domain:nunosempere.com
KMC
25m ago
What I'm confused about: why is this a story at all?
It's meant to harass and intimidate him, to mark him as a target for leftists, specifically antifa, and to chill others who may want to express right wing opinions.
What is a random reader expected to do? Unless you happen to employ him, seemingly nothing.
It's not the random reader that this is intended for, it is for the radical reader. For the radical reader it means that the enemy has a name, a face, a place of work and a home. He has family and friends.
The point of anonymity and pseudonymity it to protect your real assets from retaliation, and that's how and why it is being used today just as much as it was for the Federalist Papers, and forever before then.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
30m ago
Yes, but the lower courts could just ignore that. Maybe in another 10 years the Supreme Court will finally take a case and issue a wishy-washy decision that the lower courts could then ignore again.
yunyun333
30m ago
i don't think the jews were worse than arabs, at least in their intentions. certainly, if the arabs had won, the end result for jews would have been worse than expulsion. but expulsion was still a Bad Thing, although there's nothing to be done about it now.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
33m ago
nothing in the article makes likely a FARA violation
Seeking guidance from Israel in the context of a chat whose express purpose is actively changing politics in favor of Israel is more probably a FARA violation than not, because the very act of seeking guidance implies acting under the direction of a foreign principal. So, theoretically, we would just need to confirm that more than intending a FARA violation, they actually received the guidance and acted on it in some capacity.
There’s also
Members of the group also worked with the Israeli government to screen a roughly 40-minute film
Sitt wrote on Nov. 10 that the Israeli government “arranged for us” to screen the film in Gotham Hall
This is a semi-private chat. What are they doing privately when we know they at least aspired to commit FARA crimes?
RegularlyExpressed
46m ago
I am generally agree with the many posters above (below?) that misplaced maternal instinct is the reason for most of the extant female support for Palestine,
I think the coverage of the war by the liberal media/NGO complex plays at least as much of a role as maternal extinct. If the NYT, CNN etc started actually showing clips of Hamas stealing aid and shooting at their own emaciated civilians you'd probably see fewer women attributing the images of starving Gazan children to supposed Israeli malevolence.
2rafa
1hr ago
Otherwise, no one would ever have to register for FARA (“I want to help Paraguay.
Almost nobody does, and indeed it’s telling that despite hundreds of ethnic and national diaspora interest activist groups in the US almost none of them violate FARA or even think about it.
You highlight public relations counsel, but a public relations counsel would be, for example, an American advising the Israeli government without reporting this interest, which the article doesn’t allege these billionaires did (it alleges the communication was the other way around).
are specifically asking them how to conduct pro-Israel advocacy.
That depends entirely on what the ‘guidance’ was, but again, nothing in the article guarantees or even makes likely a FARA violation. If a Russian-American attends a free lecture at the Russian consulate (delivered by a state university employee) on “Russophobia” and then becomes a pro-Russia activist, completely unpaid and without being under any direct instruction of the Russian government or any Russian agent, that isn’t a FARA violation according to most understandings of that law.
quiet_NaN
1hr ago
If you are continuously denied justice in an existential matter, though, I don't think it's at all an alien viewpoint that you are morally entitled to do whatever you find appropriate to seize justice for yourself, including ineffectual and vile acts of revenge such as murdering the women and children of those who wronged you. To claim otherwise, to me, seems to amount to claiming that you can be absolved for arbitrary wrongs if you just amass enough power to make effective resistance impossible, and I don't like that even before we start taking into the account that the targets of Hamas terror were intended and more often than not happy beneficiaries of the original wrongs committed.
Our moral intuitions differ on this a lot. I am not per se against actions whose only purpose is to depress the enemies utility function. If the only move you have is to break into Hitler's villa and destroy all his paintings just to piss him off, I will not hold it against you if you do that.
But when you target third parties such as civilians, reality is typically more complex than that, because they are not only terms in the utility function of the enemy, but also of other's utility functions, such as their own or mine.
In my mind, there is a ton of difference between accepting some collateral damage and intentionally targeting civilians. If Hamas targeted IDF bases with their rockets but accepted the possibility that they might miss and blow up a school instead, or if the IDF decides to blow up 50 people to get one Hamas commander, that can still be viewed as evil because it assigns so little utility to the civilians, but it is very different from expressing a preference for killing civilians, as Hamas did on Oct 7.
If Hamas had targeted shot IDF personnel without offering surrender, I would not have liked this either, but I would also have recognized that there was some military utility to their action.
Instead, they elected to go after civilians. Intentionally. As I have written elsewhere:
Hamas leadership know that they their organization will never defeat Israel militarily. Their best chance to achieving their dream of wiping Israel from the map is a broad alliance of Arab countries who defeat Israel together. The way they get there is public Muslim outrage at Israel. And the best way to generate such outrage is dead Palestinian kids. In my opinion, their attacks were militarily completely pointless, but served the important strategic goal of getting Israel to bomb Gaza down. This will likely throw a wrench into Israel's diplomatic efforts to normalize relations with its Arab neighbors.
In short, the Gazan war is not an acceptable price for Hamas to pay for their day of impotent vengeance on Oct 7, but the motivation for Oct 7 was to get Bibi to blow up a lot of Gazan kids.
I firmly believe that an organization acting like this should be wiped from the face of the earth.
On a broader scale, the problem with the Palestinians is that they don't know how to lose.
Wikipedia has this helpful list. The overall effect is reminiscent of that black knight scene in Monty python: "You have destroyed our ability to fight you in the open? No matter, we can still do suicide bombings. You have walled in Gaza? No matter, we can still fire rockets".
Israel is evidently not incompatible with continued Palestinian existence, so absent a road to victory, resisting them seems counter-productive.
Sometimes it is better to accept accept a peace which feels unjust than fight on forever. When the Alsace became French in 1945 again, a lot of the German-speaking people living there were probably not happy about it. But somehow, the proud tradition of fighting a war every few decades about that region was never revived. It surely helped that nationalist fervor was depleted a bit on the German side after the Nazis, but I still consider this an outcome vastly better for everyone than the alternatives.
"They're both justified to continue murdering each other"
From where I stand, this seems a totally bizarre statement. If two sides fight about a thing, then whatever metric you use to decide who is right and what you would consider a fair distribution of the land or whatever, the rightfulness of all sides summed up has to be less than unity. Only if you optimized for conflict instead of post-conflict outcomes could you prefer both sides to fight each other.
In summary, I am not pro-Bibi, but I am really anti-Hamas. After Oct 7, Hamas needs to be crushed, and as Biden has not volunteered, it falls to the IDF to do the job. I don't think that the way the IDF wages this war is actually all that great, and I am very concerned that nobody has a plan to offer the Gazans a credible alternative. I also think that Israel should destroy the Israeli settlements on the West Bank and arrest the settlers who destroyed that Gazan aid convoy on charges of attempted murder.
2rafa
1hr ago
Reversing or at least heavily limiting disparate impact seems inevitable with this court. Roberts and ACB will be unhappy with it but if something as ridiculous as this happens they won’t really have a choice because of the sheer volume of litigation it would unleash.
No?
The original question is who the territory belonged to. The answer, in most legal contexts, is no one, because there isn't a formal Palestinian state. It would have belonged to Egypt and Jordan if they'd taken it back. That they didn't want it back doesn't mean their recognition of Palestine at different times for different reasons didn't create a de jure Palestinian state. It may be de facto Palestinian territory, and will likely be de jure Palestinian territory in any future negotiated system, but until there is an actual Palestinian state, it's in many respects just stateless territory. The difference between it and other de facto states is simply that no one really claims it, not that the people who actually live in de facto states are also real states too.
You thought it a silly comparison probably, but the Antarctica treaty isn't the worse comparison. Another are the spaces in the middle of the great oceans. While it is indeed extremely uncommon on land, if no recognized state exists in an area, it belongs to no state.
Obviously the circumstances of the Palestinian territories that trying to treat it as empty terrain would be considerably different, but the constraints on that are much more a matter of politics and humanitarian law than sovereign territory law.
unless action is taken on order or request [or direction] of said foreign government or an agent thereof.
As I contextualized in my OP, the billionaires have agents attending private meetings with government heads, and in all likelihood have connections with Mossad, and it seems are specifically asking them how to conduct pro-Israel advocacy. If the heads, of if the Mossad agents, have given them a direction or a request as it relates to their advocacy efforts, then they would be violating FARA. This is regardless of their original desire. Otherwise, no one would ever have to register for FARA (“I want to help Paraguay. Now I will go to Paraguay and they will tell me exactly what to do, but it’s okay because the original impetus was my own.”). A person’s original impetus is immaterial to whether their actions are being directed by a foreign principal. At its broadest,
any person who acts as a representative or in any other capacity under the direction of a foreign principal (or [under the direction] of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly supervised in major part by a foreign principal),
and who directly or through any other person:
engages within the United States in political activities for or in the interests of such foreign principal;
or acts within the United States as a public relations counsel, publicit agent, information-service employee or political consultant for or in the interests of such foreign principal;
or within the United States represents the interests of such foreign principal before any agency or official of the Government of the United States
Now back to the WaPo article:
From the start of the chat, members sought guidance and information from officials in the Israeli government.
This is blatantly illegal per FARA. They are acting (1) in a capacity (2) under the direction of a foreign principle (3a) in the interest of the foreign principal (3b) and engaging in political activity.
2rafa
1hr ago
The Democrats could technically pack the Supreme Court by abolishing the senate filibuster and using a 51 seat majority + the presidency to do so, sure. I suspect that at least several senators would balk at it, though, such that their current majority is insufficient. If they got back to 56/57 seats it would be viable, although of course as soon as the GOP had a President and senate majority it would be immediately neutered by them doing the same.
COVERED ALGORITHM.—The term “covered algorithm” means a computational process, including one derived from machine learning, statistics, or other data processing or artificial intelligence techniques, that makes a decision or facilitates human decision- making by using covered data, which includes determining the provision of products or services or ranking, ordering, promoting, recommending, amplifying, or similarly determining the delivery or display of information to an individual.
I wonder how that would apply to dating apps; would they now be required to design algorithms such that an Asian man, black woman, or trans woman all get equivalent number of matches to their privileged counterparts? Or is that not discrimination?
No_one
1hr ago
It would appear, therefore, that using this new law to reimplement affirmative action would not be legal.
Is there no way for Democrats to make the court more favorable ? E.g. by say, packing it with wise latinas?
2rafa
1hr ago
I mean, technically ‘white people’ are already a ‘protected class’ under the law as a racial group, and states like California make political ideology a protected status too (which is seemingly why Damore was able to negotiate a nice settlement with Google). What is more relevant is practice; since almost all major white collar economic activity occurs in deep blue states and cities, activist progressive judges and district attorneys can always selectively apply these laws to favored groups. It’s very rare for criminals who attack whites to be charged with racially aggravated offenses.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1hr ago
Isn't it rather more important that they have recognized the State of Palestine than whatever their exact motivations were?
ChestertonsMeme
1hr ago
This could be really interesting.
- Adding political party registration as a protected class could end up changing the character of many institutions and organizations. For example, forcing universities to hire Republicans would have major long-term effects on the values of future college graduates.
- This law conflicts with the principles of freedom of association and equal protection. It'll force the issue up through the courts (no way it doesn't get an instant challenge up to the Supreme Court) and with this Court the result could be something wild like reversing Griggs v Duke entirely.
- Even if it stands, it will bring quotas to the fore as a political issue and make the public conversations more clearly about group spoils vs. overall efficiency. It adds such onerous requirements for businesses to make any useful predictions about people that there will be tons of examples of waste and inefficiency due to the law. In an accelerationist way this could be good for getting back to a more reasonable set of laws.
2rafa
1hr ago
If college admissions were determined by “algorithm” (paper or digital) then that algorithm would be obtainable in lawsuit discovery. If that algorithm involved rectifying disparate impact (to apply this law) by bolstering eg. black and Hispanic scores, it would directly contravene not only last year’s SCOTUS judgment but also the previous judgment that ruled direct quotas explicitly unconstitutional. It would appear, therefore, that using this new law to reimplement affirmative action would not be legal.
Sloot
1hr ago
It’s like the inverse of the Mitch Hedberg joke. “I’m now the third most famous player on the Chiefs. I already was before, but I still am now, too.”
Dean
1hr ago
The "easing up" looked like thousands of Palestinians being killed in retaliation for a single-digit number of Israelis killed every few years.
You... do know that the proportionality argument of international law is about the proportional size of the bombs used to kill people, not the relative proportions killed between factions, right?
Going just by raw numbers, in the back-and-forth of action and reaction, it really looks a lot like the Israelis are constantly escalating and the Palestinians are constantly deescalating - there is not a single instance of Palestinians killing Israelis that was not followed by Israelis killing more Palestinians, and no single instance of Israelis killing Palestinians that was not followed by Palestinians killing fewer Israelis.
Why are you going by raw numbers of casualties, rather than raw numbers of attack attempts or missiles fired?
That someone tries to kill often, but is bad at it, doesn't mean that an increase in attempts at killing that get worse over time is a de-escalation of killing intent.
hanikrummihundursvin
1hr ago
'Rationalism' always makes way for 'moralism' when the ingroup starts taking too much flak. The quantifiers and metricians who usually like to count things and make grandiose utilitarian arguments to figure out the best course of action suddenly just can't even. The conflict is just too messy, there are no simple answers here, and so on.
In simple utilitarian terms Palestinians obviously suffer more. The end. Taking up any position other than this collapses every other position 'rationalist' or 'progressive' people hold. As you are no longer rational or progressive. You're just another nazi taking up the cause of your people. 'The barbarians are at the gates and something must be done.' Except we have tied ourselves up a little too much in rationally disciplining the outgroup so now we have to cover our tracks somehow.
It reminds me of Sam Harris' Moral Landscape. An entire book written by a man in an effort to convey an 'ought' without using the word. We have a few people in a very similar spot here. To them 'jews and Israel > The rest'. But getting to that point would break their own perception of themselves so we get to play this game of words instead. Where, like Harris, if we space our very transparent intentions far enough apart from one another, using just enough words, we can proclaim that by the ordained will of science, morality or whatever else, Israel must survive above all else.
Dean
1hr ago
"Rule of law" or "rules-based order" is usually taken to mean an impartial system that constrains great and small alike.
This is smuggling connotations into international law that the principle never merited. The constraints on powers great and small by international law are what the powers agreed to, not imposed. There are, indeed, many areas where the US (and others) self-constrains, but the ICC is one where the US (and others) do not, for reasons which you have not actually countered.
I do not think that this is stable long term.
Nothing about an anarchic system is stable in the long run, and the first principle of the international arena is its anarchic manner. This is why the international system doesn't run on imposing restrictions such as the ICC by fiat- trying to do so triggers more violent resistance more easily.
2rafa
1hr ago
The majority of settled land in the white settler colonies (US, Canada, Australia, NZ, South Africa, Argentina) was not directly purchased from natives. Even prominent supposed historical sales, like the purchase of Manhattan, are not actually confirmed, just rumors written about later by other travellers. In Israel much land was purchased by Jewish settlers, much wasn’t. As in the other settler colonies, much of the territory was also simply claimed, or was purchased from absentee foreign landlords, or allocated by or purchased from other colonial authorities at that time. The Jews did insinuate themselves with ‘various local factions’, not least the legal administrators of the territory (the British) under the legal treaties that ended the First World War and which determined the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
helped that faction defeat all the others
British Jews played an extremely prominent role in the expansion of the British Empire and ultimately in victory in WW1. Cecil Rhodes and other highly prominent British imperialists were agents of British Jewish families like the Rothschilds. British Jewish financiers funded the expansion of Empire and in part the defeat of the Triple Alliance powers. On the eve of the defeat the British began the process of agreeing to an eventual Jewish state in Palestine. This does not appear too dissimilar from those Spanish American examples.
Dean
2hr ago
Not really. Or at least, there are ulterior motives/incentives at the least.
For the Egyptians, it was likely to avoid having to take responsibility for the Palestinians in Gaza, and to keep an irritant in Israel's side that they could stoke or cool as a matter of leverage. Israel offered / tried to return Gaza to Egypt with the rest of the Sinai, and Egypt refused. If it was simply about recognizing a state of Palestine, they could have accepted and transferred authority to a SoP figure, but that would have entailed responsibility on economic/political/diplomatic fronts.
For the Jordanians, the renunciation of claims on the West Bank was a consequence of the aftermath of Black September, and as a way for the Monarchy to disempower the legislature. Most remember Black September as a civil war- and it was- but fewer remember that the Jordanian parliament was dominated by Palestinian interests because it was seating Palestinians based on the territorial claims of uncontrolled West Bank. By renouncing the claims, the Jordanian Monarchy was able to cut the Palestinian faction of the Parliament down to size and no longer the political threat it was.
I don't know the full extent of what Israel's intelligence services do for the west because they obviously don't advertise it. We know that they're one of the largest and best-funded intelligence services in the world. Whatever it is they do with that money, Joe Biden clearly thinks the USA is getting their money's worth.
Since all of this stuff is top-secret one of the only things I can point to is a joke from an old British TV show. Yes, Minister and its sequel series Yes, Prime Minister were infamous for portraying the government of Britain so accurately that the actual government thought the show's writers had a spy on the inside feeding them stories. Yes, Prime Minister once did a joke about the British Foreign Office hiding strategic intelligence from the PM, and the Israeli ambassador passing that same intelligence to the PM in a secret meeting.
That's just a script from an old TV show, of course. But it's not like Mossad is going to come out and explain what they do for the governments of the west in exchange for all that money. All we can say is that whatever it is they do, the governments of the west are apparently satisfied with their performance.
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