Attacking a military ship is generally not a war crime (as defined by international law such as the Geneva treaties, Rome Statute etc…). It is an act of war (same as invasion or bombardment of another country), and is likely to see retaliation by the attacked country.

Aggression (i.e. unprovoked acts of war) is against the Charter of the United Nations, which also includes the International Court of Justice as a dispute resolution mechanism. It is up to the United Nations Security Council (at which the US has a veto) to authorise enforcement of ICJ rulings.

If a nation is acting to protect another nation facing aggression from the US, it would be legal for the attack US military ships. The reason why they wouldn’t would more be that it would likely bring counter-retaliation from the US.

Liberal by itself is an ambiguous term, so it’s generally best to prefix it with another word / prefix to clarify.

e.g. Neoliberal / Classical liberal - aligned to what I think parent post is saying. Implies economic right. Socially liberal - probably what the GP post means, meaning in favour of social liberties. Can be associated with economic left (usually coupled with positive protection of social liberties) or the economic right (e.g. libertarianism - usually believe government shouldn’t trample social liberties, but businesses can). Liberal is also a political party in many countries - e.g. in Australia it is a (declining, but formerly in power) right-wing party.

That said, I believe most wars are started for reasons of cronyism / crony capitalism, to distract from issues or project an image for the leader and/or for reasons of nationalism, and politicians from all sides will give an insincere pretext aligned to the politics people expect them to have.

So back in 1994 my neighbours and I agreed that I’d give them my anti-theft fog cannons, as long as they promise not to steal my stuff.

Then in 2014 they sent some buddies in to burgle my place, and got away with a chunk of my stuff - and I know it was said neighbour behind it, because they now openly claim what was taken is theirs (of course, I never agreed with them on that).

Then since February 2022 they’ve started regularly burgling my place - in the first few weeks, they tried to take literally everything, but fortunately I hired good security guards and they only got away with about 20% of my stuff (including what they stole in 2014).

I’ve been trying to make arrangements for a monitored alarm system that will bring in a large external response if more burglaries happen, but the security company doesn’t want to take it on the contract while a burglary is in progress - but they did sell me some gear. I’m still working on getting the contract.

They say they’ll stop trying to burgle my place as long as I promise not to ever get a monitored burglar alarm, to officially sign over the property they’ve already stolen and to stop trying to get it back, stop buying stuff to protect my property from the monitored security company, and that I fire most of my security guards.

Do you think this is really their end game, or if I agree, do you think they’ll just be back burgling more as soon as I make those promises, with fewer security guards and stuff to protect my house? After all, I did have an agreement with them back in 1994 and they didn’t follow that.

That doesn’t work as a defence in common-law jurisdictions (at least), because all participants who deliberately participate in a crime are considered equally guilty of it.

I’d say this is not a strategy to avoid prosecution, but more the brazen acts of individuals who don’t fear prosecution.

I suspect anything about heaven was likely to manipulate religious voters into voting for him.

Most likely, he is envious of other US presidents like Obama who were given a Nobel Peace Prize. For the whole ‘Board of Peace’ thing, he likely also sees it as a way to manipulate into becoming something of a world dictator who sits above world leaders.

There is a thing called the ‘Dark Triad’ of personality traits, consisting of Psychopathy (lack of empathy for others / celebration of others suffering / impulsive), Narcissism (thinking of oneself as superior) and Machiavellianism (manipulating others, seeking revenge etc…) - and they often occur together in the same person. The dark triad is correlated positively with jealousy - and dark triad people consider themselves superior to peers (even when evidence points the other way) and deserving of recognition. They are vindictive towards people who get in the way of what they think they deserve.

Maybe they figure if you can’t fix the form to make it submit, you wouldn’t be up to their standard :-)

I think there is some value to MBFC, even though there are also cases where it is problematic - I don’t think a blanket rule would be right.

The issues (& mitigating factors):

• Some of the ‘mostly analytics’ sources still have ‘bias by omission’ problems or misleading headlines, even if the facts in the articles are accurate. But I think on the fediverse, we aren’t beholden to algorithms or their editorial choices in terms of the balance of what we see, so the impact of this is limited.
• Opinion pieces have a place, although arguably not on World News. At the very least, factual pieces from outlets that also publish opinion have a place. But MBFC downrates outlets for having an opinion at all even when clearly labelled as such.
• The attempt to categorise every bias on a left to right scale when really there are so many dimensions any bias could be along isn’t as helpful.

So I’d suggest:

• Only mentioning it when an outlet has a history of publishing things that are factually incorrect (or there is reasonable doubt over it). Not every fact can be verified from first principles (and sadly often articles don’t name their primary sources - in a better world having no source would reduce credibility, but it is often hard to find articles that meet the well-sourced bar). People deliberately muddying the waters create think-tanks to cite with fake facts, fake scientific journals, and cite other unreliable sources - fact checking often requires on the ground investigation, asking reliable experts, and so on; it is simply impossible to be in expert in everything you read in the news to spot well-executed fake news. I think of the approach like a tree - there are experts in an area who can genuinely apply critical analysis to decide if something is fact or bogus. But there are also bogus experts. Then there are aggregators of facts (journals and think-tanks, etc…) that try to only accept things reviewed by genuine experts. But there are also bogus aggregators. Then there are journalists and outlets that further collect things from genuine aggregators and experts, and refine them. But there are also bogus outlets. Sites like MBFC try to act like a root to the tree and help you identify the truthful outlets, who have a good record of relying on truthful aggregators, who rely on truthful experts.
• The left / right bias part means very little - I’d suggest ignoring it if you’re looking at a single article.
• Any of the higher tiers of factual reporting should be fine and not worth a mention.

If there are reliable sources countering some facts, posting those instead of (or as well as) complaining about the source is probably better.

The US for years kept the screwworm from spreading back into Panama by maintaining a virtual wall of sterile flies across the Darién Gap, which was a cheap way to protect all of North America.

But then stupid MAGA politics came along, put idiots in charge, and they decided that they’d rather try to protect the Mexico-US border and not give Mexico and Panama the incidental benefit, rather than protecting a smaller border that happened to help other countries. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/we-once-rid-the-us-of-this-nasty-parasite-now-it-could-be-coming-back/ar-AA1DKRSV has some information about how it became a problem again.

The terminology in Aus / NZ is pet (owned by people) vs stray (socialised around people but not owned) vs feral (not socialised to people).

Generally speaking, pets & strays like people - they’ve been handled as a kittens. Pets can become strays and vice versa. But feral cats (past being a kitten) will never become stray / pet (and vice versa) - it is only the next generation that can be raised differently.

While the article is defining feral cats as any cat that isn’t a pet, in reality the vast majority of what it is talking about are truly feral cats - nothing like a house cat.

With the added complication that it’s unlikely that Mangione actually killed anyone - someone killed someone in favour with the Magats, so by their logic, someone has to be killed to send a message.

Like how likely is the story that someone (who looked nothing like the surveillance photos released at the time) was called in by restaurant staff, and despite having allegedly travelled a long distance from the scene of the crime, and many opportunities to destroy everything, had a manifesto confessing to the crime, and the murder weapon still on him? Despite him having no prior inclination towards that sort of thing even?

Hopefully any jury has good critical thinking skills and can see through an obvious set up.

Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan described it as “obsolete” and said it “completely misrepresents Amazon’s current water usage strategy”.

Interesting that they don’t say in which direction it misrepresents (is it saying it is too high or too low). Maybe they are hoping the reader will infer from what they are saying that they’re using less now, without them having to say that.

They are not wrong that Israel is radicalised. However, peace is a process, and what will lead to an enduring peace is actually more important than what is just.

If Israel was actually willing to reconcile and treat Palestinians as equals, the South African model of truth & reconciliation (including amnesty for abuses in exchange for full disclosure of what happened), it wouldn’t be just for the victims, but it would allow both sides to move on peacefully.

The real problem is that Netanyahu, Smoltrich, Ben Gvir etc… don’t actually want peace, so even a neutral truth & reconciliation is currently unlikely to happen without their backers (especially the US) forcing them.

While someone’s political beliefs are highly multi-dimensional, there are two axes that are commonly used to define where someone sits:

• Economy - Left is favouring social responsibility for people receiving economic support (supporting people to meet their basic needs is everyone’s collective responsibility), while right is favouring individual responsibility (meeting your basic needs is your responsibility, and if you die because you can’t, even if it is due to something outside of your control, tough luck).
• Social liberties - Social Libertarian is favouring individual decisions on anything not related to the economy / rights of others, while Social Authoritarianism supports government restrictions on social liberties.

Since there are independent axes, there are four quadrants:

• Socially liberal, Economic left - e.g. Left Communism, Social Democrat, most Green parties, etc…
• Socially authoritarian, Economic left - e.g. Stalin, Mao. Tankie is a slang term for people in this quadrant.
• Socially liberal, Economic right - Sometimes called libertarian. Some people with this belief set call themselves Liberal in some countries.
• Socially authoritarian, Economic right - e.g. Trump. Sometimes called conservatives.

That said, some people use tankie as cover for supporting socially authoritarian, economic right but formerly economic left countries(e.g. people who support Putin, who is not economically left in any sense).

I’m not sure why people choose Youtube as their platform to criticise big tech like Google.

And apparently enforcement of foreign judgements in the US is state-by-state, and the US state doesn’t need personal jurisdiction over the person. So any US state court can decide to recognise a foreign jurisdiction, under local state laws, and all other states will recognise it. So if OFCOM can find one state that will recognise the judgement, then they are in trouble.

I think detecting that something bad is happening, finding out how, and stopping it prevents other people from being affected. Otherwise contamination incidents could go on for years, and the cumulative exposure to affected individuals would be higher, and the number of individuals affected would also be higher.

GENEVA CONVENTION relative to the treatment of Prisoners of War of 12 August 1949 Article 52 Unless he be a volunteer, no prisoner of war may be employed on labour which is of an unhealthy or dangerous nature. No prisoner of war shall be assigned to labour which would be looked upon as humiliating for a member of the Detaining Power’s own forces. The removal of mines or similar devices shall be considered as dangerous labour.

Sometimes I wonder if they are trying to get a high score by committing every possible war crime.

Apparently the xitter tweet was a eulogy for Yahya Sinwar.

Now Yahya Sinwar was a war criminal, so they kind of have a point.

However, if that is the standard they set, saying anything positive about Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, Ron Dermer, Aryeh Deri, Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisonkot, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who are all also leaders who have supported war crimes should also be grounds for having awards rescinded. But what are the chances that there is a double standard?

Perhaps a good approach is to check other recipients who are pro-Zionist‡ and see if they have anything praising war criminals, and complain - if there is no similar response, it is clear there is a double standard.

‡: And before anyone tries to twist my words as a smear, I define a modern Zionist in the usual way as someone who wants to expand the state of Israel beyond the 1967 boundaries, other than as a one-state solution with the consent of the people of the lands.

That catholics should practice confession is a religious belief. But the confidentiality part is from canon law - i.e. in terminology of most other organisations, it is a policy. It is a long-standing policy to punish priests for breaking it, dating back to at least the 12th century, but nonetheless the confidentiality is only a policy within a religious organisation, and not a religious belief.

Many organisations punish individuals who break their policy. But if an organisation has a policy, and insist that it be followed even when following it is contrary to the law, and would do immense harm to vulnerable individuals, then I think it is fair to call that organisation evil - and to hold them culpable for harm resulting from that policy.

Even if the confidentiality itself was a core part of the religious belief itself, religious freedom does not generally extend to violating the rights of others, even if the religion demands it. Engaging in violent jihad, for example, is not a protected right even in places where religious freedom cannot be limited, even if the person adheres to a sect that requires it.

IANAL, but it is an interesting question to consider whether it would be illegal in Australia (if anything, as a test to see if the right laws are on the books to block this kind of thing). The laws are likely different in the US, and it might vary from state to state.

The Fair Work Act 2009 (Commonwealth), s325 provides that:

An employer must not directly or indirectly require an employee to spend, or pay to the employer or another person, an amount of the employee’s money or the whole or any part of an amount payable to the employee in relation to the performance of work, if:

(a) the requirement is unreasonable in the circumstances; and

(b) for a payment—the payment is directly or indirectly for the benefit of the employer or a party related to the employer.

I think you could imagine the employer arguing a few lines:

• The employee is not required to spend, it is only a factor in promotions and not retaining the same role. OP said you can “get in trouble for not using this” - countering this defence perhaps depends on proving what kind of trouble to show it is a requirement. In addition, under s340, employers are not allowed to take an adverse action against an employee for exercising or proposing to exercise a workplace right, and adverse action includes discriminating between and employee and other employees of the employer.
• That the employee is not required to pay any particular person, they can choose what to buy as long as the select from a prescribed list. However, I think that could be countered by saying this is an indirect requirement to spend, and the “or another person” attaches to the “pay” part, so I don’t think that argument would fly.
• The the requirement is reasonable - however, that could be countered by arguing the privacy angle, and the fact that this is for personal shopping, far outside the reasonable scope of an employment relationship.
• That the payment isn’t for the benefit of the employer. I think that could be countered firstly by arguing this is a requirement to spend not pay, and event if it was to pay, it is indirectly for the employer’s benefit since it allows them to attract and retain clients. The way they are pushing it could further prove this.

So I think it would probably be contrary to s325 of the Fair Work Act in Australia.

Another angle could be the right to disconnect under s333M of the Fair Work Act:

An employee may refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact, or attempted contact, from an employer outside of the employee’s working hours unless the refusal is unreasonable.

If someone has a work and a personal phone, and has the app on the work phone, but refuses to use take the work phone or install an app on their personal phone so they can respond to tracking requests from the employer, then maybe this also fits.

I also wonder if in Australia this could also be a form of cartel conduct - it is an arrangement of where purchases (other than those the company should legitimately control) are directed centrally under an arrangement by an organisation.

Under s45AD of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010,

(1) For the purposes of this Act, a provision of a contract, arrangement or understanding is a cartel provision if: (a) either of the following conditions is satisfied in relation to the provision: (i) the purpose/effect condition set out in subsection (2); (ii) the purpose condition set out in subsection (3); and (b) the competition condition set out in subsection (4) is satisfied in relation to the provision.

So the purpose condition has several alternatives separated by ‘or’, one of which is:

(3) The purpose condition is satisfied if the provision has the purpose of directly or indirectly: … (b) allocating between any or all of the parties to the contract, arrangement or understanding: (ii) the persons or classes of persons who have supplied, or who are likely to supply, goods or services to any or all of the parties to the contract, arrangement or understanding; or

It sounds like there is a solid argument the purpose condition is met - they are allocating where people who are part of the arrangement (employees) shop.

They’d also need to meet the competition condition for it to be cartel conduct. For this to be met, the arrangement might need to include the clients of the company:

(4) The competition condition is satisfied if at least 2 of the parties to the contract, arrangement or understanding: (a) are or are likely to be; or (b) but for any contract, arrangement or understanding, would be or would be likely to be; in competition with each other in relation to: … © if paragraph (2)© or (3)(b) applies in relation to a supply, or likely supply, of goods or services—the supply of those goods or services in trade or commerce; or

So it could be argued that this is a cartel arrangement between the company, its clients, and its employees, and so attract penalties for cartel conduct.