Yeah but he already clarified it had to be a limp-dicked one.

You’ve completely missed their point. They’re saying that the words of the law are meaningless and not actual evidence. The Civil Rights Act also didn’t end racism, discrimination and cultural oppression in the US.

Who’s to say that the Chinese government actually enforces this as written?

On paper it says it promotes integration among the recognized ethnic groups, but some of the wording is much more dubious. For example, children won’t receive their education in their native language anymore; they must now learn Mandarin (which is the classic tactic to erode other languages, inspired directly from the west). There’s also text in there that may be used to justify breaking up certain ethnic/minority neighbourhoods.

It is.

Okay, you should be aware that that study you’re referring to the numbers of, was done by iirc a scientist linked to a Venezuelan thinktank whose stated purpose is sanctions relief. The study itself also has some questionable methods, for example: if a country previously provided aid in some form, but then stopped, this is counted as a “sanction” and any loss of life is thus included in the figure. So suppose country A supports country B with some aid program, but then B has a violent military coup. A now stops the aid, as there are clear signs that the junta in B is seizing the resources for themselves. The potential deaths the aid could have prevented when the aid was effectively being administered are included in the calculation for a period when that aid more than likely couldn’t be effectively administered. Aid programs with a limited duration are also included as “sanctions” once the programs end.

This inflates the numbers in quite a big way. Of course it’s still horrid that thousands die due to sanctions, but those numbers don’t paint an accurate image (this is not to discount the entire study btw, but it’s important to be aware of the nuance here).

Then there’s the question of: what is the alternative? Doing nothing at all? Declaring war? Sanctions do have an effect after all. Take apartheid South-Africa, eventually apartheid fell due to the severe economic pressure from international sanctions, spearheaded by India at the time. You’ll also have to ask yourself how many more people in SA would have suffered and died if no sanctions had been instated and apartheid had been allowed to fester unopposed internationally. And this effect was never taken into account into the study either.

Of course you could also hypothetically attribute the deaths to whatever triggered the instatement of the sanctions in the first place. If country A declares a war and gets sanctioned because of it, are the extra deaths in country A on the hands of A’s government or on the international community applying sanctions?

There’s plenty of ideologically motivated sanctions, especially levied by the US, that are total bullshit and just harmful (see: Cuba). I’ll always oppose those.

To be fair there’s several ‘types’ of Chess, like Bullet, Blitz, Rapid, etc…, and it’s not uncommon for high-level players to specialize in some of them. But given that they didn’t know what a GM is they probably didn’t know that either.

I don’t universally support all sanctions. I don’t support sanctions on Cuba for example, but I do support sanctions on Israel. If you want to consider me monstrous for that, go ahead.

It doesn’t, he’s explicitly allowed to withdraw enough money to cover basic needs. Dogru confirmed this in one article on this, but he’s also dishonest about it in his tweets where he suggets he’s not allowed to withdraw anything.

Her husband is a pro-palestine journalist and she gets her bank accounts frozen because of it what else would you call it?

Apparently the husband tried to (perhaps unwittingly) circumvent the sanctions placed on him through the accounts of his wife. That will get your accounts frozen alright.

I also don’t quite buy the whole narrative that he was sanctioned strictly for being pro-Palestine. There’s loads of journalists telling the Palestinian side of things, hell even a lot of state media is pretty critical of Israel these days.

I’ve seen the “evidence pack” that Dogru published (even though we have no idea if that’s a complete story). There’s definitely some stuff in there that I’d classify as pro-Kremlin falsehoods.

There’s also definitely some dishonesty going on from his side: he publicly claims he has no money left and can’t withdraw anything from his accounts (or his wife’s). But that’s simply not true, as he and his wife are both allowed to withdraw enough money to cover basic needs (not even to mention the social safety nets that Germany has, there’s no reason for his kids to go hungry).

He’s also stated he believes the invasion of Ukraine to be an illegal act by Russia, yet simultaneously promotes the viewpoint that NATO started a proxy war in Ukraine. There’s also some very precise wording going on, e.g. stating he’s not involved with Red anymore after Russia invaded Ukraine, but Red was controlled by AFA Medya, which he was still very much involved with. That same Red was also taking on employees who were also involved with RT.

I think there’s some very good reasons that unions and NGOs, which historically have taken on loads of cases of journalists being unfairly censored, aren’t touching this guy with a 10ft pole. The appeals process here is imo too nebulous, but regardless I doubt that he’d actually win the appeal.

Freezing accounts is a preventative measure. The German government must have evidence that there’s likely criminal proceeds on these accounts, plus a real risk that these funds would be transferred elsewhere. A court case usually follows fairly quickly.

If a billionaire is accused of fraud, you wouldn’t want to allow them to transfer all their wealth out of the country before you can fine them, right?

• We don’t know if this is collective punishment, you’ve assumed so but we have no proof of that.

• I don’t mind protecting people’s privacy and publicizing what crimes someone has been accused of, since just the accusation can have serious consequences. Imagine someone is accused of terrorism, this gets out to all the neighbours, and finally the judge clears their name; will those neighbours still trust them?

• The people whose accounts are concerned will receive the reason why the accounts were blocked. They too haven’t publicized it.

We don’t know, as far as I know it hasn’t been publicized.

IIRC he was considered a viable candidate for pope as well.

I have zero problems with the Pope retconning the bible into a more peaceful, anti-war version.

Does a mother become immune from judicial persecution just because she has a child? Kids aren’t a get-out-of-jail-free card.

I dunno man ask him: https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1918347089366667507

Illegal immigrants are easier to exploit than legal immigrants.

Loads fine for me. It’s someone sitting in front of a desk with 15 large monitors surrounding them in a semicircle, 3 monitors stacked on top of one another in 5 columns.

https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/189574

EPP and ECR voted against extension, but IIRC the reason is that they wanted stricter controls instead. Most other parties were largely in favour of extending the current chat control mandate.

IIRC (but could be wrong) the EPP wanted stricter chat controls, not an extension of what was already there.

If you actually looked at the statistics, you’d know that’s not the case. Defensive gun use is not horseshit, but being a privileged liberal is.

I did, did you? Crime victims who respond with a gun are 2.5 times less likely to get away from the offender than those who respond without one and 10 percent less likely to avoid injury.

Guns are a tool of equality for all manner of marginalized and dispossessed people.

This is an unhinged statement. Guns by definition are used to oppress the marginalized, weapons to force people to do what they do not want to do. To claim that they’re “tools of equality” is bizarre gun-industry propaganda. Women in abusive relationships are 5 times more likely to be killed if their partner owns a gun. Women in the US are 28 times more likely to die to firearm homicide. “Shoot first” laws increase the odds that a minority is a victim of a violent crime (an anecdotal example is Ahmoud Arbery, who was shot and killed for the crime of jogging while black).

You also mentioned that 69k is an “extreme low”, but it’s likely an overestimation since it includes non-legal DGUs. Even then, the statistics show that this is less than 1% of property crimes and in nearly 60% of those cases the perpetrators weren’t even armed. The picture that the NRA likes to push, legally using a gun against an armed stranger in a home invasion, is so rare there’s not enough reports to even find a semi-accurate number.

Meanwhile, violent crime goes up if gun ownership does (when compensating for other factors like GINI): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094119025000269

Your argumentation reeks of “Gun Culture 2.0”, the project that the NRA is pushing to promote guns for personal safety in a dangerous world (as opposed to “Gun Culture 1.0”, where the main motivation for owning a gun was hunting and recreational shooting). It’s heavily pushed through a lot of propaganda in pro-gun magazines and commercials, ignoring all statistics showing owning a gun makes you less safe, and that the world around you in general is becoming safer overall over time.