Plus the fact that risky DIY abortion methods increase in areas with abortion restrictions. On balance it is far more sensible to keep the current rules I think.

 

I just worry that after reading recently about a premature baby surviving having been born 4 days after the current baby age that abortion is no longer allowed iirc, about whether or not the cut off point should be lowered a little bit.

 

Anyway there is probably a thread to talk about the abortion debate so sorry for rambling on about it here.

 

About the new story of this announcement about the Trump administration declaring abortion, pre marriage sex and gay marriage being 'wrong', I really hope it isn't true but we shall see whether it is or not soon enough.

Edited February 2, 20178 yr by The Sultan

The only one I agree with is that 'life begins at conception'. Abortion (not in case of rape or incest or if it would risk the life of the mother if it was born should definitely be allowed) is a big argument, if I am being honest I would swing towards pro-life outside those two cases. Depends on the individual case though.

 

The other two are just completely idiotic and backward to try and say as 'wrong'.

 

Unless we have vaginas, our opinions are immaterial in this matter.

Unless we have vaginas, our opinions are immaterial in this matter.

 

Yup and thats why I haven't thought about it much until now tbh, I just think of it in terms of potential human lives being extinguished and it is sad but I agree it is a necessary thing to happen both for the welfare of the child and the mother in abortion cases as I said.

 

And yes I ageee, the power to change or keep abortion laws should be decided by females, certainly not males like most of the Trump administration.

Unless we have vaginas, our opinions are immaterial in this matter.

Does that mean that women MPs shouldn't have voted on the age of consent for gay men?

Does that mean that women MPs shouldn't have voted on the age of consent for gay men?

 

The number of men in politics far outstrips women, and besides, to be perfectly honest only gay men should have had an opinion on that - but that is an impracticability.

As nobody else has done so, I might as well mention the latest lies to come from the Trump camp. One of his advisers, Kellyanne Conway, the woman responsible for the phrase "alternative truth", criticised reporters in a television interview for not mentioning the similarities between Trump's ban on people arriving from seven specific countries with Obama's response to the Bowling Green massacre.

 

There are several reasons for this "failure". First, there was no Bowling Green massacre in the first place, so Obama couldn't possibly have responded to it. What actually happened is that two people from a place called Bowling Green were convicted of terrorist-related offences. Those offences did not include any plans for attacks on American soil, let alone any actual attack. Obama did not respond to the convictions with a ban. He merely ordered extra checks on would-be arrivals from Iraq as that was the country of origin of the two people concerned.

 

Of course, she could just have been hopelessly confused and misinformed. On the other hand, it could have been more sinister and a further example of alternative truth. The interviewer didn't challenge her, but that is not really surprising. It is reasonable to assume that the interviewer's initial reaction would have been to think "What Bowling Green massacre? I don't remember such an attack." However, asking her what she was talking about could have made the interviewer look stupid if Conway had gone on to provide further details of a genuine massacre. Therefore, it was probably safer to keep quiet.

 

As a result, Trump's team - even if accidentally - has now identified a further way of spreading their lies. Just make up an event on the assumption that it is unlikely that an interviewer could possibly prove immediately that said event didn't happen.

 

While on the subject of Trump's ban, his response to the latest legal judgement against him was typically unpresidential with him describing the judge involved as a "so-called judge". He still seems to think that the president should somehow be above the law. Somebody needs to try and get it through Trump's thick skull that he is bound by the law just the same as anybody else.

That woman and the whole team is a bunch of class A morons. What else is new

Kellyanne Conway is the TRUE STAR of this wagon train to hell. I have to give her some respect for how masterfully she manipulates the media and how they report stories, even if it's utterly abhorrent and she is doing a huge disservice to herself, her fellow American's, the future of her country and indeed the world and of course her GENDER to boot.

Kellyanne Conjob is terrifying and yet somehow not even the worst thing about this past fortnight

Trump has now said ANY negative poll is fake news...

 

Extremtly worrying that he can easily disregard anything that disagrees with him just to protect his ego. Of course there is the actual fact that polls are becoming less accurate as has been seen with Brexit and both the UK and US election but, again, the manner in which he makes the point is scary. The fact that he says that ALL negative polls shouldn't be listened to and that he only mentions the polls that are negative to him too.

The American election polls said that Hillary Clinton would win the popular vote. She did.

Trump has now said ANY negative poll is fake news...

 

Extremtly worrying that he can easily disregard anything that disagrees with him just to protect his ego. Of course there is the actual fact that polls are becoming less accurate as has been seen with Brexit and both the UK and US election but, again, the manner in which he makes the point is scary. The fact that he says that ALL negative polls shouldn't be listened to and that he only mentions the polls that are negative to him too.

 

yes polls are never accurate and social media is never a good signal as to who may be the winning majority.

So Donald Trump has managed to go all Machiavelli on us with his war on the media, with the media shooting themselves, and more importantly, the entire country, in the foot.

 

So on Monday, Donald Trump, being Donald Trump, told a blatant lie. He said that terrorist attacks are so widespread that the "dishonest media" weren't even reporting them. A list of 78 attacks were later posted which the White House said the media did not report. Now this list included some terrorist attacks that everyone knows, like the ones in Nice, Orlando & San Bernadino that were hardly off the news when they happened, so the media have been spending the last few days gleefully pointing out that yes indeed, they did indeed cover all of these terror attacks, and have been running articles listing all the times that they did indeed cover these stories. Hey, look at that Trump guy, he's so stupid!

 

Yet at no point have I hardly anyone make this point - maybe this is exactly what he wanted the media to do.

 

Think about it - he has just convinced nearly every media to spend the next few days writing about all the terror attacks that have taken place in the past few years, and for the next few days it will be all that will be on anyone's mind. His controversial "Muslim ban" was brought in on the claim that it would stop terrorists from entering the country, and with the media helpfully reminding everyone of all the terrorist attacks that have happened in the past few years (many of which had links to Islamic extremists), he is going to get the public firmly on his side, especially as the Order goes through the courts.

 

When it comes to Trump and his team, nothing he does is ever by accident. Even the things that look like mistakes are Machiavellian mind games, creating zero-sum games where he cannot lose.

It is also worth looking at any new mad executive orders issued while the press's attention is elsewhere.

So Donald Trump has managed to go all Machiavelli on us with his war on the media, with the media shooting themselves, and more importantly, the entire country, in the foot.

 

So on Monday, Donald Trump, being Donald Trump, told a blatant lie. He said that terrorist attacks are so widespread that the "dishonest media" weren't even reporting them. A list of 78 attacks were later posted which the White House said the media did not report. Now this list included some terrorist attacks that everyone knows, like the ones in Nice, Orlando & San Bernadino that were hardly off the news when they happened, so the media have been spending the last few days gleefully pointing out that yes indeed, they did indeed cover all of these terror attacks, and have been running articles listing all the times that they did indeed cover these stories. Hey, look at that Trump guy, he's so stupid!

 

Yet at no point have I hardly anyone make this point - maybe this is exactly what he wanted the media to do.

 

Think about it - he has just convinced nearly every media to spend the next few days writing about all the terror attacks that have taken place in the past few years, and for the next few days it will be all that will be on anyone's mind. His controversial "Muslim ban" was brought in on the claim that it would stop terrorists from entering the country, and with the media helpfully reminding everyone of all the terrorist attacks that have happened in the past few years (many of which had links to Islamic extremists), he is going to get the public firmly on his side, especially as the Order goes through the courts.

 

When it comes to Trump and his team, nothing he does is ever by accident. Even the things that look like mistakes are Machiavellian mind games, creating zero-sum games where he cannot lose.

This point has been made countless times within the media since November! Like, to the point where it's almost a tired meme verging on having been discredited - (try searching "distract from:stephenkb" on Twitter for a track of how long it's been going)

 

The idea that the Muslim ban was an attempt to distract the media rather than a main policy of his is...not really one that stands up. The man (by a great deal of evidence) generally has the beliefs of the last person he spoke to. His tweets all evidence a man who reacts with a knee jerk rather than careful considered analysis of how he can be Machiavellian. The number of situations where there has been no conceivable advantage in what's he's been tweeting, or his actions...how did it help him to brag about his crowd sizes in front of the CIA Memorial Wall? Certainly not his relationship with the CIA, which was the whole aim of the event.

 

And for what it's worth the US media is doing a pretty good job of highlighting other stuff that's apparently being distracted from - take the coverage of how the Republicans have painted themselves into a corner over abolishing Obamacare. It may be the case that media coverage and discussion of what he does is helping him, but all the testimony from people who've worked with him, his near-pathological inability to stick to a message (the deeply telling anecdotes from his team pre-election are pretty insightful on this - http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/...inal-days.html) and how he's responded to immediate scandal is that this is a lizard brain who shoots from the hip rather than engineering a grand strategy.

 

There isn't a grand strategy here. The US is actually led by a volatile manchild. Which if anything is more terrifying.

Bannon however - possibly.

Oh, I'm well aware of Trump using the distraction strategy throughout his campaign and well into him taking office, but my point is that this one is less of a distraction and more towards playing the media to inadvertently drum up public support for his unpopular executive orders.

This discussion reminds of the Adam Curtis documentary where he stated that Vladislav Surkov (one of President Putin's advisers) was simply orchestrating a circus of misinformation designed to keep people totally confused and disorientated.

 

To quote AC

His [Vladislav Surkov]aim is to undermine peoples' perceptions of the world, so they never know what is really happening.

 

Surkov turned Russian politics into a bewildering, constantly changing piece of theater. He sponsored all kinds of groups, from neo-Nazi skinheads to liberal human rights groups. He even backed parties that were opposed to President Putin.

 

But the key thing was, that Surkov then let it be known that this was what he was doing, which meant that no one was sure what was real or fake. As one journalist put it: "It is a strategy of power that keeps any opposition constantly confused."

 

A ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it is undefinable. It is exactly what Surkov is alleged to have done in the Ukraine this year. In typical fashion, as the war began, Surkov published a short story about something he called non-linear war. A war where you never know what the enemy are really up to, or even who they are. The underlying aim, Surkov says, is not to win the war, but to use the conflict to create a constant state of destabilized perception, in order to manage and control.

 

Oh, I'm well aware of Trump using the distraction strategy throughout his campaign and well into him taking office, but my point is that this one is less of a distraction and more towards playing the media to inadvertently drum up public support for his unpopular executive orders.

My point is that he isn't doing it as a strategy, and never really has been - before or after the campaign. It's a mistake to treat him as a rational actor rather than an instinctive reactor with a hypersensitivity to slights, a thin-skinned pride and a taste for vengeance. He only has strategy to the extent the last person he spoke to has strategy. Even then he is highly prone to revealing 'behind the scenes' justifications in the process of doing the few things that aren't knee-jerk responses - this Twitter thread is pretty illuminating in that regard.

 

Bannon certainly seems to have a grasp of your theory, so it's happening sometimes. But he's not always the last person Trump spoke to - and Trump doesn't always get when not to say what Bannon told him. It would be a real mistake to view everything Trump does through the lens of a Machiavellian conspiracy.

SEE YOU IN COURT THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!

 

I genuinely had to double check that was not posted off of a parody account :rofl: