Canada Has Pulled Off a Brain Heist (axios.com) 351
An anonymous reader writes: Seoul-born Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, a professor at Brown University known for her work on fake news, is moving to Canada. So is Alan Aspuru-Guzik, a Harvard chemistry professor working on quantum computing and artificial intelligence. They are among 24 top academic minds around the world wooed to Canada by an aggressive recruitment effort offering ultra-attractive sinecures, seven-year funding arrangements -- and, Chun and Aspuru-Guzik said in separate interviews with Axios, a different political environment from the U.S. The "Canada 150 Research Chairs Program" is spending $117 million on seven-year grants of either $350,000 a year or $1 million a year. It's part of a campaign by numerous countries to attract scholars unhappy with Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and other political trends, sweetened with unusually generous research conditions.
Canada To USA: Ya, We Got This (Score:3)
Canada is always there when the USA needs them most:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Canada To USA: Ya, We Got This (Score:4, Funny)
Looking at who you voted for in the last election, your opinions don't really mean shit.
Trump, Making (the rest of North) America Great Again
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Don't be too quick to judge, we elected Trudeau
Ummmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
In the advanced stages of the disease [latimes.com], the afflicted lose touch with reality. Opinion is unmoored from fact. Life resembles a dark fairy tale in which the villain – Trump – is an amalgam of all the worst tyrants in history, past and present, while the heroes –Trump's critics – are akin to the resistance fighters of World War II.
Re: Ummmmm... (Score:2)
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I know this place has been going downhill for awhile but this is an especially shitty submission even by msmash standards. A handful of academics get a boatload of money to move to canada is proof of a net braindrain in canada's direction and somehow this extends to proof that this is all trump's fault based upon one random comment?
I agree the summary about 24 apparently strong academics largely unknown outside their field is underwhelming.
However, I do know of a lot of well-educated people who've either put off plans to move to the States or are in the process of trying to move back.
Imagine another country elected someone like Trump and he still had support of a substantial portion of the population, would you really feel comfortable moving there?
go canada (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: go canada (Score:4, Funny)
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infinite : adj without end. "There were infinite nitpicky anonymous cowards this morning," he observed.
Won't turn out as they think it will (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Won't turn out as they think it will (Score:4, Insightful)
That makes no sense if the thing they are malcontent about is removed. Why would they remain unhappy when they get to move to a better country and earn loads of money?
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Why would they remain unhappy when they get to move to a better country and earn loads of money?
Because it appeases the ego of people who think Trump isn't that bad to imagine that there are never any bad consequences to anything that Trump does and that anybody who dislikes him for any reason is therefore unreasonably and perennially discontent?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Nope. I used to be malcontent where I was working. After leaving, I am very happy. My motivation is higher than anybody else here. Malcontentment is not a permanent state, everything is about context.
Do not underestimate the people that are brave enough to take radical decision in their life. Be suspicious of the malcontent people who are unable to take the right decision.
It's called "competition." (Score:2)
Now that US colleges are rolling in an unprecedented flood of money, why aren't they using more of it to make joining the faculty a better deal?
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Now that US colleges are rolling in an unprecedented flood of money, why aren't they using more of it to make joining the faculty a better deal?
Because that would cut into the pay raises for the administrators and prevent them from spending more money on "campus life" and improvement projects to bring in more students/charge higher tuition so that the school can pay administrators more and spend more money on "improving" the campus. What, you thought college in the US was about teaching and learning?
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US colleges prefer to build stadiums and pay coaches millions of $$$. Science? LOL!
Proud Canadian (Score:4, Funny)
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actually, it doesn't speak to much of anything. Most people prefer to live where they were born.
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As for healthcare, it's a moot point since almost all workers are covered by their employer. Another interesting anecdote, I met a retired physician from Manitoba that moved to Portland in the 90's. He worked in both Manitoba's provincial health system and in Kaiser Permanente in Oregon. He told me in no uncertain term that Kaiser's quality of care is far superior to Manitoba's.
I believe the intolerants are now a
They got Jordan Peterson (Score:5, Informative)
They got Jordan Peterson too, from Harvard, though he's from Canada and he went there 20 years ago.
So, in other words (Score:2)
It's the great brain robbery?
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History Repeats... (Score:4, Informative)
In the 80's, several of my best Physics and CS professors were ex-Americans who had fled the draft for the Vietname war in the 60's.
Canada was all the better for it.
However, in the interest of fairness, it should be noted that there's a constant brain drain (rather slower of late) from Canada to the US of talented individuals seeking the greater opportunities that a country as large as the US can offer. This is more of a small flow of academics in the other direction rather than a huge reversal in the regular brain drain to the US.
Re:History Repeats... (Score:5, Funny)
Phht. You really are spoiling the anti-Trump virtue-signaling of this "news" post.
Good (Score:2)
When we get our army of AI soldiers, we'll remember who our friends were. (and weren't)
- Love Canada
Can I hate, too? Please? (Score:2)
Yay! A truimph validating hatred of Trump by bribing scientists with taxpayer dollars for $350k to $1M a year, minimum 7 years!
Canada, aggressive? (Score:2)
Two words that rarely appear in close proximity.
Another atack to people for voting "wrong" (Score:2)
Brexit was on of the few victories of the democracy vs the powers who control everything (elections included). Now, they are takin revenge at any cost, any moment any way, This is just another maneouver to hit britain for chosing against New World Order.
Americans, I'd be worried, even if not voted for Trump, seeing how media, social networks and corporations are trying to reverse the election outcome. Democracy is fine, as long as you vote for THEIR candidate, Even if his (or her in this case) plan is to de
"Sinecures"? (Score:4, Insightful)
That word...I do not think it means what you think it means.
Providing stable, long-term funding so that established, high-profile researchers can bring their projects and research programs to Canada doesn't really look like a sinecure; they're not getting paid to do nothing. The $350,000 or $1 million per year funding for these positions isn't handed over as a lavish salary; it's support to allow researchers to hire staff, buy equipment, and maintain their labs. It's a fairly long-term arrangement as these things go - the NIH's R01 grants contemplate up to 5 years, and many sources of money are 3 or fewer years, or one-offs - but it's not ludicrous.
Re:Funny (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed, who could have predicted there would be a worse president than Bush Jr?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: Funny (Score:2)
That's largely a correction from the boom years that Clinton accidentally stumbled into due to the dot-com boom. Sometimes, the market doesn't give a shit who's president. The systemic forces of the 90s markets were laid out in earlier years, and had nothing to do with Clinton. The subsequent market collapse was expected and had little to do with Bush (except the expensive wars; it wasn't economic policy).
Re:Funny (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps you forgot how the economy did just fine in the beginning of the Dubya years, and only imploded somewhere near the end. It kept on doing bad in the beginning of the Obama years, and only started improving somewhere near the end.
Definitively untrue: http://www.taintedalpha.com/wp... [taintedalpha.com]
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That graph shows positive q-o-q change beginning Q3 2009, only 2 quarters after Obama took office. So you are correct, it did not "only started improving somewhere near the end" of the Obama years.
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Perhaps you forgot how the economy did just fine in the beginning of the Dubya years, and only imploded somewhere near the end. It kept on doing bad in the beginning of the Obama years, and only started improving somewhere near the end. I wouldn't be so quick to laud Trump's excuses for economic policy...
Also, considering how badly the USD is doing, I wouldn't be so quick to say the US economy is doing well at all.
The US dollar is dropping almost as fast as the GB Pound. USD/GBP is almost back to pre-brexit levels where as the GBP vs other major currencies is down at least 20%.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Funny (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong, there was no surplus, it was all Washington doublespeak [craigsteiner.us]. There are two parts to the national debt - public debt and intragovernmental holdings. During the Clinton years the public debt part was paid down by borrowing money in the intragovernmental holdings mostly from Social Security. So the debt was not paid down, excess Social Security funds that by law are required to be re-invested into securities became additional intragovernmental debt. During the Clinton years the national debt total continued to rise:
FY1993 $4.411488 trillion debt
FY1994 $4.692749 trillion debt, increase of $281.26 billion
FY1995 $4.973982 trillion debt, increase of $281.23 billion
FY1996 $5.224810 trillion debt, increase of $250.83 billion
FY1997 $5.413146 trillion debt, increase of $188.34 billion
FY1998 $5.526193 trillion debt, increase of $113.05 billion
FY1999 $5.656270 trillion debt, increase of $130.08 billion
FY2000 $5.674178 trillion debt, increase of $17.91 billion
FY2001 $5.807463 trillion debt, increase of $133.29 billion
FY2001 was Clinton's last budget submitted before Bush took office.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama really does deserve credit for powering the US economy out of the financial crisis. The UK went the opposite way and lost a decade, just the same as Japan did in the 90s. Frustrating as bail-outs are, the alternative is worse.
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By letting the same banks that crashed the economy in the first place to steal millions of homes through fraudclosure? Banks only grew larger and stayed over-leveraged under his watch. Like Obama's decision not to prosecute torturers leading directly to Gina "I tortured some foks" Haspel being nominated to head the CIA, his decision not to prosecute a single bank or banker will lead directly to another economic crisis
Re:Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. How do I put this succinctly? America has gone too far down the road of "instant gratification" and a LOT of people don't understand that shit doesn't happen instantly. Like the entire US economy. Sure, the stock markets "react" to policy changes, but the "economy" is a machine and it takes a long time to feel the effects of changes to the policies that drive it.
So the dumbasses that seem to make up the majority of the population, fed on decades of TV ads promising them that their life will be fantastic instantly if they only bought {whatever} think that a president can alter the economy instantly and that if something good or bad happens then the person in charge must be 100% responsible for it.
Worse? These fuckwits are now often seen in senior positions in US corporations and believe that knee-jerk reactions trump long-term strategy. This does not bode well for US competitiveness long-term.
As a colleague of mine has put it multiple times: The Chinese are playing chess. Trump is playing Donkey Kong. Thing is it is not just Trump. He is just symptomatic of the larger problem of a country that has lost its way.
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All leftist politicians have very forward-thinking 5 and 10 year plans, conveniently past the next election. They are like the guy daily wearing a sign that the world will end tomorrow...always tomorrow.
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All presidents since Nixon have been further to the right than he was, and Nixon of course was a right winger. Just how far back are you going here?
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A government should not be squandering treasure to hold up dying companies and technology. It should be using that treasure (your tax dollars) to prepare. Things like retraining workers to different industries, infrastructure improvements for towns affected to attract other business, etc. Not doing that
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That's not surprising, since I'm sure you remember Obama's statements about "remaking the US economy" and his "war on coal".
What, you think the economy is being held back because we're not mining enough coal? The 19th century called, they want their energy source back.
Re:Funny (Score:4, Interesting)
The best you can say about Trump's economic policies is that he hasn't tanked the economy yet, but is working hard to get there. A trade war with China is only going to hurt both sides, as are the steel tariffs with the rest of the world.
He seems to have assumed that it would be like when it was running a business, with lots of people kissing his ass and eager to do deals. But countries aren't like that, they will resist his shitty deals as much as possible. Maybe the UK will end up with one, due to being weak and desperate post-Brexit, but the other big markets like the EU, Japan and China won't.
No bubble (Score:2)
The worst thing Trump could do is put the economy into a Clinton-like bubble. A bubble economy looks good for a few years (e.g. the mid-90's), but there is always a long and painful crash afterward. It took the world roughly fifteen years to recover from the crashes following the twin bubbles Clinton started (stock market and real estate).
Tariffs are just a thinly disguised tax increase designed to prevent the economy from getting overheated.
Re:Funny (Score:5, Informative)
Dubya was able to relish in Clinton's strong economic policies, and Obama kicked off his term facing the aftermath of Dubya's poor economic policies. Trump exploited Obama's economic policies to a ridiculous level to the point of actually trying to take credit for the booming economy during his first year, yet with the Dow down more than 2000 points since Janauary, alone, where's President Shitgibbon to take credit for *that*?
Trump is going to run the country like any of his businesses, which is to say, drive it directly into the ground. We're talking about a man who whent bankrupt selling wine, steak and gambling to the American people. Nothing about that suggests he's a saavy businessman, let alone a capable politician.
Re: (Score:2)
Any president has a year of overlap with the previous one with respect to economics. Trump was elected in November, generally wouldn't pass a budget until about March, and then you have 2-3 quarters before those policies are enacted and the economy feels those policies in earnest. Trump dragged his feet with respect to his first budget, so that shifts the curve. When the economy finally caught up to Trump's big mouth, you not only saw a decline in the market but chaotic fluctuations not seen since the global economic crisis of 2008 and a short hiccup in late 2016/early-2016.
You say that but imagine that in 2008 the economy held on to late November, or even February of '09.
How many people would still lay the blame for the meltdown on the Bush-era policies in that case?
Re: Funny (Score:2)
Sanders is a wild card. Certainly with a supportive Congress, the economy would be radically different under Sanders. Shifted. Perhaps better, perhaps worse. Clinton would have continued existing policies and been able to provide a sense of stability. The glacially slow Obama recovery would have continued. We would have likely seen the stock market grow more sensibly. Once we see the full effect of the impending Trump correction, we'll know if the Trump boom was just a precursor to a Trump bust, or if it wa
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The stock market was up due to the prospects of having a non-socialist president, and the repatriation of foreign earnings. Do you really think the economy would have improved under Clinton or Sanders?
Of course it would have. History has shown quite clearly that the economy does better under Democratic administrations.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/11/07/trump-is-right-about-one-thing-the-economy-does-better-under-the-democrats/#27a9d68a6786
https://www.aeaweb.org/research/why-does-the-economy-do-better-democrats-white-house
Re: Funny (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump's done wonders for the stock markets.
The economy is doing well coincidentally. It takes years for the economy as a whole to react to changes, so Tump's economy is floating on Obama's legacy.
But the stock market is a bellwether. Trump's ridiculous trade war with China is eventually going to tank the economy.
Re: Funny (Score:2)
You're extrapolating from an extremely small window of data. The newly arrived market volatility suggests we may have just seen an accumulation and burst of pent-up sell pressure, which could easily send the markets down far enough to wipe out the Trump boom.
Jury is still out. (Score:3, Insightful)
Dubya was a well-meaning but simple man who was lead astray by some truly evil men (Rumsfeld & Cheney). Trump is evil and stupid but most of all egocentric, which has thus far mostly prevented him from getting the assistance he needs to accomplish very much.
We're only 17 months into the Trump era. At this point in Dubya's reign he hadn't even invaded Iraq yet. Span
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And who picked Rumsfeld & Cheney? Conclusion seems to contradict the premise.
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then it was "Trump will start bombing all these countries with nuclear weapons." Has he even ordered the attacking of the same number of countries obama did?
So now it is "Trump will invade North Korea and Iran"
Yet they keep refusing to take my bets.
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Indeed, who could have predicted there would be a worse president than Bush Jr?
Stupid is as stupid does.
Trump says stupid things. Dubya DID stupid things. I think the latter is worse.
Under Trump, the economy is booming. Under Dubya, we squandered trillions on stupid counter-productive wars, and the economy imploded.
Trump has plenty of potential to be a terrible president, but objectively he is doing okay so far.
Mmm, let's see how his trade war with Chine works out.
Re: Funny (Score:2)
Re: Funny (Score:2)
Re: Funny (Score:2)
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Mainly by being too incompetent to change too much the society Obama left him.
If he is getting good results, then maybe you should view his incompetence as a positive attribute.
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Mainly by being too incompetent to change too much the society Obama left him.
If he is getting good results, then maybe you should view his incompetence as a positive attribute.
You can't rely on Trump's incompetence, not everyone working for him is also an idiot.
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Mainly by being too incompetent to change too much the society Obama left him.
If he is getting good results, then maybe you should view his incompetence as a positive attribute.
Trump's incompetence is a positive attribute. But that's not really a good thing to say about the President of the United States.
Re:Funny (Score:4, Funny)
Funny how dubya didn't get that reaction.
People were talking about moving to Canada under W too. I'm not sure how many actually followed through on it. The thing is, most of us thought W would go down as the worst President in modern history. But then the GOP said, "Hold my beer".
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Ireland is attractive because of the culture and language.
The Netherlands is attractive because the working language is English and they have a 30% rule, where for the first 8 years you get the first 30% of your income completely outside the tax system. Also, the Netherlands is very progressive.
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Some of us like not referencing our driver's licenses to remember which gender we are.
Re: Brain drain (Score:2)
Canada is economist.
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We can look forward to many, many wonderful academic paper. For example there's the sex life of castrated transexaul protofeminist mental cases. And how about intersectional anarco-feminism of color? How about the emotional stability of carrots and parsnips, their intersectionality with gender veganism. Thank God for Canada!
Given this informed contribution, maybe it's a win-win-situation. Canada acquires a heap of top academics to improve research and development, and to build a better, fairer, more able society, and the US loses an equal number of inconvenient Cassandras and Laocoöns who only speak inconvenient truths that nobody wants to hear. Ignorance is bliss indeed. At least until the Danaans come out of the gift horse....
Re:Are we talking (Score:5, Interesting)
iZombie or The Walking Dead brain heist?
Canada said:
Oh, take off, eh!"
. . . and folks packed their bags wherever they were, and took the next flight to Canada!
Unfortunately, the Brexit campaign was abused by xenophobic folks in the UK to stoke up "foreigners are evil!" elements there. And it worked. Some foreign IT folks that I work with in the UK have told me that they feel like they have hunting targets pinned on their clothes when they go out shopping.
Xenophobia is the new wave in Europe, but the French nipped the racist "National Front" in the bud with the election of Macron. In Germany, the racist AfD got into parliament, but their political influence has been dampened.
In the UK . . . well, a majority voted for Brexit . . . how many did so on anti-foreigner sentiments . . . nobody will talk about.
But, if you are a true believer in democracy . . . it should be right of UK voters to decide to kick out foreigners . . . correct . . . ?
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Conveniently, as a result of these folks moving to Canada, the average intelligence of the United States and Canada both went up!
(Come on, someone had to say it...)
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Well, Ontario has Doug Ford
Re: Are we talking (Score:4, Informative)
Did you know about 1/2 of the White population has a below average IQ too?
Re:Are we talking (Score:5, Insightful)
Xenophobia is the new wave in Europe, but the French nipped the racist "National Front" in the bud with the election of Macron.
#fakenews
The far-right "Front National" reached the second round of the presidential elections - only the second time ever that they've managed this - and recorded their best ever score - 33.90%. [wikipedia.org]
Seriously, guys, wake up. I live in France. I was not born here. My wife was not born here. The rise of the Front National is a real concern for us. Their popularity is slowly but relentlessly on the rise. Yet I constantly read this rubbish "Woop-woop, high fives, we beat the fascists!". Erm, no, buddy. Pretending that the problem has been solved, does not actually solve it.
Re:Are we talking (Score:5, Informative)
#fakenews
The far-right "Front National" reached the second round of the presidential elections - only the second time ever that they've managed this - and recorded their best ever score - 33.90%. [wikipedia.org]
Not arguing that FN isn't an issue, but you do realise that the nature of the French presidential run-off system has the potential to create these sorts of overdramatic situations? A more representative level of support for them would be from the first round, where they got 21.3% vs Macron's 24%. If they had got just 1.3% less, or about 10% of Fillon's supports had backed Melenchon instead, then there would have been no 'big drama' in the second runoff.
Also, while Macron gained significant votes from other candidates in the second round, FN did not (when you account for those who voted in the first round but not the second and the 11.5% who nulled their ballots), so they remain a narrow but fervent group on the outside of mainstream French politics. Unless they can fix that, there is (and this was clear during the election) zero chance they can take over the presidency.
It is scary that 1/5 French voters support them, and France needs to deal with this, but there is not about to be a French Brexit/Trump. That part of it was the sensationalist media trying to drum up a story out of nothing.
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My only problem with your post is the "#fakenews" part. Come on, man. Just because someone is wrong doesn't mean that they're "fake news." The whole reason that the American right is trying to use that phrase in the sense you just used it is to water it down so we lose sight of the actual fake news stories that are flooding the internet and confusing the hell out of technologically illiterate baby boomers. By making it a catch-all phrase for anyone who says something that is wrong or biased, we fail to dist
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Seriously, guys, wake up. I live in France. I was not born here.
Then you should understand the political system a bit better. In multi-round elections you typically end up with a lovely split between parties. The second round will then bring out people opinion for or against one of the two candidates. A vote for FN isn't a vote for their policies but could be a number of things. A vote in their confidence, a vote for their policies, a vote that dislikes the opposition without any knowledge of the FN.
You say 33.9% is their best score yet in a second round? A better way o
Re:Are we talking (Score:4, Funny)
But, if you are a true believer in democracy . . . it should be right of UK voters to decide to kick out foreigners . . . correct . . . ?
The UK is a parliamentary democracy. If the UK population voted for an absolutely racist/xenophobic government at a General Election, that would be completely different from a marginal majority in a stupid fucking Referendum that no one took seriously until it was too late.
Voting in such a government would probably start an actual Civil War, but that is another issue.
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In the UK . . . well, a majority voted for Brexit . . . how many did so on anti-foreigner sentiments . . . nobody will talk about.
Randomly this reminds me that apparently a large number of people in the UK claimed they voted for it as a joke, thinking it wouldn't go through. ....Never vote as a joke.
Re: Are we talking (Score:2, Interesting)
My ultra liberal brother voted for Trump as a joke in the primary, thinking he was fucking over the republican nomination.
Living in the best time line.
Re:Are we talking (Score:4, Interesting)
Can confirm. The amount of xenophobic/racist abuse as increased since Brexit. I got screamed at in the street for talking Japanese on the phone a few months back. Some people have been emboldened by what they see as endorsement of their xenophobia, regardless of what proportion of leave voters actually agree with them. I know a lot just fell for the Euro myths and £350m/week for the NHS lies.
Re: Are we talking (Score:3)
You should simply look them in the face, then speak pointedly in Japanese, with laughter intermingled. That type of shit drives racists crazy.
Re: Are we talking (Score:2)
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iZombie or The Walking Dead brain heist?
Canada said:
Oh, take off, eh!"
. . . and folks packed their bags wherever they were, and took the next flight to Canada!
Unfortunately, the Brexit campaign was abused by xenophobic folks in the UK to stoke up "foreigners are evil!" elements there. And it worked. Some foreign IT folks that I work with in the UK have told me that they feel like they have hunting targets pinned on their clothes when they go out shopping.
Xenophobia is the new wave in Europe, but the French nipped the racist "National Front" in the bud with the election of Macron. In Germany, the racist AfD got into parliament, but their political influence has been dampened.
In the UK . . . well, a majority voted for Brexit . . . how many did so on anti-foreigner sentiments . . . nobody will talk about.
But, if you are a true believer in democracy . . . it should be right of UK voters to decide to kick out foreigners . . . correct . . . ?
AfD in German was a loose alliance of far right parties that banded together for the election when it looked like the far right had a chance. They didn't get a majority and fractured, their ostensible leader, Frauke Petry resigned on day 1, they've completely descended into petty bickering. If an election was held again, I think Merkel would get a majority again and AFD would be lucky to get a few seats.
And you're completely right about Brexit. It was all orchestrated on the irrational fear of Johnathan
Brexit != Democracy (Score:4, Insightful)
But, if you are a true believer in democracy . . . it should be right of UK voters to decide to kick out foreigners . . . correct . . . ?
If you are a true believer in democracy then you should have a lot of trouble with the Brexit vote. Several million British citizens living outside the UK, many inside the rest of the EU, were denied the right to vote in the referendum. It is extremely likely that many of them would have voted to remain, especially those in the EU!
There is no doubt that this exclusion was legal. But you cannot exclude several million of your adult citizens from voting on an issue which directly affects them and then pretend that the result is democratic. As someone who has lived in Europe working at the CERN particle physics lab I always felt of myself as an EU citizen first and foremost and this is now being stripped away from me without my having any vote.
Fortunately, I had already moved to Canada before it was fashionable and I have now done my own personal Brexit and am a proud, new Canadian citizen. However, it is still sad to see the country you grew up in having names that are becoming increasingly ironic: "Great" Britain and the "United" Kingdom.
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So what you expect is to have the right to have input into British politics without having to live with the consequences of those decision. It's the people still living in Britain that will have to live with the consequences.
If citizens in the UK were the only ones affected by this decision you would definitely have a very valid point and this why I've never really complained before about not being allowed to vote in general elections despite the fact that most countries do not disenfranchize citizens abroad. However, this decision affects every British citizen. Indeed the citizens most affected are those living in the rest of the EU and yet they were still excluded. This vote will result in EU citizenship being stripped from
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Oh. So now Brexit is a xenophobic thing.
Okay.
Because having economic migrants (not refugees) thrust upon you by the EU is just the way to go.
The UK is already moving towards totalitarianism and state-enforced blasphemy laws.
But the problem is people who object to a class (not a race) of people who come to this country SOLELY for the economic incentives, with NO intention of following existing laws or adapting themselves to the local culture.
Where grooming gangs, pedophiles and rampant lawlessness go unchec
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Re: Are we talking (Score:5, Insightful)
Amusingly, one of the arguments given for voting leave (and the reason that a lot of Indian and Pakistani immigrants voted) was the preferential treatment of Europeans over Asians by the UK immigration system. It's amusing how even the racism in the leave campaign wasn't self consistent, let alone their economic arguments.
There were many reasons why individuals would choose to leave EU, and many for wanting to stay too. Many of the reasons did not follow party lines at all.
It's easy for Americans who are used to polarization to think of it as right versus left and party lines, but that is seldom the case in European politics. Things are far more nuanced, and especially in referendums. A left-leaning English man might have voted for leaving because he felt he paid too much to the EU compared to what England got back, while a right-leaning Scot might think that EU subsidies and incentives for his region were needed for his business, while another Scot might be fed up of London controlling their oil income. It's all varied, and I would guess that only a minority of the votes had anything to do with xenophobia.
Britain is used to high immigration, and people around the world who have Commonwealth passports and rights already. Integration is much better in the UK than in the US, although certainly not perfect. The parts that have immigration fears are quite often left-leaning, not almost all right-leaning like in the US. Sure, you'll find skinhead right-wing supremacists, but they are hardly numerous enough to influence a referendum. Religion plays a much smaller part, and if anything, the Christians are more welcoming, not less like in the US. It's a very different playing field.
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What I think is funny is that you post how nuanced the Brexit vote was compared to American politics. You assume that the US is just simply left v right. As an American, I do wonder frequently if the media and people on the coasts tend to think that way myself. But though as a conservative, I did not vote for Trump, I know a lot of people who did. Most of them did not like him overall and would have preferred a stronger candidate. They each had their own reasons voting for him, and though some were "be
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though some were "because he's not Clinton", that was a very small number of them
Isn't "small" a rather strange way of saying "most?"
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Integration is much better in the UK than in the US, although certainly not perfect. The parts that have immigration fears are quite often left-leaning, not almost all right-leaning like in the US.
Do you seriously believe this?
The UK, which started dealing with mass migration about 50-60 years ago, is better at integration than the US, a mass-immigrant society from its very beginnings?
Most of what I've read, seen, heard from people etc. suggests the UK is not very good at integrating immigrants at all. Granted, it was much more open to immigration than other European countries and much more welcoming to immigrants initially, but due do that it assumed things would take care of themselves...which resu
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Yea, if you live in a country where a legal vote has been held, you stay there! I mean, it's not like anyone has ever been moved to a ghetto, thrown out of the country, died, or has had any other horrible thing happen to them as a result of a legal vote... Legal votes are safe!
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Anybody stupid enough to move because of a legal vote- well, that's somebody who isn't likely going to be doing any original research anyway, just derived politically correct bullshit like climate science, string theory, and Women's Studies.
Stuff that the Trump Great America is not interested in funding because there is no profit in it.
The man wen bankrupt running a casino. You know, the place where the odds are always stacked in favor of the house.
Is profit really all we should be interested in? Is breathing clean air and drinking clean water profitable? Is understanding our world and environment profitable? Is understanding the building blocks and mechanisms that underpin our physical reality profitable?
Theses things, among many others, have value that cannot be expressed monetarily. You might consider how many things enable and enrich your life that do not make money for anybody. Or not!
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Wow, this post is amazing! The historical parallels are beautiful! Bravo, mod parent Interesting!
Now it's PC/SJW science instead of Jewish Science, and this time it's climate science, string theory and women's studies instead of Einstein's theories of relativity, Heisenberg's theories of quantum mechanics, and Freud's organized psychoanalysis. And now likewise, those scientists are taking refuge in other countries.
This is amazing, it's almost like being able to use a time machine to visit Germany in the '30s.
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Oooh, nice by-the-numbers fake news posting. Some kids pose with baseball bats for a cool picture with firm tongue-in-cheek ironic undercurrents, and suddenly you have leftists 'patrolling the campus with baseball bats on a seek-and-destroy mission against "nazis"'.
Yeah, c'mon, it's not like they were carrying tiki torches or something ... who could take it seriously?
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