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  • Step into the arena, many many people far smarter than you or me have hashed this debate and still have no consensus.

    There is no general consensus on the definition of terrorism. The difficulty of defining terrorism lies in the risk it entails of taking positions.

    The political value of the term currently prevails over its legal one. Left to its political meaning, terrorism easily falls prey to change that suits the interests of particular states at particular times. The Taliban and Osama bin Laden were once called freedom fighters (mujahideen) and backed by the CIA when they were resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

    Now they are on top of the international terrorist lists.

    General Assembly Resolution 42/159 acknowledges that the cause of terrorism often lies in the "misery, frustration, grievance and despair" that leads people to seek radical change. The resolution identifies the root causes of terrorism as occupation, colonialism and racism. A definition of terrorism should thus be comprehensive, in order to avoid double standards.

  • foreign /fôr′ĭn, fŏr′-/

    adjective

    1. Located away from one's native country.  "on business in a foreign city."
    2. Of, characteristic of, or from a place or country other than the one being considered.  "a foreign custom."
    3. Conducted or involved with other nations or governments; not domestic.  "foreign trade."

    Don’t be disingenuous , even in native Russian it has distinction of worth:

    …explanation of the concept [near abroad] in Russian: " 'The term originally had an ironic nuance,' said the historian Ivan Ivanovich. 'People spoke of nastoyashchyeye za rubezhye, "the present-day abroad." But now the words have acquired a purely informational meaning, in order to distinguish the new states of the C.I.S. Commonwealth of Independent States, a title now in the dustbin of history ] from the "original" abroad.' “

  • People SCREAMED at the party. Muslim Democrat voters made all the democracy moves, and got told to get lost:

    • Organized a massive protest movement,
    • Made their desires and convictions known publicly and directly to leadership who’d listen
    • Turned out and protested in person
    • Were snubbed any kind of representation or platform at the DNC, even for a curated speech by a sitting Congressional member
    • Ran a massive protest vote in the Democratic primaries, which if sustained (which it was in the general) meant that the Dems would loose Michigan at a minimum (which Kamala did) and its 15 electoral college votes went for Trump

    The party has to be listening for anyone’s voice to be heard. Until you hit your FEC donor limit and the throw down even more for a Super PAC, or pay for a seat at fundraiser dinner/chat a you’re definitely a nobody to them. We need a new party:

    Organizers said about 700 people attended the fundraiser. Ticket prices ranged from $3,300 to a half million dollars. Political experts said this visit is essentially a trip to the ATM.

    August 12 Zoom event with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, where tickets ranged from $1,000 to $25,000

  • Wut?

    U.S. regulations have three levels of a circuit breaker, which are set to halt trading when the S&P 500 Index drops 7%, 13%, and 20%.

    Granted that’s the main market index not an individual security, but a 5-11% drop is significant. Iirc the last time it ended the day’s trading for the S&P was the start of COVID, when investors ran a fire sale liquidation because nobody knew if the whole world was going to die.

    A downswing is a hurdle to recover from in raw math terms, and represents a bigger blow to vibes based trading, especially given the legislative (virtue signaling so far) action on anti-trust, or the current popular sentiment against insurers.

  • The UK has a long tradition of pieing awful politicians - and guess what? It gets a laugh and memable pictures, but changes nothing.

  • Permanently Deleted

    Jump
  • mindless scaffolding

    So perfect, yet succinct - bravo!

    It’s always at best a starting off point, needing a real human to review and heavily edit. Even in the more refined spaces like surveillance where’s there’s a ton of research money thrown at it, it’s still just a pattern recognition probability gambler that needs human oversight.

  • Ken is harkening back to the old old school of journalistic credibility - “trust me that I’ve checked it out, and it met my standards of credibility and verification, but I won't burn my source by revealing them”

    The rub is discerning when a journalist/institution is lying/repackaging corporate or government press releases as “reporting”. Substack is a good way to free journalists of a corrupted editor, but they can also suffer from algorithmic/audience capture that incentivizes certain reporting - ie. hugbox news.

  • And a buttload of live-fire data from actual combat to boot. The CIA jacking a Hind-D was chill to research its flight profile limitations, radar signature, weaknesses, etc, but seeing how it’s used in practice and deviation from doctrine is key.

    The Ka-52s had their feast of the counteroffensive’s battlefield when first committed, until we figured out their limitations and counter-meta. They haven’t had so much fun lately.

  • Listened to the first season a while back, I genuinely had one (1) note/dispute, for a series spanning nearly 11 hours on the Iraq invasion. They brought receipts, sources, archived media snippets, and a lot of context that mainstream media still glosses over with 9/11 remembrance justifications.

    Very listenable, add it to your queue if you remotely enjoy geopolitics

  • NYPD barely bats above 50% for murder arrests in a ‘good’ period - not convictions. 33% is abysmal given their absurd budget and frankly unconstitutional practices like stop and frisk.

    Within the U.S. criminal justice system, criminal cases can be cleared (or closed) one of two ways. The first is through arrest… The second way a case can be closed is through what is called exceptional means, where law enforcement must have either identified the offender, gathered enough evidence to arrest, charge, and prosecute someone, identified the offender’s exact location, or come up against a circumstance outside the control of law enforcement that keeps them from arresting and prosecuting the offender

  • “Must pass” is part of the language that ostensibly liberal media outlets like HuffPost use to cover for Democrats rolling over yet again.

    Literally nothing “must pass” we’ve had how many government shutdowns from Republican shitfits over stupid culture wars and cynical “fiscal responsibilities” whilst rubber stamping national defense budget blowouts?

    Democrats can add poison pill amendments too, or at least burn down the clock with the filibuster they cling too so desperately each time they achieve a majority. But they don’t, because deep down most of them are okay with this.

  • I could have done without the “Palestinian” erasure, and the conflation of IDF and civilians killed on Oct 7th - just like it’s important to delineate between 7,000-17,000 Hamas fighters and at least 20,607 dead civilians the IAF bombed callously with AI driven targeting.

    But otherwise you’re mostly right; Iran/Hamas set the stage for the Israeli overreaction, Hezbollah attacking the north in ‘solidarity’ and Iran loosing their chess pieces, whilst Russia was bled out in Ukraine and distracted.

  • Someone did their Snowden reading:

    Parallel construction is a law enforcement process of building a parallel, or separate, evidentiary basis for a criminal investigation in order to limit disclosure as to the origins of an investigation.

    In the US, a particular form is evidence laundering, where one police officer obtains evidence via means that are in violation of the Fourth Amendment

    De facto illegal and shady as hell, but in use when the (feds especially) want to catch someone, typically via warrantless SIGINT mass surveillance. They’ll do the investigation using dragnets and broad searches through metadata and other means that are illegal and inadmissible in court, then an incredibly convenient cop/witness/informant will appear with information that permits an arrest/search under permissible means - under the hope that the suspect has incriminating evidence.

    This is wayyy too convenient to get him, with all the evidence on hand, from a ‘concerned citizen’. We live in a police state, that serves the ruling and moneyed class.