This is so fucking stupid I’m pulling it out of the greys because the only hope for this racist buffoon is to be so thoroughly shamed they have an epiphany.

I do this a lot to the mostly Christian bigots I have the misfortune to interact with. “May the Gods take pity on your broken dishonorable soul”. They take it poorly. Half of them correct it to “God” like they can’t even wrap their hateful mind around what I wrote. Weirdly a lot of jerk New Atheist types do the same…

I was just looking at ACLED’s stuff actually, but their data shows a decline post-2018 in al-Hudayda which made me wonder about that number. Even combatant deaths have slowed, though they’re picking up elsewhere like Ta’izz. Though now with the UAE proxies fighting the Saudi proxies who knows what will happen next.…

I don’t want that libertarian charlatan “Max Contrarian” in my subthreads. Please dismiss him if he responds to you. I’ve heard all the cliches before and his actual grasp of IR, IHL, and international events is much weaker than he wants you to think. 

It was counting all military-age males as combatants. It was a CENTCOM policy I’m fairly certain, and I think I remember discussions about the issue though my memory is a bit fuzzy. There’s evidence AFRICOM used the same system in Somalia as well.

It’s about 2/3rds the coalition by most data sets I’ve seen. Which one had 48% of civilian deaths in al-Hudayda? (or Hodeida, for folks following this. News outlets use different methods of transcribing Arabic) 

The ICC would run a narrow investigation targeted at the worst abusers. The US would be on the political side, pushing a negotiated peace and possibly (though doubtful under Trump) pressuring the Saudis to do something, even if they don’t accede to the investigation (which I highly doubt, they aren’t party to Rome…

Any US role would be more direct, between the parties in Yemen. If it wasn’t for the Iran obsessives in the Trump administration we probably would have already, but accepting that the Houthi had some legitimate grievances was beyond the ideological pale, even though I’m sure State analysts have been saying that since…

We don’t technically need to be party to the Rome Statute, as the crimes took place on Yemeni soil. If the government of Yemen requests an investigation we can refuse to cooperate but not stop it. Yemen hasn’t ratified the Rome Statute but did sign, so I’m not sure how that’d affect the issue. Customary law just makes…

Years ago it was warned continued arms shipments and refueling to the Saudi/UAE coalition could make the US party to war crimes, given the number of serious examples of strikes that violated the law even under the most generous set of assumptions. Weddings, hospitals, funerals, markets. The coalition has committed far…

It’s certainly less lethal, and a more interesting social symbol. 

In many parts of this country you can walk around with an AR-15 but if you have a knife bigger than a pocket knife you can be arrested. Think about that.

Until there’s accountability from CBP, I’m not satisfied. 

They have a tendency to search social media and phones and computers as well, particularly for anyone that they think is Muslim (which has caught more than a few Jews). There’s not really anything to do about it though. Either they’ll let you through, or they won’t. 

I’m not sure about that. The evidence coming from Xinjiang is mixed and fragmentary. I don’t think it’s creating any real loyalty to the state, or that imposed Chinese dress and custom will stick, but the survelliance state in Xinjiang is nothing to scoff at. They can force Uighur culture more underground, at least…

Yeah, I vaguely remember that and thinking it was an awful idea. You might be able to convince me that during the VISA application process social media should be looked at, but only public-facing accounts. But CBP shouldn’t have the power to ignore previous security checks on a whim in person. Evidence suggests that…

If the price is too high. They’ve got outs. The “one country two systems” promise insulates the government from potential agitation inside mainland China because that’s a unique framework. It’s possible for them to back down. If this goes on long enough, it may even become a better outcome for the government. The…

The “Yellow Vests” were never a coherent group with coherent ideology. After the first couple of protests it was hijacked by the far-right and it fizzled in large part because many of the people who originally protested quit.

CBP isn’t qualified to assess this sort of stuff. It’s a notoriously abusive agency with a toxic internal culture full of people who failed to get into better positions or chose this position because of their pre-existing ideology and prejudices.

Probably, but they’ve accelerated the repression recently on a much larger level. Why now? Some people speculate the mute reaction to putting Uighurs in concentration camps convinced China they could take action with minimal risk. So they sped up the slow building of illiberal control. But speeding it up caused a…