The Anti-Targ

13 hours ago, Darzin said:

They've held three independence referendums all of which have failed, that's hardly not letting it go. Also the law change seems entirely reasonable allowing citizens who have lived there for that long seems completely fair. Those independence referendums failed despite a large block of anti-independence voters being excluded from the vote. The unrest is largely because the pro-independence parties know if every citizen on the island gets a vote their dream of independence is dead forever.

France seems to have done everything as fair as it could be done. It's hardly imperialism when the territory in question keeps repeatedly voting to stay part of France despite questionable franchise restrictions. 

The third vote was widely boycotted by the Kanaks because they asked for a postponement and it was refused. The first referendum was 56% for remaining with France, the second was 53% for remaining with France, it's possible a third non-boycotted referendum would have achieved a majority for independence given the direction of travel from the previous two, though France's COVID-19 support of New Caledonia possible created more good will than might have otherwise existed. France decided to interpret the 96% result of the third referendum as definitive despite the boycott, which is about as legit as any dictator winning >95% of a vote.

There is a difference when a colonial power actively encourages over decades citizens of the colonising country to move to a colony as a deliberate policy to skew the population demographics towards colonial loyalists. When it comes to self-determination of a colony indigenous voices should carry more weight. France Annexed New Caledonia in 1853, and action most people today would regard as illegitimate. If a significant majority of Kanaks want independence then I think that's the direction New Caledonia should be going.

2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

You guys are getting much warmer weather than ever before. Could increased fish deaths be related to water that has become too warm?

Warmer water means less dissolved oxygen for the fish to breathe. So 100% yes, significant warming can kill a lot of fish. Question is how much warmer are the waterways? A degree here or there possibly isn't enough of a change in temperature, 5-10 degrees might be enough of a change. Though you'd probably have to ask a limnologist what the precise tipping point would be.

Admittedly I was thinking pretty narrowly about Independence.

Was the USA really colonised by the British? British reach seemed to be limited to the East coast by the time the revolutionary war ended British colonial rule. 

New Caledonia experiencing quite the unrest recently. As I understand it because France is on the cusp of passing a law to enfranchise French people who have lived there for at least 10 years in a reversal of the agreement made in the past that all but quelled the independence movement, and done it seems without any consultation with the indigenous Kanaks. The move, if signed into law by Macron, seems to basically end any possibility of independence without a civil war.

Why can't France just let it go? This might be part of the reason https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_mining_in_New_Caledonia

I may be wrong since I haven't looked at the history in any depth but as evil European colonisers go I feel like the lands colonised by Britain got the least shit end of the colonialism stick. There was still lots of shit on that end of the stick, mind you.

Vincent Namatjira should send Gina a box of chocolates thanking her for making him far more well known and popular than he would have been if she wasn't such a sensitive snowflake. I can imagine the value of his paintings going up by 50% thanks to Gina's fragile ego.

I mean it might be good, and if it is I hope it does very well. I just wouldn't put a bet on it being good. I'd like to be proven wrong, because, well it's nice to have good movies come out that I really want to see on the big screen. It's been a long time since I was excited about going to a theatre to see a movie. I've seen movies I've liked and am happier coming out than I was going in. But I want to be all happy and excited going in.

4 hours ago, DMC said:

Wow Ann Coulter went full racist..thirty years ago.

True, I guess what I meant is this is the first time I've seen her totally mask off. I have not seen or heard anything of her in my media exposure for at least 10 years. I imagine other's have got more regular doses of her vileness over that time.

Ref the campus protests looking cool. There is a reason people spend a butt load on their public image, because it matters in this timeline. If your public image can look cool without having to spend lots of cash that's even better, though there is normally a non-monetary cost to getting that image, which for the students is arrest, assault and an hiatus in their formal education. But they are learning a helluva lot from this experience.

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

The Israeli people aren't allowed to see or hear or read of any of this.  So they don't even know.

It's called government censorship.

Surely not, the USA would never prop up a regime that suppresses speech or freedom of the press, never, ever, ever. Ever?

Wow, Ann Coulter went full racist in Vivek Ramaswamy's face saying should would never vote for him because he's Indian, on Vivek's own show no less? I guess Coulter being so brazen and Vivek having a piss weak reaction are both unsurprising, but still wow. It goes without saying that Ann is not alone in refusing to vote for someone because of their race.

Pretty much a core principle of Justice: punishment for doing bad, reward for doing good. I'm not sure if Schindler was ever punished for the bad in the way society normally likes to see punishment for people doing bad things (I think he probably punished himself), but perhaps that doesn't matter if your redemptive action more than balances the scales. The best reward for doing good is happiness and the warm feeling you get when you see people's lives are benefited by your actions, esp people who are in desperate need.

In the hierarchy of virtue it's best not to to be a Nazi in the first place, next best is to become a reformed Nazi and to work against its ideology, not sure what's morally worse between staying a Nazi to benefit yourself even though you know its wrong or being a true believer. Either way Schindler did the next best thing, and I'm glad for it, as I am sure are all the families who's lives he saved.

Possibly the only thing that can stop the Israeli govt and military abuse of Palestinians are the Israeli people. Sadly over the last 20 years the results of successive elections suggests the majority of non-Arab Israelis don't have much of a problem with treating Palestinians as lesser humans. Not sure that's likely to change, even with revelations by Israeli whistleblowers of inhuman behaviour such as this. I can see a lot of Israelis calling these whistleblowers traitors who should be executed for treason.

I guess there is a movie in there from the snippets from LOTR, but to much will be strasight made up. There isn;t enough for an actual adaption. I don't trust it.

New EV sales in New Zealand have fallen off a cliff with the new govt axing EV/Hybrid/PHEV subsidies and axing taxes on big engine ICE vehicles, as well as introducing a new tax for EV and PHEV drivers.

The tax for EVs and PHEVs was always going to come, since our govt (whether right or left) still labours under the false belief that taxes pay for govt spending. And hence the public also believes it, for some reason near universally believing what the govt tells them, which is virtually unheard of on any other subject. So they had to put a tax on EVs and PHEVs in lieu of the petrol taxes ICE car users pay, so that everyone "pays their fair share" for maintaining and building roads. So, necessary and fair if you believe in the "pay for" fallacy, which means pretty much everyone including EV and PHEV owners believe it's necessary and fair.

MTG surely knew her motion would fail, so what audience was she playing to with that stunt?

6 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

 

She's going to stand down from her seat at the election though, so she's not gonna win anything. 

Except perhaps a contract as an consultant to the new Labour govt when they win the election. Something she wouldn't get if she became a Reform MP. The reason you hop over to Reform is so you can get on the grift. I guess she can't be bothered with the kind of work and public profile that comes with being on the Reform grift, and is more comfortable with the lower profile govt consultant grift.

3 hours ago, Padraig said:

Dismantling and reconstruction could easily be termed as reform, so I think that's just semantics.

Like the ICC, it is far better for the UN to exist than not exist.

That's too simplistic.  Depriving a country of a veto would presumably require the Security Council to approve it, which would  obviously be vetoed.  Other countries can't force the US (or any other country) to give up on their veto.  Especially since Russia and China wouldn't want to give up theirs either, so you'll have 3 major powers all in full agreement (for a change).

 

That's like saying the American revolution was reform. Or demolition of a derelict building to build a new, useful building is just remodelling.

The existence of the veto is one of the exact reasons the UN can't be reformed. Veto has to get gone, and in will never happen in the UN, which you have so eloquently stated. The UN is no longer fit for purpose.

I don't think I suggested the UN should be disappeared without a new global governance structure replacing it. So I agree the UN needs to limp along on its crutches until the world wakes up. Which might only be after a real disaster of global proportions.

2 hours ago, House Balstroko said:

It isn’t really meant to be able to directly solve problems. It’s a public forum to discuss global issues and avoid another calamity like WW2. 
 

I don’t think there’s a way to truly avoid inequality, as there are huge disparities in the world, be that in terms of wealth or population. If each country were truly given an equal opportunity, then you would have a situation where a nation of 100 million people, has the same amount of influence as one with just 10. 

Technically in the general assembly there is equality, since each country has one vote.

But I don't know why you are taking what I've written and interpreted it in such an absolute sense. The fact that there will never be wealth or income equality at the individual level does not mean we should simply accept the current extremes of wealth and poverty we are seeing. Similarly with nations we should not merely bow and accept absolute impunity on the part of some countries and irrelevance and subservience by others. The bullies of the world must be able to be held to account and the smallest of nations must be guaranteed justice.

2 hours ago, Bironic said:

There’s also the possibility of reform of the UN. Not super likely at the moment but definitely on the table.

Reform of the UN is not possible in practice. It's dismantling and construction of a global institution far superior to the current UN with the real ability to hold all to account is needed.

9 minutes ago, House Balstroko said:

That sounds reasonable at a surface level, but is ultimately also the reason why an institution like the League of Nations failed. 
 

The UN is held together by the fact that inequality is a major fixture of international diplomacy. Sure, every sovereign nation has a seat at the general assembly, but only 5 hold veto power at the Security Council. 

Which is why the UN will also ultimately fail (or arguably has been failing since its inception). It's a body in a coma that doesn't realise it's never waking up and its only future is death.

Is it too much for Biden to say he has a no problem with students protesting Israel's actions in Gaza and they should be free to do so in the manner of the US's long proud history of peaceful protest on all manner of political and social issues, even if he doesn't agree with their criticisms, but what he has no time for is violence or calls for violence or statements in support of Hamas' campaign of terror against Israel.

You can't just come out with statements in opposition to antisemitism and claim to have addressed the complexities and nuances of this mess nor the injustices being perpetrated by Israel. Focusing on antisemitism is tantamount to legitimising everything Israel is doing. There's no moral high-ground in doing that.

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@DMC...or lack thereof

Not doing anything wrong is not the same as doing the right thing. Esp when it comes to a president leading means actively doing [hopefully] what's right.

Selective enforcement is the hallmark of pretty much every justice system in existence today, just ask minorities, esp racial minorities in certain western countries that claim to be bastions of equality and justice, and the poor who find themselves in prison when a richer and/or differently skin coloured person would receive a non-custodial sentence or a significantly lesser term of imprisonment for exactly the same crime.

Not holding the rich and powerful to account for wrongdoings is a feature for how the current (dis)order operates. To hold the ICC to a higher standard of exception is odd indeed as a rationale for its disestablishment.

The fact that countries were given the opportunity to opt out is tantamount to recognising the claims of the sovereign citizen movement. You opt out of (or don't ratify) the ICC you should be out of all global governance institutions with the exception that you retain a UN general assembly vote (but no speaking rights), which includes the US losing its security council veto. If you're not going to be a global player, you don't get to be a global playah. Of course no one has the guts to stand up to the global bullies, so bully they will continue to do.

Given Biden is a neolib and captive of orthodox macro-economic mythology the best that can be said is lesser of two evils, IMO.

Perhaps people can pick specific ways they differ but my impression is that this pretty much applies to the USA just as much as to Australia (and most of us) and it doesn't matter too much if it's a R or D in the oval office (or LNC / ALP in Canberra for Australia).

IIRC in 2016 Lichtman said he couldn't make a prediction, so far he is being pretty coy this year. I predict he's not going to make a firm prediction this year, which to me leans towards a Trump win. The incumbent wins more often than not, so to not be able to predict an incumbent win is not a good sign for the incumbent.

Lichtman's keys do appear to be reliably correlative, there probably needs to be a lot more elections before any causative or predictive value can be asserted. But as far as forming the basis for an educated guess it seems to be more reliable than other attempts at formulating predictive criteria. There's no way his keys can be 100% predictive for elections where he has made, or will make a definitive prediction. So his predictive model actually needs a few failures, to be able to really assess what sort of predictive value the keys have.

Of course population shifts towards certain undemocratic preferences, fascism and authoritarianism, can also ruin what predictive value the keys may have objectively had in the past.

I may be reading him/them wrong, but I doubt even a President Trump would send gun blazing soldiers into the Hague to break out Bibi and his crew. May be different for US citizens, but even then I think a negotiated handover with an assurance they would be investigated and possibly tried for war crimes under US law on US soil would be attempted first. Whether the US carried through on such an assurance or reneged on the basis that it was forced under duress would be a different question.

I guess it's also unlikely any US citizens would be taken across the EU border let alone all the way to the Hague before they got "rescued".

What did they decide to make the legal names of the spawn? One might argue as is the Jewish heredity wont that sans DNA test you can only be 100% sure that the one who gave birth is the parent (though with donated eggs even that's not absolute, in a genetic sense, anymore), so that's a potential argument for the sprogs to take the mother's name. Conversely, I guess, if you want everyone to believe the male partner contributed the sperm, whether true or not, the kids should take the father's name to minimise rumours and gossip.

4 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

Money was pretty tight for the first few years my family was in the US, and sometimes dinner would be a can of pork 'n beans and a pot of rice. I am not a fan of pork 'n beans to this day.

Right there were the mistakes. Baked beans on toast is a magical flavour and texture combination, don't know how or why but it just is. If you mess with it by having pork in the can, or using some carb other than toast it simply doesn't work.

5 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Beans on toast is literally a can of Heinz beans warmed up and poured onto a piece of toast, right?

I think I once saw a suggestion that you fry up a sliced onion, red or yellow, add the beans to warm them up and pour that on the toast.

If you can afford it butter the toast first, or put butter in the beans while you are cooking them.

Simplicity is one if the hallmarks, so frying up some onion is extra effort for possibly not all that much reward. But if you have the time and inclination it sounds like a good variation on the classic.