The comments in this thread are exactly why they get pissy over the disrespect of not learning the basic pronunciation used by people from there. All the stupid stereotypical comments here show that most people don’t know a damn thing about the region except some poor jokes. But hell what do I know I’m just from…

Without a plan, and “end to the war” could be just as bloody and expensive as continuing it. That’s the primary problem here. There is no viable plan for an exit. 

Polling shows that over-estimation of Muslim (and also foreign-born) populations is routine. It’s a bit absurd. There’s always this idea that there are scary violent Muslims out there. It’s not backed up by anything but racist conspiracy theory media, but fear-based hate-narratives sell. 

If you go to fairly niche papers yeah. al-Monitor and the The Diplomat (Middle East and Asia respectively) tend to be better. Outside of that, well I’m not sure. Even generally good outlets publish some real howlers in the Op-Ed section. 

This has blown up on Twitter among MENA experts and people who you know, actually live in London. It’s a horribly racist piece from one of the charlatans from the faux-centrist site Quillete.

There’s solid evidence that far-right groups have been recruiting heavily from cops, ex-cops, and ex-soldiers in order to help them embed in into power structures. The police seem to have the worst of it, though trying to radicalize ex-soldiers is very risky and at one point DHS seemed concerned about it. They’re…

This stuff is only going to get worse. No one is working the far-right extremism angle competently in the US or Europe, and it feels like no one will until it’s too big of a problem for easier solutions. Entire radicalization networks that are barely being watched, and half the ones being watched are by NGOs with no…

I honestly doubt they do. In the abstract hitting someone for a DUI/DWI seems like a great attack. Not so certain it’ll work in reality. Most DUIs are first time offenders who never reoffend, which means a solid part of the population has some relationship with someone who made that mistake, which makes it a…

But will this ruling have any practical effect or will the GOP and their allies in the judiciary manage to smother the ruling long enough to make this nothing but a symbolic victory?

You might be surprised by the opinions of some folks who had good reasons to hate John McCain’s policy preferences, but had surprisingly high opinions of him as a person. Arab Twitter has had a lot more nuanced takes than English Twitter, ironically. 

The body politic runs on “dumb theater”. This sort of symbolism plays an important role in how societies think of themselves and how they perform out their values and ideas. It all is very dumb, but it’s also fairly important despite being dumb because this is one of those bigger social norms that people care about…

Truth is, there’s no reason to charge at all. The things required, like a phone line or internet access, are already required for the prison to run. Giving say a free 30-an hour a week would be a lot more just.

Honestly, this is largely symbolic. Part of the reason the reform was sold is because it’s good optics, in reality this isn’t changing much of anything but it tackling a recurring perception problem for the party.

It’s hard to explain police actions holistically without the idea that they’re using their muscle on counter-protesters and not the far-right. Too many incidents, too many witness accounts, too many well documented cases of racism and ties to hate groups in the police, to pretend otherwise.

Very true, but if there’s generally one winning argument even in partisan politics “this will save a ton of money” is usually it. For-profit prison companies can only dump so much into lobbying before diminishing returns. Especially given their poor favorability with the public. 

An asylum-seeker should, in theory, not have any improper entry counted against their asylum claim. In theory, that’s illegal under US and international law.

FYI fuck Twitter so much for letting so many far-right bigots use their platform, but I just got in trouble for something (they won’t tell me what) and can’t tweet for 12 hours. Meanwhile open hate groups have accounts despite their very existence and raison d’etre violating the rules, including VDare. 

VDare has been infamous among those studying white supremacists for decades. It’s a very old, very hateful cesspit. Brimelow is a vile piece of shit. So of course he’s still allowed on Twitter and sometimes far-right media, along with a whole host of the bigoted monsters he publishes (Derbyshire, Steve Sailer, etc),…

They’re doing some particularly stupid things. One of the jackasses from the NRSC was screeching about musicians being “unhinged leftists” for playing a campaign event for the Democratic Senate candidate in TN. You know, the moderate former gov.

I’m not sure town halls are where real scrutiny of any policy positions happens. In my experience they’re almost entirely performative.