homura1650

The entire logic of the Court's opinion rests on the fact that bump stocks still use a seperate trigger action per shot. They just cause the trigger to automatically trigger against a stationary finger instead of the shooter needing to manually actuate their trigger finger.

Is this an obtusely litteral reading of a law that was clearly intended to be more broadly interpreted? Probably. But it is a reading with a majority support on the court, so we are stuck with it until congress amends the law.

There is plenty of room to debate tradeoffs in patient care. However, the policy was to perform a check every 15 minutes overnight. Not great for sleep quality and, all else being equal, a net negative for mental health. However, it does prevent a long tail of serious negative outcomes (such as, potentially, this death). There are a bunch of healthcare circumstances where sleep quality is sacrificed in favor of other concerns.

In this particular case, in addition to all of the normal concerns the facility would have, this girl was:

• on a new medication
• nauseous
• unwell enough that she cut a phone call short to go to bed early (which sounds like was out of character for her)

Those are all red flags that her condition should be monitored closet than normal.

Hamas is a terrorist organization that "we" have almost no leverage over.

Israel is a democracy that we have significant leverage over.

Put another way, the "serious" calls for harder policy from the US to Israel is to condition some of the military aid. The reasom no one is calling for something similar with Hamas is that we are not giving Hamas military aid.

The only aid western countries are giving to Gaza (and, by nessesity Hamas) is humanitarian aid. And international law is very clear that conditioning that is not acceptable.

If you are Iranian elite reading this, then you have no business blaming Israel, since Hamas is the one in your sphere.

Every movement has a canon: the core principles behind it, a mythology about its history, and the textbook statement of its objectives.

Every movement also has a reality. Thousands or millions of people with their own ideosynchratic beliefs forming a complex social web. Within this web, a vibrant biosphere of memes [0] develop, spread and evolve on this social web. A movement is simply a name we give to a cluster of memes within this complex web. It is not any of the myths we tell about it; those are merely particular memes holding the cluster together.

The author of this article is a self described liberal feminist. She identifies a change that occurred within her bubble of feminism, where it became increasingly anti-man.

To be clear, that is not all the author says. Once she gets to the "Let's talk about how the patriarchy harms men and boys" section, she stops the meta conversation about the movement itself, and spends the rest of the article discussing mens issues directly.

However, to your comment, and the first part of the article, maybe we need to stop hiding behind the mythology we tell ourselves about feminist; and start recognizing that the "feminist" portions of the social web are still susceptible to anti-feminist memes.

[0] in its original sense; as a direct analog to the genes of biology.

It is 34 counts, but still only a single crime. It is more analgous to robbing a single house once, but taking 34 items. Given how the bussiness records law are written, each false record is a seperate crime, but they were all done as part of the same scheme.

This is pretty common in criminal law. It is suprisingly difficult to commit only 1 crime.

Only anti-semite would acuse Bibi of lying.

Just ask the Israeli attorney general who, in 2019, indicted him on bribery and fraud charges.

And Israel obviously has the most moral military in the world. Just ask their minister of national security: convicted criminal Itamar Ben-Gvir. Specifically, he has been convicted of supporting a terrorist organization. He also never served in the IDF, because the IDF thought he was too extreme.

The US has largly privatized regulation. Where most countries would have a government agency enforce the law, the US tends to give individuals the right to sue to do so. This means that the rewards need to be high enough to both incentize lawsuits, and make up for the cases that don't get brought.

In this case, according to the appalet court [0], the compensatory damages were only $175k. The rest of the judgment cane from $4m in punitive damages, and about $560 in attorney's fees.

[0] https://mediaassets.kshb.com/NWT/Sam/Opinion_WD85778.pdf

Just because someone says something does not make it true.

Opposition leader Lapid has indicated that he intends to support Netenyahu if his coalition falls apart due to the deal. Of course, such transactional support offers tend to be fical, and Netanyahu needs perpetual support in order to avoid jail on corruption charges.

Unfourtuantly, such a realignment (or, at least the threat of one) to a more centrist coalition is the only plausible path to a deal.

Kicking the can down the road in Gaza has been Israeli policy for over a decade. The strategy is called "mowing the grass". The idea being you can destroy the terrorist of the week's tactical ability to strike and buy Israel a few years of peace. Repeat this cycle every few years until ???, then magically resolve the issue.

This failed catastrophically on October 7, because the typical cycle of Gazan attack happened to allign with a catastrophic security failure on the part of Israel.

The question remains: what comes next. The US's complaint from October 8 on has been that Israel has no day-after plan. Without a day after plan, all that destroying Hamas will accomplish is have the next round be conducted by a terrorist group not called Hamas.

Every tactical move Israel makes today harms its strategic position for the day after plan. At the beginning of the war, some strategic concessions were needed to adress the very real tactical concerns. But there are massively diminishing returns.

So, the "Israeli" proposal Biden was talking about is not supported by Israel.

On this specific issue, I'm not even mad at Israel. The US is free to offer potential deals. But it does not get to unilaterally declare that one side has agreed to it.

The story would be different if Israel had a history of listening to the US and caring about its image. In that case, establishing a narrative that it is an Israeli deal would put pressure Israel to accept it; as the alternative would be to loose face internationally and embarres and hurt the credibility of their ally. Even in that case, it would be a tough call, because that kind of hard ball burns a lot of political capital. However, that is a moot point, as Israel has clearly demonstrated those concerns are not a major factor in its decision making.

As to the merits of Israel's decision to reject the deal. The complete military defeat of Hamas is a practical impossibility. At best, you will get a hollow victory where something forms under a different name.

Netenyahu does list a more restricted goal:

the destruction of Hamas military and governing capabilities

What you are left with is pure terrorism. No counterparty you can negotiate with. No internal counterbalance that cares about civilian concerns (aa week as those voices are already within Hamas). Just a loose knit enemy with no interrest other than violence, and no capacity to surrender.

Whats more, even in principle, Netenyahu's position is incompatible with any negotiation. A deal entered into with an organization that has no military or governmental abilities is worthless. Hamas would have no capability to enforce the deal.

Maybe I'm too used to deciphering GovSpeak, but the report does not obsolve Israel of anything.

The article quotes the report in saying:

[The department does not] currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance [in Gaza]

However, that is a very selective quote, that is not at all what the report says.

The actual quote reads:

While the USG has had deep concerns during the period since October 7 about action and inaction by Israel that contributed significantly to a lack of sustained and predictable delivery of needed assistance at scale, and the overall level reaching Palestinian civilians – while improved – remains insufficient, we do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance within the meaning of section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act.

Which translates into: "Israel is definitely obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid. However, since US law says that puts restrictions on us, we talked to our lawyers who found a way for us to say that they are not"

They are not even being subtle about it. The only way the state department could have been any clearer would be to say "current policy is a clear violation of the Foreign Assistance Act". And a US agency is never going to say that.