Sadiq Khan - Travel ban hypocrisy..........

No standards like double standards.

how long have these countries banned israel passport holders ?

is it just since trump banned people from usa

or just since it was printed in press as an argument for justification
of trunp

how many united nations countries dont even recognise israel as a country



why should trumps supporters justify his poor decisions by saying oh well
somebody else did that

i can't travel either, if I leave the house they'll recognize I'm Lord Lucan and arrest me.
Luckily the tesco van delivers.

From Transparency Internationals Corruption Index.

Four of that group of eleven countries also among the eleven most corrupt countries in the world.

18   United States   74   76   74   73   73   Americas   
24   United Arab Emirates   66   70   70   69   68   Middle East and North Africa 
41   Brunei   58   N/A   N/A   60   55   Asia Pacific   
75   Kuwait   41   49   44   43   44   Middle East and North Africa 
116   Pakistan   32   30   29   28   27   Asia Pacific   
131   Iran   29   27   27   25   28   Middle East and North Africa 
136   Lebanon   28   28   27   28   30   Middle East and North Africa 
145   Bangladesh   26   25   25   27   26   Asia Pacific   
166   Iraq   17   16   16   16   18   Middle East and North Africa 
170   Sudan   14   12   11   11   13   Middle East and North Africa 
170   Yemen   14   18   19   18   23   Middle East and North Africa 
170   Libya   14   16   18   15   21   Middle East and North Africa

Is corruption mandatory in a certain religion then.

No to bacon, no to honesty, sort of thing?

I know corruption exists in all countries and all religions, but shirley this is no coincidence.

We need to march and drain those swamps, come on libtards, get yer crocs on, and march, march, march.

To be fair to the people who signed the Trump petition, most of them probably couldn't even name those 11 countries, let alone place them on a map.  But they do know how to use Facebook, Twitter, hashtags and love buzzwords and slogans such as #dumptrump and #trumpout.

Suspect you can get quite a lot of juice on this lot that almost no one in the UK has ever heard of....

Abdul Hamid
Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi
Fayez al-Sarraj
Omar al-Bahir
Hassan Rouhani
Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nayhan
Faud Masaum
Mamnoon Hussain
Hassanal Bolkiah
Michel Aoun
Jaber Al-Mubarrak

Are they all founder members of the women's movement in their own countries?

The leaders of those 11 countries according to Wiki.  Just googled Michel Aoun.  He's actually Christian but got in with the support of Hezbollah the Shi'a Islamist militia that is helping Assad bomb Aleppo.  He is a military general who wants to retake parts of Israel.  His son in law is leader of the FPM by acclamation after his nephew quit the race

Omar Al-Bashir is President of Sudan since 1989 after a military coup.  In the Darfur region, he oversaw the war in Darfur that has resulted in death tolls that are about 10,000 according to the Sudanese Government, but most sources suggest between 200,000 and 400,000

Hassanal Bolkiah is actually The Sultan of Brunei.  On 9 March 2006, the Sultan was reported to have amended Brunei's constitution to make himself infallible under Bruneian law

They are only 41st on the corruption list despite this...
He had open disagreements with his brother, Jefri Bolkiah, who owned a network of companies and investment vehicles under the name "Amadeo" run by his son, Prince Hakim, which was used to buy the luxury goods company Asprey and build an amusement park and other projects in Brunei.[20] In July 1998 the Amadeo group collapsed under US$10 billion in debt.[21] Between 1983 and mid-1998 some US$40 billion of what were called "special transfers" were made from the accounts of the Brunei Investment Agency (BIA).[22] An independent investigation was undertaken into the circumstances of these special transfers, concluding that in round figures, US$14.8 billion were paid to the accounts of Prince Jefri apart from the US$8 billion to accounts of the Sultan and US$3.8 billion for Government purposes. The destination, purpose and recipients of the remaining transfers were not established.[22] Due to the secretive nature of the state and the blurred lines as to where the royal family's finances and the state finances began and ended, establishing the true course of events is very difficult

is that the level trump has fallen to? that to see him in a good light we need compare him to
this lot ?

You change your tune a lot, donny, cosying up to bad people is either ok or it is not.

i havnt changed my tune

these countries have been hostile to israel since it was formed

i'd like them all to get along but it aint that simple



but really comparing trump to that lot , its funny

...and desperate.

Khan is behaving in a hypocritical manner, I can't see how that can be denied.

It's absurd, but I think that's the point.

they havnt recently imposed the bans, i would hope khan
is in favour of them accepting israel as a state as we british do

despite uk not voting for them to be admitted to united nations
back in the 40s/50s after they took over the british mandate of
palestine by force.....which to some folk around the world has
never been accepted

same as russian land grab in germany was never accepted and
numerous other disputes that have arisen through conflict

Ah, so it's only bad if it's a recent ban, thanks for clarifying.

Saddo.

Fwiw has Khan actually demanded the government rescinds its invite to Trump?  The bits I've seen quoted seem quite fair from him.

"Just hours after demanding the government rescinds its invite to President Trump over his travel ban, Sadiq Khan"

That's a disingenuous smoke and mirrors quote I reckon.  It implies Sadiq Khan demanded it, but it doesn't literally say he did.

"Just hours after a petition demanding the government rescinds its invite to President Trump over his travel ban, Sadiq Khan"

is probably more accurate

In which case he isn't a hypocrite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uJ8IJunYs0&spfreload=10

Why wasn't Clinton banned from travelling to UK?

Sadiq Khan ✔ @SadiqKhan
There should be no state visit for President Trump until he lifts his immigration ban. http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/sadiq-khan-stop-the-uk-state-visit... …
12:54 PM - 30 Jan 2017




There you go, CLYDEBANK.

hypocrite then

Isnt that what politicians do? Being a hypocrite is a part of their job description.

Also, it really has to be a stupid MP to compare this ban to Israel. Those countries have concrete reasons to ban Israel. Israel is in violation of some unique UN resolutions, of which no other country is guilty at such a massive scale. Most of these countries have made it clear that if Israel goes back to the 1967 settlements, they are ready to accept.

Now look at Trump's ban. It also addresses a problem. But the proposed solution is a mess. I am yet to see one reason how it stops terrorism. And the execution of it has been so bad that you have to question Trump's intentions. Is he really trying to solve a problem? Or just pleasing his voters while sucking up to the war machinery?

My argument about Israel is only to show that those countries don't beat around the bush to justify the ban. They clearly state the reasons.

Trump's ban states a reason as well. But executes a solution that doesn't address the issue.

It's about resonating with the voters and everyone has heard of Trump.  It's difficult to resonate with the public and show integrity at the same time.  If you show integrity normally it means you won't resonate.  It's the conundrum of politics.  Plus there is all the PC nonsense to further muddy the waters.

That's why Trump got elected and BREXIT got voted in.  People vote on emotion and soundbites rather than reasoned arguments.

still strange all these right wingers spouting the same rubbish

FROM THE SPECTATOR

My pick for the pious political hypocrite of the week award

Douglas Murray:





I would like to propose Labour MP Tulip Siddiq as the winner of the pious political hypocrite of the week badge for her response to President Trump’s temporary immigration halt. From today’s Guardian we learn that Ms Siddiq is one of a number of Labour MPs who have warned that the UK Prime Minister’s allegedly ‘feeble’ response to President Trump’s recent immigration order risks making UK Muslim communities feel ‘disenfranchised and disillusioned.’ Apparently the consequences of this failure could be ‘played out on our streets’ and ‘turning a blind eye to the reality of this ban we run the risk of losing the trust of an entire generation of young British Muslims.’

Now of course one might ask what it is about any group of people that makes them so available for street disturbances. I cannot think of any other group in society of whom this would be said. Does not the very suggestion that young Muslims might rise up on the streets of Britain over such a far-away political issue actually suggest a certain validity to the argument some people make that Muslims are unusually bad at integrating and continuing to import them in very large numbers is a mistake in the long term? Does it not, in other words, go some way to justifying what rationale appears to exist behind Trump’s Presidential order?

I park the thought in order to award the prize. The reason why Tulip Siddiq’s comments stand out are because of something rather closer to home than US border politics. For as well as being MP for Hampstead and Kilburn Ms Siddiq is also the niece of the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina – a woman to whom I understand she is very close. Such are the happy connections of an inter-connected world.

So were I Ms Siddiq, and genuinely concerned about global injustice, I would not spend much time condemning the UK PM for not sufficiently condemning the US President: this is a long and convoluted process, unlikely to yield results. Instead I would pick up the phone and call my aunt. For of course Bangladesh has for many decades run a genuinely bigoted and borderline racist border-control of its own which, among other things, refuses entry to Israeli passport holders. If you were a Jew living in your ancestral homeland and sought to go on holiday to Bangladesh – never mind if you decided to live there – you couldn’t. Now if I were such a believer as Ms Siddiq appears to be in the right of people to roam wherever they like such a blanket ban going back many years would bother me far more than a temporary ban which looks likely to be clarified in the coming weeks.

The other thing that is so interesting about this relationship is that it brings to mind a number of conversations I have had in recent years in the migrant camps of southern Europe. For on a fairly regular basis I have come across groups of Bangladeshi men in those camps who have come to Europe because they have had to flee their native land. As ever it is hard to verify the reasons they give, but most Bangladeshis I have spoken to in the Greek camps have explained that they had to leave their native Bangladesh because they were involved in the political opposition and that their lives were under threat from government forces. The plight of these people is genuinely terrible. Unable to return home, and unable to go beyond Greece to get into Europe.

So as I say, if Tulip Siddiq really wants to alleviate global social injustice, instead of using the alleged volatility of young British Muslims to try to sway US government policy she should just speed-dial her aunt. Direct lines don’t come much more direct than that.

Hampstead & Kilburn fallen

douglas is a neo con

Isn't it amazing that with all the mess the muslim world is, Trump is unable to convince the world on a good vetting system for 7 countries that are actually struggling with civil war(exc. Iran)?

Fact is Trump got the execution horribly wrong. His own poeple are struggling to defend it, both legally and politically, and the latest effort in that defence is bringing in Israel. Its a failure at all levels. Without even starting on whether its right or wrong, the executive order failed to pass the legal test(and normally executive orders don't have that issue, that is why they exist!). It was nothing more than an idiot's way of gaining attention and now he's got all his minions around the world trying to defend him from politicians who have found a great way to stay busy.

saddam hussein tried to bring in isreal when he invaded kuwait

another comparison ?

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
Everybody is arguing whether or not it is a BAN. Call it what you want, it is about keeping bad people (with bad intentions) out of country!

He still doesn't understand that his ban does not stop any terrorists. It leaves enough loopholes for any terrorist to come in.

De traveller and Donny Osmond trying to defend the ban on Israelis.

Israel deserves it.

This is the hypocrisy of the Left.

The only group I know who if they don't get their way they turn violent are religion of peace members

another silly attack from wildmanfromborneo

Roosevelt had more balls...

On February 19th 1942 Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. Under the terms of the Order, some 120,000 people of Japanese descent living in the US were removed from their homes and placed in internment camps. The US justified their action by claiming that there was a danger of those of Japanese descent spying for the Japanese. However more than two thirds of those interned were American citizens and half of them were children. None had ever shown disloyalty to the nation. In some cases family members were separated and put in different camps. During the entire war only ten people were convicted of spying for Japan and these were all Caucasian

I don't think anyone has said Israeli's deserve it, wildman. Bans on foreigners only matter if they are recent, and everyone has to have heard of the man doing the banning, is what I have read.

pity your comprehension is so poor saddo

you could join if if it was better instead of having to post silly stuff

He does not believe on banning people based on their religion or country.

Yet he supports countries banning people who have an Israeli stamp on their passport.

Feb 2, 2017 -- 8:49AM, wildmanfromborneo wrote:

De traveller and Donny Osmond trying to defend the ban on Israelis.Israel deserves it.This is the hypocrisy of the Left.The only group I know who if they don't get their way they turn violent are religion of peace members

First, I didnt defend the ban.

Second, i posted another comment immediately in case any idiot thought my main point was Israel ban. I think I gave some reasons why countries get away with Israel issue, and why SLovakia got away with banning Islam, and why Austria this week banned the hijab and no one asked why.

You apparently missed both my comments.

Feb 2, 2017 -- 9:01AM, TheBetterBettor wrote:

Roosevelt had more balls...On February 19th 1942 Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. Under the terms of the Order, some 120,000 people of Japanese descent living in the US were removed from their homes and placed in internment camps. The US justified their action by claiming that there was a danger of those of Japanese descent spying for the Japanese. However more than two thirds of those interned were American citizens and half of them were children. None had ever shown disloyalty to the nation. In some cases family members were separated and put in different camps. During the entire war only ten people were convicted of spying for Japan and these were all Caucasian

This is what im stressing. He proposed a solution in which innocents were trapped, but it made sure no **** could get away.

Trump didnt propose a solution that addressed the basic issue. His solution only trapped the innocents, and all the terrorists had to do was fake their religion, and that only if they were a national of the 7 countries mentioned. What a joke!

**** = japanese

Internment of civilian nationals belonging to opposing sides was carried out in varying degrees by all belligerent powers in World War Two. It was also the fate of those servicemen who found themselves in a neutral country.

At the outbreak of war there were around 80,000 potential enemy aliens in Britain who, it was feared, could be spies, or willing to assist Britain's enemies in the event of an invasion. All Germans and Austrians over the age of 16 were called before special tribunals and were divided into one of three groups:

'A' - high security risks, numbering just under 600, who were immediately interned;
'B' - 'doubtful cases', numbering around 6,500, who were supervised and subject to restrictions;
'C' - 'no security risk', numbering around 64,000, who were left at liberty. More than 55,000 of category 'C' were recognised as refugees from Nazi oppression. The vast majority of these were Jewish.
The situation began to change in the spring of 1940. The failure of the Norwegian campaign led to an outbreak of spy fever and agitation against enemy aliens. More and more Germans and Austrians were rounded up. Italians were also included, even though Britain was not at war with Italy until June. When Italy and Britain did go to war, there were at least 19,000 Italians in Britain, and Churchill ordered they all be rounded up. This was despite the fact that most of them had lived in Britain for decades.

Thousands of Germans, Austrians and Italians were sent to camps set up at racecourses and incomplete housing estates, such as Huyton outside Liverpool. The majority were interned on the Isle of Man, where internment camps had also been set up in World War One. Facilities were basic, but it was boredom that was the greatest enemy. Internees organised educational and artistic projects, including lectures, concerts and camp newspapers. At first married women were not allowed into the camps to see their husbands, but by August 1940 visits were permitted, and a family camp was established in late 1941.

That many of the 'enemy aliens' were Jewish refugees and therefore hardly likely to be sympathetic to the Nazis, was a complication no one bothered to try and unravel - they were still treated as German and Austrian nationals. In one Isle of Man camp over 80 per cent of the internees were Jewish refugees.

More than 7,000 internees were deported, the majority to Canada, some to Australia. The liner Arandora Star left for Canada on 1 July 1940 carrying German and Italian internees. It was torpedoed and sunk with the loss of 714 lives, most of them internees. Others being taken to Australia on the Dunera, which sailed a week later, were subjected to humiliating treatment and terrible conditions on the two-month voyage. Many had their possessions stolen or thrown overboard by the British military guards.

An outcry in Parliament led to the first releases of internees in August 1940. By February 1941 more than 10,000 had been freed, and by the following summer, only 5,000 were left in internment camps. Many of those released from internment subsequently contributed to the war effort on the Home Front or served in the armed forces.

As regards British citizens interned by the Nazis, in September 1942 the Germans sent 2,000 British-born civilians from the Channel Islands to internment camps in Germany. Another 200 were deported in January 1943, as a reprisal for a British commando raid.

In 1941-2 approximately 130,000 civilians from Allied countries living and working in colonies invaded by the Japanese were interned. These included men, women and children from the Netherlands, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the USA. The camps varied in size; some were segregated according to gender or race but there were also many camps of mixed gender. One of the largest un-segregated camps was the Stanley internment camp in Hong Kong, which held 2,800 mainly British internees. Unlike prisoners of war, the internees were not compelled to work, but they were held in harsh conditions in primitive camps. Brutality by the Japanese guards was common and death rates were high.

Internment was also carried out in the USA after the Americans entered the war in December 1941. Some 100,000 Japanese-Americans living on the west coast of America were interned, often in very poor conditions.

Trump didnt propose a solution that addressed the basic issue

It's a move that resonates with his emotions and that of his supporters.  Who's to say that wasn't his real intention?  The fact that it couldn't work was secondary.

donny osmond    02 Feb 17 09:15 
pity your comprehension is so poor saddo

you could join if if it was better instead of having to post silly stuff




The thread title is correct donny. It could have ended at that but you are trying to say Khan is not a hypocrite in this instance. Clydebank finally admits he is really, but then goes on to make mitigating excuses for the hypocrisy. Please do tell me what I failed to understand.

my comment was directed to your comment

once again your comprehension lets you down

saddo I think the petition is ridiculous.  I think I've made that clear from the get go.  I think Sadiq Khan showed a lack of integrity in signing it, which wasn't clear from the OP, but I understand why he did it.

The fact that it couldn't work was secondary

So a solution that cannot work is secondary? So you are saying political actions should resonate with what poeple want, but its only secondary that they also 'help in achieving' what the people want?

So a solution that cannot work is secondary?

No, but if the objective was to resonate then it is a solution to that objective, rather than the stated objective.  The first objective being to resonate and the second objective actually being secondary.

If you can fool the public into thinking something will work it's better than something that works that the public don't believe will work. (for you)

worked in Ebbw Vale anyway

Worth posting again the article on Ebbw Vale.  The area in Wales that most benefitted from being in the EU, returned the highest percentage of people wanting to leave it, which is what I mean by the first objective being to resonate with voters.  Trump does what the man on the street is thinking.  That it makes no difference to the stated objective is secondary.  If that's what they are thinking and they believe it's the solution, for Trump, that is the best solution.

What’s the EU ever done for us?” Zak Kelly, 21, asks me this standing next to a brand new complex of buildings and facilities that wouldn’t look out of place in Canary Wharf. It’s not Canary Wharf, though, it’s Ebbw Vale, a former steel town of 18,000 people in the heart of the Welsh valleys, where 62% of the population – the highest proportion in Wales – voted Leave.

To go there – along a new dual carriageway – and stand next to the town’s new sixth form and training college, a glass and steel architectural showpiece next to its new leisure centre, a few hundred yards away from a new train station, is to stare into the abyss of the UK’s failed Remain campaign.

Even Kelly, who has just finished a training session on a brand new football pitch, backtracks slightly after asking that question. “Well, I know … they built all this,” he says, and motions his head at the impressive facilities that are all around us. “But we put in more money than we get out, don’t we?”

We’re standing on the site of the old steelworks, a toxic industrial wasteland left rotting when the plant, once the biggest in Europe, finally closed in 2002. It’s now “The Works” – a flagship £350m regeneration project funded by the EU redevelopment fund and home to the £33.5m Coleg Gwent, where some of the 29,000 Welsh apprenticeships the European Social Fund pays for help young people learn a trade. Add in a new £30m railway line and £80m improvement to the Heads of the Valley road from other pots of EU money, and the town centre has just received £12.2m for various upgrades and improvements.

Ebbw Vale, left devastated when the steelworks closed, has had more European money poured into it than perhaps any other small town in Britain. But according to the figures Kelly heard, “we get out £7m a year from the EU and we put in £19m”. Anyway, he says, “it was time for a change”.

And change is now coming. But what it will mean for an area dependent on inward investment and with the highest unemployment in Wales – nearly 40% of people are either unemployed or not available for work – has yet to be seen. In the local fish and chip shop, Deborah Basini says that she voted Remain. “All my family did. I’m very worried about what’s going to happen to inward investment. I’m 60 – this isn’t going to affect me. It’ll be my grandchildren who are not yet born.” Her customers, however, thought differently. “There was only one word people had on their mind: immigration. They didn’t look at the facts at all.”

Are there any immigrants in Ebbw Vale? “No! Hardly any. And the ones there are are all working, all contributing. It’s just … illogical. I just don’t think people looked at the facts at all.”

It’s a town with almost no immigrants that voted to get the immigrants out. A town that has been showered with EU cash that no longer wants to be part of the EU. A town that holds some of the clues, perhaps, in understanding quite how spectacularly the Remain message failed to land. There’s a sense of injustice that is far greater than the sum of the facts, and the political landscape has fractured and split. Zak Kelly says that many of his friends, in what is Nye Bevan’s old constituency, voted Ukip.

Same followed yesterday with Ed Miliband.  He doesn't want to vote for Article 50, he thinks it's a bad idea, but he knows what he thinks is best for the poor is not what the poor man on the street thinks is best.  At least that is what he is saying.  Of course he may be playing a tactical long game, realising he can't win now, in which case his stated objective, is not his actual objective

Maybe Trump is the master persuader......

The article is a bit long but is an interesting read.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/156532225711/the-persuasion-filter-and-immigration


The Persuasion Filter and Immigration
Posted January 29th, 2017 @ 8:02am in #Trump #immigration #Obama #Islam #Terrorism

President Trump has issued temporary immigration orders that ban citizens from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. This is a good opportunity to test the Persuasion Filter against what you might call the Hitler Filter.

For new readers of this blog, my starting point is the understanding that human brains did not evolve to show us reality. We aren’t that smart. Instead, our brains create little movies in our heads, and yours can be completely different from mine. We see that situation now. Half the country thinks President Trump is well on his way to becoming a Hitler-like dictator. But many other Americans think Trump is an effective business person with good intentions. They can’t both be right.

I use the word “filter” to describe an optional way of looking at the world. A good filter is one that makes you happy and does a good job of predicting what happens next. Let’s use that standard to compare the Hitler Filter to what I call the Persuasion Filter.

The Hitler filter clearly isn’t making people happy. The people watching that movie are protesting in the streets. Meanwhile, the people who see Trump as a good negotiator looking out for the country are quite happy with the job he has done so far. The Persuasion Filter says Trump opens with a big first offer and negotiates back to something reasonable. If you don’t recognize the method, it looks crazy, random, and racist.

But what about predictions?

The Persuasion Filter predicting Trump would become president when the Hitler Filter thought he had no chance. Now we have another chance to test the predictive power of the Persuasion Filter.

If Trump is a Master Persuader, as I have been telling you for over a year, he just solved his biggest problem with immigration and you didn’t notice. The biggest problem is that his supporters on the right want more immigration control than he can (or should) deliver while his many critics on the left want far less. Normally when you negotiate there is only one party on the other side. But in this case, Trump is negotiating two extremes in two different directions. It’s the toughest possible situation. Best case scenario is that 40% of the country want you dead when it’s all over. Not good.

So what does a President Trump do when he is in an impossible situation?

According to the Hitler Filter, he does more Hitler stuff, such as being more extreme than anyone expected with his recent immigration declarations. That filter accurately predicted that he would be “worse” once elected. Sure enough, his temporary immigration ban is more extreme than most people expected. If things never get worse from this point on, we would have to question the Hitler Filter. But if things get worse still, the Hitler Filter is looking good.

Compare to the Persuasion Filter. This filter says Trump always opens with an extreme first offer so he has room to negotiate to the middle. The temporary ban fits that model perfectly. On the immigration topic alone, both the Hitler Filter and the Persuasion Filter predict that we get to exactly the point we are at today. Let’s call that a tie in terms of predictive power. The hard part is predicting what happens next.

The Persuasion Filter says Trump is negotiating with his critics on the extreme right at the same time as he is negotiating with his critics on the left. He needed one “opening offer” that would set up both sides for the next level of persuasion. And he found it. You just saw it.

The left sees Trump’s executive orders on immigration as pure Hitler behavior. That gives him plenty of room to negotiate to the middle. The initial orders are too broad, and clearly target too many of the wrong people. As he fixes those special cases he will be moving away from the Hitler model toward the middle. And people are more influenced by the DIRECTION of things than the absolute position of things. As long as he is moving away from the Hitler analogy, people will chill out, even if they think he was too close to that position before. Direction matters.

Trump’s temporary immigration ban set a mental anchor in your brain that is frankly shocking. It will make his eventual permanent immigration plan (”extreme vetting”) look tame by comparison. The Persuasion Filter says that’s his strategy. Because that’s ALWAYS his strategy. He acts the same way every time. He wrote a book about it. He talks about it publicly. Then he does it right in front of us, over and over. And no matter how many times he does it, half the country still thinks the opening offer is the real one.

I’ve mentioned in this blog a few times that persuasion works even when the subject of the persuasion recognizes all the techniques as they happen. This is a perfect case. The left has been watching Trump make big offers and dial them back for the past year. And yet they still think this time it will be different. The Persuasion Filter says that 70-year old Trump will act the same way today as he has for the past several decades: Big first offer, then negotiate.

But what about Trump’s critics on the far right who want more extreme immigration? Trump needs to negotiate with them too. And he is. He did that by showing them that his temporary offer was so extreme that people took to the streets. The system (America) is actively trying to eject Trump like some sort of cancer cell. And the worse it gets, with protests and whatnot, the more leverage Trump has to tell his far right supporters that he has gone as far as the country will let him go. He needed that. The protests are working in his favor. He couldn’t negotiate with the extreme right without them.

Are Trump’s temporary immigration plans chaotic? Yes. Do they hurt innocent people who were minding their own business? Yes, temporarily at least. Did he scare the pants off of half the country? Yes. Will there be lots of unintended damage from Trump’s immigration orders? Yes. No honest person should deny the cost component of the equation. It’s ugly. But don’t stop with a half-pinion. If you want a full opinion on immigration you have to compare those costs to the potential benefits that include fewer terrorist acts and avoiding Europe’s refugee problems. Are people making that comparison?

No.

On Twitter I am seeing lots of well-meaning liberals tweet charts showing that no one from the banned countries has ever been a terrorist in the United States. But Trump isn’t trying to solve the PAST. He’s trying to reduce risks in the future. And the future has risks that are unlike the past.

If you want your president to solve only problems that have already happened in the past, we can ignore any potential climate change issues too. Human activity has never warmed the planet too much in the past, so why worry about it in the future? The point is that we try to stop problems before they happen, not after. Terrorism and climate change are similar in that one narrow way. They are both problems of the future, not the past. You can’t look to history to figure out how to solve either one of them. Dinosaurs didn’t drive cars and ISIS didn’t always have hobby-sized drones that can drop bombs.

On a related topic, President Obama and past leaders have gone out of their way to avoid labelling Islam as the problem behind terrorism. That makes sense on a rational level because only a tiny percentage of Muslims are terrorists. Obama wanted to avoid causing a religious war that pitted Christians against Muslims. So he avoided saying “radical Islamic terror,” for example. One could make a good case that Obama’s approach was the wisest path. It allowed us to stay on good relations with our Muslim allies and it probably depressed recruitment for the terrorists, at least a little bit. Smart, right?

Now we see Trump doing exactly the opposite. His words and actions seem to be intentionally mixing the Muslim “brand” with the terrorist “brand.” How does that make sense with the Persuasion Filter? I’ll tell you how.

President Obama’s approach was to give a free pass to Islam in general and to any Muslims that were just minding their own business. But the unintended consequence is that Muslims have less incentive to police their own ranks. Trump changed that. Now if you want to stay out of the fight against terrorism it will cost you.

So Trump has created a situation – or will soon – in which the peaceful Muslims will either have to do a lot more to help law enforcement find the terrorists in their midst or else live with an increasingly tainted brand. Trump is issuing no free passes for minding your own business. His model makes you part of the solution or part of the problem. No one gets to sit this one out.

I’m not smart enough to know whether President Obama or President Trump have the best strategy in this regard. But both strategies are rational.

—

Scott Adams

Co-founder of WhenHub

Author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

So Trump has created a situation – or will soon – in which the peaceful Muslims will either have to do a lot more to help law enforcement find the terrorists in their midst or else live with an increasingly tainted brand. Trump is issuing no free passes for minding your own business. His model makes you part of the solution or part of the problem. No one gets to sit this one out.

............

I fully agree have been saying this for weeks.

It's an interesting article.  There will be a lot of people, myself included, who think it's been a long time coming.  Not the policy but the general get tough rhetoric, that is sadly lacking in the vast majority of European mainstream media and politics.  It's a price worth paying, rather than pander to the sensitivities of Muslims, who won't take hardly any responsibility for the violent sub culture they have created.  It's just a pity the person proposing getting tough is such a narcissistic loudmouth.

Double standards I agree....Where were the lefties when the whole russian paralympic team was banned from Rio?

Anti Semitism has been with us for thousands of years. From 2k years ago we can add an attempt to wipe out Christians too. (See recent attempts by Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Hitler, Communism ,Islam, the EU!)

The methods differ but the end game is the same.