@dfarrah
Thoughts are always completely free. The expressions of those thoughts are not, even on this site they are not, though JtC gives us the greatest latitude possible.

whether you support free expression and free thought or not.

It appears that you would rather exercise thought and expression control and not hear what others think.

So much for 'open borders,' so to speak.

@lotlizard
that natural physical borders of islands help enforce their governing powers, who regulate their political borders, work hand in hand to the advantage and protections of the islands inhabitants. And the enforcement of those regulations make a lot of sense.

Don't bring snakes to Hawaii ... is one of them.

How about the Channel Islands (Jersey, Guernsey)? The British overseas territories that top the list of the world’s tax havens?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/13/british-overseas-territori...

The smaller the entity, the more jealous it is of its prerogative as a recognized sovereign state. None could exist, none would persist for one day more without strict rules strictly enforced about who can enter, let alone who can settle and live there permanently.

Where can Mr. and Ms. Average Person just move and immediately claim all the benefits that native citizens and tax-dodging international elite have?

When was the last time you went to an event anyplace and the venue security allowed you to disregard rules, leave your assigned area, and stroll backstage, just like that?

Of course the 99% are nonplussed or become enraged when the people on top, the politicians, the 0.01% in Beverly Hills or posh sections of Berlin or wherever, tell people on the bottom their citizenship, traditions, ancestral roots, pride in and attachment to home are worth nothing and morally must be given away to anyone anytime for free, all the while the same 0.01% are surrounding themselves non-stop with tokens and barriers of identity, security, luxury, and exclusive sparkle and status.

Afterthought: Having himself risen to the top, John Lennon had a revelation that actually the world should be one and everyone should be able to share in everything — and that is the truth. Yet without a Secret Service detail such as a president would have, it took only one unguarded moment for him to be murdered. So I don’t know what the answer is either.

(Edited to add) Second afterthought: Who is a Tibetan? Can someone who is genetically Han Chinese, who was born in Tibet, and whose grandparents moved to Tibet long ago be a Tibetan, or are they still to be viewed, as some parts of the NGO industrial complex advocate, as an invader and destroyer of Tibetan culture? Analogously, who is a Hawaiian? Nowadays I tend to want to restrict “Hawaiian” to mean “of Kanaka Maoli ancestry or background” only. Is that racist?

@eyo
as the saying goes here in the Northern parts of Germany, 'we will see us'.

'Alles wird gut' is another one from the folks I worked with in my former life.

So, all is good. That's good.

Thanks for being yourself mimi, never give up, never give in. LOVE

Everything changes, especially blogs on the internet. The other C99 would still be punching UP about borders, and jobs, and the environment, and shitty trade deals. Racism is popular now, because the economy sucks and politicians are useless puppets of big capital. Maybe the other C99 never existed, except inside my head. oh well

I am never going to enable a capitalist border stopping the free flow of labor, free organizing, free cooperation, free compassion, free love for the planet and each other. Socialism can provide free rent and food too, that is a more civilized society if you ask me. Watching my neighbors die on the street does not seem so civilized.

I am not enjoying the border filled present, all bound up inside tiny identity traps, enablers armed to the teeth, fearing every thing that threatens their precious "way of life", which is hideous overconsumption and explotation of shrinking planetary resources. seig heil USA

PEACE

@Centaurea
I am out of wit now how to get back to my usual self and comment without biting everything around me.

I have to go and bake a nut cake. Seems a fitting way to distract myself from more nutty talk here.

Thanks for being a good sport. I love this place.

Being of a mystical bent, I agree with John Lennon about the world "being one" and "living as one".

At the same time, as long as we're inhabiting physical bodies, at least at this point in human evolution, there are going to be some boundaries. I may feel my connection to everyone and everything, often more than I'd like to. But my physical body is covered with skin. That comprises a border between my body ("me") and everything else on the planet. It keeps my internal parts from spilling out and getting mixed up with everyone else's. I think that's a good thing. Of course, we've made up a lot of stories about what that border (the skin) means: it's color, size, shape, etc. That's not necessarily a good thing.

On the psychological level, boundaries are what humans use to maintain our personal integrity as sovereign individual human beings. Boundaries are an "inside job". Boundaries are not about forcing other people to bend to our will, or insisting that someone who isn't just like us is bad and wrong. People who are part of the "hive mind", who are brainwashed by propaganda, whose minds have been captured, have poor boundaries, or none at all.

Here's the thing about the US of A: as a collective entity, it does boundaries really badly.

We've neglected to agree on and implement a policy with regard to our national borders (aka "immigration policy".) At the same time, we've neglected taking care of our own citizenry and our infrastructure. We have failed to maintain our internal integrity. (Yep, the hand of the oligarchy is no doubt behind much of this.)

Now the pendulum has swung far in the other direction. Instead of vague, inconsistent boundaries -- which is basically the same thing as no boundaries -- we're adopting a brutal, angry, punitive stance, constructing "walls" to shut the rest of the world out. But walls are not necessarily the same thing as boundaries.

At the same time, do we respect the boundaries of other countries of the world?

No, we do not. We (collective "we") view the rest of the world as fair game, open for our picking. We routinely disregard the sovereignty of other nations.

The whole world is there just for us, to do with it as we will. We stomp all over everyone and everything else, and insist we have a right to do so. A divine right, because "god shed his grace on thee". If anyone complains or fights back, we throw a self-righteous fit and call them terrorists.

So, yeah. Boundaries.

Once we humans figure out how to do them properly, perhaps we'll evolve to the point where we don't need them anymore. Paradigm shift.

@edg
thanks for being so honest and having eyes wide open. Disrespecting borders, the European history and Colonialism is full of it. How could anyone forget? Then the EU supporters tried to work against that, it pretty much seemed to fail and we go back to disrespecting almost everything under the sun.

Good Night.

Being of Polish ancestry on my paternal side and Finnish and Seminole tribe on my maternal side, I have heard many stories of Russia disrespecting the borders of Poland and Finland, and many stories of Germany disrespecting the border of Poland in 1939, and many stories of Europeans in general disrespecting the borders of Native American tribes.

Those stories partially inform my view of illegal immigration.

More importantly, though, my view of illegal immigration is informed by growing up in Detroit and watching black citizens be dispossessed of jobs and self-respect and hope by immigrants and by outsourcing and by the golden handcuffs of Democratic welfare programs.

Is it racist of me to have more concern for black American citizens than for illegal immigrants? If so, I wear the title proudly.

@lotlizard @lotlizard

add millions of migrants from the Islamic world and from Africa to the mix, completely destabilizing what had already been a precarious balancing act.

Help me out here, I missed that decision.

of harmony among over two dozen nations who, despite shared roots and traditions, had a long history of deep mutual distrust and rivalry punctuated by war . . . when BAM!

Someone decided, without asking voters or their parliamentary representatives, to add millions of migrants from the Islamic world and from Africa to the mix, completely destabilizing what had already been a precarious balancing act.

Criticism of this fateful decision and its likely effects on Europe’s demographic future tends to be immediately ruled out of bounds, denounced as neo-Nazi and racist. So does any attempt to organize political opposition to the decision as ongoing policy.

It’s like it was in East Germany again. It’s impossible to have an open, civil discussion. People are afraid to say what they really think. Voice the wrong opinion and you can be accused of hate speech or deemed a threat to the constitution, liable to be spied upon, ostracized, fired, jailed.

Under these circumstances I don’t know how democracy can work. Perhaps those in charge never intended democracy to work.