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Why is the State Department being destroyed?
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The Final Dakar
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Nov 27, 2017, 04:23 PM
 
I can not profess to know what it does, outside of diplomacy and international relations, but every piece of news about State seems to indicate that it is the red-headed step child of the administration. Targeted for cuts, employees ignored, sections bypassed – to what end?

I'd remind you that this department is supposed to be run by one of the adults in room, Rex Tillerson, but certainly his behavior towards the department he leads does not indicate adult behavior.

So I ask, with the hopes that someone with a bigger understanding might be able to elucidate as to what dismantling state helps accomplish or facilitate. Because to me, this goes further than the normal administration ignorance.
     
OAW
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Nov 27, 2017, 04:39 PM
 
This is what happens when you put people in charge who are fundamentally philosophically opposed to the very mission of the federal agencies they lead.

OAW
     
The Final Dakar  (op)
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Nov 27, 2017, 06:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by OAW View Post
This is what happens when you put people in charge who are fundamentally philosophically opposed to the very mission of the federal agencies they lead.

OAW
Rex Tillerson is philosophically opposed to diplomacy? Gonna need citations for that one.
     
OAW
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Nov 27, 2017, 06:37 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
Rex Tillerson is philosophically opposed to diplomacy? Gonna need citations for that one.
Not diplomacy per se ... but the process by which foreign policy is formulated. The man is trying to run a critical governmental organization like a private business and that is fundamentally a problem. The expertise required to effectively determine and execute foreign policy is being systematically gutted because Trump and Tillerson don't believe in that power resting in the collective hands of the State Department.

Tillerson’s State Department Is Adrift, Diplomats Say | NBCNews.com

Rex Tillerson Is Fiddling With PowerPoint While the World Burns | Politico.com

OAW
     
OreoCookie
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Nov 27, 2017, 09:20 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
Rex Tillerson is philosophically opposed to diplomacy? Gonna need citations for that one.
Rex Tillerson seems opposed to staffing it and keeping it staffed with career bureaucrats. That's one of the instances where his experience as CEO should transfer to some degree: you need a functioning bureaucracy to support your efforts. I am not sure what Tillerson's motivations are, but after so many months I think it is fair to judge him by his actions and say that he is in favor of cutting the State Department, and that he is at the very least willing to accept that many of the State Department's diplomatic capabilities are cut in the process.

In the first few months of the Trump Presidency there were several news reports where in reaction to Trump low-level diplomats from Europe tried to get in touch with their colleagues at the State Department only to find out that literally nobody was home to take their calls. One example concerned the US's trade deficit with Germany, but there were other cases, too. Extremely important ambassadorships are left vacant. There are no ambassadors appointed to Germany, the EU or France.

I think what happens at the State Department is a much bigger deal compared to the play the story gets in the news. This will have a long-lasting impact on the US's ability to do business around the world as many career diplomats are leaving or are being forced out, and you can't replace those. Fellowships which were used as a way to attract talents have also been nixed. The tree is being hollowed out.
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The Final Dakar  (op)
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Nov 27, 2017, 09:56 PM
 
I need to post some receipts, so you guys understand where I'm coming from here, but the impression I'm getting is its a little more insidious than just not naming ambassadors and cutting bureaucrats. For example, they eliminated the office in charge of sanctions at state.
Instead, the role of coordinating U.S. sanctions across the State Department and other government agencies now falls to just one mid-level official — David Tessler, the deputy director of the Policy Planning Office. The Policy Planning Office, which previously operated as a small team providing strategic advice to the secretary but did not manage programs or initiatives, has grown in power under Tillerson’s “redesign” of the department.
     
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Nov 27, 2017, 10:13 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
I need to post some receipts, so you guys understand where I'm coming from here, but the impression I'm getting is its a little more insidious than just not naming ambassadors and cutting bureaucrats.
Of course, and I didn't mean to imply that. However, that is what you see on the surface, and I think cutting fellowships and the like is akin to the example you brought: it is a much more subtle way to hamper the State Department for the foreseeable future.

Like you wrote in your first post, there has got to be more to the story, because someone with Tillerson's background knows exactly what he is doing here. He isn't doing this out of negligence due to incompetence, but in his case it is much more likely that it is intentional. And the fact that we can't make easy rhyme and reason of it, makes me very uneasy.
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The Final Dakar  (op)
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Nov 27, 2017, 11:03 PM
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/m...epartment.html
In December, Nikki Haley, Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, set up a conference call with two senior State Department officials: Kristie Kenney, the State Department counselor, and Patrick Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management. Haley wanted to ask them questions about the logistics of her new job: basic matters like what her salary and benefits would be and where her family would live in New York City. Kenney and Kennedy told her about the federal employee health insurance plan and offered to send her floor plans of the U.N. ambassador’s apartment. When word of the call got back to Trump’s transition team, the two department officials were reprimanded by Glazer and told never to speak with Haley again.
Two days later, Kennedy was told to retire and given three days to clean out his office. Kennedy had spent 44 years in the Foreign Service and was not particularly political, focusing instead on management and operations; he’d been appointed to his under-secretary position by President George W. Bush. But he had become a central figure in conservative conspiracy theories about Benghazi and Clinton’s private email server. Tillerson aides later joked that Kennedy’s defenestration was like something out of the Soviet Union, dragging a political foe out into the street and shooting him in the head so as to send a message to others.

A few weeks later, Kenney, who as counselor was the State Department’s No. 5 policy official, was told that her services were no longer needed, and she retired. And in the weeks after that, half a dozen other top diplomats were shown the door — fired, forced into retirement or warehoused at a university fellowship. “If you took the entire three-star and four-star corps of the military and said, ‘Leave!’ Congress would go crazy,” one of the recently departed said.

Tillerson’s early choice for deputy secretary of state was Elliott Abrams, a longtime Republican foreign-policy hand who served as George W. Bush’s deputy national-security adviser. At Tillerson’s instigation, Trump met with Abrams in early February and came away favorably disposed to his nomination, according to White House officials. But after the meeting, Trump apparently saw Rand Paul on Fox News disparage Abrams as a Never Trumper. (During the campaign Abrams wrote an article for The Weekly Standard titled “When You Can’t Stand Your Candidate.”) Trump told Tillerson that Abrams could not work for him after all.
When I recently met with Hook in his seventh-floor office at the State Department, he seemed wary of any implication that, in light of his establishment pedigree and association with Cohen and Edelman, he wasn’t sufficiently pro-Trump. I noted that on his conference table he had a book by Daniel W. Drezner, an international-politics professor at Tufts University who writes regularly for The Washington Post website and is a frequent critic of Trump and of Tillerson. In fact, just that morning, Drezner had published a column calling on Tillerson to resign. I jokingly told Hook that he might want to hide the book. Instead, R.C. Hammond, Tillerson’s communications director, who was sitting in on the interview, immediately seized it.

“This is the guy who has the thing at The Post?” Hammond asked Hook. “Where’s your trash can?” He made as if he was going to throw the book across Hook’s office. Hook raised his hand to block Hammond.

“No!” Hook said. “It’s a book on policy planning! This was written before Rex Tillerson was even considered.”

“Trash can,” Hammond reiterated.
Hook kept his hand up. The fifth of Bombay gin and the liter bottle of tonic water on his desk suddenly made more sense.
And they complain about liberals needing safe spaces. Its ****ing scary.

The Foreign Service officer recalls a recent meeting of acting assistant secretaries, where the most pressing matters discussed were the backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests and the number of typographical errors in memos to the secretary’s office. “The world is going to hell in a handbasket,” the Foreign Service officer fumed, “and the greatest minds in our diplomatic service are talking about FOIA requests and [expletive] typos.”

All of which can lead to some dark thoughts. More than one State Department official told me that they believed all of this wasn’t a case of simple mismanagement but of something more sinister. “I’ve lived in a lot of countries where conspiracy theories abound because people feel like they lack self-determination,” Nancy McEldowney, a 30-year career Foreign Service officer who retired in June, says. “And a great many people inside State are now hypothesizing about what the goal of all this is. Why are they firing people and shrinking the department down? It can’t simply be a budget-cutting exercise. If it were purely for reform, they would have done it differently.”
I do feel part of this is some kind of isolationist impetus of Bannon's but he's been gone a while now.
     
The Final Dakar  (op)
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Nov 27, 2017, 11:07 PM
 
Stuff like this also makes no sense: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/24/u...tillerson.html
Republicans pilloried Hillary Clinton for what they claimed was her inadequate attention to security as secretary of state in the months before the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. Congress even passed legislation mandating that the department’s top security official have unrestricted access to the secretary of state.

But in his first nine months in office, Mr. Tillerson turned down repeated and sometimes urgent requests from the department’s security staff to brief him, according to several former top officials in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Finally, Mr. Miller, the acting assistant secretary for diplomatic security, was forced to cite the law’s requirement that he be allowed to speak to Mr. Tillerson.

Mr. Miller got just five minutes with the secretary of state, the former officials said. Afterward, Mr. Miller, a career Foreign Service officer, was pushed out, joining a parade of dismissals and early retirements that has decimated the State Department’s senior ranks. Mr. Miller declined to comment.
What. The. ****.

The number of those with the department’s top two ranks of career ambassador and career minister — equivalent to four- and three-star generals — will have been cut in half by Dec. 1, from 39 to 19. And of the 431 minister-counselors, who have two-star-equivalent ranks, 369 remain and another 14 have indicated that they will leave soon — an 18 percent drop — according to an accounting provided by the American Foreign Service Association.
Mrs. Clinton and John Kerry, her successor, were both seen as focused on their own priorities and were not particularly popular within the department. The model secretaries in recent history have been Colin Powell, James A. Baker III and George P. Shultz, Republicans who cared about management.

“Everyone who called me, I said: ‘Listen, guys, this is going to be great, and maybe he’ll finally get the department in shape,’” said Dana Shell Smith, the ambassador to Qatar, who recently resigned.

Since then, Ms. Smith has changed her mind.

“These people either do not believe the U.S. should be a world leader, or they’re utterly incompetent,” she said. “Either way, having so many vacancies in essential places is a disaster waiting to happen.”
     
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Nov 29, 2017, 10:13 AM
 
The State Dept. should NOT cater to one ideology but it has been for too long, wastes billions and doing very little. I KNOW. I was a contractor there for a few years and saw it daily.
     
Laminar
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Nov 29, 2017, 04:09 PM
 
Originally Posted by BadKosh View Post
The State Dept. should NOT cater to one ideology but it has been for too long, wastes billions and doing very little. I KNOW. I was a contractor there for a few years and saw it daily.
What's the role of the state department?
What ideology have they pushed in the past?
What are some everyday examples of avoidable state department waste?
     
el chupacabra
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Dec 7, 2017, 01:56 AM
 
One of their roles is issuing visas and permanent resident cards. Up until now they have showed favoritism bias to criminals (illegals/ undocumented migrants whatever stupid lingo fits their propaganda agenda). But what it come down to is the shadiest people get residency and citizenship before law abiding people whove been waiting for years; because aside from bribery, it’s easier to fill the quotas by just stampng the same people in rather than do the work to do it right. So good people on the wait list get pushed down the line since illegals cut in front of them filling the quotas. I imagine theres also been a goal to bring in the least competent people most prone to criminal activity since they tend to lean left, but thats just a hunch. The DOS needs to be hollowed out.
     
subego
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Dec 7, 2017, 02:20 AM
 
Originally Posted by el chupacabra View Post
Up until now they have showed favoritism bias to criminals
[citation please]
     
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Dec 7, 2017, 04:25 AM
 
Right. I found it was always helpful having a criminal record when I applied for visas and work permits
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Waragainstsleep
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Dec 7, 2017, 06:48 AM
 
Originally Posted by el chupacabra View Post
I imagine theres also been a goal to bring in the least competent people most prone to criminal activity since they tend to lean left, but thats just a hunch.
I don't think anyone on the right can say much about competence given the current government.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
Laminar
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Dec 7, 2017, 11:17 AM
 
Originally Posted by el chupacabra View Post
people most prone to criminal activity since they tend to lean left, but thats just a hunch.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...ump-Appointees

Even when we standardize it by getting annual averages, GOP administrations still have 29 times more indictments, 64 times more convictions, and 24 times more prison sentences.
     
el chupacabra
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Dec 7, 2017, 04:16 PM
 
Proof of discrimination against republican administrations.
     
Laminar
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Dec 7, 2017, 05:01 PM
 
I figured.
     
andi*pandi
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Dec 7, 2017, 05:08 PM
 
Iran Contra anyone?
     
The Final Dakar  (op)
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Dec 7, 2017, 05:10 PM
 
God lord. Police discrimination against blacks isn't real but republican discrimination by justice is.
     
Laminar
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Dec 7, 2017, 05:47 PM
 
Originally Posted by andi*pandi View Post
Iran Contra anyone?
Watergate was fake news, liberal media, etc.
     
el chupacabra
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Dec 7, 2017, 11:13 PM
 
Originally Posted by Laminar View Post
What's the role of the state department?
What ideology have they pushed in the past?
What are some everyday examples of avoidable state department waste?
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articl...ate-Department
     
subego
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Dec 7, 2017, 11:33 PM
 
If their big screwup accounts for 2% of their budget, I’d say that’s pretty good for Uncle Sam.
     
el chupacabra
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Dec 8, 2017, 12:05 AM
 
… .
( Last edited by el chupacabra; Jan 5, 2024 at 01:18 AM. )
     
subego
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Dec 8, 2017, 12:25 AM
 
Do any of those videos show preferential treatment? I haven’t watched them.
     
OreoCookie
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Dec 8, 2017, 01:01 AM
 
@el chupacabra
You use a bunch of random videos of presidents and legislators as justification to cut back the State Department? Ok. And to attribute malice towards other countrymen and women who just happen to have different political opinions.

I think you should inoculate yourself against hyper partisanship and take a breather.
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el chupacabra
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Dec 8, 2017, 04:01 AM
 
… .
( Last edited by el chupacabra; Jan 5, 2024 at 01:18 AM. )
     
OreoCookie
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Dec 8, 2017, 07:22 AM
 
Originally Posted by el chupacabra View Post
One video he mentions how we're rewarding illegals; others talk about all the benefits they're taking and how their bankrupting the country, how many of them are criminals etc.
And do you believe all this? And what does ICE have to do with the State Department? (Hint: ICE belongs to DHS. Do you want to cut funds for the DHS because you are unhappy with the US's immigration policies?) And should the US stop appointing important ambassadors as well as foreign policy experts because of immigration issues?

Out of curiosity, have you ever dealt with US immigration yourself?
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Waragainstsleep
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Dec 8, 2017, 09:59 AM
 
Originally Posted by el chupacabra View Post

"They're not sending us their best", we dont need any more of these fools. MAGA!!!1!
I remember disagreeing with you on most things but were you always this bad?
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
el chupacabra
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Dec 8, 2017, 11:55 PM
 
… .
( Last edited by el chupacabra; Jan 5, 2024 at 01:17 AM. )
     
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Dec 9, 2017, 01:27 AM
 
Originally Posted by el chupacabra View Post
The world trade situation is way out of control, thats one of the reasons Trump was elected. ...... They will be replaced and the dirty back room deals between the ruling classes will continue as it always has.
Just out of interest, do you think Trump is actually different from these elitist backroom dealers, or are you just saying thats what the people who voted for him thought?
( Last edited by Waragainstsleep; Dec 9, 2017 at 11:02 AM. )
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subego
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Dec 9, 2017, 09:44 AM
 
Originally Posted by el chupacabra View Post
One video he mentions how we're rewarding illegals; others talk about all the benefits they're taking and how their bankrupting the country, how many of them are criminals etc.. Mostly it's to remind people what a large issue immigration has been for over 20 years proven by the fact that all parties have agreed on the issue for over 20 years, but no one with any teeth wanted to get their hands dirty... until now... The videos are of democrats saying all the same things as Trump did about illegals. The only reason they changed their tune in current times is purely due to the political climate. But otherwise it's not the citation you were looking for. I dont get my info from the news usually. I dont have TV, dont watch Fox, CNN, Culbert, Daily Show, dont read the paper or any brand name news. In fact I used to be the kind of person the news came to for information; and they just regurgitated whatever I or my colleagues told them, no fact checking at all no matter what famous brand they were.

Much of what I say on immigration and other issues comes from personal experience or talking with the people in my community. I dont get why other people dont do the same. In Chicago for example there should be hundreds of people who work for border protection or in the business community. I already know not a single agent isnt disgusted with the fact that the state department continually re-issues visas and DACA papers to overstays & people with a criminal history - and people who flat out dont even qualify for DACA... How does nobody on here know these guys and heard all their stories? As well as people from every other industry for that matter? In the past 10 years 16 people I knew were killed by Illegals. 14 were splattered over the sidewalk in the same incident, by some kind of military rifle, but it didnt make the news.
Trump is trying to reform the government. There's a high chance it will fail but something has to be done, it's a disaster due to weak leaders kicking the can down the road for too long.

"They're not sending us their best", we dont need any more of these fools. MAGA!!!1!
and I dont even like Trump but I know this'll trigger all the short tempered types in the marxist echo chamber so...
Where is the preferential treatment?
     
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Dec 9, 2017, 01:26 PM
 
Originally Posted by el chupacabra View Post
OT, did anyone notice? The guy on left is pointing a gun at the middle guy's head. His finger is on the trigger. And he seems distracted.

I don't recognize the pic. If it's from a movie, does the middle guy die in the next frame?
     
subego
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Dec 9, 2017, 01:34 PM
 
What stood out to me was the guy on the right’s gun. The shadowed rock behind it makes it look like a pistol sized Thompson.
     
el chupacabra
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Dec 9, 2017, 03:07 PM
 
… .
( Last edited by el chupacabra; Jan 5, 2024 at 01:17 AM. )
     
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Dec 9, 2017, 09:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by el chupacabra View Post
There aren't nearly enough ICE employees for them to do their job effectively, and I guess you've been missing all the talk about how california is doing everything it can to prevent ICE from doing their jobs just to stick it to Trump. That said, there is a lot of waste/ bureaucracy in DHS too that should be on the chopping block.
You initially claimed that you want to cut the State Department because of its lackluster enforcement of immigration law — missing that this wasn't the State Department's job in the first place. And now you are pivoting to DHS. It sure sounds like you didn't think this through.
Originally Posted by el chupacabra View Post
No, they should cut back on appointing ambassadors and foreign policy experts for separate reasons. I was just giving one reason yall hadnt thought of yet, so you guys wouldnt scream tl;dr wallotex bla bla.
Your reasoning makes no sense, there is no logical connection between appointing ambassadors or foreign policy experts and immigration enforcement.
Originally Posted by el chupacabra View Post
Anyway Americans aren't going to lose sleep over less caviar parties between our ambassador and germany, or less pate parties in France.
But they will lose sleep when German car manufacturers close their plants in the US and they lose their jobs, unable to feed their families.
Originally Posted by el chupacabra View Post
I'd love it to have a long lasting [negative] impact on our ability to do do world trade. The world trade situation is way out of control, thats one of the reasons Trump was elected. But unfortunately it wont have much impact.
So you hope for the destruction of the American economy? Why? That sounds very unpatriotic to me.
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The Final Dakar  (op)
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Dec 9, 2017, 10:27 PM
 
What does 'the world trade situation is out of control' even mean? Too many countries are trading internationally?
     
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Dec 9, 2017, 11:35 PM
 
Trumpsters are insular, anti-globalists. I think its just large scale racism.
( Last edited by Waragainstsleep; Dec 10, 2017 at 12:48 PM. )
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subego
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Dec 10, 2017, 12:05 AM
 
I assumed it meant we should stop outsourcing everything to other countries.
     
The Final Dakar  (op)
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Dec 10, 2017, 11:11 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
I assumed it meant we should stop outsourcing everything to other countries.
That's not a 'world trade' situation, that's a 'US trade' if not outsourcing situation.
     
The Final Dakar  (op)
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Feb 27, 2018, 12:49 AM
 
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/968314821925105670
Joseph Yun, the US State Department’s top diplomat in charge of North Korea policy, tells CNN he’s retiring at the end of the week
     
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Feb 27, 2018, 12:55 AM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
Who needs that guy?
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The Final Dakar  (op)
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Oct 16, 2018, 10:12 PM
 
     
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Oct 22, 2018, 05:55 PM
 
The State Department has been downgraded in effectiveness, due to the global empire the U S military now oversees. There are commands that are run by military officers that aren't even overrun by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Read The Sorrows Of Empire, by Chalmers Jonson. It's not current, but it does a good job at explaining how this has transpired, and how, with an empire of over 700 military installations around the globe, the State Department is essentially ignored.
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The Final Dakar  (op)
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Oct 30, 2018, 09:27 PM
 
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/don...y-soon-n926006
The Trump administration will soon fulfill a long delayed promise to Congress by naming a special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, a position vacant since the month President Donald Trump took office, a Republican congressman tells NBC News.

In May, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked by Congress why the administration had failed to name an anti-Semitism envoy and testified: “You have my word. We'll move on them.” But the position, vacant since January 2017 has stayed that way.
The Trump administration’s failure to name an envoy for anti-Semitism has come under renewed focus following the killing of 11 Jews on Saturday at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. The Anti-Defamation League, which fights anti-Semitism, has said it’s more important now than ever to ensure the position is filled by a qualified individual urgently.
     
   
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