Israeli settlers are despicable, but even in current government those who support them are minority freaks(who Hamas has empowered very much after October 7th).
Also it is a two way street, there is also a problem of Palestinian settlers, which while I do want to highlight is separate and in no way justifies the Israeli ones, is still a real problem and harnesses a lot of bad publicity when Israel destroys said illegal settlements.
Sure, they only have several ministers in the government, Likud politicians show up at settler events, they keep changing the laws to be more in favor of settlers, etc etc...
As for Palestinian settlers, where would those even be?
What? Settlers are totally tolerated and supported by the state. Look at Ariel, it is a fully established town settled almost 50 years ago with a university that operates in every practical way as part of Israel. If you think the government doesn't support them, what would support look like?
I don’t think we can truly compare the missile attacks of Hamas vs the bombing campaigns of Israel
Look at any photo of any neighborhood in Israel, is there anywhere that remotely looks similar to the pile of rocks that Gaza looks like now?
Universities, hospitals, so much infrastructure, all gone. So much of Gaza is now people living in tents. Israel destroyed so much civilian infrastructure that existed.
Look, I don't disagree, but American cities looked pretty fine after WWII, and Germany was rubble. Which side gets pounded more doesn't inherently prove which side was right.
(In this case, I'm of the opinion that both sides committed clear, deliberate war crimes.)
Germany invaded most of Europe and left much of it in rubble. You're picking a very weird, specific comparison (German vs. US cities) and leaving out the obvious comparison (German vs. Soviet or Polish cities).
Also, comparing Nazi Germany, a massively powerful industrial state, with a tiny, poor territory under foreign occupation by a vastly superior power is insane.
Gaza began the war with a more powerful army than many European countries: more soldiers, more rockets, more war-fighting infrastructure. Gaza wasn't a particularly poor place before the war, certainly not by the standards of the middle east. It had mansions and average salaries that, for some professions, were higher than average salaries in Israel. It was a net food exporter.
I claimed Hamas had a larger and more powerful military than many European countries. This is a fact.
> What? You mean countries like Monaco and Liechtenstein?
No, my claim is much stronger. I mean Hamas's army was comparable to countries like Denmark (20k active soldiers), Finland, the Czech republic (27k active) and maybe even the Netherlands (40k active). Estimates of the size of Hamas's army pre October 7 range from 20k to 40k active combatants, with US intelligence estimates converging on 30k. This is looking just at fighters and excludes Hamas's political wing.
> Simply counting the # of soldiers or rockets is disingenuous when this is obviously an asymmetric war.
Counting things like soldiers and military arsenals is the standard way to evaluate military strength. And of course there is a force asymmetry, Israel is a global power and its air force is probably the second most effective in the world. That doesn't mean we shouldn't evaluate Gaza's military the way we would any other.
> Please explain what you mean by "war-fighting infrastructure ".
Well, for example, Hamas built the largest underground military tunnel system in the known world, a vast standing army numbering in the tens of thousands, gathered plenty of intelligence on Israel, militarized their population, and has a history of combat, for starters. But it goes way beyond this, and extends to the broad financial and military support they enjoyed from the IRGC.
> "Depends on what you mean by "standards of the Middle East", but just compare Israel($52k) and Gaza ($3455) for 2023:"
I'm not comparing it to Israel, which is a standout in the middle east, and among the most technologically developed countries in the world. I'm comparing it to other middle eastern countries. It wasn't exactly destitute, despite its murderous, anti-woman, anti-gay, and antiy-jew jihadi philosophy. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE-xjBRKkPL/
> It's clear that the method of combatant recognition employed by the IDF is flawed, given they're killing aid workers and people from the UN.
Have you considered that the some aid workers were also Hamas militants? Or that the UN, through UNRWA, employed Hamas militants? Many of the so-called aid-workers israel killed turned out to actually have been part of Hamas. There is unfortunately extensive evidence that UN employees participated in the 10/7 attacks and the subsequent fighting. And Hamas uses world central kitchen and other aid organization vehicles and infrastructure, so distinguishing is not easy in the first place.
> How did you develop your understanding of this situation? And what are you trying to communicate here?
I have developed my understanding of this situation from decades of study on this topic, and at least a thousand of hours of research over the past 2.5 years. In the span of 15 years, I've gone from leading so-called pro Palestine rallies to my current positions. What I am trying to communicate is that reality is more nuanced than many (including a younger version of me) like to think. Reality is nuanced, and at odds with the picture you paint.
>No, my claim is much stronger. I mean Hamas's army was comparable to countries like Denmark (20k active soldiers), Finland, the Czech republic (27k active) and maybe even the Netherlands (40k active). Estimates of the size of Hamas's army pre October 7 range from 20k to 40k active combatants, with US intelligence estimates converging on 30k. This is looking just at fighters and excludes Hamas's political wing.
Hamas, who don't even own a single Howitzer. Much less a plane.
Stronger in munitions? One western artillery shell is worth countless Qassam rockets. The Qassam rockets are largely useless from a military perspective because you aren't going to hit anything with them.
This is an apples and oranges type comparison, except Hamas is stuck with crabapples.
Qassam rockets are not "useless." They've killed multiple people, including kids. They are relatively low-yield compared to later Grad/Fajr/M-75 type rockets Hamas used, but to say they're "useless" is a huge overstatement, and the implication that they represented Hamas's entire arsenal is wrong.
The reality is that Hamas also had dozens if not hundreds of R-160 / M-302 medium range rockets (up to 200km) and long range Ayyash 250 rocekts (travel more than 200km).
In addition to the direct devastation the rockets cause, they also force large swaths of the Israeli population into bomb shelters, which has other military benefits for Hamas. It was part of the 10/7 strategy they employed.
People like to pretend Hamas was a tiny force. The reality is what I said: it was larger than many European militaries, with an arsenal to match.
I suggest you look up the concept of CEP, circular error probable. It's a very important measure when discussing weapons like these.
Modern western rocket artillery will strike your target from tens of kilometers away within a circle of a couple of meters.
Your typical Grad will have CEP in excess of 1.5% of range. So at 10KM you'll have only half of your rockets land within 150 meters of your target.
These are weapons where your target selection amounts to "fuck someone in that general direction". Not "better shoot at that guy before he shoots at us". Fundamentally useless for fighting wars.
The Grads can be vaguely useful, but Hamas doesn't have the launch platforms to field them as an area denial weapon as originally intended.
EDIT: and you can probably stop reading right here, I'm mostly just repeating myself after this point.
> They've killed multiple people, including kids
I never thought I'd laugh at the idea of kids being killed, but in this context it comes across as pretty hilarious. This is not a good feature in a weapon of war! In war you typically want to kill enemy soldiers, not kids.
You can point a Gazan artillery rocket towards an urban center, maybe hit someone and kill a kid. It is not feasible to hit a target more specific than that using these weapons.
You can't fire one at a smallish enemy position.
>The reality is that Hamas also had dozens if not hundreds of R-160 / M-302 medium range rockets (up to 200km) and long range Ayyash 250 rocekts (travel more than 200km).
Hamas having dozens if not hundreds of M-302s is certainly a claim I'd love to see evidence for, but even if it were true this isn't very impressive at all. These are terribly inaccurate unguided artillery rockets! Western militaries don't really have much in terms of equivalents because they're practically useless.
>People like to pretend Hamas was a tiny force. The reality is what I said: it was larger than many European militaries, with an arsenal to match.
This is a straight up lie. Hamas had a plenty of manpower, but certainly has never had an arsenal to match. Artillery rockets you can realistically only use to indiscriminately strike civilian areas are absolutely useless when fighting a war.
The whole point is that Hamas is an unconventional fighting force that does aim at civilian centers and doesn't particularly care for accuracy. You sneeringly ask me to look up CEP, as though Hamas tries to be accurate and target military installations rather than sewing terror. They know they can't go head to head against Israel militarily, and they do purposefully kill civilians (see: 10/7). I can see you laugh at kids being killed, which is horrifying!
You also scoff at the idea that Hamas had M-302s, but the reality is not only did they have them but they fired them, for example on July 9, 2014 towards Hadera. In March 2014 the IDF also siezed M-302s being smuggled into Gaza. I can go on. Your snarkiness is no substitute for research.
I wrote "people like to pretend hamas was a tiny force" and you say that's a "straight up lie." But people on this very thread have claimed that. Yes, their arsenal didn't match European countries in terms of accuracy, but in terms of raw firepower, they had lots, which is why Israel spent billions developing the iron dome.
If Hamas had the tech, they'd surely blow up the whole of Israel, including military installations. But they don't (which I agree is good) and their history and words and actions all show a desire to target and kill civilians.
The most effective air force in the world is almost certainly the American one. The second most effective air force in the world may well be the American Navy.
I don't see how that's relevant to the earlier claim, but even this claim of yours is a gross overstatement.
There was a partial blockade, not a full blockade, and this partial blockade came after Palestinians launched the second intifada. Prior to the october 7 massacre, perpetrated by Hamas and gazan civilians, tens of thousands of gazans were able to travel out of gaza through egypt and israel, where many of them worked. nearly 75,000 truckloads of food and cargo went into gaza from israel in 2022. Gaza exported lots too.
My point is that Israel had full control about exactly what Gaza was allowed to import and export (and frequently used those controls for collective punishment as well)
I don't quite see how under those circumstances, they were able to build "a more powerful army than many European countries", unless you talk about Luxembourg or the Vatican.
Yes, Israel and Egypt together controlled what Gaza was allowed to import and export - not as a form of collective punishment, but to ensure its own security. There's a huge difference between that and a "full blockade" (which is what Russia did to Mariupol early in the war), so precision matters.
In terms of Hamas's army being more powerful than that of many European countries, I'll respond to that below.
And the Wikipedia article you cite has been manipulated by a band of ideological editors and is not reliable, and has no value (inverse value?) as a citation.
The article currently has 361 references. Also the accusation they use it in arbitrary means, for collective punishment is widely shared, not just here.
Explain to me how continuously reducing the area permitted for fishing is necessary for Israel's security.
Calling the Second Intifada "sparked by Israeli massacres" reverses the basic chronology and ignores Palestinian leaders' own admissions.
1) Marwan Barghouti (Fatah leader of the uprising in the West Bank) told The New Yorker in Jan 2001:
"The explosion would have happened anyway... But Sharon provided a good excuse."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/01/29/arafats-gift
2) UK Parliament Hansard (Apr 16, 2002) quotes the semi-official PA daily Al-Ayyam (Dec 6, 2000) reporting PA communications minister Imad al-Falouji:
"the Palestinian authority had begun preparations for the outbreak of the current intifada... in accordance with instructions given by Chairman Arafat himself"
and that it was not meant merely as a protest over Sharon's visit.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2002-04-16/debates/d69...
(search within the page for "Al-Ayyam" or "Al-Falouji")
1. Ariel Sharon staged a deliberate provocation by storming the Temple Mount with hundreds of policemen.
2. Palestinians protested, and Israeli forces shot live ammunition at them, killing four Palestinian civilians. Within weeks, riots had broken out and Israel had killed dozens of Palestinian civilians.
Israeli actions were the spark, not some planned Palestinian operation.
The long-term cause of the 2nd Intifada was Israeli refusal to carry out the Oslo Accords in good faith. The Palestinians recognized Israel and agreed to give up the armed struggle for their freedom in exchange for a set process by which Israel would rapidly withdraw from the occupied territories and allow the creation of a Palestinian state. The Israelis repeatedly reneged on that throughout the 1990s, and by 2000, the Palestinians were completely disillusioned with the so-called "Peace Process."
This mixes up the first 24 hours with who launched the Intifada as a sustained campaign.
Even if you think Sharon’s Temple Mount visit was provocative and Israeli police used excessive force on Sept 29, senior Palestinian figures later said the uprising was coming anyway and was planned, and Sharon was a convenient trigger.
Also, it is not just Israelis saying this. Mainstream sources record these admissions and describe the outbreak as Palestinian violence following the visit.
You've actually hit on the most important point: Although Oslo was sold as a two-state solution, the Israelis never agreed in writing to a Palestinian state.
The Israelis showed an incredible amount of bad faith. Rabin said in one of his last speeches that there would never be a Palestinian state - only a semi-autonomous entity under Israeli control. The Israelis never halted settlement construction. After Rabin was assassinated by the Israeli Right, Netanyahu deliberately sabotaged Oslo for years (which he brags about today), refusing to withdraw from the occupied territories as agreed.
After 7 years of this, with a Palestinian state no closer at all, a top Israeli politician (soon to become PM) staged a deliberate provocation, and Israeli forces began massacring Palestinian civilians.
Of course there were thoughts in the PLO about the possibility of future armed resistance. They would have been crazy not to think about that possibility. But they preferred a negotiated two-state solution, and they tried to get it for 7 years. After the Israelis started massacring Palestinian civilians, it would have been impossible for the PLO to keep a lid on the violence.
You are switching topics because the original claim does not survive contact with the record.
You said Israeli massacres sparked the Second Intifada. Your own timeline does not name any massacre that happened before it began. The first deaths were in the clashes after Sharon’s visit. That is tragic, but it is not some prior massacre that supposedly set everything off.
Also, your Oslo framing is backwards. Oslo did not promise a Palestinian state or rapid final withdrawal. It is an interim framework that explicitly defers permanent-status issues like borders, settlements, and Jerusalem to later negotiations.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/isrplo.asp
A politician visiting a holy site under police protection is not a massacre and not a justification for launching an intifada.
Switching topics? We've been discussing the reasons for the 2nd Intifada. The Israelis reneging on Oslo was the fundamental reason for it.
> Your own timeline does not name any massacre that happened before it began.
Huh? I've mentioned the massacres that Israeli forces carried out in the aftermath of Ariel Sharon's storming of the Temple Mount several times now.
> The US-led Mitchell Report is explicit: Sharon’s Temple Mount visit did not cause the Intifada
You cite the Mitchell Report when it agrees with you, but ignore it when it disagrees with you.
The Mitchell Report explicitly states that the PLO had no premeditated plan to unleash violence.
In fact, it says that the proximal cause of the 2nd Intifada was the massacre that Israel carried out on 29 September 2000 against Palestinian protesters. Those protests were in response to Sharon's storming of the Temple Mount.
The report says that after that massacre, neither side showed restraint, which caused the violence to escalate.
So the report that you yourself are citing as an authority turns out to agree almost 100% with what I've been telling you all along.
> Oslo did not promise a Palestinian state or rapid final withdrawal.
Actually, Oslo II lays out a very specific timeline for Israeli withdrawal, to be completed within 18 months (by mid-1996!).
More generally, the Oslo Accords were sold as a rapid path to a two-state solution. If the Accords weren't about a two-state solution, then the Palestinians were completely swindled by the Israelis.
You opened with: the Second Intifada was sparked by Israeli massacres. Now your alleged massacre is Sept 29, the first day of the clashes after Sharon’s visit. That is not a prior massacre that precipitated anything, it is the opening confrontation itself, and you are laundering it with a loaded word.
On Oslo, you did not even mention it until your massacre story fell apart. And your Oslo summary is wrong on the text. Oslo II explicitly defers permanent-status issues (Jerusalem, settlements, borders, refugees, etc.) and excludes them from PA jurisdiction. The 18-month line is about phased interim jurisdiction, not a guaranteed state or full withdrawal. This was also obvious to everyone alive at the time and was widely reported. It's only now that people like you are attempting to rewrite history.
https://www.peaceagreements.org/agreements/410/
Read the Mitchell Report you keep invoking.
- It describes Sept 29 as large demonstrations where Palestinians threw stones and Israeli police used rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition, killing 4 and injuring about 200. Calling that a massacre is absurd. It was an armed clash, premeditated and planned by the palestinians, so not only was there no massacre, but the Palestinians themselves say armed clash was premeditated and Sharon's visit was just a pretext.
- The Sharon visit did not cause the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
Also, Sharon visiting a holy site under police protection is not violence. Mitchell even says holy places must be accessible to all believers. The choice to turn that into an uprising was a choice.
> You opened with: the Second Intifada was sparked by Israeli massacres. Now your alleged massacre is Sept 29, the first day of the clashes after Sharon’s visit. That is not a prior massacre that precipitated anything, it is the opening confrontation itself, and you are laundering it with a loaded word.
Those are the exact same thing. The "clashes" you're describing are Israeli forces firing live ammunition at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in the wake of Sharon's deliberate provocation.
You pulled out the Mitchell Report as an authority on the subject, and it turns out that the Mitchell Report backs me up.
> Calling that a massacre is absurd.
Police opening up with live ammunition into a crowd of unarmed demonstrators, killing 4 and injuring 200 is not a massacre?
> but the Palestinians themselves say armed clash was premeditated and Sharon's visit was just a pretext.
No, no one said the September 29th clashes were premeditated. How would the PLO even be responsible for Israel deciding to open up with live ammunition on a crowd of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators? Did the PLO use mind control on the Israelis?
> Also, Sharon visiting a holy site under police protection is not violence. Mitchell even says holy places must be accessible to all believers.
The Mitchell Report says that Sharon's visit was a deliberate provocation. He wasn't just a random believer visiting a holy site. He was a top Israeli politician (on the verge of becoming prime minister) and a notorious general with a long career of slaughtering Palestinian civilians (including in Lebanon, where he let fascist Christian militias carry out a massacre in a Palestinian refugee camp). He stormed the holiest Muslim site in Palestine with hundreds of police officers. It was a political stunt intended to spark a reaction. One would have to be incredibly naive to think otherwise. Sharon knew that his actions would spark a massive outrage among Palestinians. Or are you claiming that Sharon had no idea what he was doing?
> The 18-month line is about phased interim jurisdiction, not a guaranteed state or full withdrawal.
No, the 18-month deadline is explicitly about full withdrawal of all Israeli forces from virtually the entire West Bank (including Area C) to specific military bases. Israel just completely reneged on that. Netanyahu has boasted about torpedoing Oslo by reneging on that specific requirement.
You opened with "Israeli massacres sparked the Second Intifada." Now the "massacre" is just the first day of the riots themselves, and when that gets challenged you pivot to Oslo (which you never mentioned in your original claim).
Mitchell's chronology is not "Israel opened fire on peaceful unarmed demonstrators." It describes a confrontation after Friday prayers where Palestinians began throwing at police near the Western Wall; police used rubber-coated bullets and live ammo; 4 Palestinians killed, about 200 injured; and 14 Israeli policemen injured. That is a violent riot plus (arguably) bad crowd-control, not a one-sided massacre. Same report: "no persuasive evidence that the Sharon visit was anything other than an internal political act" and "The Sharon visit did not cause the Al-Aqsa Intifada."
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/mitchell_plan.asp
Nobody is claiming Palestinians pre-planned Israeli live fire or used "mind control." The point is what happened next: Palestinian leaders chose to turn this into a sustained uprising. Barghouti said the explosion would have happened anyway and Sharon "provided a good excuse."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/01/29/arafats-gift
Also, a politician visiting a holy site under police protection is not violence. Throwing stones and turning it into a street war is.
Your Oslo II claim is wrong on the text: interim jurisdiction explicitly excludes settlements, Jerusalem, borders, etc. The 18-month clause is phased redeployments, not "full withdrawal from Area C."
https://www.peaceagreements.org/agreements/410/
It's hard to believe the earth is round, but it is.
As I mentioned above, Hamas's army was comparable to countries like Denmark (20k active soldiers), Finland, the Czech republic (27k active) and maybe even the Netherlands (40k active). Estimates of the size of Hamas's army pre October 7 range from 20k to 40k active combatants, with US intelligence estimates converging on 30k. This is looking just at fighters and excludes Hamas's political wing.
They also had tens of thousands of rockets.
Look, I'm obviously not saying that Hamas is stronger than all European countries in every metric, and I already did mention their lack of an air force. All I'm trying to say is that by some standard ways to judge military force (e.g., number of active soldiers) Hamas surprisingly is ahead, which gives lie to the idea that it's a small force. Your position has some nuance, which I appreciate, but another commenter in this very thread wrote "This is such an insane statement that you instantly disqualify everything else you say."
It's obviously not an insane statement, given that we can debate things like the accuracy of their munitions and the lack of air power. the other commenter probably simply didn't know how many active soldiers Hamas had and how few some developed European countries have.
There are areas where Hamas was stronger and areas where it was weaker, as is true in any military comparison.
Hamas was no rag-tag militia. It was also a government organization which spent billions building a military tunnel system that was longer, better and more effective than any European power has today. They had tens of thousands of soldiers. They could reach into the deep pockets of Iran and Qatar, and diverted billions in international aid. They had tens of thousands of rockets, most inaccurate, but all with real explosives and predictable trajectories. They also developed a unique warring strategy where they put their own population at risk by firing rockets from schools, storing weapons in children's bedrooms, and so on. Hamas was a formidable army in 2023. Where we perhaps can agree is that now, after two years at the wrong end of the IDF's military capabilities, they've become a rag-tag militia.
No, they are not stronger in any area. Any European country could hand out AKs to the population and instantly have more men on paper. They don't, because that's not what makes a strong military.
Hamas' strategy was in no way unique. They are a militia fighting an urban guerilla war. What was nearly unique in the modern world was the absolute brutality with which Israel fought an urban guerilla war. They decided to level everything. Imagine if the British had leveled all of Catholic Belfast in response to the IRA. It's a level of contempt for the local population and cynical justification of mass murder that is rarely seen from "civilized" countries.
The Israelis think they can solve their "Palestinian problem" with pure violence. A terrible irony.
> Look at any photo of any neighborhood in Israel, is there anywhere that remotely looks similar to the pile of rocks that Gaza looks like now?
I'm not pro Israel, especially not after this report, but your point is silly. The US has sold billions in defense weapons/tools to prevent rockets from hitting Israel. Gaza did not have access to the same defenses. That is why the outcomes look different.
There is a normal process in place for importers/brokers to request refunds if a specific tariff was overpaid or a tariff was ruled to be illegal.
But if you imported through DHL and you were not the broker, that is more complicated, you might need to ask DHL for it, and they might not want to do it for you (as they don't have a standard process in place).
Drawback claims (assuming this is the correct thing to use) are quite difficult to do. Requires a customs broker. You used to be able to file them manually as a normal person but they ended that when the first 25% tariffs on China went into play. You need to be a customs broker to get access to the software you need to file the claim...
I spent a bit of time attempting to find a broker [1] to handle this for our project (since we had a large amount of eligible refunds due to importing then sending out of country after QA) but in the long run gave up...which is what they hope for.
Keeping an eye on all this to see how it plays out.
[1] Not only did I look for a broker but I debated becoming one myself due to this.
I would love for a self-service broker to materialize.
i.e. Where you upload your paperwork, fill in and certify the forms online, make a payment, and the broker just feeds all that through. You do the work, they're just your gateway to the system.
I've used courier's internal brokers (like DHL/UPS offer, at their ripoff rate), professional private brokers, etc. and seen all of them make stupid mistakes costing me money/time (eg. including the shipping cost in value for duties, transposing the wrong currency at face value, etc). I could do a better job myself, and frankly with a decent portal it would take me less time. Heck I bet I could build a fairly automated system that is more efficient (higher-margin) and accurate.
Here in Canada there's new legislation that even if you use a third party broker, you still need to post a security or bond with CBSA (see CARM) maintained on an annual basis. It boggles my mind they made the infrastructure to deal with money from all the individual buyers, but not a self-service portal to deal with the forms. Self-clearing here still entails a physical visit to a CBSA office.
You assume that the executive branch would willingly follow the court decision. I think it's naive (doubly so for the current administration) and it's more likely that the tariffs will be re-introduced under a different sauce and that refund requests will not be processed using some flimsy excuses.
Still falls flat when it comes to metadata privacy. Just having multiple nodes distributed geographically that listen for packets would give you the ability to narrow down the location of a specific identity dramatically, even if you're not in range of their device.
That's not my recollection of the events. I think "showed us who he really was" is just the FUD spread by the Liberals. I have left leaning friends and their opinions of PP are totally disconnected from the reality of what he says and does, they are just repeating the talking points they get from their circle.
Nobody wants to debate actual policy and basically we ended up with a different conservative, Carney, whose actual policies are in my opinion iffy ans his performance the same. Scare tactics are easier than policy debate.
I mean… we elect leaders to represent us and protect our country. If the other guy looked like he was willing to give the country away, well, that means he wasn’t the best person for the job. Trump rhetoric just showed us how ready Pierre Pollievre was to lead us: aka, he wasn’t.
Also Canadian here (I've been using this account for years despite the name though).
The above poster is correct that Canada also has a lot of problems. I lived in the U.S. for 20 years and probably would have stayed if I could have. For many people, moving to the U.S. was seen as highly desirable for a long time, especially for tech workers.
I've noticed the reverse is true since around the start of Trump's presidency (not for tech workers though, at least not yet).
I also agree with the suggestion that Canada is at risk of falling into fascism as well.. we were a razor's edge away from electing our own version of Trump in our most recent election almost a year ago... funnily enough, Trump's talk of annexing Canada shortly before the election swung the polls enough that the Liberals were able to retain power (and fortunately, with a minority government that gives our 2 social democratic parties some political sway even with only a handful of MPs).
Now there may be more Canadians coming back (and American refugees coming) that the tide has noticeably shifted.
The message sent, perhaps more accurately, was that the USofA electorate fully bought into the Trump / Project 2025 framing of the "problems" facing the USofA.
eg:
> People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else.
And yet recently prior administrations famously did enforce contempory border protections and prioritised chasing down people with actual criminal records.
Past administrations, eg. the Republican Eisenhower, have been in favour of open borders for the cheap labour and boost to the agricultural industry.
His often cited border enforcement operation was undertaken at the request of the Mexican government who were losing labor to US agribusiness.
All that aside, the USofA Democrat party has a messaging and PR problem of epic proportions and the USofA has spiralled into a two party Hotelling's Law cesspit despite the founders largely disliking party politics - a fundemental flaw in the forward iteration of an "adequate for now" electoral system centuries old.
Sure, recent past administrations enforced border protections and prioritized deporting immigrants with criminal records. And that’s irrelevant.
The Biden administration did neither. They took active measures to strip the Customs and Border Protection Agency of its scope and authority through executive order from their first day in office. Their policies directly led to over 2.4 million border encounters in 2023 alone, the most ever recorded in the history of the country.
This wasn’t policy they campaigned on or announced. It wasn’t something the American people wanted, and it polled terribly even among Democrats. But they did it anyway.
Conversely, Trump had the voter’s mandate to secure the border when he entered office, but he’s managed it so poorly, created terrible optics, and has Democrats marching in the streets in every major U.S. city in support of illegal immigration. The Republicans make the Democrats look like PR masters by comparison.
This appears to be a partisan statement subject to data source and bias. eg:
The Biden administration took office amid heightened debate in some circles over the merits and tactics of deportations, yet it is on track to carry out as many removals and returns as the Trump administration did.
The 1.1 million deportations since the beginning of fiscal year (FY) 2021 through February 2024 (the most recent data available) are on pace to match the 1.5 million deportations carried out during the four years President Donald Trump was in office. These deportations are in addition to the 3 million expulsions of migrants crossing the border irregularly that occurred under the pandemic-era Title 42 order between March 2020 and May 2023—the vast majority of which occurred under the Biden administration.
Combining deportations with expulsions and other actions to block migrants without permission to enter the United States, the Biden administration’s nearly 4.4 million repatriations are already more than any single presidential term since the George W. Bush administration (5 million in its second term).
> Their policies directly led to over 2.4 million border encounters in 2023 alone, the most ever recorded in the history of the country.
Their policies or global events? Either way the sheer number of recorded border ecounters speaks to them being out and about and actively encountering people on the border ... when thought about, that's hardly a bad thing - it sounds more as if they were getting the job done.
To be clear, I have zero interest in debating this aside from noting it's hardly clearcut.
> The Republicans make the Democrats look like PR masters by comparison.
They are indeed superlative propagandadists, on this we can agree ...
they are, however, in a view from afar, falling well short of actually making middle North America great again, gutting essential infrastructure maintainance, etc. etc.
But few will ever know given they've also gutted many of the means of tracking the state of the country, the state of the environment, the activities of their administration.
Counting deportations is half the equation. If Biden was deporting roughly as many people as Trump, but there are 4X as many people crossing the border, it wasn’t good enforcement. Look at net illegal immigration to get the impact, and it’s estimated the number of illegal immigrants increased by 3.5 million people during Biden’s term.
You say "illegal immigrants" to describe people that had border contact, made application, and were allowed into the USofA as "as yet documented" applicants.
People that, for the most part, committed no crime, made no attempt to hide, paid taxes, ran businesses, and employed others.
Yes, Obama increased deportations, and deported people at a faster rate than Trump. But that’s completely irrelevant when we’re talking about the Biden administration, who did not continue this policy, who reversed it, who allowed an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants through his executive orders and policy set by Mayorkas, with many millions more granted asylum status with reduced vetting. This was not reported by the news media until it inevitably reached crisis level.
The very fact that Obama deported more immigrants, and Trump is deporting fewer but with riots in the streets should clue you in to the effect that media has over you.
> The very fact that Obama deported more immigrants, and Trump is deporting fewer but with riots in the streets should clue you in to the effect that media has over you.
Whoa. To refresh my memory, how many American citizens were shot by ICE under Obama? How many cities were threatened with Insurrection Act occupations? Maybe deporting people doesn't require such actions, and "the effect that the media has" is highlighting how ridiculous these behaviors are.
edit: more data https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/biden-deportation-re... . I sincerely hope you will re-adjust your priors based on actual data (some of it from the current administration!) as opposed to what you hear on the radio or television.
During Obama’s presidency ICE wasn’t dealing with protestors actively interfering with day-to-day operations in cities throughout the country. Remove the protestors, and the probability of a civilian getting shot goes to ~0. Of course dozens of non-citizens died during those years.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make with your data. The first doesn’t even cover Biden’s term, which again, is what I’m talking about. The second is extremely disingenuous because doesn’t take net illegal immigration into account. Even if Biden deported a similar number of people as Trump, he let far more people in: the net number of illegal immigrants in the country during Biden’s term is estimated to have risen by 3.5 million people.
> When is the last time you questioned your priors?
Every day, friend.
> During Obama’s presidency ICE wasn’t dealing with protestors actively interfering with day-to-day operations
What do you think the difference is? What do you think your most reasonable opponent might say? In a dispassionate analysis, who do you think is correct?
I highly recommend to watch the Oscar winning movie “no other land”, for anyone that thinks that Israel would just let them leave in peace
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