420blazeit69 [he/him] @ 420blazeit69 @hexbear.net

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4 yr. ago

Derailing a thread about supporters of genocide to call Nicaragua an "autocratic shitole" is what libs would call "whataboutism."

This is both not enough and better than nothing.

Or they pad it with a ton of absolute garbage

The death penalty is not abolitionist. If you think they should just kill this guy but are also vaguely in favor of prison abolition, there's a real contradiction you need to work out.

Good point, plenty of defense attorneys are just in it for the money.

As always, the only winners in pointless stuff like this are the solicitors and lawyers.

I bet they hate this one, too. As a defense attorney this is basically your nightmare: someone who definitely committed a horrific crime and it's your job to make a frivolous appeal. And if you're on the other side this is the last case you want to fuck up.

I'm not a prison abolitionist

The "guilty until proven innocent" part highlights a tactic to push back on manufactured claims of genocide paired with smears of genocide denial: genocide is a formally defined crime, just like murder. Just like murder, you start with a presumption of innocence -- that is, you start by denying the accusation, and it is on the accuser to prove what happened.

In cases like the Holocaust (or Palestine today) you have a mountain of evidence. You have countless eyewitnesses backed by film, sometimes video, and almost always official statements or internal documents showing intent.

In China you have significant motivation and credibility questions about the much smaller number of witnesses, you don't have anything like the photographic documentation of the Holocaust, you have some blurry satellite photos of... something despite the U.S. having spy satellites that can read a license plate, and your official statements (that are themselves backed by significant evidence) are about combating radicalization through development.

In short, there is actually a live question about the credibility and weight of the evidence. You do have to engage with the evidence and not simply take the accusation at face value, just like you would at a murder trial.

"no one is safe"

That's right, no one should be insulated from a criminal investigation.

Seems like quite a lot of people understood the context here, a site that has posted the context nonstop since October 7

they have targeted civilian infrastructure like the powergrid before

First, there's a huge difference between targeting civilian infrastructure vs. actual civilians. Blowing up a bridge across a river in a city is not the same as indiscriminately bombing the city.

Second, there is likely no significant infrastructure that is used purely for civilian purposes. The fact that Russia hasn't destroyed any infrastructure it can reach (which is virtually everywhere in Ukraine) is evidence that they are showing at least some restraint. Contrast this with Gaza (where the Israel had to be pressured to even allow water in) or the indiscriminate bombing campaigns that everyone conducted in WWII, and the U.S. in particular conducted in Korea and Vietnam.

The thing about genocide is that the concept was formalized as a crime, meaning you do actually have a burden of proof, and you do actually have to provide evidence, and requiring, examining, and weighing the evidence is no more offensive than requiring, examining, and weighing the evidence against someone accused of murder.

And you do actually have to do this analysis, because "genocide" is thrown around all over the place as a political tactic, and plenty of accusations are bullshit (or are you a genocide denier if you call bullshit on the accusation of white genocide in South Africa?).

Who?

Why do you think Hamas is doing what it's doing?

Did they just wake up one day and say "let's do terrorism"?

Every admiral would tell his political superiors that military necessity would call for attacks on Houthi missile infrastructure on the ground in Yemen: fixed and mobile launch sites, production and storage facilities, command centres and whatever little radar infrastructure there exists.

This has to already be happening, certainly through Saudi Arabia, probably also with direct, covert U.S. action.

It comes back to how deeply rooted American Exceptionalism is in the American psyche. There's this idea that you can always win, in fact you are supposed to win, so if you lose it's because you made a mistake. There's no such thing as a no-win scenario, and there's no such thing as doing everything you can but losing to an opponent who also knows what they're doing.

The easiest place to see this mentality is in American sports fans. The opinion "the other guys are professionals too and are sometimes just better" is always in the extreme minority. And people are more tribal and less rational about nationalism than sports fandom.

A mix of:

1. We can't really know how things will play out, so I'm going to at least try to nudge things in a better direction. If that helps create a better world, good, if it does nothing, at least I can die in the water wars knowing I tried.
2. But things are very likely fucked, so I'm going to enjoy what I can in life while I can.

If you don't think China is communist, why do you think it will hit whatever arbitrary threshold you're imagining?

You obviously fall into the trap of believing that hard science cares about politics

Look in the fucking mirror champ

You're trying to tell me a rapidly developing, well-resourced country will hit some arbitrary technology threshold because communism. You know, the political system that put the first man in space a generation after most of the USSR wasn't even literate.