domain:abc.net.au
P-Necromancer
25m ago
A mission that, judging by nothing serious happening due to its failure, clearly wasn't that important in the first place?
This is a bizarre claim. The goal of the 2019 talks was to come to some agreement with North Korea, and no such agreement was reached. What more profound failure could possibly have resulted from lacking intelligence? Are you seriously contending that being able to listen in on Kim Jung Un's discussions wouldn't have been an advantage at the negotiating table? That's no minor thing. I'm not confident that that information would have led to success, but you haven't done much to justify your confidence it wouldn't have.
The US planting listening devices in proximity with world leaders is a subject with a storied history, by the way. It rarely results in deaths, but I suspect mainly because most nations are sufficiently foolish as to trust US-made infrastructure the NSA can trivially compromise.
(North Korea has gone so far as to develop its own national operating system for this reason, among others.)
It came out in the Snowden leaks that they'd casually tapped the phones of 35 foreign leaders, and that was just the program he knew about. And these were people we had a lot more to lose by offending. This program persisted through both Bush's term and Obama's; I find it hard to believe either would have failed to approve this operation, provided there actually was a meaningful possibility of success. Both certainly did approve operations that killed more foreign nationals for much less potential upside.
jkf
39m ago
You'd probably get similar numbers for tobacco use though -- I don't see anything there that establishes cause and effect?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
41m ago
These stories are certainly disturbing but they're largely sensationalized rarities. Family support systems keep the majority off the streets even if they're personally broke. In the cases where you have a girl in the situation you describe it's almost definitely a case of some sort of seriously bad home life (eg molestation, etc) and not simply "times are hard in Japan." While living in one's parents' home well into adulthood may be odd to those from anglo or European countries, it's not such an anomaly here. When you have a girl who has opted out of that it's for a reason.
Homelessness does exist in Japan, of course, but it's miles away from the type of widespread homelessness you see in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. (I am only naming places I've actually been.)
I think not just that the constitution is a suicide pact, but that every nationstate is a suicide pact practically by definition. That's what it means to hand off the monopoly of force to the state.
This also illustrates that the alternative to law and order is either banditry or civil war.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
55m ago
If you think that changes in your qualia would have noticeable effects, what is your reasoning for saying
What if it's assigned randomly, like the first thing you ever see is assigned what I see as "red?" There's just no way of knowing, no conceivable test to find out.
(Emphasis mine)
If you expect that your experience of red would be different if it were "assigned" first vs second, such that you would notice if the first "assigned" quale switched places with the second, including all associations, then it seems like there are at least conceivable tests.
Supah_Schmendrick
1hr ago
Your gloss on human trafficking vs. illegal immigration misses the mark completely due to this baffling refusal to believe that pro-immigration advocates care about immigrants' welfare as human beings, as an end unto itself.
Those may be their feelings, but closer examination of the actual facts of migration policy reveal this to be, at best, Mrs. Jellyby-ism. So much undocumented immigration is facilitated by truly horrific cartels/people-smugglers that the U.S. government has long balked from designating the cartels as what they are - para-state criminal enterprises fully deserving of the foreign terrorist organization label just like the Haqqani network, Hezbollah, etc. - out of fear that it would open many illegal immigrants to criminal liability for materially-assisting an FTO.
P-Necromancer
1hr ago
Maybe this is a nitpick, but isn't this exactly what people generally mean by "imported?" In 2021, the US imported an average of around 2.39 million metric tons of steel a month. All of that steel had international sellers that wanted it sold and all of it had US buyers that wanted to buy it. I wouldn't say that Biden imported it (if your annoyance with the framing is merely the centering of Biden's role in the process, I don't have a firm position on that subject) but he certainly 'elected to not use violence to stop them.' Conversely, he did forbid the importation of Chinese cars, knowing that order would be enforced through violence if necessary. Those manufacturers want to sell us their cars, what right had he to infringe on their freedom by stopping them?
Illegal immigrants, with few exceptions, wish to come to America to sell their labor; sell fractions of their own lives. It seems entirely appropriate to describe that as 'importation.'
How could any amount of missing paperwork justify bringing lethal force to bear against a human being?
In many instances this is uncontroversial. A pardon is paperwork, after all, so everyone executed by the state or killed in an altercation with the police dies for lack of (certain) paperwork. I don't think this is an especially tortured analogy; pardons and visas are both official endorsements granted to specific individuals the authorities deem worthy that stay punishment for otherwise illegal behavior.
As a matter of fact, I suspect that the vast majority of otherwise justified lethal force could be prevented (or at least rendered unjustified) via appropriate paperwork, given that by the numbers almost all of it is military in nature. (Crime, obviously, is not otherwise justified. Self defense is, but self defense kills a negligible number of people per year compared to war. Police actions are a bigger slice of the pie, but still far, far less. And while some force exercised in war is not justified, surely defense against an unjustified war is.) And any military action could have been countermanded and it is for the lack of that paperwork that the lethal force is brought to bear.
People accept this because paperwork actually means something. The paper doesn't matter at all -- doesn't even exist in a lot of cases in the digital age, I'd imagine -- and trying to reduce official judgments to paper is just ignoring their actual significance; the oft-repeated observation that 'money is just paper, man' comes to mind. Somehow this realization never actually leads to us throwing off the chains of capitalist oppression.
OliveTapenade
1hr ago
What does that have to do with the point under discussion?
OliveTapenade
1hr ago
Why do you say 'native white' specifically? I said myself that I think a community has the right to determine its own conditions of entry, but in the case of Georgia, that existing community is not exclusively white. Wikipedia tells me that about a third of Georgians are black, which sounds about right for a former Confederate state. Judging from this it sounds like it's been like that for a long time, and I'd bet that most black Georgians are descendants of people who've lived in the state for centuries. So I find it a bit odd that you specify 'the native white population', since the native population of Georgia in this context seems like it would include an awful lot of blacks as well. Do they not count, for you? If not, why not?
On a side note, I also notice that, per Wikipedia's chart on live births by race of mother, the black birthrate in Georgia is going down faster than the white birthrate, though the overall number of black residents is increasing slightly faster, presumably due to immigration. Notably comparing 2010 to 2022 on USAFacts, the populations of every racial group in Georgia have increased, including whites. It seems hard to say that Georgian whites are being 'replaced' if they are increasing in number.
Anyway, what would happen if you submitted a referendum to all native Georgians on immigration policy? You might have to define 'native Georgian', but I see no way of defining 'native Georgian' that would restrict it only to whites, since there is clearly a very large non-white population whose ancestors have been resident in the state for centuries. But let's say we poll everybody who is resident in Georgia and who had at least one ancestor resident in Georgia in 1950. What would they vote for?
The answer is that I don't know. I don't think you know either. Georgia is a red state, but not that red - Stacey Abrams won 45% of the vote in 2022, and 48% in 2018. Its house of reps is 100 Republicans to 80 Democrats. There's clearly a left in Georgia and we might expect them to be more sympathetic to immigration - and of course, many on the right, including moderate Republicans, are sympathetic to a level of immigration as well. I'm not convinced that Georgians would overwhelmingly vote to kick Koreans out. There's clearly an appetite in Georgia for cracking down on illegal immigration, and Brian Kemp has signed bills to that effect, but I can't find much recent about legal immigration. This 2025 poll suggests that most Georgians want illegal immigrants to have some path to residency - if true I can't imagine them being more hostile to legal immigrants.
What position do you think Georgians would all vote for? Ending all immigration? Banning all Asian immigration? Nonwhite immigration? What is it that you think Georgians want?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
If you came to this country and wanted to stay there and assimilate, would you go to Sunni or Shiite mosque?
Which ones are telling me my people should go extinct?
vorpa-glavo
1hr ago
I thought you might be interested in this. I was listening through the backlog of the Voluminous podcast, which reads a letter of H.P. Lovecraft's every episode, followed by the hosts commenting on it. And in episode 62 H.P Lovecraft talks a bit about The Worm Ouroboros.
If you're of the right or alt-right persuasion, you might want to skip the commentary afterwards, since the hosts are classic American progressives, but the readings of the letters at the start of every episode are often quite enjoyable.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
Did you read the rest of my comment? I'm not using "violence" in a pejorative sense here, I'm using it because within the linguistic resources of English it is the most general word available, unless I am very much mistaken.
Yeah, I know. This is exactly how "taxation is theft is used", and yet it was dubbed "the worst argument in the world". I haven't kept track of names and dates, but I'm pretty sure there's a strong overlap between people agreeing with Scott's "worst argument in the world", and proponents of "immigration enforcement is violence".
Eetan
1hr ago
Western style progressivism is the (still) most prestigious memeplex in the world, it is easy to understand why people all over the world want to immitate it (without fully understanding the nuances).
As for assimilation, it is going on stronger and faster than ever, only the assimilation is not going the way you would prefer.
Imagine some far away country, split roughly equally between Sunnis and Shiites, except that the split is not equal.
Sunnis tend to live in cities, control the media, bureaucracy and secret services, the wealthy, powerful and influential tend to be Sunni in way disproportionate ratio, while Shiites tend to be poor underprivileged country folk.
If you came to this country and wanted to stay there and assimilate, would you go to Sunni or Shiite mosque?
vorpa-glavo
1hr ago
Did you read the rest of my comment? I'm not using "violence" in a pejorative sense here, I'm using it because within the linguistic resources of English it is the most general word available, unless I am very much mistaken.
Do you have a better word for that category of human activity that is more neutral? Because I personally don't think the neutral use of the word "violence" should be considered an attempt to try to sway an argument one way or another, because there are many instances where "violence" is morally acceptable and justified, maybe even necessary for the functioning of society.
Supah_Schmendrick
1hr ago
"You lost fair and square" is a bad objection to Democratic congressmen pursuing their own mandates. Politics is always going on all the time, power is always being renegotiated, and no side is entitled to their enemies laying down arms.
In the words of Nancy Pelosi, "elections have consequences."
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
Transmetropolitan had the "Revivals", where society healed and thawed out the cryopreserved as a government program, knowing that they'd be unable to handle the future and would essentially become mentally-ill homeless. It had a sort of poignant plausibility to it.
Or there's always the []publicity stunt option](http://nobodyscores.loosenutstudio.com/index.php?id=558).
TitaniumButterfly
1hr ago
Oh cool, you're taking on BurdensomeCount's mantle. I'm not in a place to argue with you right now (and wouldn't if I were) but gosh that's kinda neat.
Supah_Schmendrick
1hr ago
No such thing as current Democratic party platform is conceivable in Asian countries
No, but nor is there some sort of inherent immunity from western-style progressivism in epicanthic folds; sometimes Asian progressivism is more extreme than the western version.
TitaniumButterfly
2hr ago
Kudos! Let us all follow your example. And since I'm exhausted enough to be effectively drunk at the moment, allow me to further, without license or invitation, tell you that I think fondly of you in general and am always happy to see your name show up.
Supah_Schmendrick
2hr ago
Why couldn't they make all those workers legal?
It appears Hyundai was doing what previous practice had established to be "legal-ish" enough for federal enforcement purposes...only then the new administration started enforcing the letter of the law, not the cozy de-facto waiver that had been in place previously.
TitaniumButterfly
2hr ago
I've reached a point in my development as a man that I can appreciate a truly excellent villain, and should consider his departure a great personal loss.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
purely American creation
That's a bit far. I think they'd fit right into Europe.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
Isn't using men with guns to do something part of the standard definition of violence? How do illegal immigrants get removed from the country?
"Worst argument in the world" people, when someone wants to have borders....
vorpa-glavo
2hr ago
Isn't using men with guns to do something part of the standard definition of violence? How do illegal immigrants get removed from the country?
I'm actually a little surprised by the people pushing back on this one, as I don't consider it a "leftist framing." It's certainly compatible with a libertarian analysis as well.
Except for literal pacifists, basically every person on Earth agrees violence is acceptable under at least some circumstances, whether it be self-defense, carrying out a just/honorable war, defending ones property or whatever. The police and federal agents use violence to enforce the rule of law in society. I think the vast majority of ordinary people consider ordinary instances of police force/violence to be completely justified and necessary. Without that, you don't have the rule of law at all, you just have a bunch of suggestions and no means of enforcing them.
I agree that walls are not violence, though. But I don't think physical barriers are the primary way we prevent people from getting into or out of the country, or get rid of them once they get here.
Putting someone out who is in my house without permission is violence, in that the intruder is the one committing it. This is a basic axiom of English common law. I have already suffered an injury. It doesn't matter if the intruder is a beggar or the King of England, if he doesn't leave then I am justified in defending myself from the harms already committed.
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