Ok so first, my biases. I’m going to write my best guess and then I’ll read the article. So… is it that Portugal helped people instead of simply trying to arrest them or put up anti-homeless architecture so that those better off wouldn’t have to see addicts in the streets? Let’s go and read now…
WELL. I’m shocked!
"Portugal’s leaders responded by pivoting away from the U.S. drug war model, which prioritized narcotics seizures, arrests and lengthy prison sentences for drug offenders.
Instead, Portugal focused scarce public dollars on health care, drug treatment, job training and housing. The system, integrated into the country’s taxpayer-funded national health care system, is free and relatively easy to navigate. "
Not every country is the same as the US. Other countries’ conservatives aren’t necessarily the same as yours. Sometimes conservatives and left-wing parties even work together to solve issues.
As a Portuguese who was alive (albeit a kid) in the 90s, I can summarize this as we didn’t have enough resources (both human and monetary) to keep enforcing the U.S. drug war model. Since it wasn’t working and we were reaching a critical situation (like half of Lisbon in particular was filled with drug addicts shooting heroin up their veins), we turned to the experts.
The article implies this was a decision made from the beginning of this epidemic, but it was pretty much a last resort because the other model was unsustainable for the government. Not sure if we would’ve adopted it if we had US’ resources.
Also, just giving context here, not trying to diminish this accomplishment.
I love this kind of stuff. “We’ve been doing what one of the most powerful and wealthy countries has been trying to do for decades without success, and we just can’t afford it any more. Alright, let’s dust off that report from the experts we received when this all started and see if that can help…”
As far as I remember, yeah, that’s essentially what happened. At first, the government and the police saw drug addicts as criminals in the eyes of the law, and tried to go after them, which is, as far as I know, what the US and a lot of other countries do.
Bibi reduced military protection in the south to punish the kibbutz dwellers, and to focus on war-criming the West Bank. Either he figured his trunks full of cash would keep Hamas in line, or he just really didn’t care what happened down there.
He also clearly gives zero shits about the hostages. Hamas wanted to negotiate for their release at the beginning of the conflict, but he decided he would rather war-crime Gaza instead.
Israel could have gone along with this and still attacked Hamas but I suppose they knew there would be Palestinian civilians killed so they wanted the excuse of “But muh hostages!”.
I predict the swap will be done now that Israel needs no more excuse. Hamas leaders will be able to (or allowed to) flee, just like Arafat fled the Beirut siege, calling it a victory.
Netanyahu is going to bomb the hostages and then blame Hamas, saying they were used as human shields, just like he’s been doing with Palestinian civilians. 200 Israeli hostages “murdered by Hamas (using Israeli bombs)” is more useful politically to his war-machine than 200 live hostages.
I doubt it. He is fighting for political survival. He is probably a goner regardless but even he realises that to do what you suggest would be political suicide. He only cares about himself.
Are you by any chance in denial of the PIJ missile which misfired into the hospital carpark a couple of weeks back? The one which Hamas lied was a direct hit by Israeli bombs killing 500?
Are you by any chance in denial of the PIJ missile which misfired into the hospital carpark a couple of weeks back? The one which Hamas lied was a direct hit by Israeli bombs killing 500?
No, I think it is likely that it was a rocket that misfired. Israel has been responsible for all the intentional bombs hitting hospitals, schools, places of worship, etc though, so I’m not sure what significance you are attributing to what someone believes about the one unintentional one?
Sorry. I misjudged you. Been on Reddit too long. No room for nuance there.
The significance is that media is still often relaying Hamas claims as if fact and you might have been relying wholly on such reports.
That hospital incident was clearly Hamas bs from the outset - no photos, a video of the carpark leaked within 24 hours, Al Jazeera themselves unwittingly streamed live footage of the misfiring rocket.
According to three sources familiar with the talks, the original deal on the table involved freeing children, women and elderly and sick people in exchange for a five-day ceasefire, but the Israeli government turned this down and demonstrated its rejection with the launch of the ground offensive.
Targeting civilians is a war crime. Targeting enemy combatants while trying to evacuate civilians, trying to warn civilians so desperately that you warn the enemy combatants too, and killing civilians in attacks that target legitimate military targets and reflect a sufficient level of care to minimize risk to human life, is not a war crime, that's the definition of "collateral damage."
There's no double standard there, that's the whole issue.
It is. When your enemy is embedded in hospitals and mosques and everywhere else civilians try to go for safety, it gets hard. But I'm sure your alternative is just for Israel to just agree to a one-sided ceasefire and wait for Hamas to shore up its weapons, move the hostages, and repeat its 10/7 attack, huh?
ahh yes. Because the Israeli army has literally no options between “relentless bombing of Gaza, denying access to food, water and medicine, sniping civillians trying to flee according to your demand on the safe routes you designated and bombing ambulances trying to move patients in the same way” and “doing nothing and watch Hamas regroup.”
Israel could have led an infantry assault into Gaza withou pounding everything first. That would have meant higher casualties though and here shows the true nature of Israels government and army.
They do not care for any palestinian life. So far for every Israeli soldier that got killed, more than 200 palestinian civillians were killed.
In world war 2 the axis powers killed about 6 civillians for every axis soldier and the allies killed about 1 civillian for every 4 ally soldiers. So the war that was about total destruction and genocide still had more than a magnitude less civillians killed relative to combatants killed.
“Yeah, but if there’s one Hamas guy inside a densely-populated refugee camp, what possible other choice do we have than to bomb literally tens of buildings in there? He could have been in any of them! We gave those civilians ample warning that they are subject to murder at any time, anyways! How can you say we’re not merciful and restrained!?”
ahh yes. Because the Israeli army has literally no options between “relentless bombing of Gaza, denying access to food, water and medicine,
the IDF turned off its supply of 7% of gazan water for a few days, and is still getting shit for it. Hamas never bothered to maintain the power plant or desalination plant, stole fuel from the power plant that could have been used to keep running the hospitals and desalination plant, and openly dug up water pipes to fashion into rockets. They didn't even hide that, they were proud of that.
sniping civillians trying to flee according to your demand on the safe routes you designated
You know that bridge was Hamas snipers, right? Israel didn't have a real presence in that area yet, the closest thing they had was a ship that did not fire small bullets. People initially blamed all the bullet-ridden bloody bodies on the bridge on an Israeli airstrike, and then realized that there was no sign of any explosion anywhere on the bridge, and had to change their story. =/
and bombing ambulances trying to move patients in the same way”
Hamas said that there were no patients in those ambulances, but the IDF had intelligence that there were, in fact, terrorists in them. This is in keeping with a long-standing pattern going back a good 20 years, Hamas loves shuttling terrorists around in ambulances.
Israel could have led an infantry assault into Gaza withou pounding everything first. That would have meant higher casualties though and here shows the true nature of Israels government and army.
I love how, now, people are saying "they should have invaded by land!" when, before the ground invasion began, everybody was protesting the concept of a land invasion and surrounding nations had threatened to declare war if Israel invaded.
They do not care for any palestinian life. So far for every Israeli soldier that got killed, more than 200 palestinian civillians were killed.
You know how I know you made that number up? Nobody anywhere has published any number of palestinian civilians that were killed in this war.
In world war 2 the axis powers killed about 6 civillians for every axis soldier and the allies killed about 1 civillian for every 4 ally soldiers. So the war that was about total destruction and genocide still had more than a magnitude less civillians killed relative to combatants killed.
Please, feel free to cite Hamas statistics here, I'd love to see if they've finally claimed a number of civilians vs combatants.
Hamas wouldn’t have done 10/7 if not for Israel’s colonialism and genocide, and Israel has never had a true “ceasefire” in Palestine. They for years have done bombing campaigns that they euphemize as “mowing the grass”, against Gaza. You can’t divorce the current conflict from the history that led to it.
Turns out that desperation breeds extremism, and Israel is the one who made Palestinians desperate.
People don’t denounce slaves who revolt as being too brutal, but continually murdering and starving peoples’ children apparently is not bad enough to justify revolt when it’s only Palestinians being murdered.
They have bombed a neonatal unit! You can’t murder premature babies and be like “Whoopsy!”. Absolutely disgusting. As for ‘evacuating civilians’ they’ve blocked the borders. Workers who worked outside Gaza have been forcibly returned.
Worse, Argentina has one of the best social infrastructures in the world and he’s campaigning against it. They are voting in someone who is going to remove free healthcare and universal pensions.
Not to defend Milei (he’s a total knob), but one could argue that Argentina’s social infrastructure is a big part of the problem. The state has been notorious for spending much more money than it makes for decades… and still poverty is rampant and rapidly increasing in many parts of the country. It’s obvious that the system has been broken for decades.
Doing away with corruption would obviously be a great thing, but the fact remains that too many people are dependent on some kind of government subsidy either because it’s the easiest way (heavily subsidised parts of the economy, cozy government ‘job’, …) or because they simply have no other option due to the bad economy.
The Argentine constitution states that healthcare is a human right. This is the philosophy on which the country operates. Putting millions off of healthcare will never be a great thing.
I agree that their financials are a mess. The problem is really incompetence more than anything. The NIMBY problem exists in its own special level there and basically those with don’t want to support those without, which is how they are voting. It’s an empathy problem.
You can certainly have a single payer system work efficiently, many countries do. It is not the cause of Argentina’s problems.
I agree with you on the healthcare, but that’s not where I’d start changing things. The main problem I see (and our friends/relatives in Argentina tell us about) is that the state is expected to pay for a lot of basic necessities because people, even those with a full-time job, can’t afford them… and the various governments have a habit of doing the worst possible thing.
For instance when electricity prices exploded in 2019/2020, the government apparently paid out 5000 pesos to every household but did nothing to address the root cause. Another time retired people got a flat fee of 6000 pesos. No money went into improving the country’s electricity grid or power efficiency (or no money that wasn’t somehow ‘lost’ underway, anyways).
The same goes for unemployment money. While it is important, in the long term it would make more sense to create an environment where the economy can prosper instead of paying the unemployed what is frankly a pittance. Most unemployed people would rather work than live off welfare, if given the chance.
But then there’s the challenge of transforming the existing economy, especially industry, into something sustainable that could survive without heavy government subsidies. But that discussion is going to lead to a fundamental discussion about peronism, so let’s not go there please.
A lot of these things are probably at least partially caused by incompetence, but that’s not a valid excuse IMO. If you run for office, you should bring the necessary qualifications, and also be able to judge the qualifications of the people working for you
Just for reference, I went to grad school in Buenos Aires and lived there for about 5 years, which is where many of my opinions come from. I really feel like there is an endemic problem where people simply won’t vote in those who really are competent and can fix things. It’s really about the politics of name recognition and such. It’s a bit like what the GOP does int he US–that is, nothing useful. I remain hopeful but doubtful that the people will eventually pick up on this and change tactics.
I remain hopeful but doubtful that the people will eventually pick up on this and change tactics.
Same here. I’m not going to hold my breath though - I personally know too many people who voted for Fernandez/Kirchner even though the Kirchner clan is arguably the apex of corruption and directly responsible for one of the worst bankruptcies in the country’s history… just because they were unhappy with Macri’s budget cuts (which funny enough were way less far-reaching than what Milei wants to do) and Kirchner double-pinky promised to do better this time.
I’m not going to pretend to have the answer to all (or even most) questions. It’s just insert adjective for ‘argh!!!’ here to watch a country with such natural riches and resources so skillfully flush itself further and further down the crapper. But I’m going to have to agree with your assessment and there’s probably not much that can be done from outside the country.
On the upside: thanks to Western Union basing its exchange rates on the dólar blue, supporting my niece’s studies now costs five times less than what it cost two years ago, so there’s that!
I went to grad school in Buenos Aires and lived there for about 5 years
This is a bit off-topic and just personal curiosity: what made you choose Argentina, resp. Buenos Aires? Do you know somebody there, did you want to see the city/country, or is it just the logical choice where you’re from?
Re: grad school, I studied linguistics and Spanish as an undergrad and wanted to do grad school somewhere Spanish speaking. I spent time researching countries and universities and the Universidad de Buenos Aires was clearly the choice for affordability, quality, and being in a very large cosmopolitan area. I really did enjoy my time there and would still be there if it weren’t for the economic collapse. I had been working and got laid off, literally a couple courses shy of finishing. I got married there and my husband now lives with me in the US.
Aw man, having to quit when you can already smell the finish line is extra mean. I hope you were still able to finish your courses, even if it had to be elsewhere. But…! Spectacularly belated congratulations for the happy couple! If the festivities were in Buenos Aires it must have been quite an event.
This probably also gives you a unique insider view of the country from the outside, the culture and the people. I would imagine it to be quite interesting to get you talking over a good Merlot (or a still water if you prefer) and some empanadas (make mine jamón y queso).
Save for a short one-day stop between flights in September, we’ve last been in Buenos Aires around New Year 2019/2020. It is an impressive city in many aspects. My sister-in-law who is a cop accompanied us. Even then, we were advised to leave La Boca before 5 pm. I’m not sure I’d want to go there at all in the current climate, even though it was one of the more enjoyable and pretty parts of town. But then again, everywhere I go there’s that huge imaginary billboard hovering above my head that says “Gringo with money who’s unfamiliar with how things work here” in huge letters. Or maybe I’m just slightly paranoid.
He's probably thrilled that Lindell is destroying his defense, committing new offenses, and he doesn't really care about being called an 'ambulance chaser' or 'disgusting' 50 times.
I imagine, if he dislikes Mike Pillow, he was ecstatic. This guy is digging himself a deeeep hole. Oh my his lawyer tells Mike to calm down and hour and half in. Oof.
The fact that Mexico is making progress on this is good to see, though also pretty embarrassing as a resident of the USA that our society is moving backwards at the same time.
You can wait out a filibuster. You just don’t allow new business until they’re done. That means they have to keep talking and eventually they’ll run out of speaking ability.
A filibuster raises the vote threshold, so it’s not something you can just wait out. And thank to how the filibusterer works nowadays, congressmen don’t actually need to get up there and talk, they can merely threaten to filibuster to raise the vote threshold.
What do you think a filibuster is? It’s an active debate. So yes, you can wait one out. If they can’t continue, then their time is over and you vote. It’s why they’ll get up and read books.
To break it, you don’t move on to new topics until they give up.
Still work that way. You have three options. You cloture the person, you move to new business or you wait them out. You still have the option to wait. Nothing has changed.
Waiting means nothing happens. You just wait. If it’s important enough that’s what you do.
And that essentially isn’t an option at times due to how difficult it is to reach the 60 vote threshold, which means nothing gets done, which means congress is basically useless.
Or you just wait them out. You do nothing until they relent.
Politics sometimes has to be ugly. What you don’t do is make sad excuses as to why things don’t get done. You just shut things down till they go for a vote.
They’ll get pressure from their party to stop it. At some point they’ll need to move to other business. It’s a battle of the nerves. Politicians have lost the guts to play chicken.
They actually get the opposite, support from their party. Because if you’re the minority party and you’re able to kill legislation that the majority party wants, it’s seen as a victory.
The Senate not being population-based is part of the problem too. As are gerrymandering and not having universal adult suffrage or federal holidays for voting days. But a Constitutional Convention would be state-based, too, so we’d end up with something even worse than we have now.
I get the reasoning behind wanting a clear distinction between animal products and alternative products, but ‘grill’? In my understanding, a grill is the appliance you cook (or, in this case, grill) your food with. You can grill vegetables. So why would they ban ‘grill’?
These are all very heavy sentences. No arguments from me there. But, tell the story without putting a spin on it.
Remember that in France it is civil law and judges study the case and make decisions. Lawyers aren’t pleasing cases and objecting as much as in North America like we see in Hollywood movies or on Netflix.
Cases mentioned:
Guy gets 10 months in prison for stealing a Redbull [Source in French]: Yes. Based on different laws, he was found guilty of looting, among other things. He was made an example of. Harsh. Not his first rodeo…
6 months for stealing fruit. Cannot find source. Looting, not protesting.
Looting a Louis Vuitton store. 1 year in prison. Homeless guy with schizophrenia. Said he was looking for food.
1 year of prison. Was found in the store after the looting… picking up the leftovers.
After giving 4 examples states that he gave 5 examples. Says the courts are “cramming as many cases per day”… Yes, that’s how they do. Makes false claims (says they are told to plead guilty, we can’t know that, says they have no lawyers, provides no proof).
I’m sorry, but I cannot call this independent journalism. This is just 12 minutes of false connections and misleading or manipulated content. It is not news.
Fact: the judges handed out harsh punishments based on the current laws because these individuals were caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
In France, the truth depends on the time, the place, and the context. Judges have to rule based on that. There are options to appeal. But, if it’s 4 in the morning, for example, and you’re in the Louis Vuitton shop checking out handbags on the same night as riots, you’ll get the book thrown at you.
The guy who made this video could have told the straight facts, no spin, just facts, and it would have been a stronger argument.
Also…
Furthermore, the French government is censoring social media
They have been suggesting that, haven’t done it yet.
I mean every example you listed is fundamentally a property crime. I don’t see how property crimes could possibly translate into such long prison sentences. Unless they’re using weapons and attacking or threatening people it just doesn’t make any sense. “Looting” is an arbitrary definition that seems very ripe for abuse by a government that is already out of control. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE_Om13VpQw
A French article (the one linked to above) about the Redbull case says
On Monday 3 July, the Marseilles court tried this man for acts of “burglary in a group”, “in a state of legal recidivism for having been convicted”, in February 2022, “for similar or assimilated acts”. According to the lawyer, this previous record alone cannot explain the severity of the sentence imposed. Especially as her client, who was under a committal order, was taken directly into custody after the hearing. “This sentence may seem harsh but, in my opinion, it is contextualised in relation to the riots. The judge’s aim is to restore public order and social peace while deterring those who might be tempted to get involved in such reprehensible acts.” She added: “It’s obvious that if it hadn’t been for the riots, my client would have been eligible for a new plea bargain.” And therefore to a potentially lower sentence. On Tuesday 4 July, she indicated her willingness to consider his request for a reduced sentence.
All about the context here in France. Only serious cases get to plead their case to a jury (murder, etc.) so this guy had zero chances. Maybe less than zero.
This guy was only saved because he saved the screenshots.
This may seem like overkill, but whenever I’m dealing with customer service for a significant financial concern, I always take detailed notes: time, date, name, what was discussed, and screenshots when relevant.
Just a few years ago a large appliance company tried to dick me around on a faulty product that was several thousand dollars.
It took weeks of back and forth, but when I was able to make contact with a layer of management just outside and above their customer service channel with my very long and detailed log of their bullshit, they authorized a check the next day.
It wouldn’t be direct evidence, but it might put it on the company to provide their logs. If they didn’t retain them, then that could affect the ruling
Yes, but submitting a manipulated screenshot in court is a whole different type of fraud and can carry whole different types of penalties than just claiming X happened when it was Y, so very reasonably puts the onus back on the company to look through their logs and try to prove what's in your screenshots didn't happen that way.
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