From a utilitarian point of view, it probably makes more sense to attempt to minimize suffering rather than opting out of the decision and thereby passively enable greater suffering.
But hey, it’s the trolley problem all over again, and people hate even thinking about that one.
Oh, corruption is going to thrive under Trump. Did you not notice that last time around? Did you not notice the fake charities, the tax payer money funneled into Mar-a-Lago, the hundreds of millions going to Trump PACs, the money going to the Trump hotel in Washington DC, all the corruption and bribes and schemes?
And the fun thing is that now that Trump knows how to do all of this, how to funnel millions into his own pocket, a second Trump presidency is going to be corruption on steroids.
The only thing that’s going to crumble are democratic norms and human rights in the United States.
Ironically, so is supporting the Hamas position that Israel shouldn’t exist.
The law should still apply equally to every company, shouldn’t it?
That’s because they like the idea of a Trump dictatorship. They simply assume they’d be on the side that’s going to do the dictating.
That’s fair.
However, it’s just an argument for cracking down on money laundering, criminal enterprises, dark money in politics, etc.
Bad actors who oppose cryptocurrencies out of nefarious reasons don’t make cryptocurrencies a good thing, particularly if even worse actors support cryptocurrencies for even worse reasons.
Another thing of course is that the banks are unhappy with not getting their share in money laundering, crime investments and tax evasion, like they do with government currencies. Cryptocurrencies could also democratize organized crime and not just leave it to the established ties between politics, banks and existing crime groups.
I’m not sure that “cryptocurrencies make it much easier for criminals to launder money, finance criminal enterprises, evade taxes and for organized crime to funnel dark money and into politics and corrupt politicians” is the kind of pro-cryptocurrency argument you seem to imply it is.
You’re spelling out how they’re acting like a neutral party here.
Qatar is knowingly and willingly hosting the leadership of a terrorist organization that mass murders innocent civilians - both Israelis and Palestinians. Hamas leaders live in luxury in Qatar, they have billions of dollars stashed away.
That makes Qatar about as “neutral” about Hamas as the Taliban were “neutral” about al Qaeda.
It’s a destitute open air prison. Come on now.
You act like I’m debating that, or like I’m taking sides.
I’m not.
I’m just pointing out that a totalitarian regime - a regime that tolerates no dissent, that enforces strict religious laws, that suppresses women, that has the death penalty for homosexuality, that openly uses slave labor - isn’t some kind of neutral party if it has a vested interest in Gaza and has been openly supporting Hamas for decades.
I don’t blindly trust their reporting.
That’s all I’m asking for.
The hostage deal was negotiated by Qatar, the Hamas leadership is living in luxury in Qatar, Qatar is seeking to gain more influence in the future of Gaza.
Is this really the right moment to blindly trust the Qatar state owned news source with its reporting about a Qatar negotiated deal related to a conflict that Qatar has a vested interest in?
Point being that installing Chrome isn’t the “trouble” you’re making it out to be, when switching to Edge comes with zero advantage.
But you weren’t asking an open ended question anyway, right?
Conversely, if they’re both evil, why use Microsoft over Google?
People have their browser set up the way they want it, and downloading and installing Chrome to have everything sync back and work exactly the way they want things to work takes all of two minutes.
Why use Edge and spend time and effort to import bookmarks, import passwords, change settings, install extensions etc. only to have the exact same end result that downloading Chrome would have given them in the first place, but with the added annoyance of Microsoft leveraging Edge to nudge them into the Microsoft ecosystem?
That absolutely doesn’t mean that the power to create or disband ministries has to rest with the executive branch.
In fact, it can easily be argued that creating the framework in which the executive branch operates is the domain of the legislative branch - so the creation, merging, splitting or disbanding of ministries should also be a power of the legislative branch.
Or you could argue that it should be a power that should be shared between an administration and parliament, where an administration could introduce a motion to change ministries to parliament, and parliament would have to vote on it.
Lots of possibilities.
Winamp wasn’t a Google project.
As mentioned in the article.
Then I assume you’re aware that the Geneva Convention make one exception where hospitals lose their protection: when they’re used for a military purpose that is harmful to the enemy.
In other words: a warring faction cannot simply set up a military headquarter, a military outpost or a military attack position in a hospital and expect to enjoy the full protection granted to medical facilities while using it to attack the enemy.
You’re aware of that, right?
Except that in this case, the UN is explicitly saying that the numbers they’re quoting cannot be verified and they’re merely cutting the numbers Hamas is giving them.
So the question is: if the IDF cannot be trusted, why should we trust the terrorists?
What does the Geneva Convention say about using civilians as human shields? What does the Geneva Convention say about using hospitals, schools, places of worship as military headquarters or outposts? What does the Geneva Convention say about murdering civilians to prevent them from evacuating from an area that is under attack?
That’s some incredibly bad reporting and fuzzy math presented as facts:
The contract stipulates the creation of over 100,000 units of 155-mm ammunition via Expal, a Spanish company Rheinmetall recently acquired in November 2022 for a hefty sum of 1.2 billion euros.
Other, more credible reports state that the order is for several hundreds of thousands of DM121 shells - meaning the math here could be easily off by a factor of three or more.
Even Rheinmetall’s own website states that the order is for several hundreds of thousands of shells.
Which would mean that these shells would cost about as much as they always have, and maybe even significantly less.
So what is it?
Support Ukraine in the war against Russia - or all wars are equally bad, only chickenhawks support wars?