domain:mattlakeman.org
veqq
6m ago
Palestinians are the Jews and Christians who converted to Islam (or kept Christianity.) Many are descended from Jews expelled elsewhere - I personally know multiple Palestinians who have gotten Spanish citizenship after proving their ancestors were expelled in 1492 for being Jewish along these lines: https://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-refugee-gets-spanish-citizenship-after-discovering-jewish-roots/
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
27m ago
Big media outlets have low public trust, so they shouldn’t be used as a litmus test for whether a story is true or important. And there are a lot of legal things which nevertheless demand our attention. IMO notable takeaways from this are —
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The public narrative about an important foreign policy issue is molded by ethnic identitarian billionaires who have maximal “skin in the game”, or motive to be biased. “Jewish” is an implementation detail here, the crux of the problem is that a group of hyper-biased billionaires are changing the narrative on a highly sensitive issue which demands impartial objectivity. This influence is not counterbalanced by another force because Palestinians simply aren’t as numerous, wealthy, powerful, or tribal in America. Given that their influence is secretive, we can’t know whether a mayor or police chief is doing something because it is right or because of influence. We similarly can’t know whether a big media outlet is biased or not. IMO this means that the American public must be ultra-careful about scrutinizing information about both Israel and the protests. As another user mentioned ITT, the story of former IDF soldiers(?) clobbered the skulls of students with planks got less coverage than it would were a group of a former Iranian soldiers clobbering Jewish students. And that the police turned a blind eye on this makes one wonder whether it was a Jewish billionaire’s influence behind the scenes that encouraged it through proxies (“I will fund your campaign / give your daughter an internship / withdraw my donation / …”). That is unevidenced, but that doesn’t mean it is improbable. All we know is what they are doing in a semi-private group chat, so what they do behind the scenes could be less wholesome.
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There is potentially something illegal occurring, because these activists are being briefed by the Israeli government officially, and likely by Mossad operatives unofficially.
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Although the law states that protests need the proper certificates, Moral Law unequivocally states that all laws must be impartially applied. Moral law states that once you have biasedly applied a law, there no longer is a law anymore, just tyranny with a side of lying. I think that the norm during BLM was that protests on campuses did not need all the proper certificates. I would rather not have authorities selectively deciding “who gets to protest the most” based on secretive political interests by tribalistic billionaires.
I appreciate the detailed writeup. I will freely concede the following points: your analysis is probably correct, and the ICC's verdict is probably tendentious and politically motivated.
I am, I'm afraid, arguing vibes. The USA's pitch to the world over last half-century of so has been something along the lines of:
"We're here to help. Previously, empires were allowed to bully and exploit smaller countries, but we're different. We intend to put in place a world order that will allow (and require) countries to cooperate and trade with each other on equal terms. We intend to police the world if necessary, but not to rule it."
Given that, for America to exempt itself and its vassals from the international court with jurisdiction over
(a) The crime of genocide; (b) Crimes against humanity; (c) War crimes; (d) The crime of aggression.
and to explicitly threaten employees of the court is a very bad look. It makes people start to wonder why America feels that laws around genocide and war crimes are "inapplicable or inappropriate" when applied to America. It brings back memories of the invasion of Iraq. It also brings back memories of things like the unequal extradition treaty between America and the UK. It's as though Bill Gates declared that he was too important to be bound by laws against murder, or at the very least demanded the right to determine whether those laws were being correctly applied to him and his friends on a case-by-case basis.
it would be immoral to force nation-states to be governed by agreements they did not agree to
Precisely as immoral as it is to force people to be governed by laws they didn't sign.
In short, does America sincerely believe that it is too important and powerful to answer to anyone else? America's behaviour suggests that the answer is yes, and any intimations otherwise is 'who, whom' propaganda. The more America resorts to economic and diplomatic coercion, the less interested everyone else is in helping to maintain the system and America's place in it.
Having said all of that, I think that international law is an extremely flawed concept. The idea that one government can enter into an agreement that is considered binding on subsequent governments decades later seems ludicrous and anti-democratic. As with most law, it's ultimately a fudge for applying coercive power in a manner that is mostly accepted and results in minimal fuss. I wouldn't bear America any ill will for saying, "our voters are pro-Israel and we feel the need to act accordingly, regardless of international law" provided that they extended the same courtesy to everybody else.
Dean
55m ago
What was the diplomatic position of the United States about the ICC charging Vladimir Putin?
Legit question?
As a formal position, they've been mostly silent, with various policy-journal debates on how much to support or not. Some elements have used it as an argument to join the Rome Statute entirely, others resist.
As a practical / strategic position, the US is happy to help investigate / catalog war crimes, and then signal-boosting the ICC's findings to other ICC states to complicate Russia's relations. While the US itself isn't a member of the ICC, many of Russia's partners are, and so helping the ICC works against Russia and to the US interest even if no arrest is made.
As a legal position? That ICC has limited jurisdiction over various crimes in Ukrainian territory due to Ukraine inviting them to.
This is the ICC bulletin rather than a US statement, but the US would generally follow the point:
Ukraine is not a State Party to the Rome Statute, but it has twice exercised its prerogatives to accept the Court's jurisdiction over alleged crimes under the Rome Statute occurring on its territory, pursuant to article 12(3) of the Statute. The first declaration lodged by the Government of Ukraine accepted ICC jurisdiction with respect to alleged crimes committed on Ukrainian territory from 21 November 2013 to 22 February 2014. The second declaration extended this time period on an open-ended basis to encompass ongoing alleged crimes committed throughout the territory of Ukraine from 20 February 2014 onwards.
The general position of the US in Iraq or Afghanistan is that the US forces remained in the government after the initial invasions at the request of the legitimate and internationally recognized governments, with whom the US had a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that governed authorized activities and how to handle incidents of misconduct (including how trials would occur). The position would be that misconduct by US forces wasn't a matter of policy or purpose, but something the US would investigate and if appropriate prosecute soldiers for when identified. The US would provide data and information to support that point when asked, even as it denied the ICC had a jurisdiction to detain or try US soldiers.
The main contrasts with the Russian position is that Ukraine is an internationally recognized state who has invited the ICC in to investigate what has occurred on internationally recognized Ukrainian territory, but the Iraqi/Afghan governmets that were internationally recognized were not trying to invite the ICC against the US or its coalitions*.
*This is why most of the ICC applications in the context of Iraq were centered on the UK. Between the US, the UK, and Iraq, the UK was the only one the ICC had automatic jurisdiction over and could compel cooperation from.
No_one
32m ago
He replies "she could lose some weight" or "you could lose some weight" to any picture of a woman he comes across, with the exception of actually anorexic or very thin ones where he'll say "you should gain some weight".
I'd say the only constant is that it makes women mad.
shakenvac
36m ago
the present ruling population of Israel mostly moved to that territory in the late '40s, and from the start has continued violently expelling the ancestors of present Palestinians from their homes to acquire their land for themselves.
This is true to a point. It is also true that Israel was once far larger than it is today. The Israelis captured huge swathes of land through force of arms in defensive wars, and has mostly returned that land peaceably. The Israelis left the Gazans to their own devices in 2005. The common narrative that Israel is constantly expanding is ahistorical.
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.
I see this logic - not that I agree with it, but I see it. What I don't see is how your logic is not fully generalizable to the Israelis. They have also been wronged by Palestinian actions. How can it be in your paradigm that Palestinians have the right to invade Israel and kill every Jew they see, but then the Israelis do not have the right to bring indiscriminate death down upon the Palestinians in retaliation? (for the record, I do not believe either of them have the right to do this, nor do I believe that Israel's response has been indiscriminate.)
If you have been driven out of your house and into a corner at gunpoint by the mafia, the mafia boss's kid stands by watching the show and mocking you, and, seeing an opening, you shoot the kid, I will find it hard to fault you for the murder
While I don't think the analogy is particularly fair, I will point out that there is only one moral paradigm in which the shooter in your story is unambiguously justified, and that is blood feud. That is inherently a might-makes-right morality. The shooter will soon find out the hard way that that the Mafia have no more scruples than he when it comes to killing children.
Harrison Butker's commencement speech (transcript) is probably the most politically incorrect public exposition I've ever heard from a (relatively) public non-political figure. Butker is the Kansas City Chief's placekicker, and a devout Catholic. He hits nearly all the culture war hot topics: abortion, pride month, women's role in society, the Covid response, and Biden's leadership or lack thereof.
While the mainstream and new media are universal in their condemnation of this speech, the NFL up to this point is merely "distancing" itself from Butker's viewpoints. If Butker's career can survive intact, this seems to be further evidence in favor of the "vibe-shift". Indeed, he may have shifted the Overton window himself: he mentions his "teammate's girlfriend" (Taylor Swift); and simply by being on the same team as Travis Kelce, Butker's beliefs has the potential to be platformed to the millions of women who have started following the Chiefs.
Courage is contagious: the more people who stand up to the regime, the easier it becomes for others to do so. In my own small way, I signed a petition in support of Butker under my real name. While this seems a small risk to take, it isn't one I would have countenanced four years ago.
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