that what goes up must come down at some point.
Being conservative means learning all of the lessons of history and moving away from that towards “progressive” politics, especially in economics, means havign “faith” that change will always drive progress and that if ideas seem risky, it’s OK because evolution will always enable us to solve problems. Never mind the crashes along the way.
So, OK. Crashes are no problem. Stop deflecting when you phuck things up and then I won’t mind as much. Take the hit like an adult. The thing that you miss is that these risks and events were predicted by the conservatives and denied by the progressives – even after they happened.
So that’s a factor I think. Never mind that Sowell is biased. He’s also correct. He doesn’t play with magic, so it’s easier for him to be correct.
“Being conservative means learning all of the lessons of history”
No, that’s not what “conservative” means. If you want a one liner, a better summary would be ‘defender of the status quo’ or ‘resistant to change.’ That’s not pejorative – there’s value in both – but no particular point of view has a special claim to learning the lessons of history.
“So that’s a factor I think. Never mind that Sowell is biased. He’s also correct. He doesn’t play with magic, so it’s easier for him to be correct.”
Thank you. That wasn’t so hard, was it? That’s what I said in the first place. His point of view aligns with yours, so of course you are going to think of him as ‘correct.’
Suggesting that one read Sowell on this topic is like recommending Behe as a primer for evolution. He’s an active participant in the controversy. He’d be useful only if one didn’t understand the position he supported in the controversy. That’s not the case here; Sowell’s position has been made abundantly clear.
As far as your various comments on Krugman go, well, he’s a Nobel-winning economist who made the top of the survey of economics professors as the single most respected living economist under age 60, a survey on which Sowell did not turn up on any category (it was entirely write-in, so that wasn’t a result of surveyor bias). Plainly, those in the field of economics don’t dismiss Krugman as a crank or magician. That both Keynes and Hayek appear on the list of 20th Century economists suggests that their political biases are not so strong as to lead them to dismiss important figures simply for their politics. That said, I think your reaction rather nicely illustrates my point: Krugman is brilliant, but you are hardly likely to accept him if presented as a good source of basic ‘education’ on the underlying principles of the crisis – nor would I ask you to.
Time is (obviously)short this week, so I’ll read your response with interest (if you can limit yourself to one!), and I’ll respond if you introduce any new and interesting ideas.
“No, that’s not what “conservative” means. If you want a one liner, a better summary would be ‘defender of the status quo’ or ‘resistant to change.’ That’s not pejorative – there’s value in both – but no particular point of view has a special claim to learning the lessons of history.”
It’s what conservative means in America. Anyone can go post the etymology. Obviously the root word is conserve. It’s not that you’re wrong but that you’re offering a critical view from the outside.
It’s not that you’re wrong, but you don’t understand why the status quo is defended when it is and why change for the sake of change is resisted. Conservatives are not resistant to all change nor do they try to preserve every aspect of the status quo. They want evidence. Evidence comes largely from history when answering political questions. We don’t assemble Congress around realtime experiments while voting live on bills.
“Suggesting that one read Sowell on this topic is like recommending Behe as a primer for evolution. He’s an active participant in the controversy. He’d be useful only if one didn’t understand the position he supported in the controversy. That’s not the case here; Sowell’s position has been made abundantly clear.”
So basically everyone that warned you about the bubble is disqualified from comment without being accused of bias. What about the numbnuts who said no problem until after it was too late? Why are they more credible because they got it wrong and suddenly had to find unexpected illicit behavior? Your judgment is highly suspect here.
“As far as your various comments on Krugman go, well, he’s a Nobel-winning economist who made the top of the survey of economics professors as the single most respected living economist under age 60, a survey on which Sowell did not turn up on any category (it was entirely write-in, so that wasn’t a result of surveyor bias).”
And our current president is probably the expert on peace by your reasoning. Krugman is a salesman. He’s selling fantasy. I guess people that want to hear that kind of thing think that he’s really impressive. Telling you the truth over and over gets dull. Not as sexy.
But if you’re super impressed by institutions and have to weigh opinions solely on that…that’s just how it goes.
“That both Keynes and Hayek appear on the list of 20th Century economists suggests that their political biases are not so strong as to lead them to dismiss important figures simply for their politics. That said, I think your reaction rather nicely illustrates my point: Krugman is brilliant, but you are hardly likely to accept him if presented as a good source of basic ‘education’ on the underlying principles of the crisis – nor would I ask you to.”
Keynes was a non-Marxist Marxist. He thought he was a lot smarter. And he was. But still didn’t quite get it. His ideas have been discredited but his theories are interesting. The truth is that Keynes had some useful ideas as a starting point to learn more from history. He helped organize some of this top down way of looking at macroeconomics. But he was for the most part wrong because his approach was too simple.
There are lots of people that hope that some technology or set of technology will help the Keynes or Marx vision of central planning somehow work the way that modern jet fighter is controlled by community even though aerodynamically the planes are “dynamically unstable.” Well, it’s not like that. It’s like trying to run a program that anticipates every dogfight the pilot will get in to and then allow a computer to replace him. Computers can be used to make massive calculations in virtual real time. Reading the future and reading the minds of others is way beyond what is feasible. We can create models that are still flawed by our inability to control for unknowns, not the least of which, especially in macroeconomics, is human behavior.
My sense is that you don’t even understand what Keynes’s foundational theories were. That’s why you think this modern leftist economists are Keynesian just because they don’t want to acknowledge they’re really Marxists. If you understood Keynes, you’d understand what Krugman is and what he isn’t.
The real question is why it’s a battle over names? I simply offered you an article and a book by a respected (and non-delusional) economist that explained the topic. And what he said does not really conflict with other findings. He puts it all in to greater perspective. That’s what economists are supposed to do.
Krugman is a salesman. He can’t offer you a single rational reason to ignore what Sowell has to say. Certainly not the data that Sowell uses. I think it’s lame that you took this path rather than to surrender and admit that it’s beyond the scope of your understanding but you trust the “Keynesian” because some institutions you like also like him. The truth sounds lame when laid out that way. But it’s still better to face it than to run.
“Time is (obviously)short this week, so I’ll read your response with interest (if you can limit yourself to one!), and I’ll respond if you introduce any new and interesting ideas.”
If you truly are interested in an online bit by bit primer of the issues so that you can make up your own mind I’ll explain Keynes for you. His work was important, but perhaps for different reasons than you realize. I don’t know of any truly Keynesian economists. Actually some conservative economists will offer some of the same advice when it’s valid, not because it’s Keynesian. But his approaches are risky. And if you don’t communicate those risks…that doesn’t seem Keynesian either. It seems like even Keynes would have learned a lot more from his own ideas if he’d have lived longer.
This really should not have been so controversial. If you read Sowell you’ll understand the “Keynesian” approach a lot better. You might still believe in some interventions. I think even Sowell says “it’s not up to me” kind of thing. Maybe I’m projecting a little. But what Sowell and other conservative economists do is lay it out straight and explain the risks and the problems. It’s best to be exposed to both sides.
“It’s not clear how citing a famously conservative writer who agrees with the CRA-as-cause model contradicts that argument, or requires any elaborate counterargument.”
Some basic knowledge of classic economics is required. If you’re not picking at up as we go then you need to do your own study. Or perhaps you really are not interested in trying to understand opposing views.
“Some basic knowledge of classic economics is required”
Sure. And I got mine the old-fashioned way. I completely understand your posture, and appreciate it as an indispesible component of your posting style, but it’s pretty silly to try to sell a partisan advocate as a source of basic economics education.
And, of course, your comment doesn’t actually respond to the substantive point. Citing a famously conservative author who sees CRA as relevant would serve well as a response to an argument along the lines of ‘no credible economist thinks X,’ but that was quite explicitly not the contention.
“Sure. And I got mine the old-fashioned way. I completely understand your posture, and appreciate it as an indispesible component of your posting style, but it’s pretty silly to try to sell a partisan advocate as a source of basic economics education.”
Who in your mind is nonpartisan?
“And, of course, your comment doesn’t actually respond to the substantive point. Citing a famously conservative author who sees CRA as relevant would serve well as a response to an argument along the lines of ‘no credible economist thinks X,’ but that was quite explicitly not the contention.”
This is not true. The article was not evidence. The article gave you a very simple overview. The guy has published dozens of books, including one that was used to pull excerpts for that column. The article I cited gave you an introduction to his research on the very topic we were discussing with great specificity.
http://www.amazon.Com/The-Housing-Boom-Bust-Revised/dp/0465019862
And by the way, your arguments and citations are useful in understanding “root” causes of the derivatives crisis, not the housing crisis. Let’s just consider unstable housing prices as the acceptable cost of interventions (or at least as an unrelated discussion) and figure out how we can make things safer for the banks that are following the law. If all you care about is preserving the interests of banks and certain politicians it makes sense to look only at that. If you care about how the consumers fare, you really should look at the greater scope of what is going on.
“I think that you have a topical and conversational comfort zone and try to steer most conversations in that direction, and you get frustrated when others won’t ‘cooperate’ with that.”
That’s an interesting way of looking at it. It projects your own values for being “comfortable” rather than looking for useful and verifiable information.
It seems like you often forget why people come here because your own motives are different.
“Oh, nonsense. That’s a bit like suggesting that Krugman’s only bias is toward rational and comprehensive analysis.”
This really makes me laugh. For one thing, it is you that failed to qualify your pejorative use of “bias.” I’m not sensitive about any particular word. But when you use derogatory language (which can always be acceptable if supported) with zero substance to back it up, especially coming from a guy that seems to rail on others with that accusation…it just makes me wonder where you think you’re coming from.
For another thing, it also reveals just how little you understand the controversies in various economic approaches. I know this seems weird to you, but it really is not the Marxists that are rigorously scientific. Keynes tried to be rigorous in his experimental theories but that was many decades ago. Most Keynesian economists are simply trying to ride the wave of credibility that Keynes once had. Decades ago.
If you want to promote these interventions you have to do it with rational arguments. But doing that won’t make you popular. Anywhere. It will make you “biased” towards rigorous and balanced analysis. And that would make you “conservative.”
I’ve even bent over backwards clearly indicating that if there are rational arguments for interventions that I have no philosophical objections. But because people are unwilling to lose their beliefs in magic, they don’t want to stick with rigorous analysis. if you deny the magic, certain political and social factions will run you out of town on a rail with tar and feathers for keeping you warm. It’s “negative thinking” and “selfish conservatism” driven by a desire to “preserve the status quo” and “maintain the oligarchy.” The entire point of conservative, free market economic models is to preserve the meritocracy via the dynamic upward mobility opportunities created by free markets that also police potential power imbalances that might rationally lead to stagnation of upward mobility, like labor laws, again, created rationally, antitrust laws and so forth.
But…whatever, man.
Krugman is a politician that has some facility with modern economic theories.
“I don’t really have the energy to play that sort of game – which, perhaps, is the extent of your intent.”
I don’t recall coming to you and asking for your counsel on the effects of malice or incompetence in the banking crisis. Those are interesting topics in their place but from my perspective it’s you causing problems here.
I’m trying to help. You don’t want my help. You want to “win” with our preselected, dogmatic views because of your heavy reliance on institutions and your weak ability to criticize official institutional views.
Perhaps, just as a guess, you don’t understand what an economic “bubble” is. The bubble would have been exacerbated by fraud, because those are additional “illegitimate” transactions. Fraud has always been a known problem. You can’t blame ordinary levels of fraud when your plans go awry unless you’re out to get justice and enforce the law. That’s good. But trying to point to “fraud” as an explanation that avoids looking at the underlying problems of far greater scope would be “cherry picking.”
You also mentioned something to the effect that these interventions led to higher levels of fraud and more economic activity. No kidding. That’s the point.
And furthermore, this lowering of creditworthiness standards also contributed to “fraud” because other than saying that rational risk calculations were unlawfully bigoted, there were no new rational guidelines to replace it. There were “pressures” to take higher risks. The programs some times did specify and support very low down payments for example. That affects price and drives “bad” speculators in. The programs also forced offering loans in high risk “red lined” areas.
You’re being deliberately argumentative and / or you’re not tracking well how these pieces fit together in reality. And by the way, that’s also a point to remember because few retail banking clients understand any of this either. Therefore they simply follow the trends and miss the “go slow” signs until we have panics and huge swings in selling patterns and price crashes are exacerbated. These chains of complex interventions make it difficult to assess risk and track what is likely to happen. Even for the highly educated and experienced experts that understand derivatives. Even they can only speculate what might happen in the markets organically, what the government will do to keep the bubble rising, and how it will ensure that there is a soft landing.
It’s so easy to look back and fixate on certain unsavory characters (according to pop culture), like defense lawyers or “banksters” when you don’t have the patience to go in and understand complicated things that play out over the course of many decades.
It’s also easy to fixate on some proximate (versus ultimate) cause(s) in order to distract from the ill-advised government policies if you simply want to defend the state’s right to intervene when it wants. This is a destruction of private property rights. This is shifting sovereignty of private property in to the hands of government beyond Constitutional taxation.
“But trying to point to “fraud” as an explanation that avoids looking at the underlying problems of far greater scope would be “cherry picking.””
Good thing nobody’s doing that. At issue is what policy contributed to the shift in behavior, and there’s more than one candidate. You have one you favor; there’s a great deal of disagreement. My intervention, so to speak, was to point out that you’re taking as a given something that’s still quite controversial. The subprime crisis correlates with two sets of legislation, and it correlates temporally more closely with the relaxation of restrictions on institutional activities than it does with CRA.
The introduction of ‘fraud’ into the conversation, if you’ll track a bit more carefully than you’ve done to date, was not to suggest that fraud was at the root of the subprime crisis, but that a specific contention you’d made about the essential appropriateness of the lines of behavior exhibited within the industry was highly questionable.
“It’s so easy to look back and fixate on certain unsavory characters (according to pop culture), like defense lawyers or “banksters” when you don’t have the patience to go in and understand complicated things that play out over the course of many decades.”
Again, it’s a good thing I haven’t done that. And, frankly, some folks with stronger backgrounds than yours disagree pretty strongly with you, so don’t overplay the condescension card. You might consider reading the report available at this link.
It’s a pretty damning and thorough workup that notes, among other factors, that there have been three periods in U.S. economic history when mortgage securitization has been attempted, and each time it collapsed. Professor Simkovic suggests that it was competition among mortgage securitizers for loans that was the proximate cause of the crisis. Beginning at p. 257, he evaluates government policies and pressures, including the CRA specifically, and comes to the opposite conclusion that you have. Presumably, he had the patience to go in and understand complicated things that play out over the course of many decades, as he’s taken the time to track similar prior events to the 19th century. (One might hope that this would discourage you from your reliance on posturing, but we both know that I’m not an optimist when it comes to human nature.)
“It’s also easy to fixate on some proximate (versus ultimate) cause(s) in order to distract from the ill-advised government policies if you simply want to defend the state’s right to intervene when it wants.”
Well, yes, you make it obvious that it’s easy to fixate on a particular cause in order to advance a particular point of view.
“The subprime crisis correlates with two sets of legislation, and it correlates temporally more closely with the relaxation of restrictions on institutional activities than it does with CRA.”
Perhaps you don’t understand that the relaxation was based on “entitlement” or “rights” claims for excluded classes of people to participate. This is, yet again, you not understanding the implications of slippery slopes in legislation and case law.
And on top of that, I’m not trying to pin it all on the CRA particularly, which was just another intervention layered on to previous ones. IOW, we keep messing with the proverbial soil and environmental factors and when things go wrong we look more at proximate causes than a more rational and comprehensive view that would lead to questioning the propriety of these complex interventions in the first place.
The funny thing is I don’t mind interventions that are clear and easy to see when there is broad consensus to do so. But political realities make these “social justice” interventions complex and therefore more dangerous in the effects on pricing, which therefore leads to speculators and “bubbles” bursting. And for this reason I argue strongly against interventions except when there are very strong rational reasons for them. I’m not so delusional that I think it’s possible to have a huge, powerful nation with absolute “hands off” economic policies. I’m just realistic about the effects and the need to keep things simple and rational.
“Beginning at p. 257, he evaluates government policies and pressures, including the CRA specifically, and comes to the opposite conclusion that you have.”
I’ll take a look but I’m not convinced that you understand my conclusions at all.
“Well, yes, you make it obvious that it’s easy to fixate on a particular cause in order to advance a particular point of view.”
My “fixation” is to look at the entire history of banking interventions. Whereas you focus on local proximate causes and an apparent misunderstanding of my assertions.
Competition and Crisis in Mortgage Securitization
Michael Simkovic
Fordham University School of Law; Seton Hall Law School; Harvard Law School – John M. Olin Center for Law and Economics
October 8, 2011
Indiana Law Journal, Vol. 88, p.213, (2013)
Abstract:
U.S. policymakers often treat market competition as a panacea.
> Holy cow! Start your abstract with a straw man. Nicely done.
However, in the case of mortgage securitization, policymakers’ faith in competition is misplaced.
> I’m listening…
Competitive mortgage securitization has been tried three times in U.S. history – during the 1880s, the 1920s, and the 2000s – and every time it has failed.
> This is an argument that basically is going in exactly the direction I mentioned before. Once you regulate something and problems happen, you can either question entirely whether it’s a good idea to intervene, or just assume that problems are caused by not having enough regulations. This is a natural force in politics that drives many slippery slope movements. You can’t go back up the hill, can you? No way! Blasphemer!
What I’m saying is that rather than just assume that “progress” means always going forward, always “fine tuning” to preserve the good (of failed policies) some times you have to look at possibly returning back “up the slope” by backing away from the interventions rather than only looking “forward” (or down the slope) to see how more interventions and “better” regulations can really save the programs. No way does anyone regard “hands off” as a universal problem solver.
Most recently, competition between mortgage securitizers led to a race to the bottom on mortgage underwriting standards that ended in the late 2000s financial crisis.
>Well, it was not an unregulated market. It was a “race to the bottom” because of moral hazard problems already in place. I described that earlier.
This article provides original evidence that when competition was less intense and securitizers had more market power, securitizers acted to monitor mortgage originators and to maintain prudent underwriting.
>Sure. That’s normal.
However, securitizers’ ability to monitor originators and maintain high standards was undermined as competition shifted market power away from securitizers and toward originators. Although standards declined across the market, the largest and most powerful of the mortgage securitizers, the Government Sponsored Enterprises (“GSEs”), remained more successful than other mortgage securitizers at maintaining prudent underwriting. This article proposes reforms based on lessons from the recent financial crisis: merge the GSEs with various government agencies’ mortgage operations to create a single dedicated mortgage securitization agency that would seek to maintain market stability, improve underwriting, and provide a long term investment return for the benefit of taxpayers.
>I don’t disagree. Furthermore, although it discusses things from views we have not discussed here, my views are not actually in conflict with anything in the abstract. I think I even mentioned this last year some time. It makes sense to argue for better regulations in derivatives markets if the other interventions and policies are “sacred cows.” See, for political reasons, we might be a secular republic but we do in reality have quite a few taboos and sacred cows. Unofficially of course. I’m not afraid to “blaspheme.”
Read what Sowell has to say if you want to understand more or less what I’m getting at.
http://www.nationalreview.Com/articles/227468/housing-boom-and-bust/thomas-sowell
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is adapted from Thomas Sowell’s new book, The Housing Boom and Bust.
Let us go back to square one to consider the empirical consequences of policies in the housing market. Politicians in Washington set out to solve a national problem that did not exist — a nationwide shortage of “affordable housing” — and have now left us with a problem whose existence is as undeniable as it is painful. When the political crusade for affordable housing took off and built up steam during the 1990s, the share of their incomes that Americans were spending on housing in 1998 was 17 percent, compared to 30 percent in the early 1980s. Even during the housing boom of 2005, the median home took just 22 percent of the median American income.
What created the illusion of a nationwide problem was that, in particular localities around the country, housing prices had skyrocketed to the point where people had to pay half their income to buy a modest-sized home and often resorted to very risky ways of financing the purchase. In Tucson, for example, “roughly 60% of first-time home buyers make no down payment and instead now use 100% financing to get into the market,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Almost invariably, these locally extreme housing prices have been a result of local political crusades in the name of locally attractive slogans about the environment, open space, “smart growth,” or whatever other phrases had political resonance at the particular time and place
Follow the URL to finish the online article and or read the book:
http://en.wikipedia.Org/wiki/The_Housing_Boom_and_Bust
http://www.amazon.Com/The-Housing-Boom-Bust-Revised/dp/0465019862
Labeling is rarely a problem in cooperative discourse.
“You and I have a different assessment of your ‘test.'”
Of course. Because your reaction is visceral and you don’t want to accept the possibility that you have your own flaws in your impatient and myopic approach to challenging the testing procedures.
You know, I gave you an URL to a ~3 hour video of a lecture / book (video presentation) that follows this kind of analytical form using a (obviously far) more nuanced approach. You declined to look at it because the author was “Randian” or something like that. So you blame me because you’re not really that interested in understanding how others think. You are not comfortable wandering off the intellectual reservation.
You don’t even need to watch the whole thing. It was a segmented analysis of our German Socialist friends. The conversation we were having at the time was whether Nazism could rationally be considered more to the political right than the left. I simply took the position that if you feel the need to put it on some universal spectrum of left versus right politics that fascism is to the right of communism, not right of center. They hated the communists in part because they had to distinguish themselves and justify their overt nationalism versus the international goals of the communists and their covert nationalism / imperialism.
Anyway, it’s all interesting stuff. But if you’re not tracking the conversations well over time and you’re totally unfamiliar with this kind of analysis it’s easier to just blame people that you intuitively disagree with. If you don’t understand a formula, the formula must be flawed. That’s the kind of thinking that prevents productive discourse between contending groups.
“If you don’t understand a formula, the formula must be flawed.”
It’s your argument to make. “Watch this 3 hour video” isn’t an argument. I judge “the formula” by what you present. So far, it’s remarkably vague.
Skeptics can always win that way.
Nah, you can wear the skeptic down by haranguing him until he gets too exasperated to keep arguing.
Skepticism is good if well-directed. Skepticism is bad if it’s just a kind of rhetorical tool or defense shield. I definitely try to wear down defenses when people are attacking productive (from my POV) discourse.
…or too bored.
Sure, that too.
I’m sorry about that. YMMV. If you want to discover more and become a more informed voter I suggest you spend the time. If not, throw in the…group that you find most persuasive.
Thank you for posting that report, hieronymous.
(I realized I write your BB handle incorrectly. It’s because I like hieronymous bosch’s paintings so much. I’ve got your BB handle typed before I can make myself add the extra ‘n.’)
Please, be my guest and preserve it. I don’t have a problem w/recognizing the role the private sector played in the housing bubble in buying securitized debt. I also don’t have a problem w/recognizing what role individual homeowners had in thinking they’d come upon a golden goose when encouraged by unscrupulous realtors. And, god forbid, we all forget what role the financial sector had in expanding the mortgage securities market or what role it had in spreading this American financial contagion around the world.
Oy vey. The private sector is subject to the interventions. Of course “the private sector” played a role. Sheesh.
“And, god forbid, we all forget what role the financial sector had in expanding the mortgage securities market or what role it had in spreading this American financial contagion around the world.”
Oh Lord. “Capitalists” build it, you destroy it, and then you blame the capitalists, because, supposedly, the markets are too free or capitalists are greedy or something.
Circular reasoning: Capitalists are by definition greedy. It must have been the greed. It was the fault of the capitalists! The rest of what you have is just about narratives that you don’t even understand.
How could I possibly be on the side of bad ethics when I’ve said those realtors and bankers exhibited TERRIBLE ETHICS? Sorry, buster, you’re barking up the wrong flagpole.
You apologize and cover up for the policies that created these “unethical” choices. And not only that, you’re so…unaware of reality that you think those transactions can be viewed as “unethical” in retrospect. If those transactions did indeed set people up for life, and many of them did (maybe even most), how can you now…ahem…cherry pick and look at the losers in retrospect and say that those were unethical transactions while at the same time you’re not denouncing “unethical” choices where it happened to work at and create this upward mobility that the policies intended to create? The entire reason for the policy is to stimulate upward mobility in spite of these targeted people being in a state that would make it normally “unethical” to lend to them.
Get it? The polices are to intended to modify the “ethics” in order to re-engineer our economic demographics and use principles of deterministic materialism for social justice. When that fails, you blame…who? You can’t have one without the other by shifting blame. You can try. That’s what makes you a neo-Marxist dupe.
It’s not like the banks are forced to be “smarter” or more “just” on an individual basis. The problem is that they were being smart. And this was “unjust” because of the principles of historical materialism. You can’t have it both ways. Really. And maybe here you will understand why Marxism is so ultimately futile and it must be refuted and purged. Because you create these conundrums where “justice” is served by doing “smart” injustice. By doing stupid things that are proved to be only useful for taking a look at history but NOT for planning any future outcomes. And given that the whole thrust of Marxism is that it’s about enabling smarter planning, you should be able to find the problem here.
Read Adam Smith, Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. If you want to go in chronological order, go with Smith, Hayek, Friedman and then Sowell. Sowell is the only guy still alive today among those 4 greats.
Oh, I’m glad you’re finally admitting that there were “UNETHICAL CHOICES” made by other than the homeowners. I don’t know about you, but all the realtors I know can pretty much tell where someone ranks on the socioeconomic scale just by a cursory glance at their clothing and their car. As for this policy effort being meant to “set someone up for life,” no, I don’t think that buying a little shotgun shack or a tiny ranch is going to “set anyone up for life”. That is the level of homeownership the program was meant to facilitate, and if the realtors and the banks hadn’t pushed the program in another direction entirely, that’s what those folks would be living in today.
As for “smarter planning,” yes, there was certainly some “smarter planning” going on during this period. Oh, my mistake, I should have typed “SMARTER PLAYING” going on during this period and it wasn’t just playing being done by those seeking homeownership. I certainly agree it was a program meant to facilitate homeownership by a demographic that wasn’t in the homeownership game previously. But homeownership was something within their grasp if they had remained purchasing the lowest tiers of homes. Would there still have been a housing bubble bust? Likely, there always is a periodic bust. But it would not have had NEARLY THE RAMIFICATIONS that this one did because this was coupled w/the slowdown of the entire U.S. economy and many layoffs of middle-class homeowners who could no longer afford their homes. This was, in other words, the PERFECT FINANCIAL STORM that rocked everyone’s boats even those who’d never had their boats rocked before. So, the sub-prime mortgage crisis might have triggered the sequential crisis but the fact the U.S. had allowed itself to permit sub-prime mortgage securities to play any kind of serious financial role in the American economy is the fault of cynical investment companies that designed the bundling of sub-prime mortgages in order to find themselves driving a new investment vehicle. Ethics will out.
http://fisher.osu.edu/supplements/10/10402/financial-derivatives-lessons-from-the-subprime-crisis.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage-backed_security
You do rattle on. You’re not making any more sense than before. These are just circular rants of yours.
Talk about circular rants! You cannot remain free of particular rants. You insist on throwing in Marxism and Communism into every discussion as if you’re on auto-pilot. Oh, you are on auto-pilot.
Well, there’s some truth to that. I can do what I want, but I am on autopilot with you because you’re unable to learn. And pretty much everyone else likely to read the comments at this point has already heard what I have to say on these topics.
This is just amazing:
“I don’t know about you, but all the realtors I know can pretty much tell where someone ranks on the socioeconomic scale just by a cursory glance at their clothing and their car.”
I bought my first Rolex, a Submariner Day Date, when I was 20. I stopped wearing it because of idiots like you. I liked it because it’s an amazing, strong steel watch. Great design.
But jackasses like you ruin the pleasures of wearing a fine watch. I gave it to my dad. He’s a “liberal” leftist. He loves wearing it.
Hahahaha, what a touching story! You’re saying that now that you’ve stripped yourself of your watch you’re no longer identifiable as the haute demographic that you claim?
I didn’t buy it to be stereotyped. Idiot. I know you can’t understand that. For you a brand is only about identity. But those watches are excellent and have an interesting place in history.
Of course you didn’t “buy the watch to be stereotyped”, however, such paraphernalia is often the indicator of substantial wealth. You’re going to pretend otherwise? Certainly, if those poor non-homeowners had come into a realtor’s office bedecked w/Rolex watches and fur coats, there would have been some evidence of them being able to buy their $350,000 homes that the realtors and the bankers said they could afford. Why would you be such a nitwit to say I’m only interested in brands for brands sake? I’ve got a dive watch that I wouldn’t want to rely on if it were another brand. Stop it w/your stupid slurs. Sheesh.
What you are pretending is that wealth isn’t blatantly displayed and that those realtors and mortgage bankers should have recognized those homebuyers couldn’t afford what they were being persuaded to buy by those very same realtors and mortgage bankers. But since it was often the realtors and mortgage bankers who were encouraging these lower-tier homebuyers to go upscale, often w/encouraging remarks about the unlikelihood of ARMs going up for X-number of years, it didn’t matter what those families could **reasonably afford.** Because, guess what, it didn’t matter to the banks. Why? Because the banks considered that they’d be making money coming and going — from the original sale and then from the bank foreclosure. Trouble is, the economic downturn was sooooo huge and lasted for so long it didn’t just hit the housing market, it hit the entire economy so even homeowners who were initially fine were often eventually swamped if one of the breadwinners lost their job.
“Of course you didn’t “buy the watch to be stereotyped”, however, such paraphernalia is often the indicator of substantial wealth. You’re going to pretend otherwise? ”
It’s unprofessional to give it any consideration at all. Period. And it might be unlawful in some cases if your judgment leads to any harm coming to anyone because of your stupidity. You think scammers don’t know about retarded people like you?
OMG. You…are very naive. Whatever “professional” that advised you this is a thing is correct that it’s a thing – but it’s unprofessional and potentially illegal.