The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
27d ago
Italian organized crime didn't rely on tribal loyalty among Italians (or even Sicilians) to keep things under wraps; it relied on that old standard of violence towards anyone who opened their mouth.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
27d ago
Anyone who turns a blind eye to welfare fraud is effectively steering us towards an equilibrium with less welfare spending and more red tape.
Only if there's anyone with the power to add the red tape to attempt to stop the fraud. If not, money given to fraudsters simply increases without bounds, as with SSI/SSDI fraud.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
28d ago
While you hang those 90 pickpockets, are another 900 working the crowd watching the executions?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
28d ago
Sanctions refer to what you describe, but not just what you describe. In particular, these sanctions disallow flag registry for participating nations. Any ship in international waters not flying a legitimate flag -- a stateless vessel -- is subject to seizure. That's what the US did here.
The ship is "subject to seizure" as a matter of US law, because the US made a law which applies outside its territory.
Yes, a law which applies on "the high seas". Which is certainly not anything unusual.
As a matter of international law, it probably isn't. (There are some technicalities here because most of the flags of convenience used by oil tanker operators are US client states - the situation where the US seizes a Liberian or Panamanian-flagged ship and the country of registration doesn't object is messy).
The seized vessel in this case -- the Skipper -- was flying a Guyanese flag. However, it does not have a Guyanese registration; this was a literal false flag. There's no flag state to object.
(Also, the Skipper wasn't exporting anything from Venezuela. I believe it was delivering naphtha)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
28d ago
The most depressing part is realizing this will make no difference. Everyone who mattered was aware this was going on and was fine with it, and that will remain true.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
28d ago
The US is seizing tankers transporting Venezuelan oil in international waters close to Venezuela with neither the ship nor the cargo having any connection to the US.
The ship was sanctioned (for Iranian connections, not Venezuelan) and thus subject to seizure. Venezuelan oil exports are sanctioned. If you and (in particular) Europe wishes to use "sanctions" as some sort of intermediate path between pure diplomacy and actual warfare, there has to be enforcement of those sanctions. Otherwise sanctions are a farce.
In plain English this isn't sanctions, it's a blockade.
The wording only matters in that a blockade is an act of war. Certainly Venezuela is free to respond to it that way. But enforcing sanctions isn't generally considered that.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
28d ago
Indeed they do prefer Malvinas. I suppose the 3700 people on the Falklands care too, though the half-million sheep and million penguins likely do not.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
29d ago
I don't think the situations are comparable here. For Britain, beating up Argentina and keeping whatever they kept, nobody cares by now what it is anyway, was pointless and meaningless.
The Falkland Islands, and Argentina very much still cares.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
29d ago
Indirect solutions like this always sound good but in practice end up as anarcho-tyranny -- people end up having to do a LOT of work to prove their workforces are legal (some of which work may itself be illegal according to other laws), if they screw up they get nailed to the wall, and meanwhile someone else who operates completely unlawfully gets away with everything.
Keep it simple, reduce collateral damage, if you want to stop illegal immigration, go after illegal immigrants.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
29d ago
You won't be able to buy the Chinese ones either.
The rains of destruction aren't brought on by any action against the Somali fraudsters. They're brought on when the parasites sufficiently damage the host and the destruction comes as an inevitable consequence. Look at many large American cities in the 70s and 80s, or much of Detroit and Baltimore today, to see what happens.
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