Politics Thread!

[KlaxonCow]

Trump says Coca-Cola agreed to use real cane sugar in US drinks: ‘It’s just better!’. Apparently we are the only country that uses corn syrup.

Well thank God that problem was solved.

But the reason why America uses high fructose corn syrup is because America produces an excess of it, due to governmental agricultural subsidies.

So, actually, no, the problem is not solved, if American taxpayers are still paying American farmers to overproduce corn, and they've now lost one of their biggest customers.

Unless Trump has also sorted this out at the same time, then there's going to be a massive "corn syrup mountain" wastefully decaying at American taxpayer's expense (like the EU has its "butter mountain" as well) and / or if he's going to solve that by changing government subsidies, then there are going to be American farmers losing out - and that's not electorially wise, when rural areas are the strongest part of your "base" (though, that said, Trump might well "solve" that one by cancelling democracy to become "King of America" instead).

But I have that feeling - from Trump's track record of being an economically illiterate moron, who doesn't understand that trade deficits are not "losing" - that he has no concept of the idea that things are interconnected like this and there are knock-on effects and unintended consequences, to what is essentially just the fact that Trump is a Coke fan and has had non-American Coke and realises cane sugar tastes better. And that is the ONLY thing that's gone through his mind on this.


By the way, not that the high fructose corn syrup thing shouldn't be sorted out - it really should, as it has always been (much like the EU's famous "butter mountain") a wasteful over-production and inefficiency in government subsidies, when you're paying farmers to grossly over-supply something that you can't sell at those numbers, so it will just be left to rot (because of the other economic horrid-ness that you can't just usefully give it away to Africa - use our excess to feed the starving of the world - because it'd crash the market price - that we have corn mountains and butter mountains that are deliberately left to rot, when there's starving in the world, because giving it away ruins the profitability of your central business, so of course no-one is going to choose that, unless strong-armed by the law to force you to accept it as a "cost of business").

The world is a complicated interconnected place and a lot of the reason why things are collapsing and falling apart is "tunnel vision" on your individual needs to fail to see their knock-on consequences.

Indeed, capitalism will kill itself - if all jobs are lost to AI automation, then the money system itself collapses. Because while robots can make cars, robots don't buy cars. And if no-one has a job then who has the income to buy any of these cars that, sure enough, you're producing for minimal costs with robots, maximising your profits. IF any fucker could afford to do so, but which they can't, as you fired all humans from employment. The whole population on benefits, but with no-one left earning a wage to pay income tax, and no-one able to afford anything to pay sales tax, how the fuck do we raise enough taxes to pay everyone "Universal Basic Income" anyway?

Corporate greed is inevitably going to break the money system itself. Like, seriously, money itself will just stop functioning properly - that is exactly how catastrophic this is going to be. Yet not a single politician speaks about it, much less has any kind of a plan - and they're even encouraging it with a law to ban laws that ban AI, at the request of their billionaire sponsors.

The greed of the rich, not reigned in, is actually going to break the very mechanism that makes them rich in the first place. But they just want their initials in the "rich high score table" that they can't see they're going to kill themselves off - and take the entire population down with them, with catastrophic cascading economic collapse.

"Everything in moderation. Even moderation itself", as the old wisdom reminds us.

[zip accident]

Trump says Coca-Cola agreed to use real cane sugar in US drinks: ‘It’s just better!’. Apparently we are the only country that uses corn syrup.

Well thank God that problem was solved.

But the reason why America uses high fructose corn syrup is because America produces an excess of it, due to governmental agricultural subsidies.

So, actually, no, the problem is not solved, if American taxpayers are still paying American farmers to overproduce corn, and they've now lost one of their biggest customers.

Unless Trump has also sorted this out at the same time, then there's going to be a massive "corn syrup mountain" wastefully decaying at American taxpayer's expense.

It won't decay, unlike butter. It's sugar, the osmotic potential is lethal to bacteria and fungi.

[KlaxonCow]

It won't decay, unlike butter. It's sugar, the osmotic potential is lethal to bacteria and fungi.

That's worse.

So it'll just get bigger and bigger forever, until the whole planet is consumed by high fructose corn syrup?

[tufty]

Well it's all going to shit very rapidly for Donald, isn't it?

Not only has he started calling his base "weaklings" and that he doesn't "want their support any more", Trump has now sued Murdoch for defamation over the "Epstein birthday letter" they claim to have unearthed. For 10 billion dollars, no less.

https://www.scribd.com/document/8900471 ... doch-et-al

[KlaxonCow]

Trump is an idiot.

It's only defamation, if it's not true. Therefore, you compel the court to investigate and provide a legal ruling on each of the claims one-by-one.

And once ruled upon as fact - and, thus, not defamation - the press are free to publish any of these discovered facts and evidence over and over and over again for the rest of all time, with complete legal impunity. Because it's been ruled a fact and, therefore, cannot be defamatory.

Hold your nerve, "Keith" (sorry, but finding out through a legal document that Rupert Murdoch's first name is actually Keith has made my day). Let it go to court and don't settle. Once Donald eventually realises that he's just launched a legal investigation into himself, he'll come begging you for a much, much larger settlement.

And he's not going to have a "base" left at this rate:

[tufty]

It's only defamation, if it's not true.

Not true /and/ either made with malice or with disregard to the truth. And it has to have caused actual damage. That last one is a bit of a push - who at this point still believes Trump's long term and highly documented friendship with Epstein was a fiction, and would a WSJ article have caused them to come to their senses?

[PFVA]

That man is annoying me again.
He has no right to interfere in Brazilian internal issues and with the Brazilian Judicial System.
Just because his son is friends with Bolsonaro's son he cannot pressure the country with threats of 50% tariffs to drop the charges.

Note: The trade associations of both the US and Brazil are protesting the tariffs. The 2 countries are big trade partners and the balance is quite equilibrated. Brazil imports almost as much as it exports to the US.

[KlaxonCow]

As I've said before, the rest of the world needs to just cut America out of global trade, until they return to a sane trade policy again.

And it looks like Canada's already moving full steam ahead on that:



They're going to build coast-to-coast energy infrastructure to fully supply themselves and, from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, make links over to Asia and Europe. All very deliberately to break their dependence on America and simply cut them out of the equation altogether. Unless or until America returns to sanity.

Elbows up.

[zip accident]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8d638rrndzo

Ellen DeGeneres: I moved to the UK because of Trump

I wonder what Farage thinks of that?

[KlaxonCow]

Not true /and/ either made with malice or with disregard to the truth. And it has to have caused actual damage. That last one is a bit of a push - who at this point still believes Trump's long term and highly documented friendship with Epstein was a fiction, and would a WSJ article have caused them to come to their senses?

And seeing as we're talking about a news organisation, reporting on current affairs, exactly like every other news organisation is right now, then the malice / disregard for the truth criteria would never work either.

But, well, I was thinking of the McLibel case, where McDonald's tried the usual "sue people for silly amounts of money to scare them into shutting up" tactic against a couple of protesters outside one of their "restaurants" in the UK, and how that horridly backfired on Mickey D's... even though, technically, they ultimately won the case.

The protesters had leaflets that made a bunch of claims about McDonald's that they were handing out outside one of McDonald's "restaurants". And it's clear that McDonald's were just trying the age old tactic of trying to scare them into silence by suing them for a silly amount of money - and as the longest legal case in British history, McDonald's were also trying to stretch it out as long as possible, knowing that it's the losing side that has to pay all the legal fees for both sides, so they were deliberately making it as expensive as possible to further the "mob tactics" of just scaring the other side into a settlement, where they retract all their claims.

But the protesters were principled activists, so they kept going - choosing to represent themselves, in order to be able to afford it - and though they ultimately lost, as there were some claims on the protest leaflet that were demonstrated to be untrue, it was an awful "Pyrrhic Victory" for McDonald's. Exactly because of what I'm warning of here - that, in such defamation / libel / slander cases, as it's only illegal if it's not true, the court is compelled to investigate and legally rule whether the claims are true or not.

And this is how, though McDonald's ultimately won the case, they actually lost horribly. Because they went through each claim one-by-one, and an awful lot of the protesters' claims were ruled "fact" by the court.

That, for example, they deliberately targeted children in their advertising - and you'll notice that we've never seen hide nor hair of Ronald McDonald or his "Hamburglar" friends and foes in any UK advertising since. That they purposefully use fat and sugar in their products to addict people - and, again, you'll notice that, ever since, McDonald's has a "healthy menu" available as well. And so forth.

So though McDonald's strictly won the case - as there were some untrue claims made - they, in reality, lost miserably because they had a UK court confirm a whole stack of claims as being "fact". Which is a PR disaster that keeps on giving. Because, as mentioned, if the court rules that a particular claim is true and not libel, then that sets the legal precedent - anyone and everyone is now allowed to report on these claims (although, yes, being careful to note that they are historical and therefore not necessarily remain true, but were ruled true at the time of the court case) with impunity, because it's already being legally confirmed as not being libellous to say so.

And Trump would be wise to read up all about that case, as I can see this going very badly for Donald, if "Keith" holds his nerve to not immediately settle but is prepared to take it to court. Then we can all have fun watching the court go through each claim and rule that, yeah, that's true and that's true and that's true, all the way through the WSJ article one-by-one.

As we all know, were Trump and Epstein friends? Yes, that's fact. Were they neighbours for a while? Yes, that's fact. Did Epstein meet Maxwell - and, by all reports, have sex with her - on Trump's plane? Apparently, that's also fact. Did Trump wish Maxwell well? Yes, and let's watch that footage over and over again, shall we? Indeed, when the courts examine the footage, the press would be totally within their rights to re-publish it over and over, as it's just reporting on the topic of the day.

You get the gist. Don might think he's being clever with the age old "sue them to shut them up" tactics. Just as he previously thought he was clever in courting the right-wing conspiracy theorists by telling them he'd release all the files - 9/11, Roswell, JFK, Epstein, etc. - until it's reached the point that people are asking him to make good on releasing the Epstein files. And - oh shit - now the files simultaneously don't exist AND they're really boring that no-one should be interested in them, even though that's logically contradictory, even without taking Pam Bondi's "the files are literally on my desk" contradiction of the idea they never existed.

And this is Rupert Murdoch. He can afford to not take the settlement and let it go to court. "Keith" is not an idiot, like Donald. Let it go to court and when Donald realises just what a disastrous outcome he's brought down upon his own head, he'll be on his knees begging Murdoch to take a settlement. Then, sure, I don't doubt Murdoch will take it, as it's lots of big money and he's made his point. A crucial point, in fact, for Murdoch - he has to let it hurt Trump badly, as this defends the right of his "news" organisations to publish such things in future.

This is what I'm thinking. That Donald's made a really, really dumb move here. That it's just the "knee jerk reaction" of the very rich to sue for stupid money and that just makes everyone shut the hell up, right? In many and most cases, probably yes, unfortunately. But, in this case, he's not thought this through. Murdoch is not scared by such large sums of money - indeed, I like to imagine that, like Scrooge McDuck, he dives into a big pit of money and goes swimming through it all - and it actually completely serves his interests not to settle but let it go to court.

Let a court of law actually prove over and over that the Wall Street Journal was just (mostly) reporting the news. Let anyone else thinking of suing his news organisations watch it all go disastrously badly for Trump. And, as I say, I would imagine that "Keith" will eventually settle - to extract more out of Trump, begging for him to "please make it stop", than Trump was trying to get out of him - because, yeah, he's also rich and would still want the "sue people to scare them into shutting up" mechanism to remain intact, for his own use later. But exercising patience - let it hurt Trump badly first, then it's fine to take a settlement, once the point has been made.

[Kelloggs]

Caveat: I'm not a legal expert, neither in the UK nor in the US. All of this is just hearsay, and if anyone can educate me on this matter, I'd gladly accept such education.

I was under the impression that libel law is a place where the UK and the US differ in subtle ways. My understanding was that in the US (and I seem to remember someone explicitly saying or writing this) "the truth is an absolute defence" (or defense, in this case). So, if you (as the defendant) can bring the receipts, and the receipts hold water, there should be no case to answer.

In the UK, also as I understand it, the truth is necessary, but not sufficient. The UK has an extra test, that I don't believe the US does, of "was the plaintiff [the party bringing the libel case] harmed by this?" I suppose the thinking is, you can know something about someone, and you can know that publishing it will lead to losses to them... and you go and publish anyway, and the jury will be perfectly within their rights to conclude malice, and damages will be based on that finding. Thinking around the matter, there would also be the defence of "in the public interest": yes, I know this will be damaging, but it's in the greater good. This may also mean that a libel case can pass on truth but fail on harm, but everyone then knows (as proven by a court of law) that it wasn't made up.

As I said, please let me know if I'm speaking from out of my fundament.

[tufty]

You're not really talking from your fundament. IANAL either, but as I understand it, yes, there are differences, mainly in divergences of US law from the English common law it started out as.

What hasn't changed, though, is that in either country, truth is an absolute defence against libel (written) or slander (spoken) defamation claims. If it's true, it's not defamation, even if the person concerned doesn't want that truth out there.

In the US, to prevail, you have to show that the statement was false, that the person making the statement either knew it was false or didn't bother to check, and that you were actually damaged by the statement. There's also outs covering satire and clearly absurd statements, but they don't really apply here.

I can't imagine that the WSJ don't have receipts for their claims, and ones that at least hold enough water to be defensible. There's 3 places the receipts could have come from - an FBI/DOJ whistleblower, the place the alleged book was bound / printed, or, IMO most likely, Ghislaine Maxwell herself. They don't have to reveal their sources, but I can certainly see them calling Maxwell to the stand if this actually goes to trial. Which would be a bit ironic, Captain Bob's daughter helping defend his sworn enemy.

So the question is whether Murdoch(s) is pissed off enough to play hardball and really humiliate Trump. I'm not sure that's gonna happen, Murdoch is more likely to play Trump for his own gains and the whole thing will end up with an out of court settlement that leaves Trump with a sore arse but an ability to claim he "won".

[KlaxonCow]

There are differences but, as tufty says, they don't really make a difference here.

It's the Wall Street Journal. They have the receipts.

And they're a newspaper reporting on potential criminal behaviour by the President of the United States of America - not just his possible involvement in Epstein's heinous crimes but, if true, the corruption of a governmental cover-up of these facts. It's hard to think of a more worthy "public interest" defence. If this doesn't qualify for "public interest", then absolutely nothing does.

And, of course, while we should not pre-empt the judgement of a court of law and we must remind ourselves of the principle of "innocent unless proved guilty", the sheer dodgy-ness of Trump and Epstein's long friendship, coupled with the track record of the President as a known sexual pervert then, were I a betting man, I'd put all my money on there being no fucking way the Wall Street Journal's losing this.

(As a reminder, Trump said "grab them by the pussy". Trump boasted that he ran beauty pageants, simply so he could walk in on the models in the changing rooms. Trump confessed to wanting to fuck his own daughter on daytime TV. Trump paid hush money to a porn star, during his Presidential campaign, to keep his affair secret. And it's very much suspected that the reason Trump kow-tows to Putin and praises him and regurgitates Russian propaganda is because Putin arranged to have footage of him with a honey trap to hold over him. Let us be clear who we're talking about here and how it's already beyond all reasonable doubt that this man is a pervert of the highest order.)

[KlaxonCow]

Trump's succeeded in pressurising CBS / Paramount to protect the paedophile President by cancelling the Late Show, and Trump, gloating on Truth Social, has suggested that Jimmy Kimmel is next on his list.



We've reached the "silence all criticism" phase of the fascist take-over, it seems.

[skab]

As I've said before, the rest of the world needs to just cut America out of global trade, until they return to a sane trade policy again.

And it looks like Canada's already moving full steam ahead on that:

Just to make things clear, this guy was the Conservatives' candidate before the last election (and this video is from March) who crashed and burned since everybody saw him as "Maple Trump". He even lost his own seat. Can't be bothered to look it up if he's still the Conservatives' leader, but he's out of the game for at least this round.

But anyway, after bootlicking Trump for months, all of a sudden he was basically parroting the anti-Trump, anti-Trump-US lingo that kept Labour's PM Mark Carney in office, so this is still a good indicator for the current mood in Canada.