***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[everysingletime]

Well, I do know of one friend who has vacationed there since Dutuerte came to power and she came back in one piece. As long as you don't get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess.

Yes. There is probably a discrepancy in the treatment of Filipino Americans between high class and low class areas.

 

[gry60]

The worst part is that the users that are getting killed turned themselves in while thinking they were going to receive treatment...

Is this not grounds for crimes against humanity?

He doesn't care. He craps all over the UN or any human rights org that tries to check him. After obama spoke on it he said "to hell with the US" and dared him to pull financial support.

There's a huge difference between how Filipinos I know in the Philippines and how my American born Filipino friends view Duterte. My Filipino American friends are scared of going back to the PI for vacation while my Filipino friends are insisting that I come visit since the country is apparently being cleaned up

I read a good article last week that points out that the middle class/upper class areas, the people there say they feel safer, but in the poor areas and the 'hoods that's where the craziness goes down. Targeting the people who need the most help

Some stop and frisk **** taken to the extreme over there.

Reminds me of a report that came out a while ago about drunk driving enforcement in Chicago. Police was found to target the mostly poorer, minority neighborhoods of the West side while most drunk driving incidents happen in an area where most homeowners are police officers/firefighters.

 

[RustyShackleford]

TBH I believe/get the feeling that most people regardless of party disagree with Israel, especially the Zionist movement, but Israel/Jewish people have too much political clout in the US and the UN.

If you dare to speak out against Israel, you get labeled as an anti-Semite or terrorist sympathizer

This is why there's nothing but biased and politicized debates on the issue ,nothing honest or genuine ever leading to any productive solutions.

What I find most ironic about it all is that a good amount of Israeli's themselves don't agree with the actions of their government,are they anti-Semites too? . Jews aren't a monolith and a lot of them actually care about what happens to their Palestinian neighbours,we only get one-sided coverage of it though

In the current climate,you say anything critical and you're labelled a Hamas supporter/Jew hater instantly without 2nd thought

Duyba bout to come through heated at y'all

 

[sfc415]

I don't even care anymore. I recently decided to stop responding directly to idiots on here since I don't speak with idiots in real life. They can tell me to leave the US (which I am planning on doing anyway) or threaten to send me pictures of their gold chains all they want Only going to respond to the intelligent people who aren't products of incest on here, which is pretty much everyone other than the 2-3 clowns that derail every topic

 

[d nice]

@RustyShackleford When you headed back to the Islands breh? I wasn't playing about them Lewis books

 

[RustyShackleford]

Leaving next week, I still got you if I find them, don't worry famb

 

[d nice]

Leaving next week, I still got you if I find them, don't worry famb

I honestly thought you forgot. Good lookin out fam

 

[wubalubadubdub]

Anyone who really thinks settlements are the real reason there isn't a 2 state decision is misinformed. Israel has given up land for peace. There is a track record with other countries. Do i think its a good idea? No. Do i think there would be a solution if there were no settlements? No.

Dig up Arafat and thank him for where we are today. A better deal is not coming. It amazes me how palestinans are given a free pass and treated like children who have no responsibility for any action of any kind.

Liberals are just naive when it comes to this issue and instinctively side with the people with less power. Israel pulled out all the jews of gaza and were greated with rockets and bombs. That's why the country moved more to the right.

What did the UN and international community do for syria? And you think jews are going to put their safety and future in their hands? It's not happening soon.

outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-

“Decades of political maneuverings have created a disproportionate volume of resolutions, reports and conferences criticizing Israel,” Ban said in his address on Friday to the U.N. Security Council. “In many cases, rather than helping the Palestinian cause, this reality has hampered the ability of the U.N. to fulfill its role effectively.”

That's a big part of the problem.







abbas is a HUGE part of the problem. But always given a pass.



Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week hailed the 39th anniversary of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic trip to Israel, contrasting it with the intransigence displayed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Abbas “refuses to come to direct negotiations without preconditions, is also continuing to incite his people regarding the idea of a right of return and erasing the State of Israel, and, to my regret, is not taking the right steps to start calming things and preparing public opinion for reconciliation with the State of Israel,” he said at his weekly cabinet meeting.

Netanyahu’s point is often ignored, but vitally important. Abbas, currently in the 11th year of a four-year presidential term, has made no serious effort to engage with Israel diplomatically. He has, however, successfully thwarted efforts by the United States to open bilateral talks between the PA and Israel, choosing to internationalize the conflict rather than working to solve it through direct negotiations.

Jackson Diehl, the deputy editorial page editor of The Washington Post, assessed Abbas’s mindset in May 2009, shortly after President Barack Obama began his current term in office. “The Americans are the leaders of the world,” Abbas told Diehl. “They can use their weight with anyone around the world. Two years ago they used their weight on us. Now they should tell the Israelis, ‘You have to comply with the conditions.’ ”

Diehl observed that Abbas was convinced “that the United States will simply force Israel to make critical concessions, whether or not its democratic government agrees, while Arabs passively watch and applaud.”

On two occasions this is exactly what happened.

In late 2009, Obama prevailed upon Netanyahu to implement a 10-month moratorium on Israeli construction in the West Bank in order to facilitate direct negotiations with the Palestinians. Instead of using the freeze as an opportunity to negotiate, Abbas refused to engage with Israel until September 2010, the final month of the freeze. After two meetings, Abbas tried to get the United States to prevail upon Israel to extend the freeze. When Israel refused this latest precondition, Abbas suspended the talks.

A few months later, Newsweek reported on Abbas’ troubled relationship with Obama. The Palestinian president didn’t express regret for a missed opportunity, but rather blamed the lack of diplomatic progress on the president, who he claimed had suggested the settlement freeze. “I said OK, I accept. We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump. Three times he did it,” Abbas said.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, though, saw things differently, recalling in late 2012:

I stood on a stage with [Netanyahu] … and I said it was unprecedented for any Israeli prime minister to have done that. I got so criticized. I got criticized from the right, the left, the center, Israeli, Jewish, Arab, Christian, you name it. Everybody criticized me. But the fact was it was a 10-month settlement freeze. And he was good to his word. And we couldn’t get the Palestinians into the conversation until the tenth month. … In the last 20 years, I’ve seen Israeli leaders make an honest, good-faith effort and not be reciprocated in the way that was needed.

In 2013, Clinton’s successor, Secretary of State John Kerry attempted to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Over a nine month period, the two sides engaged in talks. Israel released dozens of Palestinian prisoners — including convicted murderers, kidnappers, and torturers who killed dozens of Israelis — in order to keep the negotiations going. In February 2014, when the United States offered a framework for a future peace deal, Netanyahu accepted the proposal. Abbas rejected it.

As David Hazony, editor of The Tower, reported at the time, Abbas dismissed every major issue proposed by the Americans. He rejected establishing a Palestinian capital in the neighborhood of Beit Hanina, demanding instead all of eastern Jerusalem; he refused to accept Israel as a Jewish homeland, thereby recognizing its legitimacy as a Jewish nation-state and forfeiting future Palestinian claims to the territory; and he refused to abandon the Palestinian “right of return,” which facilitate the immigration of millions of Palestinians into Israel and lead to its effective destruction.

At the end of 2014, former Israeli peace negotiator Tzipi Livni blamed the failure of the American-sponsored talks squarely on Abbas. She told New York Times columnist Roger Cohen that she had hoped to continue the talks, but that Abbas instead signed 15 international conventions — 11 of which the Palestinian Authority was immediately in violation — in an effort to bypass direct negotiations and politicize the conflict. The final blow to the American effort was Abbas’ announced formation of a unity government with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, even though Hamas rejects Israel’s right to exist, an internationally accepted premise for peace.

The signing of the 15 international conventions wasn’t accidental. Abbas already announced his intent to bypass direct negotiations and seek to internationalize the conflict in a 2011 New York Times op-ed. “Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one,” he explained. “It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.”

A 2012 effort for admission to the General Assembly failed. But that hasn’t deterred Abbas from using Palestinian membership in international organizations to attack Israel’s legitimacy. The most recent manifestation of this effort were the two UNESCO resolutions approved in October, which effectively denied Jewish claims to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, despite extensive evidence to the contrary.

The point of the resolutions, Eylon Aslan-Levy wrote last month in The Tower, was “to render Israeli sovereignty over the Old City utterly illegitimate, do the most damage by prejudging how the international community should approach the question of the holy sites in any future accord.”

Over the past eight years, whenever diplomatic opportunities for peace presented themselves, they were quickly and deliberately buried by Abbas. It is clear why Netanyahu, who has repeatedly offered to meet with Abbas without preconditions, observed that the Palestinian president “is not taking the right steps” for peace.


http://www.thetower.org/4202-mahmoud-abbas-a-record-of-rejectionism/

 

[AZwildcats]

 

[wubalubadubdub]

What you can't handle an informative and alternate point of view? Continue the circle jerk while screaming nobody is allowed to criticize israel.

 

[RustyShackleford]

Anyone who really thinks settlements are the real reason there isn't a 2 state decision is misinformed. Israel has given up land for peace. There is a track record with other countries. Do i think its a good idea? No. Do i think there would be a solution if there were no settlements? No.

Dig up Arafat and thank him for where we are today. A better deal is not coming. It amazes me how palestinans are given a free pass and treated like children who have no responsibility for any action of any kind.

Liberals are just naive when it comes to this issue and instinctively side with the people with less power. Israel pulled out all the jews of gaza and were greated with rockets and bombs. That's why the country moved more to the right.

What did the UN and international community do for syria? And you think jews are going to put their safety and future in their hands? It's not happening soon.

outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-

“Decades of political maneuverings have created a disproportionate volume of resolutions, reports and conferences criticizing Israel,” Ban said in his address on Friday to the U.N. Security Council. “In many cases, rather than helping the Palestinian cause, this reality has hampered the ability of the U.N. to fulfill its role effectively.”

That's a big part of the problem.







abbas is a HUGE part of the problem. But always given a pass.



Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week hailed the 39th anniversary of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic trip to Israel, contrasting it with the intransigence displayed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Abbas “refuses to come to direct negotiations without preconditions, is also continuing to incite his people regarding the idea of a right of return and erasing the State of Israel, and, to my regret, is not taking the right steps to start calming things and preparing public opinion for reconciliation with the State of Israel,” he said at his weekly cabinet meeting.

Netanyahu’s point is often ignored, but vitally important. Abbas, currently in the 11th year of a four-year presidential term, has made no serious effort to engage with Israel diplomatically. He has, however, successfully thwarted efforts by the United States to open bilateral talks between the PA and Israel, choosing to internationalize the conflict rather than working to solve it through direct negotiations.

Jackson Diehl, the deputy editorial page editor of The Washington Post, assessed Abbas’s mindset in May 2009, shortly after President Barack Obama began his current term in office. “The Americans are the leaders of the world,” Abbas told Diehl. “They can use their weight with anyone around the world. Two years ago they used their weight on us. Now they should tell the Israelis, ‘You have to comply with the conditions.’ ”

Diehl observed that Abbas was convinced “that the United States will simply force Israel to make critical concessions, whether or not its democratic government agrees, while Arabs passively watch and applaud.”

On two occasions this is exactly what happened.

In late 2009, Obama prevailed upon Netanyahu to implement a 10-month moratorium on Israeli construction in the West Bank in order to facilitate direct negotiations with the Palestinians. Instead of using the freeze as an opportunity to negotiate, Abbas refused to engage with Israel until September 2010, the final month of the freeze. After two meetings, Abbas tried to get the United States to prevail upon Israel to extend the freeze. When Israel refused this latest precondition, Abbas suspended the talks.

A few months later, Newsweek reported on Abbas’ troubled relationship with Obama. The Palestinian president didn’t express regret for a missed opportunity, but rather blamed the lack of diplomatic progress on the president, who he claimed had suggested the settlement freeze. “I said OK, I accept. We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump. Three times he did it,” Abbas said.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, though, saw things differently, recalling in late 2012:

I stood on a stage with [Netanyahu] … and I said it was unprecedented for any Israeli prime minister to have done that. I got so criticized. I got criticized from the right, the left, the center, Israeli, Jewish, Arab, Christian, you name it. Everybody criticized me. But the fact was it was a 10-month settlement freeze. And he was good to his word. And we couldn’t get the Palestinians into the conversation until the tenth month. … In the last 20 years, I’ve seen Israeli leaders make an honest, good-faith effort and not be reciprocated in the way that was needed.

In 2013, Clinton’s successor, Secretary of State John Kerry attempted to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Over a nine month period, the two sides engaged in talks. Israel released dozens of Palestinian prisoners — including convicted murderers, kidnappers, and torturers who killed dozens of Israelis — in order to keep the negotiations going. In February 2014, when the United States offered a framework for a future peace deal, Netanyahu accepted the proposal. Abbas rejected it.

As David Hazony, editor of The Tower, reported at the time, Abbas dismissed every major issue proposed by the Americans. He rejected establishing a Palestinian capital in the neighborhood of Beit Hanina, demanding instead all of eastern Jerusalem; he refused to accept Israel as a Jewish homeland, thereby recognizing its legitimacy as a Jewish nation-state and forfeiting future Palestinian claims to the territory; and he refused to abandon the Palestinian “right of return,” which facilitate the immigration of millions of Palestinians into Israel and lead to its effective destruction.

At the end of 2014, former Israeli peace negotiator Tzipi Livni blamed the failure of the American-sponsored talks squarely on Abbas. She told New York Times columnist Roger Cohen that she had hoped to continue the talks, but that Abbas instead signed 15 international conventions — 11 of which the Palestinian Authority was immediately in violation — in an effort to bypass direct negotiations and politicize the conflict. The final blow to the American effort was Abbas’ announced formation of a unity government with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, even though Hamas rejects Israel’s right to exist, an internationally accepted premise for peace.

The signing of the 15 international conventions wasn’t accidental. Abbas already announced his intent to bypass direct negotiations and seek to internationalize the conflict in a 2011 New York Times op-ed. “Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one,” he explained. “It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.”

A 2012 effort for admission to the General Assembly failed. But that hasn’t deterred Abbas from using Palestinian membership in international organizations to attack Israel’s legitimacy. The most recent manifestation of this effort were the two UNESCO resolutions approved in October, which effectively denied Jewish claims to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, despite extensive evidence to the contrary.

The point of the resolutions, Eylon Aslan-Levy wrote last month in The Tower, was “to render Israeli sovereignty over the Old City utterly illegitimate, do the most damage by prejudging how the international community should approach the question of the holy sites in any future accord.”

Over the past eight years, whenever diplomatic opportunities for peace presented themselves, they were quickly and deliberately buried by Abbas. It is clear why Netanyahu, who has repeatedly offered to meet with Abbas without preconditions, observed that the Palestinian president “is not taking the right steps” for peace.


http://www.thetower.org/4202-mahmoud-abbas-a-record-of-rejectionism/

Called it

 

[wubalubadubdub]

I got the bat signal. You probably just missed me.

It's juat mental masterbation for me at this point. Not like i'm gonna change any minds. Not sure why the one pro israel person bothers people so much. Liberals are open minded and thoughtful people.

 

[RustyShackleford]

What you can't handle an informative and alternate point of view? Continue the circle jerk while screaming nobody is allowed to criticize israel.

Shut the **** up about telling anyone they can't handle an alternative point of view. You have spewed some top level buffoonery at anyone that dares disagree with you on this subject

You have not proven to be a reasonable person offering a alternative viewpoint, instead you have acted like outright clown with his head up his ***.

 

[RustyShackleford]

I got the bat signal. You probably just missed me.

It's juat mental masterbation for me at this point. Not like i'm gonna change any minds. Not sure why the one pro israel person bothers people so much. Liberals are open minded and thoughtful people.

I would never miss your nonsense, don't flatter yourself.

And please, miss me with this "I'm just pro-Israel" bull ****. You're the clown that runs to label people anti-Semitic for being in slightest way against Israel's nonsense.

 

[heatpinoyboy]

The worst part is that the users that are getting killed turned themselves in while thinking they were going to receive treatment...

Is this not grounds for crimes against humanity?

He doesn't care. He craps all over the UN or any human rights org that tries to check him. After obama spoke on it he said "to hell with the US" and dared him to pull financial support.

There's a huge difference between how Filipinos I know in the Philippines and how my American born Filipino friends view Duterte. My Filipino American friends are scared of going back to the PI for vacation while my Filipino friends are insisting that I come visit since the country is apparently being cleaned up

I read a good article last week that points out that the middle class/upper class areas, the people there say they feel safer, but in the poor areas and the 'hoods that's where the craziness goes down. Targeting the people who need the most help

Speaking from personal conversations with my family who live in Ayala Alabang they are never bothered but my other fam living out in Tarlac or Bula are on constant alert.
My mom and dad both lived through Marshal Law and they watch the Filipino News every morning with nothing but unfortunate nostalgia of Marcos' reign

 

[sfc415]

My friend that lives in the Makati area in Manila, which I'm assuming is a middle to upper middle class area, said she voted for Duterte because she thought he would work towards ending corruption, but she turned on him because he's linked with the Marcos family as well as other corrupt Filipino politicians. Hmm where else have I heard about something like that recently

 

[ninjahood]

My Filipino American friends were actually pretty ignorant of what's going on there until I explained it to them. They seem pretty unconcerned after it was explained to them. They're still going to the Philippines on vacation with no damns given.

My dude Dutuerte sounds unhinged but it seems he only targets drug dealers so if you're vacationing there you should be good as long as you're not doing drugs lol

ya got Frank Castle as president

 

[Nike Jordan]

My man was really triggered.

 

[AZwildcats]

What you can't handle an informative and alternate point of view? Continue the circle jerk while screaming nobody is allowed to criticize israel.

Alternative it is, informative I don't think so 

 

[whywesteppin]

Israel-Palestine is complicated and unfortunately any discussion in here will be at best a small introduction, if that.

If you really care about it, read through the history of Jews in the Middle East and other religions in the Middle East. Read up on the events surrounding WWII. Read up on the King David Hotel bombing.

Read up on the extreme factions on each side who have hindered peace. Read up on the involvement of other countries in the struggle and how they have often used Palestinians as a pawn. Look at the effect of educational bias on these people.

Read up on all of that and you'll see how complicated it all is and how many different parties are to blame.

 

[gry60]

It's fair to recognize that there is bad faith on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The state of Israel - and the conflict - is 61 years old, and they exist in a region where none of their direct neighbors can be considered allies.

I can see how the right to return without recognizing the legitimacy of Israel would be a source of concern for the Israeli government: the Arab population in the region outnumbers the Jewish population. It isn't far fetched to think that being thought to be illegitimate by all your neighbors and letting in Palestinians (including those sympathetic to a Israel-denying Hamas) is not the greatest idea. For peace to exist, Israel will have to be recognized by its eventual neighbors and both sides will have to forget about the grudges they hold towards each other. Otherwise it's going to be an endless tit-for-tat situation until one side goes for a full blown genocide.

My other opinion is on the status of Jerusalem: why not make it an independent city? Obviously, the religious factions will never let go of the idea of the holy city being controlled by the other religion(s), so why not come up with a system that will make that city the middle east equivalent of Washington DC?

 

[Brownstone]

Israel-Palestine is complicated and unfortunately any discussion in here will be at best a small introduction, if that.

If you really care about it, read through the history of Jews in the Middle East and other religions in the Middle East. Read up on the events surrounding WWII. Read up on the King David Hotel bombing.

Read up on the extreme factions on each side who have hindered peace. Read up on the involvement of other countries in the struggle and how they have often used Palestinians as a pawn. Look at the effect of educational bias on these people.

Read up on all of that and you'll see how complicated it all is and how many different parties are to blame.

The causes are easy albeit convoluted, it's the solution that is complicated.

 

[frink85]

I get that it's a two way street but Israel has been strongarming the Palestinians for years. And who's giving Abbas a pass? I'm not but then again I'm nobody. Abbas and Netanyahu are both to blame for their hard line stances. Bombings and mortar attacks and rocket launchers and even stone throwing is deplorable on both sides I agree there. The reason I put the onus on Israel is because they have considerably more political and economic clout.

Personally I'd like to see them leave the West Bank and Gaza Strip dead zones until they can sort their mess out and not have folks throw up their shanty houses and incite more violence

 

[frink85]

The worst part is that the users that are getting killed turned themselves in while thinking they were going to receive treatment...

Is this not grounds for crimes against humanity?

He doesn't care. He craps all over the UN or any human rights org that tries to check him. After obama spoke on it he said "to hell with the US" and dared him to pull financial support.

There's a huge difference between how Filipinos I know in the Philippines and how my American born Filipino friends view Duterte. My Filipino American friends are scared of going back to the PI for vacation while my Filipino friends are insisting that I come visit since the country is apparently being cleaned up

I read a good article last week that points out that the middle class/upper class areas, the people there say they feel safer, but in the poor areas and the 'hoods that's where the craziness goes down. Targeting the people who need the most help

Speaking from personal conversations with my family who live in Ayala Alabang they are never bothered but my other fam living out in Tarlac or Bula are on constant alert.
My mom and dad both lived through Marshal Law and they watch the Filipino News every morning with nothing but unfortunate nostalgia of Marcos' reign

It's crazy. You got kids getting shot up because some random dude on a motorcycle was trying to tag her dad, and they just chalk it up to the game. Terrible. You'd be surprised at the revisionist history with Marcos nowadays, it sorta explains the love affair with Duterte. If you look at his actions deeper it's not that much of a reach to see that he's setting up his political enemies with the drug accusations. Dude just throws out wild allegations and everyone runs with it. And it's amazing that it's ok, because they've seen that story before...

My friend that lives in the Makati area in Manila, which I'm assuming is a middle to upper middle class area, said she voted for Duterte because she thought he would work towards ending corruption, but she turned on him because he's linked with the Marcos family as well as other corrupt Filipino politicians. Hmm where else have I heard about something like that recently

Makati is middle class to very upper class in certain areas. And yup, the Filipino Trump comparisons from a few months ago were pretty spot on. Dude is a one man swamp and he's letting his cronies fill in the empty spaces

 

[everysingletime]

Derrick didn't even touch him

*oops wrong thread