Regardless of your political views… The fact you can watch civilians being blown up and be like “justice” is pretty raw dude. I think you need to have a think about how you relate to the world… and other humans.
Also that’s not what I said. Guy above me asked for justice. And I said justice for all innocent people. But apparently no, you Hamas apologists don’t accept idea of innocent people in Israel.
If you wanted justice you would recognize the apartheid, that Israel was founded on ethnic cleansing that has escalated to genocide, advocate for a permanent ceasefire, and a solution to the conflict where both Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights.
Who said that? I’d be happy for the people who did Oct 7th to be brought to justice. I doubt you’d say the same for the criminals in Israel’s leadership and military.
They’re one of those people that magically appear only when there’s some news about Biden they can shit all over. Check their comment history. If you have any doubts.
For the record, I’m neurodivergent as well, I’ve just had a lot of experience with these people. It gets easy to spot them after a while.
…Biden doesn’t want to support the genocide of Palestinians, he is just forced to given the fact that if he looks weak to independent voters from not unconditionally backing Israel’s genocide of Palestinians than he is going to lose the election. Do you honestly think he would be supporting a genocide if it wasn’t a smart political strategy?
Ok fine so maybe even independents think what Israel is doing is awful in Gaza, but can’t you people be patient and wait until the dust settles after the election, and after all the Palestinians are dead and removed from their land? We can have a discussion about whether the Palestinian genocide was right or wrong then! Stop sabotaging Biden in the meantime, he is trying real hard to swoon those independent voters and they clearly are rabid supporters of the IDF committing genocide which is definitely a fact I didn’t contradict a second ago!
4 hours and not a single right-center douchebag has come out of the woods. Maybe they’re catching on that their rhetoric isn’t working and Biden is going to flat out lose the country because of his genocidal friends.
This is just how the world works tbh. The ICC has no mechanisms for enforcement. They rely on participating countries, because they don’t have an international mandate to do well, anything, without the approval of the international community. There is no world government, or world police
Yeah sorta. But there’s no way to force the US to participate, there’s zero international law that has enforcement mechanisms. In order to pursue an ICC trial, they rely on the armies/police/prosecutors/judges of other nations, and none of those nations are going to risk fucking up their relationship with the US. In this case, the US is literally not beholden to the laws
That’s kind of the point of being a (near) hegemon
They get paid very well not to see that, or in the case of Germany get paid very well and used support for Israel as a smokescreen to deflect from the antisemitism they rightfully fear to be accused of. Israel is helping German Antisemites to push the blame on “immigrants” while Ethnically German Nazis get to attack Synagogues and have it downplayed. Zionists and Antisemites are allies.
Democrats are never as good at predicting things as when they predict they can’t get something done. The point is to try, to raise the issue, to force your opponent to defend the issue, to raise awareness and money and volunteers to beat back the waves of evil that would destroy us all.
My entire life, Democrats have been shrugging and rolling their eyes while Conservatives rub their genitals all over the furniture.
Did Donald Trump need 60% to get what he wanted? Did Dick Cheney? Did Reagan or Nixon need a supermajority to funnel money into their pockets while destroying lives? No, they got what they wanted while Democrats in charge lined their own pockets while destroying lives.
Don’t come at me about Biden. He’s a shitbag, but I’m voting for him anyway because we literally cannot have another Trump term. But I’m really fucking tired of hearing about things we’re not trying to do because we’ll probably fail. There’s value in the failure, in the attempt.
Rescheduling is a great step forward. Congress needs to pass legislation to decriminalize marijuana. It’s in their court now. Write your Senators and Representatives if you’re invested.
Exactly. We can have more influence in decriminalization by paying attention to Senate and House vacancy dates and elections, and by writing them with our interests.
Which is a different thing than a spectrum, right? Putting your little data points on a line, assigning number values to seizing the means and chattel slavery?
Because I was challenging your assumption that it is something you can or should do to derive a meaningful understanding of political beliefs and how they interact with each other, or for that matter, concepts of ethics and morality.
Beliefs and ideology are very different. I was talking about the defining characteristics of established ideologies. Adding personal beliefs only further increases the need for a more robust graph than a line.
I don’t make assumptions about an individual’s beliefs based on their political alignment. I know too many single-issue voters to make that mistake.
My assertion about progressives supporting censorship of speech applies to the ideology, not each and every individual that supports the ideology. Many don’t recognize that as authoritarian, because of its good intentions.
If there’s money to be had, sure, they want a piece. Conservatives would rather a lower tax and no subsidies and let the free market shake things out. They align with Libertarians on economic policy. Minimal taxes and maximum free market with no purse for social programs or subsidies.
Again, it’s not that they won’t accept them. Conservatives prefer limiting government in free enterprise. There would be no money for subsidies if the taxes were as low as they’d like them to be. There would also be no money for social services like welfare, SNAP, Medicaid, Medicare, emergency housing, etc.
That’s the high social legislation I was referring to. That’s where they differ from Liberals and Libertarians alike. Conservatives support restrictive legislation on social liberties. Christian Nationalism is a great example.
Its a spectrum that exists on the left running from libertarian to authoritarian. Not from capitalist to socialist. Democrats, Democratic socialist, social Democrats are not the same thing or part of a spectrum of Democrats. They are distinct and different ideologies that share a term but disagree on many other things. There are no left wing Republicans despite authoritarians existing on both the left and the right.
Libertarianism is a left wing ideology born of the 19th century. The concept of a right-wing libertarian was not widely accepted before the red scare of the 1950s and '60s. Nearly a century later. Because it is quite literally impossible to be a capitalist and favor that kind of freedom. When your concept of freedom is the freedom of capital. If capital is free we are all slaves to it. And therefore not free.
Deeper than that be very basic concept of capitalism is authoritarian in nature. It’s concept of private property as opposed to personal property requires a strong authority to enforce it and protect it. Being absolutely incompatible with actual libertarianism. Or the concept of public property as as envisioned by Actual libertarianism.
Further it is a gross misrepresentation to saying that Libertarians or even anarchists are anti-government, or anti-economic redistribution. Strictly speaking that’s just capitalists. All Libertarians or anarchists want is small, more granular, and accountable government. Said government to collecting funds via taxing for robust public housing is not anti libertarian or even anti-anarchist. It’s just anti-capitalist.
And just to finish off. Wikipedia isn’t necessarily authorative. And political Compass despite being wildly more accurate than the political Spectrum as often portrayed in Western Nations is still a misrepresentation.
Just one of many examples of how a linear scale cannot place all ideologies are current Libertarians. For example, I’m friends with a libertarian couple that are fiscally conservative, and socially liberal. Where would you place them? What about someone who supports social economic systems as well as Christian Nationalism? You can’t force data to fit into an assigned scale. A scale must be selected to accommodate the available data. There’s a reason professors have been using the political compass or Nolan Chart in higher education for the last twenty years.
That organizational need only applies to ideologies, however. The current state of political parties in the US, for example, is somewhat linear.
Socially liberal fiscally conservative is the most meaningless label/platitude in American politics for sure. Even some Republicans will classified themselves that way. As well as Larp-atarians and democrats. Truly meaningless. Of the three groups Democrats probably come closest to actually being that. While still falling well far of it. Literally everyone is conservative with their resources, but wants everyone to believe they aren’t anti social.
Homeless as an example. Everyone treats it like some complex unsolvable problem. When everybody knows the solution. Give them actual housing. The kind that allows them to have stability and security in their life. Not just access to a shower, and overnight use of a random cott in a roach/rat infested building that they’re forcefully turned out of every morning. With no regular access to actual meals. If we just “gave actual housing” to them. That would take care of 60 to 80% of homeless. The few that would remain don’t have homeless as a primary problem.
A libertarian might debate whether we should do this at the town/city, county, state or national level. They wouldn’t argue that we shouldn’t, or already are doing too much to address it. As many larp-atarians do. Larp-atarians can’t even agree on a basic concept of freedom beyond capital/capitalism.
Many, but not all support legalization of marijuana. Many but not all even support equal rights. Whether it’s about racial, gender, or sexual lines. The term that best describes Larp-atarians, is selfish. Their views on freedoms etc don’t really extend much beyond themselves. And worse. Many will vote Republican if there isn’t a Larp-atarian on the ballot. Which considering how anti free speech etc they’ve been for decades. Makes them an extremely anti libertarian group to vote for whether you consider yourself right or left.
And what about the Christian Nationalist who supports increased social programs from my example? Or are you going to redefine their beliefs with arrogant condemnation to fit your analysis as well?
Fascist. Because they only support that with the expectation of being given deference or increasing their power at the cost of everyone who rejects or refuses them. Not to compare them literally to Hitler or the nazis. But Hitler offered social support to his chosen people as well. That doesn’t make him a good person. Or even right.
Take the proselytization out. Give it unconditionally like the Samaritan did. It’s one of the biggest parables in Christian teaching. So It’s oddly suspicious they all ignore it. Either they’re not really Christian. Or they could use to read their book.
There’s no arrogance or redefinition of beliefs involved anywhere here. It’s all facts and history. You are welcome to believe anything you want. Because belief specifically does not require truth facts or knowledge. Often it’s the opposite.
Also note when I use the term fascist to describe them I made a point of specifically not comparing them directly to Hitler or the nazis. Just because someone’s a fascist does not necessarily mean they are a monster. Fascism however always leads to monsters.
And just to finish since I sense that you’re getting emotional and defensive here. I see you around quite a bit and generally upvote your posts. Because you seem generally pretty on the ball and have a reasonable understanding. I simply disagree with you on this point. And have pointed out factually, philosophically, and historically why. I just hope at some point you take the time to read and consider. You are more than welcome to disagree after that. Just consider that because something is written, no matter where it is written. Does not inherently make it true.
Emotion has no place in determining the logistics of mapping political ideology. Your argument is subjective, and mine is scientific. You’re using your opinions to redefine other’s opinions to fit your narrative.
There is a reason scholars in political science do not use the system you are clinging to by manipulating data into conformity.
How is the origin and basis of libertarianism subjective. And again how are Western political Scholars authoritative. Capitalism literally existed back when libertarianism was created. They specifically chose to create an ideology outside it.
Calling unfettered capitalism libertarianism in no way reflects libertarianism as it was created. Claiming that the freedom of capital is equivalent to actual freedom is an absurdity. If you have access to a freedom that others do not. Due to anything like capital or resources that’s not a freedom. That’s a privilege and should not be protected.
Likewise, the non aggression principle. Capitalists or any other group claiming to abide it’s definition of private property can’t also unhypocritically claim to abide the non-aggression principle. Private property demands aggression and violence to enforce it.
If a homeless starving man walked into or broke into a wealthy person’s second, third house, or yacht. Knowing that this season or time of year they would not be there. And took a tchotchke in order to be able to afford to feed themselves. What would the response be? Would it be understanding and assistance? Or would they be chased down by armed men and most likely locked up and deprived of freedom for a considerable amount of time? Better yet would a wealthy person face remotely the same response stealing from poorer people?
Remember post ex parte appeals to Authority can always be overridden by just pointing to the origins of the ideology and the fact that for a century there were no accepted right wing Libertarians.
In its day the remotely closest thing to what we would consider a modern libertarian were those like Friedrich Hayek. Who was then considered an outsider and Fringe group to what was recognized libertarianism. Not to mention if I’m not mistaken came along well after the establishment of the ideology. Simply seeking to repurpose it. If he was considered Fringe and outside the mainstream. How then can his viewpoints be considered what was always intended for libertarianism? Not revisionism but main stream. Clearly it wasn’t. But maybe you have some writing and evidence from the ideologies origins. Writings that aren’t Hayek’s or his acolytes Rothbard or Friedman.
Rothbard considered the modern founder of rightwing libertarianism. Again almost a century after the ideologies founding. Openly just rebranded classic liberalism. Which again, wasn’t libertarianism. But a separate incompatible ideology. Though claiming to have similar goals via different policy. The claims have never been proven however.
So if were gonna debate let’s debate. What actual support for your claims do you have?
I never suggested that the origin or basis of libertarianism was subjective. I simply said that the ideology is currently defined as supporting high civil liberty and supporting low economic social systems, and because of these qualities, is difficult to map on the same axis as liberal and conservative. It’s really quite simple, and doesn’t justify a wall of text to counter.
You have yet to explain how the aforementioned fascist fits on your line. Do they go on the left for supporting high economic social systems or on the right for support of highly restrictive social legislation? Whichever you choose determines if your line is preferential to economic or social system definition, which in itself is biased. Some individuals vote more heavily on social issues, and others economic. Just food for thought.
What part of using terms like libertarian and libertarianism as they were designed is subjective? Isn’t trying to redefine terms to mean something they were not designed to mean, actually the subjective thing?
I justified calling them fascist because they fit several of the markers of fascism. Nationalism in terms of Christian nationalism being one big glaring one. There are plenty of Christians who aren’t nationalists. Odd that you chose to try to justify Christian nationalists. And again I point you towards Hitler’s government. He had high economic social support for his chosen people. Yet they were a right wing fascist government. In much the same way fundamentalist Christian nationalist social support only extends to proselytizing and no further. No actual support or Solutions for people in need.
Worse. These so-called Christian nationalist destroyed and gutted much more effective and cost efficient programs. In order for less effective use of proselytizing through the government. That said. Again, decent people get roped into these horrific schemes thinking that they’re doing good. They are doing evil in the Christian and atheistic sense of the word. But they can still be decent people despite their actions. But only because of their misguided intent.
What question did I dodge? I answered that. Wait. You think there are left wing fascists? I mean it would fit with redefining left-wing Libertarians to be right wing I suppose. So I shouldn’t be shocked. Even though fascism is defined and accepted as being a right wing ideology.
I don’t think they’re either. Fascists fall under the bottom left quadrant of the Nolan Chart for supporting liberal economic and conservative social systems. Libertarians are placed opposite them on the top right. Left wing on the top left for liberal social and liberal economic, and right wing on the bottom right for conservative social and conservative economic.
My point is if you place them on the right of a straight line, you’re defining your line to weigh on social policy over economic policy. Therefore you must place Libertarians on the far left, despite their staunch objection to tax generated social systems. A line simply doesn’t work.
So first things first. Nolan was a liberal, despite calling himself libertarian. Liberal == economic freedom, libertarian == social freedom. Always has been. Always will be. Second I was not aware that the Nazis were liberal and supported economic freedom. Honestly everything I’ve seen historically screamed the opposite. You know, the whole if you aren’t with us we kill you. Not a socially or economically “liberal” vibe. But I’d be interested to see what your justification for the claim is.
Why would you not weight social Freedom over economic freedom? Society is the basis of the economy. Who in their right mind would prioritize economic freedom over social freedom? Who would want prioritize being the wealthiest inmate in a concentration camp for instance. over being free but having wealth similar to everyone else?
Let’s put this in better perspective. The transition from mercantilism to capitalism. Capitalism provided zero new economic freedom. There were immensely wealthy non royals that owned trading companies. But they were socially segregated from the royals and could never become them outside of marriage which was also segregated. Capitalism offered new social freedom, now us low born could become the equivalent of the royals based largely on dumb luck and chance. The change was strictly about social freedom. As surpurfluous and damaging as that particular freedom was.
Finally there is no meaningful economic freedom without social freedom. Without social Freedom you will be permanently segregated from economic success. Black people and minorities for example in the United States technically have access to economic freedom. And yet it is always such a noteworthy thing anytime one of them actually becomes economically successful. Because they generally do not have the social freedom.
Liberal economic policy means they support high tax socialization. Hitler socialized much of Germany’s industry, and is responsible for the creation of Volkswagen. Conservative economics support low tax socialization.
As far as weight of social freedom vs. economic support goes, that’s entirely up to the individual. Plenty of people cast their votes with economic priorities- the elderly, Conservatives (not MAGA or far-right), and people on social programs such as Section 8, Medicaid, or SNAP to name a few.
Capitalism is a form of economy that in no way dictates social legislation. We base social legislation (liberty or restrictions on acceptable behavior) on The Constitution and its Amendments. The policies are independent of one another.
Read up on the Political Compass if you don’t like the Nolan chart. They accomplish the same goal of identifying independence of social and economic systems in relation to political ideology.
Economic policy is on a spectrum from liberal (high tax socialization) to conservative (low tax socialization). High taxation with low socialization falls under conservative.
Social policy is on a spectrum from libertarian (freedom from socially restrictive legislation) to authoritarian (oppressive socially restrictive legislation).
The use of the term libertarian here is not to be confused with the Libertarian ideology or party, as it’s being used to exclusively define social liberty, and does not include economic policy definition. The same is true of the use of liberal vs Liberal in regards to economic policy.
Broad Strokes like this are never 100% accurate but to clarify why you’re being downvoted:
In the USA pretty much all Libertarians are considered right wing. It’s not a progressive ideology, just one that prefers lower taxation. In contrast, Liberals are often the middle left of the US spectrum before Social Democrats and the farthest left would be fringe groups of Communist Radicals including anti-police and anti-property activists. On the other end, from center to furthest right would be: Moderates, Centrists, Libertarians including a smaller group of Tea-Party anti-tax activists, Rightwing Anarchists (small but vocal), Evangelical Theocrats, and Segregationists (so conservative that they want to return to early 1800s).
You may notice this doesn’t leave a place for many ideologies such as meritocrats or anarcho-communists. Just a side effect of our two party system is that the side you align with doesn’t usually align with you as an individual. Sucks to suck, especially for those log cabin republicans.
Words mean what people who use them think they mean, and Americans using the word Libertarian mean right-wing anti-government and pro-business folks. This may not have been the word’s original meaning, but language changes.
Progressives are more in support of authoritarianism than they realize. Censoring speech is authoritarian by definition. It’s the primary reason I don’t identify as one.
Edit: Consider putting the power, and setting the precedent, of subjectively altering the first amendment in the hands of this conservative SCOTUS. Is that really a great idea? Fascism arrives as your friend.
Second edit: It turns out that I’ve been misinformed about progressives supporting hate speech censorship. Sorry about the confusion. Have a good night.
Consider putting the power, and setting the precedent, of altering the first amendment in the hands of this conservative SCOTUS. Is that really a great idea? Fascism arrives as your friend.
Again, when have progressives done this? How are progressives responsible for how a conservative SCOTUS rules on First Amendment rights? Specifically, what legislation has been drafted by progressives that censor hate speech? I have yet to see anyone aside from social media, who have their own set of codes of conduct, be censored by the government over hate speech.
A perfect example would be how Republicans say the craziest racist shit and aren’t censored for it. If anything, it gets plastered all over the news. So your logic is highly flawed, champ.
It’s been my understanding that hate speech censorship has been a progressive ideal for many years now. I’m learning tonight that it’s not actually the case. It was the primary reason I drifted from the ideology.
I am very aware of how free speech is already regulated in regards to inciting violence or a riot, as well as its hierarchical place regarding a content or conduct policy. What concerns me, is regulating speech in regards to an intangible.
I’m a very empathetic person, and it’s painful for me to say, but I don’t believe it’s safe to empower our government to legislate speech in regards to feelings. Unlike inciting violence, the impact is subjective. If we define it as verbal or written attacks on a protected class, then who is to define what classes are protected? How often do we amend it as new classes are created? How do we define a verbal attack? That is a slippery slope of precedent that can be used against all of us, as well as journalists, under the wrong administration.
With that being said, I’m very surprised to learn that all of the calls for hate speech censorship from the far-left have faded away. I’m very happy to hear it, and I’m sorry for causing such a commotion with my misunderstanding.
It’s been my understanding that hate speech censorship has been a progressive ideal for many years now.
Progressives prefer direct means to combat hate speech, instead of relying on legislation. And if you see one punch a nazi, no you didn’t. That nazi fell.
In all seriousness, I absolutely believe private platforms owe their users a content policy that protects them from attacks. I just don’t think it should be legislated. If Elon want to turn X into a cesspool, it’s no different than your local bar becoming a racist dive. You just find a new place to go with your friends on a Saturday night.
Literally everyone censors speech, and is fine with it. Everyone, with exceptions so scant that may as well not exist at all.
Laws that prohibit workplace harassment. Defamation. Laws that punish incitements to violence. Laws that punish fraud and confidence scams. Laws against insider trading. Even things like RICO. These are ALL, in varying forms, limits on speech that are basically uncontentious to most normal, well-balanced people. These are limits on speech so ubiquitous and accepted that people have actually somehow convinced themselves that somehow "free" speech is clearly categorically different than these other things even when it plainly isn't.
The only people sincerely for (edit: total) free speech are honest-to-god anarchists. True "free speech absolutists" basically do not exist, and when someone claims to be one it really just means they want to be able to get away with using racial slurs in public.
Not at all. I don’t need laws to be a respectful person. Do you need religion to be a good person?
I’m educated enough in political science to know that one of the most common ways to create a dictatorship is to leverage fear of the right to enact socially controlling legislation with the support of the left, then slowly begin to leverage that same legislation against the leader’s enemies. It’s prevalent throughout human history, and a proven system for inevitable authoritarian control.
Incidentally, the other most common way to create a dictatorship is by leveraging the military and police forces against the people, as Trump plans to do in Project 2025. Just food for thought.
In modern history, it's typically the right wing dictators that got voted in through "legal" means, and it's the right wing dictators that achieve power by slowly controlling what can and cannot be said by the media. The leftist dictatorships, if you want to call the soviet-style ones as such, do so through violence and the military. You have it exactly backwards which sins here come from which wing. It doesn't pass a common sense test, so I think you may need to go back to school.
And let's not get bogged down in utter bullshit. We're talking about "progressive" censorship here, which almost certainly means hate speech laws. There have been exactly zero dictatorships that flowed out of political movements of intentional inclusivity. Neither the Nazis nor Soviets were concerned with "hate speech". They both were all about it.
I didn’t say the dictators were left wing. You’re right, they’ve been almost exclusively right wing leaders. I said they begin by getting support from the left to enact social legislation against the right, then begin to leverage that newly created power against the enemies of the government, including media. It’s the most common first step onto the slippery slope.
You said it yourself. Media censorship leads to authoritarian control.
But literally all modern states have media censorship. Literally all of them. For example, prohibitions on libel or fraud. That's censorship. Confidentiality of national secrets is a form of censorship. Hell, even copyright laws can be interpreted as a form of censorship.
Libel/slander is a civil suit, not a crime. Fraud is falsification yielding a gain. Private institutions can and should determine their own code of conduct.
The problem comes into play the day that SCOTUS puts an asterisk on the first amendment to determine an intangible. As soon as the government has the precedent to enact censorship legislation, the tool will be available to whatever corrupt leader decides to wield it.
I’m not deflecting. I don’t understand your question. Fraud involves a contract or gain. That’s not protected by free speech.
I think the problem stems from your lack of understanding of how the Constitution protects freedom of speech. I’m simply saying once we grant the government permission to silence our enemies, they can use that power to silence us.
What does "protected by 'free speech'" even mean? Who is this free speech and how are they protecting or not protecting anything?
Fraud is a form of speech. It's putting ideas out into the world -- ideas that induce a false understanding in another, typically to reap some material benefit to the fraudster... but lots of the protected forms of speech do that.
The state punishes this speech by outlining a procedure for a harmed party to punish the fraudster, backed by the authority of the state (i.e., lawsuits).
Just because speech is part of a contract doesn't magically transmogrify it into non-speech. Besides, what even constitutes a "contract" isn't something we can say is fully and perfectly defined...
So here we have speech and punishment for it. That sums up to censorship. And how do we decide what is and isn't "fraud" and so does or doesn't qualify as protected speech? It's complicated. Very complicated. We have a huge statutory framework. Legal tests. We're still trying to specify the line. The target shifts through all of history. Cases get overturned and updated and our frameworks and tests evolve. Sometimes we go too far. Sometimes not far enough. Sometimes the shifting reality of how our society operates changes the balancing point. Sometimes we have simply been wrong and regretted it.
Now I think I know what you actually are trying to say. That political speech needs to be highly protected from government meddling. That's hardly a radical idea. I don't know any credible person who disagrees with it.
But there's also a significant legal grey area between which, for example, it becomes hard to identify where political speech ends and direct calls to violence start. Surely it isn't protected for a political leader standing in front of a riled mob to point across the street to his political enemy and shout "go kill him, now!" But where's the exact point where the rhetoric shifted from "proper" political speech to a call to violence, exactly? How much subtext and implication are we going to accept? How riled does the crowd have to be? Either way, by outlining a point where speech can end you up punished, we've censored that speech. And censorship through civil action is still censorship, don't be confused.
In its best form, the state exists to help balance rights in tension. When one person's speech rights are out of balance with the harms that speech inflicts on another (such as in fraud or an incitement to violent), the state exists to mediate that. And we should want it to be just and fair when it does, and balance that tension in a way that creates the best possible environment. Join the reasonable people and discuss where you think things fall on that balance. Don't pretend there's some magical and inviolable difference between this censorship and other kinds that are acceptable, though. Have a reason.
Fraud involves intentional deception to gain something of value, usually money. One commits fraud through false statements, misrepresentation, or dishonest conduct intended to mislead or deceive. This article looks at types of fraud crimes and the criminal and civil penalties for fraud.
Fighting words are words meant to incite violence such that they may not be protected free speech under the First Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court first defined them in Chaplinsky v New Hampshire (1942) as words which "by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.
I’m not suggesting we go backwards. I’m concerned about the repercussions of allowing SCOTUS to set the precedent of what can and cannot be said or written by citizens or media to protect the feelings of others. That sets the precedent for a crime of opinion regarding freedom of speech.
I know it’s a harsh stance, and as an empathetic person, I hate that I can’t trust my government enough with the power to protect the vulnerable. I simply don’t trust them enough with that power.
Plenty of protected political speech involves deception with gain (especially gain of political office). Inciting violence is already against the law... and that law is a form of censorship.
I’m concerned about the repercussions of allowing SCOTUS to set the precedent of what can and cannot be said or written by citizens or media to protect the feelings of others.
And I am saying they already can do and did and you need to engage with that and not pretend there's some magical line that cannot be crossed. Defining what is and isn't protected speech is a complex and ever-ongoing negotiation. The links you provided are evidence of this -- are evidence that I am right. There isn't a clear categorical definition that separates the protected from unprotected -- what is protected and isn't protected is defined only by where the censorship starts.
You should be highly concerned with the repercussions of the SCOTUS's decisions. They're a corrupt institution that historically nearly always act as a brake on expanding civil rights. Good news for you on this subject, this SCOTUS would never let a hate speech law stand -- they quite like to see vulnerable people persecuted. More good news: there basically are no hate speech laws. The only government agencies censoring political speech right now are far right conservative ones like Florida, doing the exact thing you fear. It aint progressives and it aint happening with support of progressives.
But you can't pretend that speech isn't speech and censorship isn't censorship just to make your own political ideology easier to reckon. That's just embracing censorship in a different way.
Again, many forms of censorship are uncontentious. Here we have links to two forms of censorship that are such. If there's some new kind of censorship you find objectionable, identify it and make the case for why it is worse than its counterfactual.
That’s fair. I disagree that fraud applies to your point, because there is a transactional gain involved, but I agree that inciting violence is a limit on free speech.
The difference with hate speech, that specifically doesn’t lead to a crime like inciting violence, is that it’s ambiguous. It’s determined solely by the victim, without a tangible effect. That’s exactly the type of legislation that would lead to media censorship and control by a corrupt government.
I completely agree, I was just thrown off by OP’s statement that progressives censor hate speech since I am not aware of any legislation specifically passed that makes it illegal for the common person to make hate speech.
Second edit: It turns out that I’ve been misinformed about progressives supporting hate speech censorship. Sorry about the confusion. Have a good night.
No, you were LIED to by malicious actors trying to turn you against people who are, at least broadly speaking, more aligned with your goals than against. There is a reason communists historically kill social democrats before going after fascists, because they’re afraid of diluting power between similar parties. They want sole power so badly they are willing to risk fascists getting it if they think it gives them a better chance.
Then here you come with “sorry I’ve been misinformed” like it was an innocent mistake. Either you know you’re acting in bad faith or you’re uncritically regurgitating what others have told you in bad faith. The people telling you that stuff are not your friends, they are just manipulators who want to stir shit between two groups fighting the same enemy.
So you weren’t misinformed, you just fucked up, try taking some personal responsibility and go back to figure out where you went wrong and who you should be trusting.
Ok, then I fucked up. I wasn’t protecting my pride. I was legitimately misinformed, and haven’t had this conversation until now. Call it whatever you’d like. Your opinion of me is of no consequence.
Most of my friends are liberals, some are republicans, others libertarians. I haven’t been close with my progressive friends since I used to tour with Phish in the ‘90s. Lol
Sometime around ten years ago, I distinctly recall reading articles and seeing videos of progressive politicians calling for censorship. In hindsight, that was leading up to the mass disinformation campaigns of the 2016 election, so it makes sense how I could’ve made the mistake of consuming media at face value. I remember centrists began referring to progressives as “the regressive left” due to the initiative. None of those calls came from Bernie, so I still voted for him in the primary, but it certainly turned me off to the ideology.
As I said, I’m happy to have learned otherwise. I’ve been supporting progressive ideals since the ‘90s. That hasn’t changed, only my comfort identifying as one.
I stand by what I’ve come to the conclusion on over the last little while. The underlying problem is the Jewish diaspora has not healed from the historical persecution they face. That is quite frankly everyone’s problem. What they’re doing is 100% wrong but when taken in the context of “hurt people hurt people” it makes sense. I don’t know the path forward, but I do know it’s not going to happen without some very brave leaders in the Jewish community to step up and call it like it is.
Ive also been mulling the idea that Palestinians needs to charter their own Truth & Reconciliation to lay it all out in the open.
Exactly. A child molester does not get to molest children legally if he was molested as a child. It may be a reason for it but it doesn’t make it right
The diaspora is fine. Every American Jew I know is horrified at Israel’s actions. This is Colonial Settler violence. We’re just not used to seeing it in the 21st century.
In terms of sheer military might, the size of Israel’s military is very substantial compared to the listed countries. Other countries would likely come to their defense if it happened, but if it came to a fight between Israel and just Norway/Ireland/Spain, it would be very hard to call Israel a small dog. Spain might be a bit of a challenge but Norway and Ireland would likely barely even register.
Obviously, all those countries have friends and are probably pretty safe because of that, but also not entirely idle threats.
Efficiency is a thing and Norway might have an advantage there, but for example… the Skjold, there’s 6 of them in existence and the complement for them is listed as 15 people.
The Norwegian Navy as a whole is 25 boats of various sizes, Israel is not a lot better with 67 and skews towards smaller boats and neither side is equipped to fight anywhere they both could reach. The entire Norwegian Navy is about 4,000 personnel compared to 9,500 for the Israeli Navy. It would be the weirdest Naval battle with two sides that have no business at all having a naval battle, but if they were determined to fight and could figure out where, the advantage is on Israel.
If you just look at numbers maybe, we can see from Russia (large navy) vs Ukraine (no navy) that there are serious disadvantages when waging a war of attrition, even with relatively near distances and supply lines.
The Israeli navy has no meaningful capability control Norwegian waters and they would be insane to try.
I’ve mentioned at least a few times that this theoretical would require both sides being dedicated to the conflict and no outside interference, with that I don’t see how that matters as both sides would have that problem to overcome.
Also, Ukraine does have a Navy. When you compare the actual ships to the Russian Navy or even just the Black Sea Fleet, it is almost a rounding error, but they still have a few dozen small ships floating around out there. The Ukrainian Navy still had 15,000 personnel as of 2022, but I’d guess that things likely have not been going great for them lately, not sure where that’s at now. I haven’t heard of any successful engagements using the few boats left, but they are very outclassed and I’d imagine outnumbered. Does exist though, several naval bases, and they are still fighting.
Not wrong from a historical perspective, but Norway would be outnumbered around 10:1 in manpower in modern times. Kind of hard to measure the… ‘level of military technology’, but Israel keeps it up to date and Norway hasn’t had to make that a real priority beyond posturing for awhile. Obviously not the likeliest scenario, but if everyone else stayed out of the way and they could figure out how to fight each other, that’s a really hard fight for Norway.
Finland didn’t have a small military in the Winter War. In the 90s-00s “era of peace” or something many European countries have all but abolished their militaries and forgot how big they should really be.
Small compared to USSR’s, but it was enormous by measure of today’s European armies, and you still need a lot of people to control territory today, just like 100 years ago.
It’s unreal how people do not understand the difference between defending a homeland, invading a country via an easily traversable large land border, attacking a country across a geographic barrier and attacking a country in a whole different part of the world. Israel’s ability to threaten mainland Europe would not amount to anything beyond terrorism, though potentially nuclear terrorism. All of Nazi Germany, fielding the industrial capacity of most of Europe was probably not capable of successfully invading even the UK across the English Channel, even if they weren’t distracted on the Eastern Front. They simply didn’t have the naval power required.
It is definitely an unlikely hypothetical due to both sides having allies/etc and yeah, the logistics. It would kind of be like Russia declaring war on something like… Paraguay. The problems with logistics are mostly the same on both sides though, it’s just a matter of figuring out how they would fight. From there, and yes, there’s a lot to think about to get to that point… but, if they were determined to fight and everyone else was determined not to intervene, Israel has a pretty clear advantage in terms of military might whichever metrics you look at.
The real interesting piece is the Spanish Navy… as in Spain does have a legitimately impressive navy and even though it’s a long cruise, they could probably get to Israel with it whereas Israel does have a navy, but to my knowledge, the only area where they really excel there is with submarines. Israel would be completely outmatched in the Mediterranean if they could figure out how to fight in it.
I guess it is relative, but that should be over 2000 miles, it’s hard to call that short. I don’t know the exact speeds of the Spanish Navy, but assuming perfect conditions and let’s give them 25 knots, that’s still going to run you ~4 days at top speed for the big ships.
I can’t think of a better method for Spain, but it’s a long enough voyage that no one’s going to surprise anyone.
I don’t think anyone was suggesting anyone had the ability to surprise any country with the presence of an aircraft carrier. They kinda stand out. The location of every major aircraft carrier group in the world is public knowledge, there is literally no point in trying to conceal it.
Oh man, you all are still thinking these guys have a navy at the same level as some of the top 10, none of the countries here are big enough to worry about a real aircraft carrier. Spain kind of has a singular one with a flight deck that can hold a few harriers, but they classify it as an amphibious assault ship or use it for helicopters. It’s definitely the big ship to worry about in the fleet and Spain has a pretty significant complement of larger ships, but we’re talking frigates, this is not that kind of Navy.
Beyond some big ships from Spain, think mostly patrol boats and a few submarines.
Spain is not in the top 10 strongest navies in the world obviously but it is still one of only 9 countries in the world that has a currently operational vessel capable of fielding fixed wing aircraft of any kind. 6 if you only want countries with carrier launched fighters. (3 if you don’t count VTOL/SVOTL at all). And the Spanish carrier in question can field about 3 dozen harriers (and technically it’s capable of launching F35s but Spain has declined to buy them)
You either misread a little bit or whatever you were reading wasn’t planning on getting those harriers off the deck. I’m not sure you could physically fit 36 harriers on the deck even if you didn’t have to worry about flying them off/on.
It can hold a few dozen helicopters, but the space required for helicopters is not interchangeable with the space required for harriers. The aircraft numbers you probably saw is assuming you take up the whole flight deck, no space to take off and land at all, and that is assuming the helicopters are small. You can find details pretty easily online, but just do an image search, it will make it pretty obvious that you are not fitting that many harriers on that boat. They’d have to hang them off the sides.
This still is probably the ship to watch out for, but comparing it to a real aircraft carrier is rough. Also, if you count this as an aircraft carrier, there’s 11 countries, maybe more depending on how you look at it. Australia has two of these that are the same class but they built and classify them exclusively as helicopter docks and don’t have anything else classified as a carrier.
That is the pure combat composition setup, which can fit 25 airplanes below deck and 6 in parking spots on the flight deck.
And there are 10 not 11 because Russia has one but it is not currently operational, it is undergoing repairs and retrofits and considering the focus of their military it is dubious how quickly they could field it.
I think they may be able to reach Spain with transport planes (suppose these are not shot down because it’s impolite) and drop a brigade or two.
But considering how incompetent their army has shown itself to be (basically like Russia or Ukraine in the beginning of their war), I’m not sure that’d be very scary.
In any case there’s one country in the EU which has a competent military that participates in various kinds of violent shit kinda often, thus with institutional experience. That’s France.
Spain has a far, far larger mobile military strength than Israel. Like it’s not even comparable. Israel has zero operational landing craft as far as I know. Spain has a carrier group. The degree of military capability flex that is operating even a single carrier group is insane, I wouldn’t discount Spain as being basically demilitarized lol. Only 10 countries in the world posses a carrier capable of fielding fixed wing aircraft and it’s dubious how quickly Russia could get theirs running, it is currently undergoing repairs.
Yes, let’s also assume that Spain pretends to not have any navy.
It’s a joke.
I know Israel is not a self-sufficient Spain or France or UK level nation militarily. The whole idea that it is even comparable is ridiculous, but comes up because of it being a “facade of the West”, so to say.
Also opportunities for defense-related corruption are just amazing, when a certain allied state far away receives such amounts of aid not just in money or hardware, but in various common projects, with that not conditioned by having real threats (which would raise scrutiny). Everything that makes tracing funds hard is lucrative.
That’s where Israel’s real power is too - its corruption-based ties are very expansive and far-reaching. It also has very strong relations with other such states and organizations. Like Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan. Vatican, by the way.
lol, Israel isn’t part of NATO. If they somehow got involved with Norway or Spain it would trigger Article 5. Ireland would trigger the entire EU. Israel is very much a small dog, especially at the rate they are burning their credibility in the western world. They’d have to turn to Russia for friends and that would mean the US bombing them to destroy sensitive American equipment they have and don’t want the Russians seeing no matter what.
I mean, no one said they were? What did you think we were talking about in like at least half the comment you’re replying to. I mentioned that other countries would step in several times, what did you think that meant? Like, are you just restating my comment for me? I don’t get it.
Really, the only scenario where this is more than interesting world building is kind of what you mentioned though. I.e., if NATO falls apart and the US also fucks up relations with Israel leading to them ending up on Russia’s side with others in some kind of World War 3 situation.
I know what you mean, but I’m just short of remembering it. Oh well I’m sure some German person could help us, they’re great at remembering this stuff.
The word you’re looking for is nationalism. It’s the same word Netanyahu should be using to defend criticism of his nation, rather than antisemitism.
Antisemitism is a form of racism and/or religious persecution that has affected Jews around the world for over two millennia, the majority of whom are unaffiliated with the Zionist state of Israel. It would be cool if you stopped making fun of it. I’d ask Netanyahu too, but I don’t see him on Lemmy.
Antisemitism is a form of racism and/or religious persecution that has affected Jews around the world for over two millennia, the majority of whom are unaffiliated with the Zionist state of Israel. It would be cool if you stopped making fun of it.
I don’t think they’re making fun of antisemitism itself. People can refuse to indulge the spurious accusations of antisemitism Israel’s right-wing throws out in knee-jerk fashion every time it is criticized, and still take antisemitism seriously as a real and dangerous phenomenon with a long history. I understood the comment above yours as making fun of the former, not the latter.
I get it. Had Netanyahu claimed antisemitism anywhere in the article, I would’ve upvoted and laughed, but he didn’t. It seems like it’s become the go-to joke for any post about Israel now, and it has a real-world impact on the majority of Jews who have no affiliation with Israel whatsoever.
You’ve got it backwards. The constant conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel by Israel and its stooges is what’s bad for Jews. Making fun of how disingenuous they are is good for Jews who don’t want to be associated with a genocidal apartheid regime.
You’re correct that Netanyahu is to blame for the initial misuse of the term, but there’s absolutely no reason to continue to dilute its meaning for fun. It’s completely fair to mock him when he uses it incorrectly. My comment was intended to be critical of mocking it without provocation, as the initial commenter had done.
When both America and Israel accuse anybody demonstrating against the killing of children by the IDF as being antisemites they’re implying that killing children is a Jewish thing to do, because there is no doubt or denying that the IDF is killing children and they’re not even denying it.
The real antisemitism is doing and supporting highly immoral deeds and then when criticised for those specific deeds claim that those criticizing it are against Jews, because that’s saying that the people doing said highly immoral deeds represent all Jews and the highly immoral deeds themselves are the product of Jewish values.
Not even the worst antisemites since the time of the Nazis (with their “Jews eat babies” kind of propaganda) have associated mass murder of children, journalists and medical personnel with Jewishness and yet here we are with Zionists doing exactly that.
People making fun of that strategy from the Israeli and American administrations are doing more to undo the damage done by those politicians as they shamellessly bind some of the most evil actions imaginable with Jewishness by using that accusation in an attempt to silence criticism of those action, than any amount of “but, but, but think about the Jews!” propagandists: the best thing for Jews in general is exactly that people aren’t thinking about Jews when they think about Zionists, Israel, their actions and their propaganda.
It’s racism and/or religious persecution, hence the specific term. Not all genealogical Jews practice Judaism, and not all who practice Judaism are genealogically Jewish.
‘Racism’ is a good enough umbrella term for ‘being shitty to people because of some demographic category’. Whether the basis is ethnic, national, religious or anything else doesn’t seem like an important distinction. Nobody considers ‘race’ to be a useful term any more, after all.
I think we should use specific terms for specific things. There is differences in the origins, interests and means of different bigotries. Antisemitism is very different from Racism against Black people, which is very different from Racism against Asian people, which is different again from Racism towards Middle Easterners or general Islamophobia.
For Jews it makes sense to distinguish Antisemitism, as it is specific in regards to the Religion+Ethnicity combination you just don’t find with Christianity or Islam. E.g. there is many Christians and Muslims of all ethnicities while most religious Jews are also ethnically Jewish.
Maybe it included documents or correspondence from each of the 30 attempts? That would still be absurdly long at over 150 pages of documentation per attempt. But I could see them trying to make a point through the sheer volume of pages.
The point is to make the case difficult and time consuming, hoping to cause a delay. One common method I have seen is to print every email in an email chain. The efficient way would be to print the last email in a 30 reply long chain and have it make up about 5 pages of the filing. Instead of doing that though, you can print every email in the chain and turn it in to 50+ pages pretty easily. Trump does not want this case to be handled efficiently and having a 5000+ lage filing, full of repeated and unnecessary information is one way to make that happen.
Plus, that’s not a good task for an llm because its context window would almost certainly be too short.
It would “hallucinate” because it could only “remember” a fraction of the content and then everyone would be all pissy because they used the program wrong.
I mean you can pretty simply just engineer around that. Dumping 5k pages is obviously an idiotic way of approaching the issue. But having an LLM going through 500 words at a time, with 125 words of overlap in each sequence to pull out key words, phrases, and intentions, then put that into a structured data form like a JSON. Then parse the JSONs to pick up on regions where specific sets of phrases and words occur. Give those sections in part or entirely to the LLM again; again have it give you structured output. Further parse and repeat. Do all of these actions several times to get a probability distribution of each assumption around what is being said or is intended. Build the results into a Bayes net, or however you like, to get at the most likely summaries of what the document is saying. These results can then be manually reviewed. If you are touchy, you can even adjust the sensitivity to pick up on much more nuanced reads of the text.
Like, if the limit of your imagination is throwing spaghetti against a wall, obviously your results are going to turn out like shit. But with a bit of hand holding, some structure and engineering, LLM’s can be made to substantially outperform their (average) human counter parts. They do already. Use them in a more probabilistic way to create distributions around the assumptions they make, and you can set up a system which will vastly outperform what an individual human can do.
LLMs are still pretty limited, but I would agree with you that if there was a single task at which they can excel, it’s translating and summarizing. They also have much bigger contexts than 500 words. I think ChatGPT has a 32k token context which is certainly enough to summarize entire chapters at a time.
You’d definitely need to review the result by hand, but AI could suggest certain key things to look for.
People were doing this somewhat effectively with garbage Markov chains and it was ‘ok’. There is research going on right now doing precisely what I described. I know because I wrote a demo for the researcher whose team wanted to do this, and we’re not even using fine tuned LLMs. You can overcome much of the issues around ‘hallucinations’ by just repeating the same thing several times to get to a probability. There are teams funded in the hundreds of millions to build the engineering around these things. Wrap calls in enough engineering and get the bumper rails into place and the current generation of LLM’s are completely capable of what I described.
This current generation of AI revolution is just getting started. We’re in the ‘deep blue’ phase where people are shocked that an AI can even do the thing as good or better than humans. We’ll be at alpha-go in a few years, and we simply won’t recognize the world we live in. In a decade, it will be the AI as the authority and people will be questioning allowing humans to do certain things.
Read a little further. I might disagree with you about the overall capability/potential of AI, but I agree this is a great task to highlight its strengths.
Sure. and yes I think we largely agree, but on the differences, I seen that they can effectively be overcome by making the same call repeatedly and looking at the distribution of results. Its probably not as good as just having a better underlying model, but even then the same approach might be necessary.
You can’t rely on people to summarize it accurately either. Humans make mistakes too. The difference is that I can ask an LLM to do the summarizing 10x, and calculate a statistical probability of a given statement being present or true in the text, at a very low cost. Just because LLM’s aren’t 100% reliable doesn’t make humans the best bar to rely upon either.
I’ve used AI. I’ve had it make stuff up or put incorrect info into documents. I’m smart* and read through the document just like these lawyers will**. Saved me TONS of time vs just doing all the specific writing, scanning and summarizing. *citation required **smartness not withstanding
There are specialized LLMs that (if the document is digitized) will actually cite their references within the data they’ve been given and provide direct links. It’d still need proof reading as someone would have to check those citations but it would still speed up the process immensley.
Exactly. There is already one recent case where a lawyer filed a brief generated by an LLM. The judge is the one that discovered the cited cases were works of fiction created by the LLM and had no actual basis in law. To say that the lawyer looked foolish is putting it lightly…
Right, but that’s not what we’re talking about here - we’re not saying “Hey LLM, write a convincing sounding legal argument for X”, we’re saying “Hey LLM, here’s a massive block of text, summarize what you can and give me references to places in the text that answer my questions so I can look at the actual text as part of building my own convincing sounding legal argument for X.”
It’s the difference between doing a report on a topic by just quoting the Wikipedia article, versus using the Wikipedia article to get a list of useful sources on the topic.
I don’t think lawyers/Judges/procesecutors in a high profile multimillion dollar fraud case are using AI. This would be something they are used to and know how to deal with. And I don’t think this size of report would be out of the ordinary for a case like this. A lot of it probably doesn’t need to be read but is included for completeness. For example, only a few transactions over the course of a few years may be needed to prove fraud. But the entire transaction list from that time would be included as an appendix for reference.
The smart ones absolutely are using AI. The Judges might not, but the lawyers and prosecution certainly are. They don’t have to directly cite AI, but can simply use it to point out the salient bits and save themselves a LOT of time digging for info that they want.
Lol 5000 pages thrown at the likes of a cutting edge LLM is like a plank length of reading.
You do understand that they’re talking about paper, right? Even if you were feeding it to an LLM – and you wouldn’t be, because that would be legal malpractice – it would take a non-trivial amount of time just to scan it in!
It’s the legal equivalent of paying somebody with a wheelbarrow of pennies.
Just google it. This is just the first result, normally you’d remove the spine so you don’t have to turn the pages. The book in the other video is a special one that should not be destroyed, and since that fancy shmancy thing from my link is probably more expensive than my socks, it’s done manually.
It was foggy’s job to support his argument, not mine. He should’ve done a better job (e.g. by citing the video you found instead of the manual one he picked).
Also, I wrote that it would take “hours” to scan in 5000 pages, even with a fast scanner. The scanner you cited can do 3000 pph, so it would take 1.6 “hours” to scan 5000 pages. That’s still a plural number of hours, so if that’s the fastest scanner in the world my statement remains technically correct (the best kind of correct 🤓).
Finally, even a sheet-feed* very fast automatic document scanner (especially one hooked to an LLM in an automated workflow) sounds like a pretty expensive and specialized bit of tech, and I don’t know that we can assume the law firm would’ve chosen to make that investment instead of paying clerks a bunch of man-hours to do it the old, slow way.
(* Frankly, citing a book scanner instead of a sheet-feed one is another way foggy didn’t do his argument any favors, since I would’ve been happy to concede that the documents Trump’s lawyers produced were unlikely to have been bound in book form. And even if they were bound for some reason, they weren’t the kind of thing anybody would have qualms against running through a band saw to get rid of the spine.)
Paralegals won’t have jobs in 3 years. Lawyers won’t have jobs in 5-10.
I think you’re only partially right about paralegals, but lawyers will be fine because of how the profession is protected. It’s essentially a guild system, where you have to be a part of the lawyer’s guild (aka the bar) to legally be allowed to lawyer. And AI cannot join regardless of how good it is because lawyers want to keep their jobs. It would take legislation breaking the requirement to be a member of the bar to lawyer to change that, but the people writing legislation are themselves mostly members of the bar.
I won’t disagree but, I mean, if I’m a lawyer and I have a law firm, I’d rather split my millions with me and my robots. And I think there’s enough like minded greedy lawyers running law firms to set it in motion.
Except instead of you having to split your revenue with your fellow lawyers and having the work split among hundreds of similar firms, you now don’t have to split it, but the available lawyering work is split among everyone who can buy a chunk of compute. Unless you being an actual human lawyer is still advantageous, in which case we wouldn’t be at the point where AI is actually replacing lawyers.
I think when we discuss large volumes of paper it is often the case that much of it is irrelevant and not overly hard to sort an analyze. EG he is asserting that its impossible for him to afford to do this. You don’t need to actually keep reading the statements of his resources to each of the 30 institutions he applied to nor all the refusals unless its likely that something therein may be meaningful. We can probably read ONE and skim another and conclude that the statement that he can’t raise the bond by pledging encumbered real estate he’s constantly lied about won’t work.
Exhibits attached to motions consisting of rejection letters, loan and credit applications, attachments to each of those … it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” Gretta Pecl of the University of Tasmania told The Guardian. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.”
But, reason to keep fighting:
Others found hope in the climate activism and awareness of younger generations, and in the finding that each extra tenth of a degree of warming avoided protects 140 million people from extreme temperatures.
So Israel is just being a pariah of the world as usual. Nothing new.
As of now Slovenia, Spain, Norway, Ireland, Malta, Trinidad and Tobago have announced they will soon start recognizing the state of Palestine. That brings the number of countries that recognize the state of Palestine to around 150 countries out of 193 countries in the UN.
Not only that but around four fifths of the world population lives in these countries. So an overwhelming majority both in the UN and on a population scale recognize them.
With that being said, let’s go Israel. Be more of a pariah than you already are. Close yourself off from all these countries. Shoot yourself in the foot.
The Global South? Those people aren’t going to lay down and die. They’re gonna climb North, as they should. And then we’re gonna have to decide whether to shoot people approaching the borders or accept a huge population influx. Given our political reality, I think there’s a good chance we try the first option at first.
Yup. Sadly the truth. And then probably cry about all these migrants bothering them “for no reason”, and that it’s hard to find a good reef to dive in on vacation.
Right wing parties are already massively strengthening Frontex. They're fully aware what will happen, but still not willing to kill our emissions.
"Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make."
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