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posted by janrinok on Monday February 06 2017, @12:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the serving-two-masters dept.

In a case that should have the Founders of the USA spinning in their graves, The Intercept has got hold of documents relating to Peter Thiel's NZ citizenship. These documents reveal that Thiel would not normally qualify for citizenship, which requires the holder to actually reside in New Zealand. NZ law provides for citizenship under "exceptional circumstances and public interest" for people who don't plan to live in NZ.

Thiel's extreme wealth was the exceptional circumstance that allowed for citizenship and which in turn allowed Thiel to avoid certain administrative protocols that a non-citizen would have had to follow relating to the purchase of his large estate in NZ.

As part of taking up citizenship, Thiel had to pledge an oath of loyalty to HM Queen Elizabeth II (in her role as Queen of New Zealand), which certainly raises questions about either his sincerity or his fitness to be an advisor to the President.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @06:40AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @06:40AM (#463340)

    Trump, like Obama is being confronted with the fact the writing an Executive Order does not mean the thing will happen (e.g. closing Guantanamo and blocking travelers from the 7 countries). And to be fair, Obama didn't ask for that Nobel Prize. It put him in an awkward position, too. The bombing statistic is troubling, but probably due to the rapid advance of drone technology. Now it's easier and lower-risk than ever to sneak in and drop a bomb.

    so far Trump has generally been doing some great things for America

    It's much to early to make a statement like that. Before deciding an action was great, we have to know the consequences.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @08:48AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @08:48AM (#463358)

    I completely agree about needing to see the consequences. It would be more accurate to say that I think he's doing things that are at least ostensibly directed towards improving America.

    All presidents in recent decades have reached a point in their term where they begin openly engaging in actions that run contrary to America's interests or those of their own supposed ideology for various reasons. Those reasons generally boil down to corruption or cronyism. I think many people expected Trump to do this from day 1. I certainly did and initially thought his appointment of Rex Tillerson was an example of this. Assigning the current CEO of Exxon as secretary of state? Really? But he's received accolades from no less than Elon Musk. That led to me research him and it was simply surprising to see he supports things like a carbon tax, acknowledges climate change, and has extensive geopolitical experience as it relates to his criteria for the position, and more. Not exactly what I expected of Exxon's CEO. And so far that seems to be the M.O. for many of Trump's actions. They are portrayed as the worst thing since Hitler by the media, but once you actually research them yourself and get the facts - reality is often quite different than the picture the media is trying to present. I've found myself incredibly surprised by Trump. Having been severely disappointed and disillusioned by what Obama turned into, it feels great to be surprised [in a good way] again.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @09:53AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @09:53AM (#463370)

      > acknowledges climate change,

      Do not be fooled.

      Its nothing more than strategic acknowledgement intended to forestall any action on climate change. It is a lot easier to dismiss the raving idiots like khallow who deny it exists at all. Tillerson is a "lukewarmer" [cato.org] which is a group of deniers who say that humans are contributing to climate change but that its 'impossible' to know how much [dailycaller.com] and therefore it would be premature to do anything about it.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @01:58PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @01:58PM (#463408)

        You can't expect people to all act like you'd like and believe as you'd like. You need to take the pros and cons and measure them not only objectively but also relative to other possibilities. Imagine the person you'd expect for Trump to appoint as secretary of state, further imagine that this person is the CEO of the 8th largest company in the world - Exxon. The caricature of a person we'd both create in our minds... can you even imagine? And if you tend to go for the media caricature of Trump as some raving racist ready to war against the non-'merica world don't forget to factor that into your image of who he'd appoint as the secretary of state plays a crucial role in foreign relations.

        Yet we get Tillerson in reality, who is going be magnitudes more moderate and reasonable than the type of individuals we'd expect to see.

        Tillerson has even gone on the record as stating he is supportive of a carbon tax solution and that is precisely doing something about climate change. In fact far more than we've seen in years if not decades. You might point to the Paris Agreement as a keystone for progress, but it's not. Like many things that were passed under Obama related to climate change it is 100% image over substance. In particular the Paris Agreement lacks any enforcement mechanism whatsoever. We, and all other signatories, are under 0 obligation to do anything. By contrast the Kyoto protocol actually had enforcement mechanisms. Which could explain why 192 countries (and the EU) signed the agreement. And 191 ratified it. The hold out? That's us, of course. We could have ratified even under Obama, but he never chose to pursue such actions. We were, seemingly ironically, the first to hit our reduction goal from the Kyoto Protocol yet that was purely incidental since gas prices falling off a cliff led us to swap to natural gas over coal for purely economic reasons.

        Things are so much different than presented by the media when you actually investigate the facts. And that's really what I'm getting at here. Tillerson is magnitudes more desirable than what we should or would expect. I just found all of this very ironic since, at first, I assumed Tillerson was a perfect example of "Oh god, here comes the cronyism" yet now I find myself sitting here defending him. Go figure.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @03:19AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @03:19AM (#463866)

          Tillerson has even gone on the record as stating he is supportive of a carbon tax solution and that is precisely doing something about climate change.

          Nah, he only said that as a way to weaken support for the cap and trade bill in 2009. Exxon continued to fund lobbyists fighting tooth and nail against a carbon tax.

          See, the problem with Tillerson is that he's fucking-a smart. That makes him 10x worse than the incoherently screaming deniers. He's good at putting up a reasonable appearance in order to deflect from actually doing anything. He sure has suckered you in.

          I'd rather the screaming idiots, they are too dumb to realize that all their idiocy is self-defeating because it catalyzes opposition. Tillerson knows better.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @06:02AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @06:02AM (#463916)

            They've been lobbying for a federal level revenue neutral carbon tax for some time now. Revenue neutral is the key part. The idea is to not have the government see the carbon tax as a way to fill their piggy bank, but rather all revenue from the tax would be returned to the public at large. And their public statements are also consistent. For instance this [senate.gov] is a letter from Exxon's VP to congress from earlier last year.

            You have to keep in mind much of the media against Trump and his nominees is extremely partisan. For instance in doing my research on Tillerson I also came across this supposed conflict. Yet let's look at the data. Most of all news outlets screaming that Tillerson is lying and Exxon is secretly lobbying against everything rely exclusively on a single lobbyist opposing two state level issues in Massachusetts as their primary bit of "evidence." You'll also notice that even though this happened more than a year ago, all the articles about this all came out about the same time - quite recently - which further shows the media coordination against Trump. Now the fact is that Exxon and Tillerson first started pushing towards a carbon tax some 9 years ago and this is the best "dirt" they could dig up in those 9 years? For a worldwide company with 75,000+ employees? At this scale it's not uncommon for the right hand to not know what the left is doing. I think this lack of any meaningful dirt speaks volumes towards Tillerson's authenticity.

            Beware of confirmation bias. I think this strategy of always considering the corollary of "dirt" is extremely useful. Try to find the worst, most damning, articles you can find on somebody. And then consider that that's the absolute worst that the media with their vast resources and connections could dig up. It helps, I think, to give a more realistic view of what's happening at a time when the media has just completely jumped the shark.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @09:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @09:40PM (#463697)

    We have to know the actions as well as the consequences.