@michelm @evan (sorry! i had to get the kid.) i think i should have done a better job to emphasize that the mischief is in the word “right”. a right means something one can enforce, even over the objections of others. in the context of national self-determination, it is often taken to legitimize violent “resistance”. 1/
@michelm @evan that self-perceived communities have aspirations to a kind of self-determination strikes me as fine and normal, and i agree that there are many situations where it would be better if states would recognize those aspirations, which might range from recognizing as official a minority language, to intrastate devolution and autonomy, to formal secession as a separate state. 2/
@michelm @evan but i think elevating thise aspirations into a “right” is beyond counterproductive. (i think it has proven in practice quite vicious.) states thrive when they are functional, and communities that consider themselves disrespected and repressed are a drag for everyone. as long as it’s clear that any changes will be by mutual consent rather than unilateral, i think there’s tremendous scope for human communities to work stuff out. 3/
@michelm @evan but as soon as there’s a right, there’s a threat to try to enforce some rearrangement without mutual consent. and i think that poisons the whole exercise. ironically i think it ends up harming the minority communities it is meant to empower most, because while it legitimates “resistance”, they then bear the brunt of much more serious kinds of oppression than might otherwise obtain if the more powerful majority did not fear unilateral secession and potential violence. 4/
@michelm @evan i don’t mean to diminish the real trade-off here. taking the “right” off the table does mean the more powerful group can more easily choose to simply ignore and repress the claims of a less powerful group. but my (perhaps mistaken!) judgment is that overall, the cost of polarization and violence that claiming a “right” engenders outweighs the good that might come from the stronger negotiating position a perceived right might enable. /fin
@michelm @evan my view on this is very empirically guided. perhaps my very casual emprirics are wrong! but in my read, *nonconsensual* attempts to alter borders to map to nations has brought much more conflict than peace, although yes you can find examples of both. i agree very much that sometimes agreed alterations of borders to better conform to perceived nations can be pro-peace! compare Czechoslovakia vs Yugoslavia.
@michelm @evan I also say "They cannot be sundered unilaterally, and should not be redrawn lightly, but only with mutual accord of the parties most affected."
We can discuss anything, and redraw anything by mutual accord. But letting claims of nationhood justify a resort to violence to alter them more often yields death than justice.
@kentwillard (thanks!)
@evan fwiw here’s my more extended take. https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/10/13/national-self-determination-is-a-vicious-idea/index.html
“We can thus see Xi Jinping as both a heir to Lenin’s New Economic Policy and in much more contemporary terms as a populist response to the excesses of the new rich.” #BrankoMilanovic https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/state-capitalism-one-hundred-years
the tagline for the program offering free peep shows to snitches, “if you say something, see something!”
@nuala happy birthday! 🎉🎊🎁
“I suppose that it is kind of you to celebrate our martyrdom.”
i'm pretty sure full KYC-ed legal names have been pilfered from bittrex, which are used to generate scam e-mails with a bit of verisimilitude.
if you click the link, a site comes up which will smoothly connect to a crypto wallet and ask it to sign a message presented only as a bunch of hex. i, um, chose not to.
not many crypto enthusiasts on my mastodon timeline, but if you ever had a bittrex account, be careful out there. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bittrex/comments/17qaf36/is_this_email_a_scam_picture_below/
[new draft post] The bad war, like all the wars https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/11/07/the-bad-war-like-all-the-wars/index.html
ornamental soap is an attractive nuisance.
it makes more sense once you realize “moms for liberty” is kind of the opposite of “liberty for moms”.
@mybarkingdogs there might be some radicalisms with which i have some sympathy. but on Israel/Palestine, each radicalism I think is rancid.
i agree, we need the dull, practical work of arranging coexistence, letting passions cool, and detoxifying the discourse from the dreams of eliminationists masquerading as idealists on either side.
This Israel-sympathetic reading of the Israel/Palestine conflict (that writes Palestinians as victims of larger forces than themselves that are decidedly not Israel) is worth a careful read.
by #ShanyMor https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/israel-zionism/2023/11/ecstasy-and-amnesia-in-the-gaza-strip/
@Alon @BenRossTransit @phillmv @stevenbodzin earlier in the conflict, when the US first hindered fighter jet deliveries, escalation risks were clearly top-of-mind. it’s the awful stability of the conflict that has made escalation seem like a non- or merely pretextual concern now.
@Alon @BenRossTransit @phillmv @stevenbodzin maybe so. i guess i’d give a bit more benefit of the doubt that (at least US) blob caution had something to do with fears about uncontrolled escalation (which i very much felt and shared). but here we are.
@Alon @BenRossTransit @phillmv @stevenbodzin there’s a lot going on in the world. better an armed ukraine than a defeated one. but ukraine like gaza is a place where the urgent task is to find some alternative means of competing or adjudicating a situation that seems now to be destructively entrenched. we need to create alternatives that are neither capitulation nor continued destruction.
@BenRossTransit @Alon @phillmv @stevenbodzin yes. Israel should be Westphalian with respect to its neighbors, but a form of constructive meddling consistent with Westphalianism is simply the power of example, and Israel under Netanyahu has been deeply deficient in that regard.
@Alon @phillmv @BenRossTransit @stevenbodzin Pakistan is one case, and I agree its position and relationship viz China and India render it largely insensitive to what goes on in Israel/Palestine. But there is a continuity of history and sentiment across muslims in MENA west of Persia that it is unwise simply to write off, even if its current, brittle governing structures can be coopted.