When is violence against a person justified? Usually the legal boundary is immediate threat. So if a politician is advocating for you to be put into camps, then that seems like a reasonable starting point. But then you have to consider 'reasonable fear of immediate threat' and things get much murkier. Is it reasonable to fear that pro-mass migration politicians intend to destroy your community with foreigners?
In America it's still only the crazies/extremely disaffected that are actually willing to go out and kill for politics, usually. People will cheer on the killer but almost none of these people would actually be willing to do something similar.
The British successfully invaded Afghanistan multiple times, but never held it for prolonged periods. Which is probably what the US should have done.
There's this book, No Good Men Among the Living, which argues that the US successfully destroyed the Taliban in the invasion, but then stupid governance and our taking sides in the vast web of tribal politics brought it back.
So in every district Jan Muhammad appointed a Popalzai governor and police chief, or figures from closely related tribes. The trouble was, many of these communities had already chosen their own leaders during the waning days of the Taliban. In Khas Uruzgan, elders had elected as district governor an anti-Taliban personage from the mujahedeen era, a former school janitor named Tawildar Yunis (“Groundskeeper Yunis”). He was working out of the governor’s house, along with a locally elected police chief and other officials, collecting weapons from surrendering Talibs. But they were not Popalzais and, even worse, maintained political links to one of Jan Muhammad’s rivals from the civil war years. So Muhammad appointed a local Popalzai elder and friend of the Karzais, Abdul Qudus, as his governor. But Yunis refused to budge, the imprimatur of Khas Uruzgan elders lending his claims an undeniable air of legitimacy. Unswayed, Abdul Qudus then requisitioned the local school for himself and his coterie of followers, declaring that it was now the rightful governor’s residence and that it was his job to collect Taliban weapons. In response, Yunis appealed to everyone from Gul Agha Sherzai to President Karzai himself, but none were willing to wade into the growing mess. Tensions rose by the day. Jan Muhammad’s side began openly questioning Yunis’s anti-Taliban bona fides, throwing him into fits of rage. He returned the favor by declaring Jan Muhammad’s men soft on the Taliban.
The actual Taliban were perplexed. During the standoff, a trio of senior Taliban officials made their way to Khas Uruzgan to surrender to the new government: Tayeb Agha, an erudite, well-spoken twentysomething who had served as Mullah Omar’s personal secretary and adviser; former finance minister Agha Jan Mutassim, who had publicly rejected calls from Pakistani clerics to wage jihad against the Americans; and Health Minister Mullah Abbas, the official who had been responsible for recruiting Heela and other women to study as nurses and midwives. All three had been members of the Taliban since the movement’s inception. Their surrender should have been a political coup for the young Karzai government. But surrender to whom? Who was actually in charge?
And then the Americans, acting on bad information, stormed both 'government' offices in a nighttime raid, killing Abdul Qudus and his fellow officials (Yunis managed to escape and was never seen again). The three former Taliban guys decided that surrendering didn't seem like such a good idea and went back to Pakistan where they helped lead the new Taliban insurgency.
yunyun333
5mo ago
Terence Tao: I’m an award-winning mathematician. Trump just cut my funding.
In just six months, the United States has seen a wholesale assault on the scientific infrastructure that helped make it a world leader in innovation. Grants have been cancelled mid-project, fellowships for the next generation of researchers gutted, and federally funded institutes stripped of the resources they need to operate. These decisions are not the result of scientific review or Congressional debate, but of abrupt political directives that bypass long-standing norms, disrupt multi-year projects, and erode the independence of our research ecosystem.
In that time, I have seen first-hand how sustained federal investment—channeled through agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF)—powers the collaborations that link universities, government laboratories, and industry. At UCLA's Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM), where I now serve as Director of Special Projects, those collaborations have laid the groundwork for both theoretical breakthroughs and practical technologies. My own research at IPAM, for instance, helped lead to the algorithms that now cut MRI scan times by a factor of up to 10. This is the America I chose as my adoptive home: a place where science is valued as a public good, and where researchers from around the world come to contribute their ideas and energy.
It is therefore stunning and devastating to discover that the new administration, in just its first six months, has deliberately attacked and weakened almost all the supporting pillars of this ecosystem. Executive actions have cancelled or suspended federal grants with unprecedented scale and speed, with billions of dollars worth of ongoing research projects and experiments disrupted. This is not because of a negative scientific assessment of the work, but instead by seemingly arbitrary justifications. Critical funding has been pulled for as insignificant a reason as the presence of a key word in the original proposal that is retroactively deemed unacceptable.
Federal support is, of course, a privilege, not a right; and Congress has the constitutional authority to set the budgets and rules for any expenditure of public funds and resources. But many of these executive actions have not waited for either explicit or implicit Congressional approval, and in some cases have even directly ignored past Congressional mandates for appropriations. Relative to the sheer size of the federal government as a whole, the amount allocated for supporting science is not massive. The NSF mathematics and physical sciences (MPS) directorate, for instance, is the largest of the subdivisions of the NSF, and has an annual budget of approximately $1.7 billion. This looks significant until one realizes that it amounts to about five dollars per US citizen per year, and less than a tenth of a percent of the federal budget as a whole.
He seems to be referring to how the admin took an axe to science funding by ctrl+F-ing for 'woke' dictionary terms: underrepresented, minority, diverse, etc. The problem is that the effects seem to be about indiscriminate regardless of whether you were a true believer or merely box checking. Will we see upgraded diversity science pledges in the next democrat admin? Researchers might have to carefully consider the political leanings of their funding proposals in election years.
yunyun333
5mo ago
Israel fought the Suez Crisis on US & UK's behalf.
UK and France. The US told them quite firmly to stop, which they did. The US was not particularly pro Israel until Lyndon Johnson, who let himself get bossed around by his very pro-Israel foreign policy guys.
Israel didn't directly instigate Iraq 2 of course, but many of the higher ups in the executive branch who were pushing for an invasion of Iraq were ardent Zionists (see the Office of Special Plans, which also involved an espionage scandal involving an analyst passing information to Israel through AIPAC).
yunyun333
5mo ago
Trump digs himself in deeper with every new quote. Epstein "stole" young girls from him? Now why would he say something like that?
yunyun333
5mo ago
There's been widespread malnutrition and hunger of course, but few actual deaths directly from starvation until recently.
yunyun333
5mo ago
Okay, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but Westerners don't have a problem with guerrilla tactics if it's their side doing it.
yunyun333
5mo ago
The first article quotes IDF officials praising the UN system as effective in distributing aid and having found no proof that Hamas was systematically stealing aid from the UN, although they did steal from smaller organizations that didn't always have boots on the ground. It's been widely reported that various armed gangs have formed in the power vacuum to steal and resell aid at extortionate prices.
yunyun333
5mo ago
Gaza pre war had an obesity problem. I don't think anyone was accusing them of being underfed.
yunyun333
5mo ago
it is impossible to prevent civilians from starving because Hamas takes all the food.
Pretty much no one was starving to death before Israel implemented more stringent aid restrictions this March.
yunyun333
5mo ago
Guerrilla warfare certainly isn't uniquely Western but is positively viewed and admired. Most Americans seem to have broadly positive views of the Viet Cong, whose calling card was using innocent villagers as cover.
yunyun333
6mo ago
Despise is a strong word. Sure the Babylonians annihilated Jerusalem, but the Israelites did foolishly try to rebel, and moving around conquered populations was a common tactic. Cyrus the Great famously let the exiles return and rebuild their temple. They did get into conflict with the Greeks and Romans over their unique heno/monotheistic thing.
yunyun333
6mo ago
Epstein DID kill himself. Also there's no client list. Stop asking questions
The US Department of Justice and FBI have concluded that sex offender Jeffrey Epstein did not have a so-called client list that could implicate high-profile associates, and that he did take his own life - contradicting long-held conspiracy theories about the infamous case.
According to a two-page Department of Justice (DoJ) and FBI memo, investigators found no "incriminating list" of clients and "no credible evidence" that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals. Investigators also released footage they say supports the medical examiner's conclusion that Epstein died by suicide while being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York. The memo adds that investigators "did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties".
Some have claimed the conclusions reached in the memo contradict statements from Attorney General Pam Bondi in a Fox News interview that aired in February. "The DoJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients, will that really happen?", Bondi was asked on Fox, to which she replied: "It's sitting on my desk right now to review". White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on Monday the attorney general was referring to all the files that are related to Epstein's crimes, rather than a specific list.
Well, there you go. It's been almost 6 years since Epstein did/didn't kill himself, and now we can close the book on the whole sordid mess (his primary accuser also happened to die by suicide (?) a few months ago). Epstein just wasn't a diligent record keeper. In unrelated news, Netanyahu nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
yunyun333
6mo ago
The bigger problem was that everyone was asleep. My phone does go off with a weather alert when anything worse than a thunderstorm pops up, but it probably wouldn't wake me up. If you live near a danger zone then you ought to install a dedicated warning app that's really loud.
yunyun333
7mo ago
"What's so bad about murder? Everything happens according to God's plan, therefore if someone commits murder that must be God's plan."
Don't Christians say this all the time? When good or bad things happen, it's "all part of God's plan". Either God exerts agency in this world or he does not.
yunyun333
8mo ago
So Trump and Vance whine for the past year about how sending over weapons is too expensive and we need to stop, but 4 'slightly bigger' mineral deposits of questionable economic value will serve as a casus belli for dropping in American soldiers?
Hell, he's apparently gotten Ukraine actually paying for U.S. weapons now
Isn't Ukraine mega bankrupt? They'll be effectively paying America with America's own aid.
yunyun333
8mo ago
The U.K. is apparently going to buy U.S. Beef
Britain and the EU won't buy beef from hormone-fed cattle. The way they talk about it, this probably won't change.
Ukraine Mineral Deal
As discussed previously this is a nothingburger, but if it makes Trump happy, good job Zelensky.
yunyun333
8mo ago
I skimmed it but I'm a dilettante. It really is quite a fascinating field.
I agree that if you're willing to approach it with faith, then a lot of it is unclear enough for faith to hold up.
yunyun333
8mo ago
There are people that argue this. For example: https://www.academia.edu/97411885/This_Generation_in_Matthew_24_34
Like this last group of scholars, I would suggest that, in Matthew 24:34, η γενεα αυτη denotes the people of Israel who are unfaithful to God. I will seek to demonstrate that thesis in these lectures by showing that (1) qualitative uses of γενεά were common in ancient Greek literature, that (2) this specific qualitative use of γενεά was used in Deuteronomy 32, which is the source of Jesus’ “this generation” sayings in Matthew, that (3) this allusion to Deuteronomy 32 is part of a larger pattern in Matthew of portraying Jesus as the new Moses who will lead His people of Israel out of exile and into their promised land under His theocratic rule, and that (4) this specific qualitative sense best fits the immediate contact of Matthew 24:34.
But again it all strikes me as special pleading, even though I'm sure this scholar put a lot of high quality research into it. Apocalypticism is a dominant theme from early Christian documents. They expected Jesus to return soon, because Jesus said he was returning soon. The prima facie reading would be what people back then understood.
yunyun333
8mo ago
Again, I've looked through many commentaries, they are pretty unambiguous about this line. I feel confident enough not to bother pirating a more modern one.
Still not really seeing engagement with my point about Matthew 16:4.
Sure, it could be a group of people - contemporary people. Which is in line with every other place he uses it.
yunyun333
8mo ago
You'll be forgiven if I take a Reddit source (which itself sources to scholarly works from between 15 and 20 years ago to represent the modern academic consensus) with a grain of salt. I'm not sure that it's wrong, necessarily, but 2009 was a long time ago.
Biblical scholarship has been a thing for hundreds of years, and the Bible isn't getting many updates. This is not a particularly dynamic field, so I think sources from 2004 are fine in this regard. You can pick up just about any introductory new testament textbook or scholarly commentary and find the same view. It's not controversial like, say, the authorship of the pastoral epistles. Here's what, for example. RT France has to say about it in his commentary:
Jesus’ condemnation of ‘this generation’ is a prominent theme in Matthew; see, apart from this passage, 11:16-19; 16:4; 17:17; 24:34, and especially 23:29-36, which shows that it refers to his contemporaries, not just Jews or men in general, as those in whom Israel's age-long rebellion has culminated, and on whom judgment must therefore fall.
More seriously, why do you think "generation" is the best translation for genea here (which can also be translated "nation" and or refer to a people group – Christ repeatedly, including in the section immediately prior, uses this word when referencing the Jews who opposed his teaching.)
Because that's how it's translated in like every English translation, such as the NRSV, the biblical scholar version. More seriously, here's a comment stolen from academicbiblical:
The "this generation" (γενεὰ) is Jesus' contemporaries. Jesus is prophesying the imminent arrival of the eschaton within the lifetime of those around him. This interpretation is the consensus of scholarship. See W.D. Davies and Dale C. Allison Jr, Matthew 19-28: Volume 3 (International Critical Commentary), 2004.
'All these things' refers to the eschatological scenario as outlined in vv. 4-31 and declares that it shall come to pass before Jesus' 'generation' has gone. In favour of this is the imminent eschatological expectation of many early Christians (cf. esp. 10.23 and Mk 9.1) as well as Jn 21.20-3, which reflects the belief that Jesus would come before all his disciples' had died. So most modern commentators.
...
We favour interpretation (ii). γενεὰ plainly refers to Jesus' contemporaries in 11.16; 12.39, 41, 42, 45; 16.4; and 17.17 as well as in the close parallel in 23.36, and the placement of our verse after a prophecy of the parousia is suggestive. If it be objected that this makes for a false prophecy and raises the issue of 2 Pet 3.3-4, we can only reply that some of Jesus' contemporaries were perhaps still alive when Matthew wrote, so he did not have the problem we do. In summary, then, the last judgement will fall upon 'this generation' just as earlier judgements fell upon the generation of the flood and the generation in the wilderness.
The earliest Christians believed that Jesus was returning soon, real soon. That's why Paul has to reassure the Thessalonians that the dead will rise and join Christ before them, the living. You can see the evolution of this belief in John, the last gospel to be written (multiple generations after Jesus's death), where the imminent apocalyptism of the Synoptics has completely vanished, because obviously Jesus hadn't returned yet. There's also the little passage at the end of John, where Jesus remarks, "If I want him [the beloved disciple] to remain until I return, what is that to you?". Now whether or not Jesus actually said this, clearly people thought he did, and so they thought the beloved disciple would be alive when Jesus returned. But because the beloved disciple died in the meantime, the gospel of John has to make clear that Jesus was making a hypothetical statement.
yunyun333
8mo ago
The best way to close Malacca is with anti-ship mines – they are small and terribly cheap (it would probably be affordable for Malaysia or Indonesia to buy tens or even hundreds of thousands of mines) and it could require hours to clear each one.
These countries also need the strait, don't they? Why would they want to blockade it for everyone?
The Qataris that funded Hamas with explicit Israeli approval.
More options
Context Copy link