Trump's tariff wars...long post.

[Lozz196]

32 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

unless Russia just launches another invasion in a few years time. As it stands their economy is under severe pressure and conscription is very likely to occur within months due to heavy losses.

 

Without a backstop I would be very concerned that Russia will invade again as soon as the conditions were favourable.

I get what you mean, he’s got his fingers & toes crossed for a Democrat next POTUS already.

[Agent 00Soul]

1 hour ago, Woodinblack said:

Maybe I would like him better if I had a holiday at trump gaza, if it looks like the promo video

https://news.sky.com/story/trump-shares-ai-video-of-gaza-vision-featuring-golden-statues-bearded-belly-dancers-and-netanyahu-on-a-sunbed-13317241

 

 

It pissed off his Evangelical supporters, who didn't hesitate to tell him so on Truth Social.

Guardian - Gaza video backlash

[martthebass]

59 minutes ago, NancyJohnson said:

Does anyone remember the scene from The Dead Zone, where on shaking hands with Presidential candidate Gregg Stillson (Martin Sheen), Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) has this future vision of Stillson - now as President - threatening to cut a General's hand off if he refuses to have it scanned to start the launch sequence for nukes?  I think the line of dialogue is something like, 'My destiny, gentleman.'

 

This is the kind of vision I have with Trump, pretty much every time I hear his name.  It's the quickest of flashes, but every time.  A trigger response.  Trump.  'My destiny.'  Trump.  'My destiny.'

 

He actually scares the shit out of me.  He's batshit crazy.

 

 

Yep…..glad it’s not just me.

[peteb]

2 hours ago, edstraker123 said:

I completely agree Lozz - the whole thing about the war ending seems to have been lost while people vilify Trump .

 

 

The war could have ended at anytime in the past three years, all that was required was an abject surrender by Ukraine, which is what Trump was trying to force them to do a few days ago. 

 

People are vilifying Trump with good reason. Appeasement is rarely the best way to secure a lasting peace, as this country found out nearly seventy years ago. 

 

[peteb]

1 hour ago, edstraker123 said:

I don't know how anybody could like him ! But if his intervention ends the war and its better for the people that has to be a positive. I think Starmer et al would have just funded the stalemate for eternity while the deaths continued. I'm predicting Trump will get a Nobel peace prize, Zelensky will step down and never be heard of again.

 

Well you seem to like him. You've just nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize, while taking to the opportunity to blame Starmer and dismiss Zelensky...! 

 

You right wing scamps, eh... 

 

Edited 20 hours ago by peteb

[tegs07]

1 minute ago, peteb said:

 

The war could have ended at anytime in the past three years, all that was required was an abject surrender by Ukraine, which is what Trump was trying to force them to do a few days ago. 

 

People are vilifying Trump with good reason. Appeasement is rarely the best way to secure a lasting peace, as this country found out nearly seventy years ago. 

 

I keep reading comments that point to a direct correlation between 1938/9. These are not comments from hysterical individuals but rational people ranging from diplomats, senior military leaders, ex prime ministers, intellectuals. A long list of people saying wake up. Peace is so easy to take for granted.

[Beedster]

6 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

These are not comments from hysterical individuals but rational people ranging from diplomats, senior military leaders, ex prime ministers, intellectuals.

 

Take your point and not disagreeing with the sentiment, but a lot of people have vested interests in that view, diplomats and military because is brings their roles and importance front and centre, ex-prime ministers because it brings them attention as well as their being able to promote a sense of 'this wouldn't have happened on my watch', and intellectuals because having opinions is what they do and on any one scenario the opinions of intellectuals will be sufficiently divided for a significant percentage to be saying something simply because it's the opposite of what another significant percentage of intellectuals are saying. Yes, war is a possibility at present, but not because these groups of people say it is, but because it's f***ing obvious it is and why; the two most powerful countries in the world are being run by borderline psychotic megalomaniacs and because the (largely European) governments and multi-national agencies that would previously have kept them in check have been weakened to the point of impotence by organic decay and systematic hostile action      

[Beedster]

And history of course repeats, and in my view is a far better predictor of human behaviour than any of the behavioural sciences (or put another way, history is the most reliable behavioural science). This book is worth a read...

 

 

...because when you see how Stalin and Roosevelt largely sidelined Churchill and in doing so engineered the cold war - as well as a territorial and econiomic legacy that in many respects led directly to Russia's claims to Ukraine - it's hard to not see parallels with Trump and Putin now....

[tegs07]

41 minutes ago, Beedster said:

 

Take your point and not disagreeing with the sentiment, but a lot of people have vested interests in that view, diplomats and military because is brings their roles and importance front and centre, ex-prime ministers because it brings them attention as well as their being able to promote a sense of 'this wouldn't have happened on my watch', and intellectuals because having opinions is what they do and on any one scenario the opinions of intellectuals will be sufficiently divided for a significant percentage to be saying something simply because it's the opposite of what another significant percentage of intellectuals are saying. Yes, war is a possibility at present, but not because these groups of people say it is, but because it's f***ing obvious it is and why; the two most powerful countries in the world are being run by borderline psychotic megalomaniacs and because the (largely European) governments and multi-national agencies that would previously have kept them in check have been weakened to the point of impotence by organic decay and systematic hostile action      

All true but one of the biggest issues we face IMO is a vacuum created by no longer having any faith or trust in science, religion, politicians, teachers, engineers, military leaders, etc and into that vacuum steps conspiracy theorists, right wing manipulators, liars, cheats and nut jobs. Which takes us right up to 2025, Truth social, X and all the other garbage shaping the political and intellectual landscape of the post modern world.

[Beedster]

2 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

All true but one of the biggest issues we face IMO is a vacuum created by no longer having any faith or trust in science, religion, politicians, teachers, engineers, military leaders, etc and into that vacuum steps conspiracy theorists, right wing manipulators, liars, cheats and nut jobs. Which takes us right up to 2025, Truth social, X and all the other garbage shaping the political and intellectual landscape of the post modern world.

That's the systematic hostile action I was referring to. The conspiracy theorists et al haven't 'stepped into that vacuum', they have actively and purposefully created that vacuum to their own political and ideological ends. Nothing about this is organic; yes there are some helpful fools along the way who might be simply and naively repeating things social media, but they are being used by far cleverer and more strategic individuals and organisations. Either way, they are all part of the systematic undermining and abuse of truth, knowledge, freedom, and choice.   

[tegs07]

14 minutes ago, Beedster said:

That's the systematic hostile action I was referring to. The conspiracy theorists et al haven't 'stepped into that vacuum', they have actively and purposefully created that vacuum to their own political and ideological ends. Nothing about this is organic; yes there are some helpful fools along the way who might be simply and naively repeating things social media, but they are being used by far cleverer and more strategic individuals and organisations. Either way, they are all part of the systematic undermining and abuse of truth, knowledge, freedom, and choice.   

I think we are approaching things from a slightly different perspective. Over the course of my lifetime I have seen a steady erosion and decline in trust and confidence in many of the institutions that underpinned my parents generation’s view of the world. This is the vacuum that provides an easy space for the manipulation.

 

People will disregard science in favour of a podcast by some fringe lunatic.

We can argue that the fringe lunatic saying covid can be cured by bleach for example is creating the vacuum, but for this nonsense to take root there must be the perception that “they” (scientific community, doctors, politicians etc) are all to be mistrusted as they have an agenda.

 

etc

Edited 18 hours ago by tegs07

[edstraker123]

1 hour ago, peteb said:

 

Well you seem to like him

I utterly despise him but most leaders are just different flavours of terrible irrespective of how the media portray them.

[Beedster]

5 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

I think we are approaching things from a slightly different perspective. Over the course of my lifetime I have seen a steady erosion and decline in trust and confidence in many of the institutions that underpinned my parents generation’s view of the world. This is the vacuum that is provides an easy space for the manipulation.

 

People will disregard science in favour of a podcast by some fringe lunatic.

 

etc

 

Yes, and that decline has not been organic, it has in part, possibly large part, been the result of the systematic use of disinformation (what used to be called propaganda) against institutions by organisations and individuals whose interests are affected by those institutions. It's not all right wing fanatics either. Let's take science for example; cigarette manufacturers systematically undermined and discredited medical science, as more recently have people such as Coca Cola, fossil fuel companies likewise discredited bioscience, academics in social sciences have disputed the relevance and the epistemic value and even validity of the 'harder' sciences such as biology. Political parties and their followers have disputed scientific fact to promote their agendas, financial institutions dispute scientific fact to benefit their clients, manufacturers of plastics dispute scientific fact to maintain their bottom line and shareholder wealth. I could go on, but the reality is that this abuse of science has been going on - certainly in the systematic form I describe - for well over 50 years and has in part created the vacuum you describe. The point I'm making is that it wasn't organic; people didn't just 'lose their faith in science', it was taken from them by the predictable effects of the accumulation of systematic abuse of the integrity of scientific data 

[tegs07]

2 minutes ago, edstraker123 said:

I utterly despise him but most leaders are just different flavours of terrible irrespective of how the media portray them.

Let’s face it all human beings are different flavours of terrible. Most of us have an element of self interest but most are not sociopaths.

 

2 minutes ago, Beedster said:

The point I'm making is that it wasn't organic; people didn't just 'lose their faith in science', it was taken from them by the predictable effects of the accumulation of systematic abuse of the integrity of scientific data 

I largely agree with this but do feel that as a society we don’t do a very good job of praising the great work that institutions do but are very focused on the mistakes that they make.

[Beedster]

2 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

Let’s face it all human beings are different flavours of terrible. Most of us have an element of self interest but most are not sociopaths.

 

I largely agree with this but do feel that as a society we don’t do a very good job of praising the great work that institutions do but are very focused on the mistakes that they make.

 

I agree but that's a completely separate argument. A friend and i had beer the other day. He's not left wing and has criticised Starmer's government from day 1. He was in reflective mood, because he's starting to see that the logical consequence of the hostility towards, the undermining of, and erosion of institutions such as government (and science, and........) is, well, Trump. And he f*****g hates everything about Trump and the way the World is turning. 

 

So yes, you are 100% right, we are as a society so overly critical and sensitive to the slightest deviation from our expectations of institutions that we are inexorably moving towards the same place that the USA finds itself.  

[Agent 00Soul]

24 minutes ago, Beedster said:

 

Yes, and that decline has not been organic, it has in part, possibly large part, been the result of the systematic use of disinformation

 

It's funny you mentioned this.  It can also be the unintended consequences of tech.  I am a subscriber to a history newsletter and they literally just sent their email out a few minutes ago and discussed ChatGPT:

 

"I recently came across a post (on Facebook? I couldn’t find it again just now), where a teacher was lamenting about a student who’d argued some pretty radical ideas in a paper but hadn’t cited any sources. (And by radical, I mean totally untrue.) The teacher wasn’t immediately convinced that the student had made things up or plagiarized anything, merely that she needed some secondary sources for verification. So, the student and teacher sat down together to search for the information he’d included in the paper. Instead of going to Google, the student went straight to ChatGPT, where—lo and behold—the A.I. chatbot regurgitated that same falsehoods the student had put in his paper. When the teacher tried to gently point out that these “facts” were not, in fact, facts, the student refused to believe her. Who was she, a fallible human, to argue that ChatGPT—privy to the entire sum of human knowledge—would be lying? But ChatGPT lies so much that there’s even a name for it—hallucinating...Here’s the thing about generative A.I.—it doesn’t want to do research; as the name suggests, it wants to generate something. ”

 

Edited 18 hours ago by Agent 00Soul

[Beedster]

2 minutes ago, Agent 00Soul said:

 

It's funny you mentioned this.  It can also be the unintended consequences of tech.  I am a subscriber to a history newsletter and they literally just sent their email out a few minutes ago and discussed ChatGPT:

 

"I recently came across a post (on Facebook? I couldn’t find it again just now), where a teacher was lamenting about a student who’d argued some pretty radical ideas in a paper but hadn’t cited any sources. (And by radical, I mean totally untrue.) The teacher wasn’t immediately convinced that the student had made things up or plagiarized anything, merely that she needed some secondary sources for verification. So, the student and teacher sat down together to search for the information he’d included in the paper. Instead of going to Google, the student went straight to ChatGPT, where—lo and behold—the A.I. chatbot regurgitated that same falsehoods the student had put in his paper. When the teacher tried to gently point out that these “facts” were not, in fact, facts, the student refused to believe her. Who was she, a fallible human, to argue that ChatGPT—privy to the entire sum of human knowledge—would be lying? But ChatGPT lies so much that there’s even a name for it—hallucinating...Here’s the thing about generative A.I.—it doesn’t want to do research; as the name suggests, it wants to generate something. ”

 

 

Generative AI works on the information that's out there, and what's out there is not the consequence of tech - intended or unintended (tech is simply the medium) - it's the consequence of the information vacuum that @tegs07describes. And that's the big challenge with AI, not that it can take jobs away or deprive wealthy musicians of royalties, but that it is propagating and thereby reinforcing the misinformed database - largely social media - from which it is learning  

 

 

[Agent 00Soul]

1 minute ago, Beedster said:

 

Generative AI works on the information that's out there, and what's out there is not the consequence of tech - intended or unintended (tech is simply the medium) - it's the consequence of the information vacuum that @tegs07describes. 

 

 

And that is already being considered a legit source of info by people, especially, it seems, schoolkids

[Beedster]

Just now, Agent 00Soul said:

And that is already being considered a legit source of info by people, especially, it seems, schoolkids

 

There are books on science being sold on Amazon that have been written entirely using generative AI. It's not just kids. In fact because education systems are so aware of the need to protect kids from web-based harm and make them very aware of misinformation, conspiracy theories etc, many kids are in fact less vulnerable to misinformation - be it AI or human - than many adults. It gives me some hope 👍

[prowla]

25 minutes ago, Beedster said:

 

I agree but that's a completely separate argument. A friend and i had beer the other day. He's not left wing and has criticised Starmer's government from day 1. He was in reflective mood, because he's starting to see that the logical consequence of the hostility towards, the undermining of, and erosion of institutions such as government (and science, and........) is, well, Trump. And he f*****g hates everything about Trump and the way the World is turning. 

 

So yes, you are 100% right, we are as a society so overly critical and sensitive to the slightest deviation from our expectations of institutions that we are inexorably moving towards the same place that the USA finds itself.  

I can't indulge in sneering at the USA, because we're only a whisker away from the same here.

It's easy to lose faith in government, both national and local; it seems to want to reduce services but want ever more money in taxes, washes its hands of issues, looks for new ways to control people and fine them for minor discrepancies, wants to pry into our data, wants to scam our kids for their education, tells us what to think, is eroding our freedoms, and is manned (sorry, personed!) by people acting in their own self-interest.

It's been moving in that direction for the entire 25 years of this century, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody really.

[Beedster]

4 minutes ago, prowla said:

I can't indulge in sneering at the USA, because we're only a whisker away from the same here.

It's easy to lose faith in government, both national and local; it seems to want to reduce services but want ever more money in taxes, washes its hands of issues, looks for new ways to control people and fine them for minor discrepancies, wants to pry into our data, wants to scam our kids for their education, tells us what to think, is eroding our freedoms, and is manned (sorry, personed!) by people acting in their own self-interest.

It's been moving in that direction for the entire 25 years of this century, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody really.

 

You're sounding a lot like the friend in question

 

As I said to him, is that the government, or just the world? I think it's the latter, although I'm happy to be convinced otherwise..... 

[asingardenof]

Back to Tariffs, and trump is tilting at the EU windmill and threatening to impose tariffs on them.

[peteb]

2 hours ago, edstraker123 said:

I utterly despise him but most leaders are just different flavours of terrible irrespective of how the media portray them.

 

You say you despise him, but you are still buying into the narrative that Trump, of all people, will receive a Nobel Peace Prize! In the same post you denigrate two of the better politicians on the world stage at the moment, both hated by Trump's fanboys! While, neither are perfect, Starmer was a highly successful lawyer who has a pretty decent record of public service and is a capable political operator with an impossible job of trying to fix fourteen years of the most chaotic and corrupt UK government of the modern era. Zelensky, on the other hand, is a genuine political hero, a modern day Winston Churchill...! 

 

3 hours ago, tegs07 said:

All true but one of the biggest issues we face IMO is a vacuum created by no longer having any faith or trust in science, religion, politicians, teachers, engineers, military leaders, etc and into that vacuum steps conspiracy theorists, right wing manipulators, liars, cheats and nut jobs. Which takes us right up to 2025, Truth social, X and all the other garbage shaping the political and intellectual landscape of the post modern world.

 

Politicians have always been mistrusted by the public, yet there have always been decent, capable ones from all sides of the political divide. The fact that there have been so many political charlatans and nutjobs come to the fore in the past ten / twenty years makes tarring the half decent ones with the same brush all the more dangerous. 

 

Edited 15 hours ago by peteb

[tegs07]

19 minutes ago, peteb said:

Politicians have always been mistrusted by the public, yet there have always been decent, capable ones from all sides of the political divide. The fact that there have been so many political charlatans and nutjobs come to the fore in the past ten / twenty years makes tarring the half decent ones with the same brush all the more dangerous. 

You know that I am not the greatest fan of career politicians. There’s a long legacy of incompetence, short term thinking and bad judgment. I’ve never witnessed the kind of vitriol, hatred and contempt that we have seen in the last few years though. This is a very ugly development and it’s something I find disturbing as there seems to be a growing appetite for it.

Edited 15 hours ago by tegs07

[TimR]

When you read the reasons Jimmy Carter and Barack Obhama were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, simply stopping the Ukraine war isn't enough.

 

Plus, it's awarded by 5 Norwegians.

 

https://www.nobelprize.org/

 

And he's going to cause a disaster in Gaza. 

 

 

 

Edited 15 hours ago by TimR