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It's not just Peter Thiel but anyone of sound mind -- the top 5 countries by Muslim-majority population are not included. * Indonesia 204,847,000 (87.2%) * Pa
by ihsw 10y ago
It's not just Peter Thiel but anyone of sound mind -- the top 5 countries by Muslim-majority population are not included.
* Indonesia 204,847,000 (87.2%)
* Pakistan 178,097,000 (96.4%)
* India 172,245,158 (14.2%)
* Bangladesh 145,312,000 (90%)
* Nigeria 75,728,000 (47.9%)
If Indonesia suddenly became plagued by radical Islamic terrorism then it would be on the list too.
The seven countries targeted by the immigration ban have been either failed states or antagonistic to the US for the past 30 years, it is quite plain to say that it makes sense for Trump's companies -- and various other companies across a wide swath of industries -- to refrain from conducting business there. To say that other Muslim-majority countries aren't on the list due to conflict of interest is to deny this simple logic.
Plenty of other Muslim-majority countries have kept a lid on their populace by maintaining adequate internal security within their borders and providing valuable counter-terrorism intelligence to to the US, meanwhile the seven "countries of concern" have not.
- jacquesm 10y agoConsider: (1) this could be just a trial balloon (2) there are no other war torn countries on the list (and there are many) (3) many of the stated reasons for this ban appear to be total nonsense, so people will start looking for alternative explanations.
- chickenfries 10y agoYou think Indonesia doesn't have problems with terrorism? (Edit: also, Pakistan?). The idea that this is a reasonable counterterrorism measure by any means is a farce that doesn't stand up to the lightest of scrutiny. It's a test of executive power, perhaps for something more sinister [1]. [1] https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-for-a-coup-e024990891d5#.dk1h2qrd7 https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-for-a-coup-e...
- thenipper 10y agoOr Nigeria?
- sfifs 10y agoNot terrorism problems affecting the US - only Indonesia and Australia.
- saosebastiao 10y agoThe countries that were banned also do not have terrorism problems affecting the US.
- MikusR 10y agoThen why is US bombing them?
- simplyluke 10y agoExcellent question many of us have been asking for the past decade or so.
- wybiral 10y agoA long history of internal conflicts turned into messy proxy wars.
- egopulsus 10y agoare we bombing indonesia or pakistan? dont think we are
- glomph 10y agoThis comment is increadable.
- chickenfries 10y agoSo explain Pakistan and Saudi Arabia being left out?
- wu-ikkyu 10y ago$
- striking 10y agoIt's a list inherited from the Obama administration. The best time to argue about whether this list stands up to scrutiny or not was years ago. Edit: I'm not making comments about Trump's actions (specifically, I'm not defending what he did). As for whether this particular list stands up to scrutiny, that question should have been asked a long time ago.
- jstalin 10y agoAnd signed by Obama himself.
- chickenfries 10y agoThe second best time is today.
- Daishiman 10y agoTrump's use of this measure, unlike his predecessor, signals an intent that wasn't there in the prior administration. That's why people are concerned.
- GeneralMayhem 10y agoWell, sort of. Obama was president when the list was created, but it was forced through by a Republican-majority Congress. http://www.snopes.com/trump-immigration-order-obama/ http://www.snopes.com/trump-immigration-order-obama/
- lol214365 10y agoObama had veto power. How did republicans force it through? What happened was Obama signed the bill imposing exceptions to the Visa Waiver Program in December 2015, and then his own DHS added the current list of middle eastern nations in February 2016. It is the most tenuous argument to act like that was the work of the GOP.
- GeneralMayhem 10y agoIt was a rider on the omnibus funding bill. If that bill doesn't pass, the government shuts down. It's effectively veto-proof.
- ihsw 10y agoPakistan and Indonesia maintain good relations with the US and they are able to provide reassurances that radical members of their Muslim populace won't try to spread Jihad across the world.
- egopulsus 10y agoIt's very simple, those countries are not actively engaged in exporting terrorism especially pertaining to isil.
- wavefunction 10y agoWhy were Saudi Arabia and Egypt left off the list? That's where most of the 9/11 hijackers and planners hailed from. I think you're hearing echoes in your "sound mind."
- ihsw 10y agoBecause Saudi Arabia and Egypt have kept a lid on their populace by maintaining adequate internal security within their borders and providing valuable counter-terrorism intelligence to to the US, meanwhile the seven "countries of concern" have not. Six of the seven countries are failed states and the other openly calls for the US' destruction.
- CydeWeys 10y agoYes, adequate internal security like with Metrojet Flight 9268, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrojet_Flight_9268 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrojet_Flight_9268
- lebanon_tn 10y agoShould the US block immigration from France? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks
- CydeWeys 10y agoTo be clear, I'm not arguing in favor of any of these blanket bans. But yes, that is a question that someone who is in favor of them would have to answer.
- freehunter 10y agoYou mean the Saudi Arabia that was so complicit in 9/11 that Republicans in Congress passed a law saying private citizens could sue the government of Saudi Arabia for damages caused by 9/11? That's your definition of "keeping a lid" and "maintaining internal security"?
- mkagenius 10y ago> Pakistan They were the homes for Osama bin Laden(s), weren't they?
- cowsandmilk 10y agoIf Trump had found a way to ban muslims from those countries, he would have. Trump tried to find a way to institute this ban such that it wasn't blatantly a muslim ban. He decided that if he used a country list from the Obama administration, he could use that as a defense. This is generally how people try to create racist laws in modern times. The Voting Rights Act wasn't created because states created laws saying "minorities should be discouraged from voting". It was created because politicians came up with laws that targeted minorities without explicitly naming them. Thiel went to Stanford Law, he knows this, he is just trying to recover because he still doesn't know what to do about the fact that Trump was talking literally, despite Thiel's insistence repeatedly that Trump was talking symbolically. If this isn't a muslim ban, Thiel can continue to insist that Trump's promise of such a ban was not literal.
- wheelerwj 10y agoWhy did you leave out saudi Arabia? nearly 100% muslim, home to over 50% of the terrorist who have attcked the US. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/notesanddefs.html?fieldkey=2122&term=Religions https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
- rz2k 10y agoThe pattern is looks like number of people, and 30 million is less than 75 million.
- aptwebapps 10y agoAn incomplete Muslim ban is still a Muslim ban. He's not banning any other religions as far as I know.
- aeturnum 10y agoI think it's correct to say this executive order is not a, "global Muslim ban," but it's clearly focused on specifically stopping Muslims from coming to the US. The "logic" for the countries selected is that they were already "countries of concern." [1] However, the executive order is written in such a way as to allow religious minorities in, even though they're from a "country of concern." The implication is that what makes the countries, "of concern," is their Muslim majorities. Otherwise, it would be unsafe to let in other religious groups as well. There are all kinds of explanations for this, of course. The administration may have wanted to ban everyone, but didn't want the heat from the Christian right. They may have wanted to specify Christians instead of minorities, but they would look even more anti-semitic than they already do [2]. They may have written a sloppy executive order and not forseen how it would play. They may also have used a list of countries from the Obama era as cover and written the order such that it would focus on Muslims with plausible deniability about that focus. They've already said they can add more countries to the list. I think pointing out that the executive order could have banned more Muslims is worth saying but somewhat misses the point. The people who wrote this clearly think adherents to Islam are more dangerous than other believers. The fact that most Muslims can still get to the US does not change the nature of the order. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/29/politics/how-the-trump-administration-chose-the-7-countries/ http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/29/politics/how-the-trump-adminis... [2] http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/28/team_trump_just_all_lives_matter_ed_the_holocaust.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/28/team_trump...
- nkurz 10y agoThe people who wrote this clearly think adherents to Islam are more dangerous than other believers. I think it would be more exact to say that the writers believe some self-identified Muslims are sufficiently dangerous that it justifies temporarily banning anyone associated with certain Muslim-majority countries from coming into the US until we can distinguish those who wish to cause harm from those who do not. And since it's difficult to imagine how one could ever distinguish between these groups perfectly, and since other countries can be added to the list, it seems possible that this will lead to a permanent ban on Muslims entering the US. I find their precept reasonable: there are individuals from these countries who claim to be Muslim and who intend to enter the US and cause us harm --- possibly because we bombed their cousin's wedding, killing half their relatives and maiming half the rest. It seems likely that our current approach to immigration is not sufficient to prevent these harmful individuals from entering the US. So what should we do? Personally, I think we should stop killing people with drones, since I can't see how this is actually helping the situation. But given that previous administrations have killed a lot of people, and given that some of their surviving relatives are likely to seek revenge, is there anything we can do to protect ourselves? Or is the threat overblown, and any attempt at mitigation is worse than the damage the these (potentially non-existent) terrorists can do to us?
- mcguire 10y ago"...have kept a lid on their populace..." Did you really mean to say that?
- RockyMcNuts 10y ago12/17/2015 “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.” https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-statement-on-preventing-muslim-immigration https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-... 1/28/16/ Spicer: “Trump is doing what he said he would do” http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/316730-spicer-trump-is-doing-what-he-said-he-would-do http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/316730-spicer-tru... (also, Trump retweeting various people saying he's keeping all his promises in this regard) 1/29/16 Trump: “This is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting.” http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/29/14432362/trump-muslim-ban-statement http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/29/14432362/tr... Sure, it's not targeted at Muslims, it's a ban for people from certain Muslim-majority countries with exceptions for non-Muslims. And then you have Giuliani saying Trump asked him how to do a Muslim ban legally, and Flynn Jr. calling it a necessary Muslim ban https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9GKL6i38pI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9GKL6i38pI http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/michael-g-flynn-deletes-twitter-after-posting-about-muslim-ban http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/michael-g-flynn-delete... Gonna go out on a limb and say anyone 'of sound mind' as you say would say, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck...
- anigbrowl 10y agoWell there was that thing about Trump calling for a total Muslim ban a little over a yer ago: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-statement-on-preventing-muslim-immigration https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-... Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on. [...] It's entirely reasonable to consider a politician's stated aspirations as well as their more limited actions in office, since the latter are often incremental steps towards a larger goal. Please don't argue but trying to bury people in irrelevant facts. That tactic is called a Gish Gallop and makes you look like you're arguing in bad faith. Considering the administration's on-again off-again relationship with basic concepts of truth and fact, nitpicking arguments are best avoided. It cannot be that the administration gets to decide when to cite facts and figures or when to make sweeping and inaccurate generalizations; if critics are to be held to a different standard of truth from the administration, then we have a government that asserts exclusive domain over the notion of truth itself. Are you sure that's something you want to support?
- nkurz 10y agountil our country's representatives can figure out what is going on What do you feel about the argument that we've "figured out" that Muslims coming from these larger countries are not a significant threat, but that our visa and refugee policies are not yet sufficiently reliable for us to say this about the countries that we've recently been bombing? Do you think there is a legitimate threat, but the measures in the executive order are insufficient to prevent it? That there is a threat, but that there are no positive steps we can take to mitigate it? That the best way of countering the threat is to embrace potentially dangerous immigrants from these countries? Or that there is no particular threat and there is no need to change the current system?
- anigbrowl 10y agoI feel it's kind of bullshit because we already perform exhaustive checking on applicants for refugee status, and while it's certainly harder for someone coming from a war zone to provide official documentation of the risks they face, there is abundant detailed guidance for consular officers and other immigration-focused employees of the government to assess risk factors. Unverifiable claims can frequently be validated through circumstantial evidence like medical inspections. If you don't mind legal reading, most large cities have law libraries and most large law libraries keep copies of Bender's Immigration bulletin or Interpreter Releases, two professional journals which chronicle legal proceedings in immigration cases. You may find it instructive to study some in order to get a better idea of the quality and weight of evidence offered in such proceedings. Our Visa and refugee policies are the product of over a century of operational and historical experience. It's not as if we've never been faced with such complexities before and can't figure out where to begin. The claim that we can't figure this out right now is literally an appeal to ignorance. The reality is that we have tough and elaborate screening procedures in place already, and abundant data on the risk factors.
- hsod 10y agoWould you be OK with calling it a "partial Muslim ban"? While it's true that it doesn't ban all Muslims, it seems obvious that it was crafted to ensure that the vast majority of the people it banned would be Muslims.