8124

8124, 4 months ago

@simon_brooke the allegations were proven to the satisfactions of the countries now withdrawing funding, many of whom have not exactly been “friendly” towards Israel since October 7th.

let’s say further investigations were to reveal that 25% of male UNRWA employees are personally affiliated with hamas and PIJ, versus 15% terror affiliation for all men living in Gaza.

in this scenario, would you then change your assessment of UNRWA and support transferring its mission to another UN refugee organisation with a better track record? or will you continue to support UNRWA no matter what?

8124, 4 months ago

@TonyStark nice. reading about North Carolina and elections reminds me of Moore vs Harper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_v._Harper

tl;dr state legislatures do not get the last word. state constitutions do (as construed by the state supreme courts)

if Moore vs Harper had gone the other way, then this judge’s opinion would not matter. so i am grateful to SCOTUS for getting that decision right.

8124, 5 months ago

@wndlb @Joe_Hill @Npars01 @kfury should constitutional language have presumed perpetuity?

if not, then in the future wouldn’t the bill of rights be more vulnerable if our only option to preserve those amendments was through federal statute? it’s too tempting of a power grab for the next charlatan(s).

8124, 5 months ago

@shekinahcancook @rberger it's not that weird to avoid giving money to people who want you dead, or to anyone who goes out of their way to ensure the viability of nazi blogging as a career. the Holocaust proved that humanity is capable of the Holocaust.

8124, 5 months ago

@TruthSandwich @rameshgupta @kiplet i agree with you.

Substack prohibiting certain sexual content proves that they do in fact exercise editorial control.

the Holocaust proved that humanity is capable of the Holocaust, so nazi ideology already poses a credible threat on Substack’s own terms.

first amendment should cover lies and even calls for violence as long as they pass Brandenburg tests, defamation etc.

but why make their lives easy and process payments for them etc? these are businesses, not public resources. force these authors to reevaluate their worldviews, and failing that they can march or host their own servers etc, within the confines of law. there’s no reason for anyone to go out of their way to make being a nazi blogger a viable profession.

8124, 5 months ago

@TruthSandwich @rameshgupta @kiplet 100% plus, they won't allow sexual content despite lack of legal prohibition.

reminds me how Elon Musk likes to pose and preen about as a Free Speech Absolutist™ and then ruthlessly ban any and all journalists who dare to look at him the wrong way.

i think the awkward attempts to shoehorn these recent events into much longer-running narratives about media bias, are intentionally deceptive. Twitter and Substack going full-nazi are recent developments.

8124, 5 months ago

@dukepaaron Jews have no hope in the world of perpetual warfare envisioned by the new left. nobody does!

if you pick David over Goliath every time, then every time David wins he will become the new Goliath, and then you need to pick a new David to rinse and repeat.

far right politics, with their xenophobia and demented racism are not much better, but forced to choose do offer the possibility of survival.

really the DEI reckoning can’t come soon enough. paraphrasing Seth Mandel here “universities should excavate their original missions from underneath the DEI rubble, where they will find evidence of a once-thriving civilization”

8124, 5 months ago

@rlux @dukepaaron if Biden wins i think it buys us a few extra years to reckon and reconcile.

my 2¢, if Trump is disqualified by the 14th amendment and i think that there is a non-trivial chance of that happening, then Haley deserves consideration for her foreign policy approach given the risk of WW3.

8124, 5 months ago

@TonyStark @dukepaaron @rlux her answers in the GOP debates offer more nuance than that. she is threading a needle, unlike Desantis. i agree defection by Democrats is unlikely if Biden the other option.

but, hear me out (bong rip) if Trump is disqualified by the 14th amendment, Biden pardons Hunter and bows out of the race, Democrats run a Dean Philips/AOC ticket...

8124, 5 months ago

@rlux @TonyStark @dukepaaron you could be right about that. but is the US today more sexist than England in the ‘80s? i realize it’s multifaceted and there are no easy answers. Hillary also has a compelling foreign policy vision finding increasing relevance to the world today.

8124, 5 months ago

@rameshgupta @HeavenlyPossum @QasimRashid @AlliFlowers @pewnack ladies and gentlemen, Heavenly “danger is not dangerous” Possum

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/B0R3v

8124, 5 months ago

@notwithstanding @rameshgupta @HeavenlyPossum @QasimRashid @AlliFlowers @pewnack now HP is claiming that somehow the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and the largest civilian massacre in the history of Israel isn't an existential threat to Israel.

i suppose that makes sense since he was in a decidedly celebratory mood on October 8th.

8124, 5 months ago

@nicholas_saunders @Properganda @jmmarin @xs4me2 @ErikJonker @geopolitics countries are not obligated to cede territory just because someone illegally invades them. the Putin regime is openly warmongering towards Poland, a NATO member. stopping then in Ukraine is good for Ukraine, and good for NATO, so why negotiate anything other than full Russian withdrawal from land that isn’t theirs?

8124, 5 months ago

@nicholas_saunders @Properganda @jmmarin @xs4me2 @ErikJonker @geopolitics

great article, i learned a lot and found it very persuasive. i recommend it to everyone.

"Why roll the dice?"

1. any "freezing" of the conflict allows Russia to continue to reconstitute forces and continue to expand its industrial base for a renewed invasion later on, now stronger and more experienced.

2. if Russia eventually wins all of Ukraine, its air defense network will be dense with no gaps, requiring America to deploy ground troops at least temporarily to reinforce insufficient NATO troops, and stealth aircraft permanently, which are also needed to deter Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

3. in scenario 2, NATO will still defeat a full scale Russian invasion of the new border (also consider Belarus), but America will have to spend way more money than it currently is sending to Ukraine in order to help NATO do that, while also defending Taiwan.

8124, 5 months ago

@robertnorlyn fr?

8124, 5 months ago

@thejacenallen @TruthSandwich @firecat @marcelias

8124, 6 months ago

@MadeyeTheCarnaptious @shekinahcancook hamas themselves also possess moral agency and can surrender all on their own. they can also be motivated to do so from simple will-to-live.

stripping the surrendered terrorist enemy to their underwear serves a practical security purpose, these things called “suicide bombs” and “side arms” maybe you heard of them

8124, 6 months ago

@rameshgupta thought provoking question. i’m gonna guess the answer is no, but i’m willing to be wrong.

8124, 6 months ago

@MattMastodon @0xamit if killing civilians is a war crime, then every war in human history was a war crime. i know how bad you want to be John Lennon but it’s not going to work out for you.

8124, 5 months ago

@thejacenallen @georgetakei nice Holocaust Inversion idiot