domain:web.law.duke.edu
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
8hr ago
I'm saying the only way you "know" COVID vaccines work is through information provided by the same institutions which were involved in the lying and censorship.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
8hr ago
Wishcasting, as has been going on with respect to Iran since the waning days of the Reagan administration. Most likely they're reaching a non-representative set, with religious Iranians being more likely to eschew their survey. Islam tends to the more strict, not less, from the bottom up; any moderating influence comes from a "degenerate" (or Westernized) elite, which Iran lacks (largely because they killed them or drove them out in the Revolution)
dr_analog
razorboy
8hr ago
I suppose we'll see how long until they exhaust their missile supply on Israel. Two more weeks of this, or will they be in for it for years?
morphism
live long and prosper
8hr ago
The issue is not whether these arguments sound as if they could be logically compelling — the issue is whether these arguments actually are. Closer inspection reveals that they lack substance.
- The "overcrowding" argument applies to in-country movement of natives as well. By the same argument, from one part of the country to the other, or from countryside to cities would be detrimental. But people — native or not — move to cities because the concentration of people enables new kinds of services and collective works that would otherwise not be sustainable or even possible.
- That's a general argument against a higher standard of living — so why not lower the standard of living for the natives and then let the immigrants come? Another option would be to keep the immigrants where they are — and also force the other countries to stay poor at gunpoint.
- The culture argument is the only one where I see some merit, though it hinges on 1) the assumption that people do not adapt, and 2) that culture rather than power structures determine the success of individual countries.
In order to be logical, the arguments must hold up when replacing words, such as "immigrant" by "native", and they do not.
The common theme behind all these arguments against immigration is that they do not make sense as logical arguments for organizing how people can or should live together — but the core theme is "there is not enough for all of us!" and therefore "we need to cast out some people (based on random criteria)!".
Essentially, the premise is that "it's a game of musical chairs" and "we need to stop more people from playing", but the mental effort devoted to preventing people from getting in would be much better devoted to changing the game.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
8hr ago
alqueda controls syria
Well, an organization controlled by a guy who was once part of al-Qaeda in Iraq controls Syria. The terrorist-to-statesmen pipeline isn't such a bad thing; with some notable exceptions (like another AQI successor, ISIS), it usually calms them down. Ask the Sons of Liberty.
Hadad
9hr ago
On the one hand I don't think Iran has provided the US sufficient reason to attack them
Eh, you say "Death to America" even once and I consider my country wholly justified in destroying you. Talk shit get hit is natural law.
Hadad
9hr ago
Jews do not have anywhere near the level of explicit racial solidarity that whites had in, say, apartheid South Africa, or the Antebellum American South.
No, they don't. But whites don't have anywhere near the racial solidarity of the Antebellum South or Apartheid South Africa, either, and Jews are significantly more in solidarity -- openly -- than Whites have been at any time in the modern era.
Whatever covert influence some powerful Jews have to influence things in their favor at the expense of others, surely you can acknowledge that their actions (outside of, arguably, Israel) are of a qualitatively different form than, say, passing laws explicitly forbidding non-Jews from owning property, voting, patronizing the same businesses as Jews, etc.
Of course, they take a different form. They don't need to ban you from public spaces, just advocate for those spaces to be ruined so that you self-select away from them.
The worst thing a powerful Jew can do to white people in 21st-century America is write a mean book about us, produce a TV series where we’re the bad guys, and attempt (with intermittent success) to legislatively block border enforcement.
No, the worst thing a powerful Jew can do is help irreparably break society and culture through the importing of foreigners. That, plus make life domestically suck.
Contrast that with the worst era of White Supremacy, in which a white person could own a black person as property. The two situations are not comparable.
No, today is not like slavery. But it's also not like slavery for anyone. Slavery's no longer a relevant period of concern that should determine how we respond to prejudice and bias. It is a dead era.
But I don’t believe that Noel Ignatiev has the power to make me a second-class citizen, or that there’s any realistic American future in which white people are explicitly and systemically oppressed based on group identity
We're already systematically and explicitly oppressed based on group identity! That it's not naked slavery doesn't matter one lick.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
9hr ago
Lizzardspawn
9hr ago
On the one hand I don't think Iran has provided the US sufficient reason to attack them (at least not one that's recent and public). On the other... eh, Iran's government sucks and I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
That is the consensus in my part of twitter.
zeke5123a
9hr ago
Originalism isn’t strict textualism. It is trying to understand the public meaning at the time of enactment. To understand that, you obviously look at the words but also the entire context.
Note that even textualism (for reading statutes) tries to ignore strict textual conclusions. Scalia and Garner wrote a book on how to interpret texts from a textualist perspective. Strict literalism is something that caution against. Doesn’t give license to ignore the words but there ought to be an attempt to give the most reasonable interpretation of the words that puts the words in proper context.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
9hr ago
Who would Gaddafi have nuked? France?
He could have, and that might well have been enough to keep NATO out of it.
alqueda controls syria
they're no longer a threat to the United States
not because of bombing and killing their leaders, it's because the US pays and supplies them and uses them against their enemies like they did before they started attacking the US
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
9hr ago
The Houthis haven't attacked commercial shipping since December and haven't attacked US ships since the bombing campaign.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
9hr ago
It did work on Al Queda; they're no longer a threat to the United States. It won't work on Hamas because Israel would have to kill basically every Palestinian before they got to a point where the remaining ones won't re-form something like Hamas, but I don't think Iran's enmity of the US, while deep, is quite that deep. Iran's enmity with Israel might be, though.
zeke5123a
9hr ago
American weapons guided with American intelligence have hit Russian targets. I fail to see how different that is to bombers dropping bombs.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
9hr ago
Start the war during the Lunar New Year when Seoul is nigh-deserted, problem solved.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
9hr ago
And supplying the Houthis with weapons to attack shipping in the Red Sea.
wayfarer
9hr ago
Also, many ways things that made war profitable (at least to winners) are far less valuable nowadays or treated as not acceptable.
Slavery? Used to be absurdly profitable and OK, nowadays it is neither. Except extreme fringe cases.
Looting? Looting modern factories gives you nearly nothing, Russians stealing fridges in Ukraine resulted in mockery, not envy.
The same for occupation, glory, rape and so on - now occupation is clear net negative for basically all involved. Glory? There may be a bit, but not much and many will hate you. Rape? In general opinion here changed in direction similar to slavery and it got less useful with sexual revolution.
Saudi Arabia wants nuclear weapons because of Iran, not because of Israel. It's hard to accept the NPT/MiddleEast is lynchpinned by Israel when they lied, schemed, and betrayed their allies into nuclear weapons 60 years ago but it's been 60 years and all of the countries mentioned do not have nuclear weapons.
If Israel surrendered its nuclear program, I doubt it would change the landscape much. Iran has a latent capability because of the US, not because of Israel. Previously they had a latent capability because of Iraq, not because of Israel.
Iran has so far resisted joining any defensive block and their cooperation with other great powers has been pretty minimal in order to maintain their sovereignty and independence. I would guess they will have offers of assistance and they're more likely to swallow the costs now and it will make the world worse as a result.
The US/Israel continuing down the path of behaving insanely and the world relying on other actors to be reasonable to avoid catastrophe is eventually going to end in disaster.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
9hr ago
AOC has concluded that a president ordering an airstrike without congressional approval is grounds for impeachment. Fetterman thinks it was the right move. Both are, I suppose, on brand.
I suppose AOC would be (tautologically) right if she had the votes, but she doesn't. As I read it, the War Powers Act only requires notification after the fact in this case.
On the one hand I don't think Iran has provided the US sufficient reason to attack them (at least not one that's recent and public). On the other... eh, Iran's government sucks and I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
Maybe in the sense that as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps becomes ever more entrenched as a state-within-a-state, the corruptive influence of all that money and administrative self-interest will secularize it like the Egyptian Army?
Of course, then you get dynamics where the IRGC's perks and privileges derive from a permanent proxy-war footing, which merely means they'd increasingly rationalize sustained proxy conflicts on increasingly secular grounds, as Pakistan does.
wayfarer
9hr ago
who some speculate killed our President in 1963 in order to secure nuclear weapons
and some speculate that moon landing was faked, "some speculate" is worth nothing
do you believe this nonsense? Then at least state it openly. Do you consider it as nonsense? Then why you mention it?
is your claim the organization which controls syria's only connection to al qaeda is it's controlled by the emir of al queda branch and that this means they're not al qeada?
do you have the same story about al qaeda in yemen?
bombing and killing al qaeda leaders didn't beat al qaeda and it's not the reason they're not longer a threat to the US
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