Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
Meanwhile Hezbolah is Iranian backed and maybe directly controlled, and has done little in the current conflict.
They've forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes in the north of the country, all without drawing the kind of polarizing international opprobrium that would give Israel a justification for the kind of Gaza-like heavy-handed operations which would be necessary to remove Hezbollah from within easy rocket range of the border.
If, as has been speculated by people like Haviv Rettig Gur, that one of the purposes of Hamas's 10/7 aggression is to ultimately make the feeling of security necessary to maintain a first world standard of living impossible in Israel and drive the Israelis into the sea through emigration/attrition, Hezbollah has achieved about as much as Hamas has done, without any of the downsides.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
De facto, it was.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
But what you're talking about here is collective punishment, and the duty for an ethnic group to police it's own members or face consequences.
Correct. If Germans don't think about the consequences of electing a radical party to control the Reichstag, and the Nazis get control of the country and start annexing and invading the neighbors, the result is that other countries declare war on the entire country of Germany and not just on the individuals controlling policy. This is because the basic assumption of the modern nation-state system is that the nation is the sovereign unit, and has the right, ability, and duty to ensure it is governed in the manner it prefers.
If the Palestinians can't even ensure their representatives to the rest of the world match their preferences, then it's hard to call them a "nation" in any meaningful sense.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
While the labour disruptions remain, a critical mass of unsettled women is unlikely to fuck shit up in the way that a critical mass of unsettled men are.
Not in the same way, but I'd bet you'd see a mass wave of prostitution (and related vices like narcotics) and negative impacts on family life and the social fabric.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
It's not a "logical conclusion" - it's the actual holding of the CO Supreme Court. The relevant language is this (at pgs. 8-9):
We hold as follows:
• The Election Code allows the Electors to challenge President Trump’s status as a qualified candidate based on Section Three. Indeed, the Election Code provides the Electors their only viable means of litigating whether President Trump is disqualified from holding office under Section Three.
• Congress does not need to pass implementing legislation for Section Three’s disqualification provision to attach, and Section Three is, in that sense, self-executing.
• Judicial review of President Trump’s eligibility for office under Section Three is not precluded by the political question doctrine.
• Section Three encompasses the office of the Presidency and someone who has taken an oath as President. On this point, the district court committed reversible error.
• The district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting portions of Congress’s January 6 Report into evidence at trial.
• The district court did not err in concluding that the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, constituted an “insurrection.”
• The district court did not err in concluding that President Trump “engaged in” that insurrection through his personal actions.
• President Trump’s speech inciting the crowd that breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not protected by the First Amendment.
The sum of these parts is this: President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three; because he is disqualified, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Secretary to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot.
(bolding added for emphasis)
The chief holding is that, under Colorado's interpretation of federal law, Trump is disqualified from the office of President. The result of that finding under the facts of the case at bar is that Trump is disqualified from the primary ballot. However, the underlying holding is already sufficient for the CO Secretary of State to subsequently keep Trump off the November, 2024 ballot, as well as for the CO state government to claim nullification of any action by a future second Trump administration. It would require a second case affirmatively overturning this case in order for Trump to be placed on the CO presidential ballot in 2024.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
The stated reason for being removed from the primary ballot is that CO does not believe Trump is eligible to hold the office of POTUS. If the GOP nominates Trump, notwithstanding CO's lack of participation, for President, the same logic mandates that CO refuse to list Trump in the November election as GOP nominee. This isn't just about the primary, and claiming otherwise without further argument/support is either ignorant or malicious.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
California's Vice Governor has written the Secretary of State (and released the letter as a press-release) as follows:
Dear Secretary Weber,
Based on the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling in Anderson v. Griswold (2023 CO 63), I urge you to explore every legal option to remove former President Donald Trump from California’s 2024 presidential primary ballot.
I am prompted by the Colorado Supreme Court's recent ruling that former President Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the state’s ballot as a Presidential Candidate due to his role in inciting an insurrection in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. This decision is about honoring the rule of law in our country and protecting the fundamental pillars of our democracy.
Specifically, the Colorado Supreme Court held in Anderson v. Griswold (2023 CO 63) that Trump’s insurrection disqualifies him under section three of the Fourteenth Amendment to stand for presidential re-election. Because the candidate is ineligible, the court ruled, it would be a “wrongful act” for the Colorado Secretary of State to list him as a candidate on that state’s presidential primary ballot. Furthermore, Colorado’s Supreme Court cites conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch to make their case, saying the following, “As then-Judge Gorsuch recognized in Hassan, it is ‘a state's legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process' that 'permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office.’”
California must stand on the right side of history. California is obligated to determine if Trump is ineligible for the California ballot for the same reasons described in Anderson. The Colorado decision can be the basis for a similar decision here in our state. The constitution is clear: you must be 35 years old and not be an insurrectionist.
There will be the inevitable political punditry about a decision to remove Trump from the ballot, but this is not a matter of political gamesmanship. This is a dire matter that puts at stake the sanctity of our constitution and our democracy.
Time is of the essence as your announcement of the certified list of candidates for the March 5, 2024, primary election is coming up next week, on December 28, 2023.
Thank you for all your work to make our state’s elections a shining example across the country and world and for your time and consideration on this urgent matter.
Best,
Ambassador Eleni Kounalakis (RET.) Lieutenant Governor
This seems clearly poised to grade the road for CA to follow CO's lead. And while this is initially just for the primary election, this is clearly laying the groundwork for removal of Trump (as the presumptive nominee) from the November ballot as well. It also sets CA on track for potential nullification of any actions taken by Trump in the event the 2024 election returns him to office.
A decade ago he was literally a standard neocon with occasional libertarian sympathies.
Not really - he turned against the Iraq war pretty quickly after he visited the country and saw what was actually going on:
Outside of the heavily fortified—and relatively safe—U.S.-controlled "Green Zone" that surrounds Saddam's former main palaces in Baghdad, you can spend days without hearing English or seeing an American flag. Almost nowhere is there the faintest whiff of American cultural influence. People light up in elevators and carry Kalashnikovs to the dinner table. Gunfire and explosions are background noise. It is a place with almost no Western-style rules. It's not a bit like Denver.
You'd think it would be. According to the Pentagon, there are more than a 100,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq. The country seems to have swallowed them. We drove from the Kuwaiti border to downtown Baghdad and back again and didn't see one on the way—more than 700 miles on major roads without catching a glimpse of a single American in uniform.
If the goal is to control the country, there are not enough American forces in Iraq. If the goal is to rebuild it, there could never be enough. The U.S. military simply doesn't have the manpower. As it is, the Pentagon could not fight even a small war without the considerable help of civilian contractors. In Bosnia during the peacekeeping mission, there was at times one contractor for every soldier. That was nearly a decade ago. The military has grown smaller since and even more dependent on contractors. On the battlefield, contractors cook soldiers' food, deliver their mail, provide their housing, and take care of their equipment. (DynCorp maintains virtually all U.S. military aircraft in the Middle East.) In Iraq, they are sometimes nearly indistinguishable from soldiers.
It wasn't until I was flat on my back that the strangest part of the night sunk in: No one outside our immediate compound had seemed to notice the firefight. The gunfire had gone on for 15 minutes. The noise had been tremendous and unmistakable. Yet nobody—not U.S. soldiers, not cops from the Iraqi police station 150 yards away, not representatives of the famously benevolent "international community," whoever they might be—had come by to ask what happened, who did it, or if anyone was hurt. There were no authorities to call. No one cared. We were totally alone.
Not as alone as the rest of the people in the neighborhood, however. We were on a residential street. Iraqi families lived on both sides of us. What did they think? Hundreds of rounds had been fired—hundreds of needle-tipped, copper-jacketed missiles whipping through the neighborhood at half a mile a second. What happened to them all? Where did the bullets go? Into parked cars and generators and water tanks. Into people's living rooms and kitchens and bedrooms, and sometimes into human flesh.
It must have been terrifying to live nearby, or to live anywhere in Baghdad. You couldn't blame the coalition forces exactly. They weren't doing most of the shooting. But they didn't seem to be doing much about it, either. On the street where I was staying, they weren't doing anything. And how could they? All the foreign troops in Iraq hadn't been able to keep the country's main airport safe enough to use. A single block in Baghdad wasn't going to get their attention. By necessity, it was left to civilian contractors, or whoever else had the time, energy, and firearms to police their own tiny sections of Iraq.
He was a quite good magazine journalist for a while. Of course his piece about getting invited to go on a peacemaking trip to Liberia with Al Sharpton, Cornel West, and a bunch of other African-American clergy, is the best.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
Dying for something is easy, it's living with it that's hard.
Lin Manuel Miranda?!? You've been behind Hlynka the entire time?!?
(I say, tongue planted firmly in cheek).
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
On some of these, we disagree on the object level (trans, immigration). On some, we agree (I don't think state level abortion bans are likely to achieve much, even though I think abortion itself is immoral and distasteful). On the others I think there's a two-screens thing going on.
But great, now we have a clarified list of the two sides. That seems to answer your upthread question ("What do you people actually want to change?"), no?
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
I can't speak for OP. But I want to disbar and blacklist those who would persecute a business for trying to actually abide by immigration law.
I want the cops to go back to enforcing public order on the streets instead of hassling people for praying.
I want the authorities to go after the mobs instead of those defending themselves from the mob.
I want the schools to be more concerned with keeping order than making sure the people being disciplined have the right mix of skin tones, and more concerned with literacy and numeracy than decolonization, deconstruction, sexuality, or whatever the latest fad gripping the nation's sociology departments might be.
I want more people actually doing things, and fewer people administering, regulating, guiding, advising, and managing them.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
What else but armed insurrection (i.e. war as waged by the stateless) do you call the 1st and 2nd Intifada?
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
I'm not sure. I'm pulling from Darryl Cooper's account, but he doesn't give names. Apparently a German Neo-Nazi was also involved (Willi Pohl/Voss).
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
This is not a new phenomenon. The Black September massacre of the 1972 Israeli Olympic delegation in Munich was supported and facilitated by German anti-fascist radical leftist groups, and the airplane hijacking that resulted in the Entebbe raid a decade later was also a joint effort between the PFLP and German leftists.
Literally the kids of Nazis, who were so obsessed with being anti-Nazi and repudiating the sins of their parents that...they wound up separating Jews from non-Jews to figure out who to shoot. The contemporary far left has a pattern of these kinds of contradictions.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
Maybe I'm weird, but the knowledge that someone holds me in contempt takes a big chunk out of my aesthetic appreciation of them. Plus, maybe this is my bias talking, but she never looks happy or joyful in any of the photos I've seen of her. People in general are more attractive when they're happy than when they're scowling.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
Unless the idea is to have them as Jewish citizens of the new Palestinian state,
And why should this be so farfetched? Perhaps because implicit in the idea of both Israel and the Palestinian national project has been ethnic homogeneity, or at least hegemony, for the dominant ethny. Two states has always meant division of the Cis-Jordanian territory into two ethno-states, which simply isn't practical for any number of reasons (water distribution, population distribution, transport networks and ocean access, etc.) even before we get to the basic fundamental fact that significant factions in both sides see themselves as entitled to all of the land, and anything less as a bitter half-loaf to be mourned until revenge can be taken.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
To be fair, Israel has a history of trouncing the Arab powers in conventional conflicts - it would be counterintuitive to conclude from that that they are incapable of defending their position against Arab states.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
Like all those African migrants coming into Europe? Or Central and South American migrants moving in the millions into the U.S.?
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
Why would the Palestinians agree to less than half of their land?
Because they have lost repeated wars over ownership of the land, and the consequence of losing is not getting what you want. I.e., the same reason why Silesia, Pomerania, and Prussia are no longer parts of Germany, why the western coast of Anatolia and Constantinople are not Greek, and why California is no longer part of Mexico.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
Eugene Debs' 1920 run on the Socialist ticket was from prison because he was still serving a 10-year sentence he received for sedition based on 1918 speeches advocating resistance of the WWI draft. Notably, in addition to the prison term he was also sentence to a lifetime disenfranchisement, so in addition to running from jail he couldn't even vote for himself. However, he only got 3% of the vote and didn't win any states, so there was never any cause to examine the matter further.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
or it seems like they are pricing in wide spread fraud.
It doesn't need to be fraud for there to be a significant disjunct between the population being polled and the population whose votes actually get tabulated. Particularly with the relaxation of rules around drop-off ballots, early voting, and ballot harvesting in many states, activists have much more leeway to shape the electorate by activating particular groups of low-propensity voters than they did prior to the 2020 cycle.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
The question of what is "effective" will have different results depending on what the political goal which the warfare is seeking to achieve is. Attempting to clear an area is a different task with different methods than attempting to identify and eliminate particular individuals in a large civilian mass.
Supah_Schmendrick
6mo ago
I hate the discourse around inflation - when people say "inflation is down" they are talking about a decrease in the rate of change, not a decrease of an absolute number. This is unlike many other things we talk about in economic life; when the unemployment rate goes down, more people have jobs; when there is a decrease in the mortgage rate, houses cost less, etc. This condition people to think that an economic indicator "going down" means that things are getting better.
This is not the case with inflation. When inflation "goes down," it does not mean that prices are actually decreasing back to the levels that existed prior to the inflation. Deflation is a separate phenomenon that almost never actually happens (and maybe shouldn't be allowed to happen - I'm not smart enough to parse the monetary theory of it all). When inflation "goes down," it means "you're still paying way more for stuff than you were a year ago, but at least the prices aren't skyrocketing up quite as fast anymore; you have some time to rebudget and get used to these new, permanently higher prices."
That statement isn't actually a "good sign" for the economy; at best it means "things aren't actively getting worse." Unless there is some significant increase in productivity to drive prices back down, people are still having to pay more for goods and services than they did previously; their money is worth less and they are poorer now than they were previously. The damage has already been done.
Supah_Schmendrick
6mo ago
I haven't seen any type of coordination or planning to it, which is something common to most other historical examples I would call "ethnic cleansing." To my knowledge, the 60's and 70's radicalism was not focused on forcing whites out of cities, but rather blaming whites for self-segregating in areas away from blacks.
Like 2rafa, however, I would certainly agree that it was "ethnic replacement," with a fair amount of inter-ethnic conflict as well. I would also call the displacement of blacks out of many areas of Southern California by latinos "replacement" as opposed to "cleansing," because it was an emergent phenomenon and not premeditated.
...for the small minority of women who lived in London and/or other major cities. By far the most common occupation for both men and women would have been "small-scale subsistence farmer"
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