anon_
59m ago
Sure. I just think there is far more incompetence at government contractors than your initial post let on.
anon_
59m ago
Because they are the folks with guns that have a near-monopoly on violence. Or at least were on 10/6.
Who does Israel themselves recognize as the rightful government of the Gaza Strip? At the moment only themselves.
No, they have been casting about for a responsible government for years.
anon_
7hr ago
You can exclude people from entering your country, you can expel parts of your country (Malaysia/Singapore, India/Pakistan), but you can't treat certain people living in your country as non-citizens.
But they aren't any part of the country. Indeed the whole thing has been about denigrating Israeli territorial claims to the West Bank & Gaza and elevating the case of Palestinian sovereignty over it!
despite Israel's permanent control of the external policy of each enclave.
This is hardly Israels desire. They would like nothing more than to leave Gaza to Egypt and much of the West Bank to Jordan, provided that they actually were guaranteed that their neighbors would not permit the use of that territory as a launching pad for violent attacks. That's the absolute least any country can do for it neighbors in peacetime.
This whole thing is just another hack: "we'll launch rockets from the territory to force you to react, then when you control the ground we'll insist that now it's your sovereign territory and you are obligated to govern it".
anon_
7hr ago
The largest opposition of population exchange here has been the Arab world.
It seems impossible to break in any sense, largely because they don't suffer any of the consequences.
anon_
7hr ago
So there are new Hamas soldiers being officiated every day. But the officiatiation is not formal and organized. They join small cell structures (in all likelihood apolitical and religiously moderate, if not irreligious) who are then provided with weaponry (and ideas) by a small number of Hamas intermediaries (and these are the extremist ones).
If this is true it is a grave violation of the laws of war. The Geneva convention unequivocally requires that armed forces must be “under a command responsible for the conduct of its subordinates”.
That it should be totally impermissible to create a set of small cells without any independent command authority is completely obvious, especially in the current context.
In any event, they certainly aren't soldiers as the word is used in the field of international law.
anon_
8hr ago
My friend, that's what the sales guy said. And by the way he's the cousin-in-law of the prison super.
anon_
8hr ago
How much more suspicious activity and lucky coincidences would there need to be to convince you (if you're a current denier) that Epstein was murdered/"allowed" to kill himself?
I want to object to this conjunction. This conjoins two wildly different things.
Maybe let me set out a continuum
a. Epstein didn't want to die and (one or more) people made him not be alive x. Epstein wanted to die and (one or more) people removed safeguards that might have otherwise prevented his suicide z. Epstein wanted to die and managed to kill himself despite typical jail safeguards
Obviously we're going to have to draw the line somewhere between a/z on when it actually becomes a conspiracy and no long (as you say) "legit". I'm putting a finger on the scales here, but I think (x) is probably a lot closer to (z) here.
If we want to start moving closer to (a) here, maybe we could say
d. Epstein didn't want to die, but one ore more people convinced him that if he didn't kill himself, they would torture his family forever. They then removed the safeguards and encouraged him to do so.
Or maybe closer to x.
q. Epstein spoke with someone who told him (truthfully? who knows?) that there was no way to beat his charge and that no one would extract him from the justice system. He then formed an intent to die which he carried out.
t. Same as (q) but the someone also got the guards to look the other way.
We can go on and on. Anyway, I really don't like conjoining "Epstein didn't kill himself" with "Epstein had no option and decide to kill himself" and "Epstein killed himself and the guards let him do it". It's a classic motte and bailey.
I'll divulge my object-level feeling here:
- High confidence: Epstein formed, based in part on what he learned in that call, an intent and desire to die.
- Medium confidence: The information that caused him to form that belief was broadly truthful
- Equipoise/don'tcare: Someone caused the prison to allow this to transpire contrary to typical prison procedure/rules.
From there, I think I'm confident that we should call it a suicide in the broadest sense of "Epstein killed himself". Insofar as you want to get into the conspiracy theory of the last point, eh. It's fine I guess, I don't object, but I don't think it's really much of a conspiracy theory.
anon_
8hr ago
They do not. They even removed Israelis from it in decades past.
But even if they did, the fact that Hamas controls it at this moment would mean that they are not responsible. A nation is responsible in humanitarian law for areas that one actually controls, not for areas that it makes normative claims.
For example, the ROC isn't responsible for Mao's starvation even though they still (remarkably) claim they are the sovereign government of all of China.
anon_
8hr ago
I don't think the limiting factor for Hamas is recruits or manpower. It's not a binding constraint.
Meanwhile, the Japanese didn't have any trouble trusting the US even after we obliterated an entire city, hospitals and all. Or maybe they didn't trust us but realized that when one starts a war, one takes the chance that they will lose and be conquered, at which point they wouldn't have a choice one way or the other.
anon_
1d ago
International humanitarian law recognizes that starvation is no longer a valid weapon of war.
Indeed, which is why Hamas should stop starving the populace of Gaza.
Hamas, as the governing body (such as it is), is the one obligated to provide for their own people's food. This whole thing is predicated on the idea that feeding Gaza is the job of literally anyone else on the planet except the actual people who are responsible for doing so.
anon_
1d ago
- No nation at war has ever been required to feed the opposing army's solders (obviously if taken POW, not the central case) or allow the opposing army's soldiers to be supplied with food by a third party
- The enemy army controls the area in which the populace lives
- The enemy army will seize the lion's share of food aid for their own soldiers, even if requires shooting their own people to get it
That's pretty much it. You can spend hours looking up historical practice around sieges, I don't know what else you expect to find.
anon_
4d ago
Eh, there's enough socialist literature on how the workers will self-manage by selecting representatives that will handle those tasks. They don't call them leaders
You're right that referring to them as superiors does out me, point taken. Important to follow the shibboleth eh?
anon_
4d ago
Of course. But it goes to who is at fault -- the siege ends when Hamas surrenders. That Hamas has constructed itself to make that impossible to surrender doesn't change the fact that the lack of surrender is the but-for cause that perpetuates the siege.
International law can't make anyone do anything -- but it does assign normative responsibility based on the practices of nations. Doubly so when there the construction that prevents the resolution of the conflict based on that practice is itself against that practice.
anon_
4d ago
Well, we can dunk on them and they richly deserve to be dunked on.
But also it's equivocation again. Are we talking about a utopia -- on how we should organize society on ideal terms. Or are we talking about how one should live within a real society in its real terms.
anon_
4d ago
Even that's not getting it. Warriors dream of slaying the enemy. 95% of being a warrior is marching for days on end in shitty (figuratively) boots, living in a shitty (literally) camp and dying of cholera.
Most of the army isn't even fighting at all! The tooth to tail ratio is, at best, 1:3. So odds are that you're not even a soldier, you're just hauling supplies or dealing with logistics or guarding the rear/base. All while still in your trenchfoot boots and without a sewage system. They don't even get the glory of saying "I risked my life for the poets".
Maybe one angle of what I'm getting at is that any functioning system (whether it's an army or a commune or a technological liberal/capitalist society) requires a large amount of tedious, unglamorous and unrewarding work. When people imagine a system other than their own, they either forget that or imagine that someone else will do it.
It's like because they are transposing reality by imagining another system, they also transpose reality by ignoring or eliding this fact about all systems.
anon_
4d ago
First, on a normative level, this is why international law requires command authority. An armed force must be “under a command responsible for the conduct of its subordinates”. I'm sure I"m preaching to the choir here, but "We have constituted our armed forces to be incapable of X, therefore it isn't our fault if we don't do X" is a game theoretic self-own. It's invites the very conduct we seek to proscribe.
Second, I'm not sure that's right. Hamas is more than capable of butchering domestic opposition. They did it to the PLO, they can impose what they want at the tip of a bayonet and be obeyed. Perhaps though.
anon_
4d ago
I think there are multiple meanings of surrender that are confused here. I don't mean retreat and it's not just leaving the populace or the underlines to do whatever. In this context I meant it as keeping the organization of forces and all materiel intact and accounted for while ordering every member to obey without exception the orders of the victor.
Hamas is more than capable of imposing their will on the populace of Gaza.
anon_
4d ago
I’m well aware that the liberal modernity I oppose is the only thing keeping me alive at all, let alone giving me the lifestyle I currently have, and that come any serious reactionary victory, my life will most likely end (and become massively worse in the case it doesn’t)… and yet I still want that liberal modernity destroyed.
Well, I appreciate the honesty, but why would anyone join you on it?
Has anyone here seen the movie Serenity — the Firefly sequel/conclusion movie? If so, do any of you remember the speech by Chiwetel Ejiofor’s nameless “Operative” character — the “there's no place for me there” one?
I also thought of that. It's a good cultural marker how one feels about that speech.
anon_
4d ago
“I will be a warlord” is a very different type of fantasy than “I will be a poet”. Both fantasies, both silly, but silly in different ways.
I disagree. Both are saying "I will occupy a tiny slice at the top 2% of society".
Maybe I should back that up. They are silly in different ways but they have some important overlap which is that either way, the odds are slim.
anon_
4d ago
The fact that this is extremely close to
- I want worker's revolution that provides me with enlightened socialist superiors so I can be an autistic craftsman while they run the government
And I think both will end in the same exploitative place and the rediscovery about why socialist revolutions had to be enforced violently.
anon_
4d ago
I don't claim it's a very special insight, but I think the romanticism of one side has been made into a meme (on KYM no less) and it was worth looking at the less explored side of it as well.
The leftist mockery of rightism is never about how it's unrealistic, only that it's evil.
anon_
4d ago
I see no contradiction.
It's not meant to be a contradiction, it's meant to underscore that one's assessment of a system has to take into account what one believes that one's role in that system would be.
That is -- we agree that this is the same system. But the people daydreaming about destroying capitalism and replacing it with (whatever) are imagining a small slice of it. They imagine the commune but not the forced labor. They imagine the social order but don't imagine that they would ever see the sharp end of the stick.
If it's really 100 hostages to each Hamas, I'd have long expected actually-starving Gazans to bum rush every gunman then immediately declare a total and unconditional surrender.
Then again, that's kind of the core problem. They're hungry, but they're not actually "surrender hostilities and return the hostages"-hungry.
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