comfy

Ah, that sucks to hear about.

I was initially siding with Israel as they were hit first, but their response has made me rethink things.

To generalize this out to other wars and conflicts, even regular old arguments, there are almost always pre-existing conditions and tensions leading up to the first major attack. Even things like WWI, where the catalyst was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. But there is quite obviously more to the atmosphere, national ambitions, etc. etc. that make it so that the separatists wanted to assassinate him, and make it so that Austria-Hungary wanted to invade Serbia and used this as an excuse. A war would have happened anyway, no matter who attacked first.

Is it even safe to start from the Ottomans?

I had decided to abstain from commenting on this subject further. Pretty much every reply I have received is a variation of ‘fake news’ or ‘racist cunt’.

Yeah, kneejerk reactions get tiring. I tend not to use reddit-like or twitter-like forums much because of how low-effort and unempathetic most posts are. ‘Read the news title, get angry’, might as well be the motto. I’m glad you appreciated it.

Affirmative action based on […] economic prosperity would help the most people in need and capture many more who would otherwise fall through the gaps.

This absolutely is and should be fought for, alongside other movements. The concentration of wealth at the top has just accelerated after the main COVID crisis. Our whole economic system funnels wealth to those with capital, and their influence on our political system and mass media is the root cause of most issues in our society. My caveat is that affirmative action re: economic prosperity won’t solve this, the problem runs so deep that affirmative action will ultimately be inadequate, treating the symptoms rather than the cause. We need a systematic overhaul… far far far far easier said than done.

That said, economic equity doesn’t cover everything, as many Indigenous people have other priorities that aren’t strictly economic, a major one being land rights. A somewhat-known recent example of the issue is mining companies destroying sacred land or historical artifacts, another is traditional use of the land to live off of. I admittedly don’t know enough about land right to explain in proper detail, but it’s one of the main demands that protesters have demanded for decades and decades.

I would argue that abolishing slavery, universal suffrage, and anti-discrimination laws have done far more to solve systemic racism than racial affirmative action.

I agree, and I would say that this doesn’t mean affirmative action isn’t still important. To take a metaphor from the Civil Rights struggle, that anti-discrimination is taking the knife out, there is still a need to heal the wound before we can say things are fine. We’ve abolished the most blatant aggression like non-suffrage, but done very little to make amends on things like colonisation and centuries of repression and land possession.

Generations of loss and disadvantage evidently still exist, and will remain without positive interference. Disadvantage is cyclical, it doesn’t heal by itself, poverty is an self-evident example of the cyclic nature of powerlessness. And to re-emphasise, this applies generally to disadvantage, not just disadvantage caused by colonisation or racial disadvantage.

As a side note, I’m not sure if it’s even correct to frame this as about race, Indigenous classification just inherently matches up with race since the historical inhabitants of Australian land were all, to use a racial term, Black indigenous Australians, and we’ve historically just grouped them all together when it comes to the social concept of race because they’re not White or Asian. The ill-advised and quite frankly worthless Voice proposal was about them being the native peoples, not about them being a certain race or having been racially discriminated.

Given this definition of racism, it creates an interesting problem: how can one solve systemic racism, without doing actions which take race into account? If someone needs help, is it unfair to treat them the same as someone else who doesn’t need help? Or would it be more unfair to treat them the same as someone who doesn’t need help, and therefore keeping things the same, leading to them still needing help? And, regardless of whether it’s fair or not (subjective morality), is it more beneficial to society (material outcome)?

Do you mean ‘concern trolling’ or ‘sealioning’?

‘Concern trolling’ is falsely pretending to agree with an idea but raising concerns, in order to sew discontent. Something like, "I agree with giving them a Voice, but I’m concerned that … ", an insincere astroturfing attempt.

‘Sealioning’ is when someone relentlessly stalks a person asking them for evidence or arguments, in order to ‘just try and have a debate’ when the other person doesn’t want to. The term comes from from this comic, which describes it well. It’s personal harassment pretending to be civil debate.

Their argument is that the Voice isn’t even something good. It doesn’t give Indigenous people any powers they didn’t already have, and the Voice can be ignored just as easily as the advice of the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody recently was. Interview with the Black Peoples Union describes in better detail.

But even if that weren’t the case and they did think it wasn’t worthless symbolism, successful collective bargaining doesn’t just settle for every first offer. So I don’t know why you’re claiming it’s a bad strategy, it’s how unions have won important gains for workers. It’s a strategy that has been historically shown to work when applied correctly.

Horseshoe theory is not a useful method of political analysis, nor is the left-right spectrum it is founded on.

This vid explains in more detail

You have hurt the feelings of 448 million Europeans.

Communities defend communities.

Swearing to protect is vapid symbolism that anyone can feign with ease, and the laws are rarely decided by the people subject to them. The fact that so many people trust state police is amazing once we take a step back and analyse it.

Interesting case studies include real places that evicted police and politicians.

Claim ignorance? How? “I didn’t learn in school that neo-nazism and abusing children is frowned upon in society” ?

“Power corrupts”, sure, but it doesn’t turn people into nazi and child abuse fanatics. Power provides the means.

Unrelated partial list.

I just want to say the maintainer who wrote that appears to have handled this gracefully. It gives me hope.

They’ve made a transparent public announcement, making it clear what we should and shouldn’t expect from them, and how we should handle it. They understand the FOSS paradigm (no, I correct myself, the digital paradigm) and have given their blessings for the community to do what they do best. I’d guess the smart thing to do is play along with the cease notice to avoid consequences, go underground and make YouTube play whack-a-mole with sock-puppets and hostile jurisdictions.

Cut off one head and three shall take its place. Wind in your back lads, wherever you go.