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?

Which is why they released women for the other 7 days. Love how this article contradicts itself in the first sentence.

Here’s the entire sentence:

Israeli official says Hamas doesn’t want to release remaining women because it doesn’t want them speaking publicly about what they endured on Oct. 7 and in their time in captivity

which clearly implies that Hamas was fine releasing female hostages that were treated okay, but is refusing to release the remaining female hostages that have possibly been abused, raped, sexually mistreated.

You obviously don’t have to agree with that analysis, but where exactly do you see the contradiction?

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.

Well, so again: you can leash train otters???

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?

If they call for genocide? Yes, of course.

What makes you think society should just sit idly by and do nothing when people call for mass murder and genocide?

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?

From the article you’re commenting on:

The suspects were said to have celebrated the attacks by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel on Oct. 7, and were accused of spreading hate speech against Jewish people on social media, using symbols of banned terrorist organizations, dpa reported.

and

One suspect allegedly sent a sticker in a WhatsApp school class chat with the words “Gas the Jews.” Another person, a German-Turkish dual citizen, allegedly posted on his account that “the Jewish sons” deserved nothing more than to be “exterminated,” dpa reported.

So probably more the category “celebrating antisemitic terrorism” and “calling for the extermination of all Jews.”

You decide:

One suspect allegedly sent a sticker in a WhatsApp school class chat with the words “Gas the Jews.” Another person, a German-Turkish dual citizen, allegedly posted on his account that “the Jewish sons” deserved nothing more than to be “exterminated,” dpa reported.

and from a German source:

A German-Turkish defendant is said to have posted on his account that “the Jewish sons” deserved nothing more than to be slaughtered “and exterminated”.

and

According to the LKA, a Turkish citizen posted a picture of Hitler shortly after October 7, adding: “I could kill all the Jews, but I left some alive to show you why I killed them.” Next to it, he posted a Palestinian flag, the caption “Free Palestine” and an emoji with a victory sign.

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?

The fact remains that America was supporting a socialist regime in a war against a theocracy - which really contradicts the claim made above that America was always supporting theocracies against left leaning regimes.

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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.

Counterpoint: the Ba’athists in Iraq were also heavily backed by America, even though they were pan-Arab Socialists.