Trying a switch to tal@lemmy.today, at least for a while, due to recent kbin.social stability problems and to help spread load.

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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Reddit had the ability to have a per-subreddit wiki. I never dug into it on the moderator side, but it was useful for some things like setting up pages with subreddit rules and the like. I think that moderators had some level of control over it, at least to allow non-moderator edits or not, maybe on a per-page basis.

    That could be a useful option for communities; I think that in general, there is more utility for per-community than per-instance wiki spaces, though I know that you admin a server with one major community which you also moderate, so in your case, there may not be much difference.

    I don’t know how amenable django-wiki is to partitioning things up like that, though.

    EDIT: https://www.reddit.com/wiki/wiki/ has a brief summary.




  • Starting with… what navy.

    My guess is that it probably still exists as an institution. It sounds like the Neptune missiles are their thing, so they’re probably the ones firing those. They may not be at that hotel, but…

    EDIT: I’d also give good odds that they’re the guys doing the USV attacks.

    If Ukrainian forces can make it to the shores of the Sea of Azov, my guess is that the Ukrainian Navy’s role is going to get considerably more interesting, as I expect that they’ll be responsible for doing the cutting of Russian supply lines over water to Crimea. As things stand, they can maybe interdict vessels in the Black Sea, but not the Sea of Azov, so they can’t really fully cut off supply over water.




  • [continued from parent]

    There’s a name given to a limited-duration effect seen in the US where, under certain conditions, US Presidents get a short-term spike in popularity during military conflicts. That’s not a very long-lasting effect, but it is quite dramatic in strength – if the public considers the country to be at risk, they will tend to put aside political differences and support the current leadership.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rally_'round_the_flag_effect

    The rally 'round the flag effect (or syndrome) is a concept used in political science and international relations to explain increased short-run popular support of a country’s government or political leaders during periods of international crisis or war.[1] Because the effect can reduce criticism of governmental policies, it can be seen as a factor of diversionary foreign policy.[1]

    But suppose that instead of a short-term effect because of a temporary conflict, you can have a country – from a domestic political standpoint, at any rate, no or little actual fighting required – staying in a permanent, wartime crisis mode. Then maybe you can leverage the effect on an ongoing basis. North Korea has, rarely, had limited and small conflicts with South Korea subsequent to the Korean War. If it did initiate a second annexation attempt, it would likely go poorly for North Korea. It is not likely, as things stand, to initiate a second attempt. But by keeping the country politically at a state of war…well, you can still maintain control when, by most respects, North Korea’s situation isn’t all that great for the typical person in North Korea. The Kim dynasty is quite politically-repressive, and the country has about three percent the per-capita GDP of South Korea. That’s ordinarily a situation where people are likely going to ask some difficult questions of the government. But as long as, from a political standpoint, the country is at war…shrugs

    Russia in 2023 is more-politically-repressive than it was, say, ten years back, but it’s also still no North Korea. But I have wondered whether it might be the case that the Kremlin winds up trying to leverage some of the same mechanisms that the Kim dynasty does.


  • Maybe. I don’t think that the war is necessarily the main concern.

    Hitler consumed all of his fighting-age men, and then had to use what he had left, which were the youth and elderly. That’s not the situation in the Russo-Ukrainian War, not by a long shot.

    The Kremlin is very probably concerned about the political effects of mobilization. Mobilization was delayed well past the point where it was probably militarily-advisory, and the Kremlin was willing to pay a lot to bring in contract soldiers to try to limit mobilization. That’s not a government that’s exhausted all available manpower and is looking for stop-gap measures to try to convert more people into military power. It’s a state that’s worried about what the conflict might do to the government politically.

    The Kim dynasty stayed in power in North Korea for a long time by keeping the country in a constant state of alert and militarizing society.

    https://nationalinterest.org/blog/korea-watch/perpetual-struggle-why-korean-war-did-not-end-north-korea-164209

    The Political Motives of Sustaining a Perpetual War

    While often—yet mistakenly—called the forgotten war, to both North and South Koreans the Korean War is not some distant memory, but has become an integral part of their respective national identity. In North Korea, the discourse on the Korean War is among the most important meta-narratives that make use of the country’s foundational history and recurring historical analogies to explain and legitimize contemporary their government. According to this narrative, the Korean War did not end in 1953 and while the nature of this conflict changed over time, the logic of a perpetual national emergency has been kept intact.

    Even in times of political détente, the discursive construction of a permanent threat by and perpetual war with the United States was largely upheld in the domestic discourse. Described as a “diplomatic war” in many North Korean sources, diplomacy with America is described as continuation of war by other means. Understanding the reason behind this logic requires us to acknowledge that, to the decisionmakers in Pyongyang, sustaining a state of perpetual war and supreme emergency serves a number of tangible political functions. For instance, most notably to strengthen collective identity by provoking and allaying anxiety to maintain quiescence and de-legitimizing dissent. As the identity of the Self is experienced and apprehended more strongly in times of increased threats and the existence of an external enemy, these notions are frequently used to build internal unity and coherency.

    Selig Harrison rightly stated that North Korea’s “permanent siege mentality” has not only helped bonding the society (and the political class) together, but that the permanent state of supreme emergency is also a powerful political strategy that helped solidify the rule of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and now Kim Jong-un. As the leader is basically equated with the sovereignty and independence of the North Korean state and the protection of the Korean nation, the production of an identity as a warring nation reinforces a strong need to preserve the absolute nature of its leader.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songun

    Songun is the “military-first” policy of North Korea, prioritizing the Korean People’s Army in the affairs of state and allocation of resources. “Military-first” as a principle guides political and economic life in North Korea, with “military-first politics” dominating the political system; “a line of military-first economic construction” acting as an economic system; and “military-first ideology” serving as the guiding ideology.

    Songun elevates the Korean People’s Army within North Korea as an organization and as a state function, granting it the primary position in the North Korean government and society. It guides domestic policy and international interactions.[1] It is the framework for the government, designating the military as the “supreme repository of power”. The government grants the Korean People’s Army the highest economic and resource-allocation priority and positions it as the model for society to emulate.[2] Songun is also the ideological concept behind a shift in policies since 1994 which emphasize the people’s military over all other aspects of state and society.

    [continued in child]


  • So, first, that text is from the Declaration of Independence, not the US Constitution, which defines legal rights.

    But, secondly, the right to “pursuit of happiness” needs to be understood in the (somewhat euphemistic) language of the time. It is generally understood as referring to a right to property; this right was a core dispute in the American Revolution, and mirrors a nearly-identical “life, liberty” phrase from John Locke where the term used is explicitly “property”. That is, the right is not to never feel unhappy or depressed, but rather to not have one’s property taken away by non-elected parties.

    https://www.crf-usa.org/foundations-of-our-constitution/natural-rights.html

    The Tea Act, which imposed taxes on American colonists, was a critical dispute in the American Revolution:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Act

    The Tea Act 1773 (13 Geo. 3. c. 44) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. The principal objective was to reduce the massive amount of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the struggling company survive.[1] A related objective was to undercut the price of illegal tea, smuggled into Britain’s North American colonies. This was supposed to convince the colonists to purchase Company tea on which the Townshend duties were paid, thus implicitly agreeing to accept Parliament’s right of taxation. Smuggled tea was a large issue for Britain and the East India Company, since approximately 86% of all the tea in America at the time was smuggled Dutch tea.

    At the time, it was generally accepted that in England, only elected officials had the power to tax; this is one of the rights of Englishmen.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_of_Englishmen

    The “rights of Englishmen” are the traditional rights of English subjects and later English-speaking subjects of the British Crown. In the 18th century, some of the colonists who objected to British rule in the thirteen British North American colonies that would become the first United States argued that their traditional[1] rights as Englishmen were being violated. The colonists wanted and expected the rights that they (or their forebears) had previously enjoyed in England: a local, representative government, with regards to judicial matters (some colonists were being sent back to England for trials) and particularly with regards to taxation.[2] Belief in these rights subsequently became a widely accepted justification for the American Revolution.[3][4]

    However, American colonists had no elected MPs in Parliament. Parliament was willing neither to grant them elected MPs, nor to refrain from taxation and have locally-elected legislatures perform taxation. Parliament’s counterargument was that Americans had “virtual representation”, in that MPs elected by people in the UK – though not elected by American colonists – had their best interests at heart.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_representation

    Virtual representation was the idea that the members of Parliament, including the Lords and the Crown-in-Parliament, reserved the right to speak for the interests of all British subjects, rather than for the interests of only the district that elected them or for the regions in which they held peerages and spiritual sway.[1] Virtual representation was the British response to the First Continental Congress in the American colonies. The Second Continental Congress asked for representation in Parliament in the Suffolk Resolves, also known as the first Olive Branch Petition. Parliament claimed that their members had the well being of the colonists in mind. The Colonies rejected this premise.


  • My assumption is that that’s gonna get thrown out because they don’t have standing. Probably some kind of case law along those lines already, since I figure someone’s probably tried that before.

    googles

    Looks like it.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliana_v._United_States

    Juliana, et al. v. United States of America, et al. is a climate-related lawsuit filed in 2015 by 21 youth plaintiffs against the United States and several executive branch officials. Filing their case in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, the plaintiffs, represented by the non-profit organization Our Children’s Trust, include Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, the members of Martinez’s organization Earth Guardians, and climatologist James Hansen as a “guardian for future generations”.

    They call for the government to offer “both declaratory and injunctive relief for their claim—specifically, a declaration of the federal government’s fiduciary role in preserving the atmosphere and an injunction of its actions which contravene that role.”

    In January 2020, a Ninth Circuit panel dismissed the case on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue for an injunction.

    Legal actions to affect climate change by federal and state-level governments have been attempted since the 1990s; one of the first known cases was led by Antonio Oposa, a Philippine lawyer that represented a class-action suit of 43 students against the Philippine government to protect a forest surrounding their village.

    Since 2011, Our Children’s Trust has been filing various state and federal lawsuits on behalf of youth, though most of these have been dismissed by courts, as courts generally have not ruled that access to a clean environment is a right that can be litigated against.[8][5][6] Such cases are also generally dismissed as lawsuits cannot be initiated by “generalized grievances”, and require plaintiffs with standing to sue and can demonstrate concrete harm that the government has done, and that the courts can at least partially redress the harm by order of the court.[9] Further, cases cannot be brought to court if they deal with a “political question” which cannot be resolved by actions of Congress and the President.[9]

    The “political question” bit should be inapplicable, since this is a company, but the lack of standing to sue for climate change probably does apply.

    I assume that this is a crowd-pleaser by the California executive, that they expect it to get tossed out but want the political points.