Stupid reason for a ban, but I assume revolutionary means that it came to exist out of the islamic revolution in 1979 and is independent from the US empire as opposed to the former one under Reza Pahlavi which came to being out of a CIA/MI6 coup in 1953 and was a puppet regime to the West. Not really an inaccurate description.
Let’s reverse roles for a second. You’re the employer. What reasons would there be, for you to advertise an opening? Could your primary motivation possibly be paying people money? (Rhetorical question) Considering you already have a team, what kind of person do you want to fill the position? What profile should they have? And how would their motivation reflect on their expected performance?
P.S. I’m not saying, not to talk about money, but there’s a time for talking about that vs. finding out, whether you’re a fit. And answering a question about your main motivation on why you want to be part of their team with money, doesn’t reflect well on you or any expectations of you.
It’s funny to read back the thread. It makes it seem as if we disagree, when we clearly agree.
The overtaking rules were recently changed because of the way one driver exploited that set of rules
Yeah. But we don’t know how, because they only changed the unpublished guidelines… probably. We can’t really know. And you are probably correct that they want to maintain their leeway for nuance or/and manipulation, as can be witnessed nearly every season.
The kicker of this one driver’s behavior last season: it’s a clear breach of Appendix L Ch.4 2. b), c) and d). But all that has to happen because of that is a reporting to the Stewards. Everything beyond that is - by the rules we have access to - fully up to them. That’s all I’m trying to say. The actual rules don’t just offer grey areas, they lack any enforcement. It’s like if the lotg say, that if the ref sees a foul, he can do as he pleases. And these problems and discussions won’t cease until there are clear limits within the rules and guidelines and the public can finally see them. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t allow for nuance, but this is just ridiculously arbitrary.
I agree with the overall point, yet we have to be careful not to conflate the rules with the stewarding/refereeing. You mentioned the expression grey area and I would like to point out that the football rules have been revised in the last 10 years or so, to finally shrink the scope of interpretation. There is still a lot of ‘freedom’ for the referees and their interpretation, but I agree, that more clear boundaries have been established. I would point to some glaring examples to the contrary, but prefer to come back to F1, which has the exact opposite situation.
The rules for football (laws of the game) are widely accessible and available including how transgressions are to be punished. In F1 on the other hand the whole thing is absolutely opaque. We can’t really say, how much room for interpretation there is, because the FIA won’t publish their Driving Standard Guidelines (may I present a version back from the Imola GP 2022!). So we have no real reference to measure the Stewarding against. What this year’s exact wording is concerning the mirror of the overtaking car being alongside the axle of the other or whatever it is, we simply don’t know. The only thing we have is the International Sporting Code (ISC), and from that Appendix L is usually the one cited in the decisions, because it handles overtaking. But: There’s only a mention of a penalty points system in there, not how it is handled, nor what exactly gives someone a “right to the line” or anything in that direction.
For unsafe releases, we have ISC App. L Chapter IV 5. d) which states that “Cars must not be released from a garage or pit stop position in a way that could endanger or unnecessarily impede pit lane personnel or another driver”. The penalties for breaching this rule (or anything else in the ISC) is handled somewhere else (The same goes for the Formula 1 Sporting Regulations, where the unsafe release is defined again with a few specialties to F1). In Appendix B (Stewards Penalty Guidelines) they very vaguely describe, that Stewards have the authority to enforce these rules and that they “retain the discretion (…) to tailor the penalty to the specific situation.” (i.e. to judge mitigating/aggravating circumstances, etc.). Again, no clear reference to measure against. As an example for the seeming arbitrariness: In the decision document around Max’ 10 second time penalty and 3 penalty points, they mention the infringement of App. L Chapter IV Article 2 d) of the ISC, but as we’ve seen, there isn’t anything concrete in there relating to the severity of the penalty.
If we go back to Miami, Max got a 10s penalty in the Sprint for an unsafe release with a collision as a result. In their decision document the stewards write: “The Stewards acknowledge that the driver did everything he could to avoid the incident and therefore no penalty points are issued in this case.” So it seems that the Stewards could theoretically issue penalty points depending on the incident at question. But again, we have no possibility to actually know. In Oliver Bearman’s case in the same race, the time penalty was only 5s and there wasn’t anything mentioned about any penalty points.
So regardless whether we think the rules should be penalty points for unsafe releases or not, we can’t even tell how good of a job the stewards are doing, because there’s a lot of uncertainty within the rules, and we don’t even have access to all the relevant publications of the rules and their clarification.
consistently making mistakes no matter how minor should be getting a ban
We can find equivalents of this in other sports too. E.g. in football, when you’re cautioned twice, you’re sent off. And if you keep committing normal/non-cautionable foul play, you’ll be cautioned. But: Just like you can’t get cautioned for being off-side all the time, there’s a certain level of breaching the rules in F1 as well, that leads to penalty points in the first place.
I know unsafe releases are the teams faults but its not like fines have actually reduced their occurrence
During races unsafe releases are penalized with time penalties. So there’s a clear deterrent there, even if there aren’t any penalty points. I’m not sure about qualifying. The fines are certainly levied during free practice sessions.
lol yeah. They didn’t edit out all the flirting though or all the embarassed or indignant reactions by the characters around them, which presents those “cousins” in a really interesting light ;)
The US version of Sailor Moon was also censored and edited in different other ways. IIRC:
The most infamous would be South Park episodes S14E05 and S14E06 named “200” and “201”. The central theme of the episodes: Censorship. Something South Park had been subjected to ever since its inception. And this time, they centered around the limits of what is allowed around depictions of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. For context: These episodes aired after controversies around such depictions in media around the world had people killed.
So in an attempt to protect themselves, the network engaged in censorship of the episodes and it is sometimes unclear, what was intentionally in there as a plot point from the creators and what was added by the network. Although some egregious examples are clear, such as the complete bleeping of Kyle’s “I’ve learned something today” monologue at the end. While Stone and Parker inserted clear plot points like characters like Moses of all people asking, whether something was OK to show or say. I’m still uncertain whether the huge censorship bar over the Prophet is a plot point, or censorship or both.
The kicker: Prophet Muhammad had been shown in earlier episodes already, without sparking controversy and in “200” and “201” they even reference those episodes. As expected, they received death threats after the airing of the episodes and later pulled all five episodes with Muhammad depictions from their streaming sites (Super-Best Friends, Cartoon Wars 1+2, 200, 201).
This is exactly what I am talking about. Do you care about democracy or not? Do you care about human rights or not? Do you care about Palestinians (Americans), African Americans, Latino Americans or all the others that are being blamed or not?
If you do, you don’t just play the blame game, sit back and ‘watch the world burn’ as you’ve put it. As long as you’re divided, you’re powerless.
Instead of blaming, you unite. Instead of antagonizing, you organize. Instead of resignation, you fight.
Democracy is being dismantled as we speak. Agency by agency, loyalist by loyalist, executive order by executive order. And instead of building community, helping each other and organizing with those around you, I see people, who supposedly care about democracy, about human rights, about those they accuse; and what are they doing? They are blaming people who are powerless and desparing. Thereby further dividing the populace and making the takeover easier for the fascists in power. Be careful: You are telling on yourselves and your values. And we can see you.
I’m not surprised the EFAS got approved. It is a complex topic where you would need to read almost the whole KVG to truly understand what’s going on and the messaging of the opponents was sub-optimal to put it mildly.
The opposing opinion in the official booklet, at least for the German version, was incomprehensible and without concrete links to the substance of the issue or their claims. E.g. HOW are the insurers getting more power? What will they be able to do, that they can’t already? What are the absolute numbers, that show that premiums will rise, when the official report mentions sinking costs? Why will the quality of care deteriorate? They mention privatization, but don’t tell you what would facilitate that…
The Pro side mainly stressed the positive of correcting the disincentives towards cheaper ambulatory treatments through changing to the uniform financing formula, which in and of itself and without further context is a valid and good point. Both substantively and politically.
And my biggest problem lies with the official ‘examining review’ from the Federal Chancellery. I know it is normal to try and project what the changes in law could affect in reality. Imho they did it in a biased way. Why am I saying that? Because every argument and scenario they brought up was positive and basically the pro-opinion reads like a summary of the official review. Also: When making simplifications from the actual legal text, they used a more positive description (E.g. “coordination” vs. “restriction” talking about the states limiting offered services). There aren’t many absolute numbers to understand just how much money will shift between insurers, states and patients and what that would mean. In such a situation it is even more incumbent on the opponents to make the downsides clear and fill those gaps.
To add to that:
We have a militia system, which on first glance is a good thing. But then you realize that a plurality of parliamentarians are lawyers, business-people, advisors and other higher economic class individuals. Too many of them are on boards of directors or other high management positions in corporations. Compared to other western countries, it is more mixed, but clear conflicts of interests are present and it is still skewed towards the economic elite. The reasons for this are many, but among others voters getting such individuals in high positions can be paired with people in lower economic classes having less opportunities or motivation to run for office. Which is why local organizing is of utmost importance. You can see the effect in parliaments on a local level: They far more closely represent the population than on a state or federal level. Then there’s party politics, but that’ll get too long, soooo: Next point:
The media landscape: Your point about a billionaire having great impact on the electoral landscape extends to the media. You can count the owners of the local papers on one hand. Said billionaire owns some of them as well as an own TV channel if you can call it that. And there’s a general animosity towards the SRG SSR with political and legislative attacks to weaken it.
The interesting thing is that they are only one in a long line of businesses/industries openly admitting to employing undocumented immigrants, i.e. illegal hiring practices. It is clear, why these businesses are doing this: They can pay less (and the on-cost) and if at any point there is a dispute, they can threaten with the authorities, even if it is illegal in places to do so. If we can believe the numbers, they make up more than 4% of the workforce. Something that has been so seldomly prosecuted, it has become so prevalent, that they’re talking about it in the open.
You seem absolutely sure that this will materialize and that its implication means that you have no scope of action. Again, with enough institutionalists in important positions, even if he tries, it would be difficult for him to actually get rid of federal, let alone local and state elections. What is much more likely is that he will make it easier to skew or how he might call it “rig” elections. You know, like voter suppression and gerrymandering on steroids. So what I’ve written still holds: On a local and state level (or even federal level), pressure your elected officials and organize around the protection of voting rights. Be an active part of the legislative process. Democracy isn’t making a cross every four years. And she’s calling on all of us.
Sidenote: For everything that man says, you can find a clip of him saying the absolute opposite. So watch what he and his lackeys do, not what he says.
Decrying the persecution of crimes against humanity as antisemitic is quite something. It begs the question then, what these people see inherently Semitic about perpetrating these crimes.
The blatant misuse of this term is actually very harmful to Jews around the world, since calls of those actually suffering from anti-Jewish sentiment are not taken seriously anymore.
The OP did a quality reply already where he cites the article you’ve linked to debunk your own claims. But you could also have done with reading the OP’s article until the second paragraph.
The draft resolution was aimed at calling for an “immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza and the release of all hostages held by Palestinian groups in the enclave.
At this point unquestionably spouting the official lies of the U.S. or Israeli governments is spouting genocidal propaganda and can only be seen as either hopelessly ignorant or bad faith.
The second paragraph in the article:
The draft resolution was aimed at calling for an “immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza and the release of all hostages held by Palestinian groups in the enclave.
The second paragraph reads:
The draft resolution was aimed at calling for an “immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza and the release of all hostages held by Palestinian groups in the enclave.
Outside perspective: It doesn’t have to be. It is the moment democracy, its values and its people are tested. The path towards open dictatorship and/or fascism is not set in stone. What is clear is that some setbacks, even catastrophic setbacks, are unavoidable. But as a whole the free-fall can be avoided and you can bounce back from setbacks, even if it takes time. This is actually somewhat universal, since it’s not only the U.S. which is sliding more and more towards fascistic or anti-democratic tendencies. It’s just that, like with so many other things, everything does seem to be bigger in the U.S. (and Texas).
Although I’m sure a lot are feeling economic pain and/or are generally under stress and uncertainty (IIRC 50% of households struggle to make an unplanned $1000 expense), and I don’t expect it to get better under the new administration, the U.S. is still a federated system. If you look at what affects your daily lives directly, a lot more is done on a local and state level, than on the federal level.
From where I’m standing, organizing with like-minded people in your community around issues is the most promising way to go. Unfortunately the issues are back to basics issues like human rights and democratic principles, but that’s where we are. This entails more than just protesting, but actively pressuring elected officials around legislation proposals. Suggest ballot measures (find out how such a measure gets to the ballot in the first place, because it’s very different depending on where you are). And of course having people run for office and for the others to support them to get in, and get the anti-democratic forces out, once it is time. Don’t succumb to the nationalization of local elections. People can be reached way better and more directly on the local level, when they can see it directly affecting their lives and talking to the people responsible directly than for anything happening in Washington D.C. Counter the anti-democracy spewing media outlets with true alternatives (maybe there’s an entrepreneurial-minded person wanting to found a cooperative media outlet).
It sounds like a lot to do. But you are more, than you think. Even the disillusioned might be good allies. Take yes for an answer. And more people than you might expect have been part of ‘the struggle’ for a long time. Welcome them. And yes: Coordinate with and support other local actions.
Another view on what will happen with the federal institutions: Although Trump will put more loyalists than ever in powerful stations, there will remain many (even among the loyalists) who profit from the system’s status quo. This includes the Supreme Court justices and ironically corporate goons. So in furthering their own advantage, they might resist things leading to an overall degradation. Of course they will go along with and actively lobby for anything that gives them more power at the expense of the general populace, but that is already the case. Again, if you make unlikely allies on single issues: Take yes for an answer.
Bottom line: Democracy and basic rights are ideas, made by humans. And they can only survive, as long as we believe in and fight for them. Always keep the belief, always keep on fighting. If you hit your head and fall down: Get back up. As the saying goes: This is a marathon, not a sprint. All the best!
So Trump would have made annexation through military force acceptable. Instead we have Putin now changing Russia’s nuclear doctrine to: Attacking in Russia, even with conventional weapons, merits a nuclear response. A member of a union will be considered as the union as a whole. And generally lowered the level of threat (to ‘sovereignty’ instead of the former ‘existence’). https://www.newsweek.com/russia-putin-nuclear-doctrine-1988843
I don’t see this ending well. The Ukrainians, who are getting the missiles do not only have their own interest of not conceding any territory, but also the interest in getting others, primarily the U.S. involved in a direct confrontation.
Several senators commented on the incident, questioning Alderan’s intentions, since they still don’t seem to want to return to the negotiating table.