All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[thwhtGuardian]

I do get why some people don't want clear standards, as it opens up loopholes, and invites criticism of the side willing to adopt standards if someone can now argue (often sloppily) that they're not meeting those standards, or that they're setting standards that are self-serving.

It still beats the alternatives. Loopholes can be closed. If someone is arguing in bad faith, that can be pointed out.

But if we're dealing with people from different backgrounds, we can't assume they're going to have the same frame of reference. Standards will also help avoid situations where people are the toxic combination of obnoxious and wrong.

We've got several discussions here.

Private institutions are allowed to toss and ban people for whatever reason. I'd rather they not, but if CBR wanted to, they could become the top forum for Comicsgate and Trump fans. However, as private citizens, we're still able to discuss and criticize those decisions.

This argument gets messier when some people are actually calling for prosecution, and that's happened here. Dalak wrote "That she hasn't been prosecuted for this is more of an indictment of our legal system rather than a reason she is not guilty of the actions. This is obvious when you consider all the conservatives who are able to make such obviously loaded statements in order to encourage violence against their chosen targets (Democrats, LGBT, Muslims, Antifa, etc)" so he is suggesting she broke a law, or that laws should be changed to apply to what she's done.

"Be civil" is a vague rule because different people will have their own views on what is hateful. Well-meaning people sometimes come to weird conclusions due to blind spots, being primed to view something ungenerously, or sometimes getting tricked by trolls.

"Don't defend people who say transphobic things" has a potential flaw in that it could be read as preventing anyone from pointing out when detractors of a transphobe are mistaken on a specific point.

I haven't offered any opinion on whether a word applies when describing mastectomies performed on minors, mainly because I'm still figuring out aspects of the question. If someone is in need of the procedure, the word "mutilation" is wrong. I suppose it would apply if patients come to regret it.

There's no flaw in saying, "Don't defend transphobic people". Transphobic comments are terrible. Period. Don't repeat them. Don't "what about..." them (like you just did) Don't defend them. It's that easy because everything about transphobia is wrong. And that you think that there is a question about if mutilations is a hurtful word is very telling. Especially after being told repeatedly that it's horrible.

Just like racism or homophobia or Islamophobia, there's literally nothing to make up your mind about. They're just people living their lives and if you treat them differently or start trying to add equivocations to how they should live their lives then you're a terrible person.

[babyblob]

I cant believe this is even a debate. I cant believe this has gone on for so many pages.

It is simple. When it comes to Libs of Tiktok and other that promote hate speech and violence then the ONLY answer should be

"These people are wrong, their words are dangerous, and they should not be given a platform."

And a person who refuses to do that repeatedly is just as vile.

End of story.

[Panfoot]

I cant believe this is even a debate. I cant believe this has gone on for so many pages.

Weird how it seems to come up EVERY TIME with one certain person...

[Tami]

Fearing scandal, Air Force blocked generals’ foreign consulting deals

During the height of the war in Afghanistan, U.S. military leaders flocked to the Caspian Sea nation of Azerbaijan to embrace its president, Ilham Aliyev, despite a report from the U.S. Embassy comparing the mustachioed strongman to mafia bosses in “The Godfather.”

Setting aside concerns about Azerbaijan’s culture of corruption, Pentagon officials persuaded Aliyev to open his country’s borders and airspace to critical U.S. and NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. In exchange, U.S. officials promised a closer diplomatic partnership with Aliyev and steered $369 million in defense contracts to Silk Way Airlines, an Azerbaijan cargo carrier that U.S. investigators say was controlled by the government.

Two U.S. Air Force generals — Duncan McNabb and William Fraser III — who oversaw the supply routes from 2008 to 2014 later tried to cash in on their Azerbaijan connections. Upon retiring from active duty, the four-star generals negotiated valuable consulting deals with Silk Way Airlines, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act. One of them stood to earn $5,000 a day.

The Pentagon and State Department normally rubber-stamp requests from retired U.S. military personnel to work for foreign powers or companies controlled by foreign governments, having approved more than 95 percent of applications since 2015. But when the Air Force learned about McNabb’s and Fraser’s business ventures in Azerbaijan, officials flagged them as a potential embarrassment and a risk to national security, the documents show.

The case triggered a prolonged internal battle between the retired generals and R. Philip Deavel, a civilian Air Force lawyer who feared that the consulting deals might trigger a scandal.

Other Air Force officials repeatedly sought to prevent the dispute from becoming public. Between 2016 and 2021, The Post submitted four separate FOIA requests that should have produced records about the case, but the Air Force either did not reply or said it could not find any documents.v

This year, the Air Force finally released more than 400 pages of records — but only after The Post sued in federal court and presented written proof from another agency that the generals’ conduct in Azerbaijan had generated an investigation.1

The files provide an unusually detailed look at how two high-ranking U.S. military commanders tried to profit from foreign relationships forged during wartime, and at the Pentagon’s struggles to police such behavior.

The documents reveal that Air Force intelligence officials objected to the Azerbaijan business deals for reasons that remain classified. Meanwhile, Deavel, who as the director of the Air Force Review Boards Agency was responsible for reviewing such arrangements, raised ethical concerns because the U.S. military had given extensive business to Silk Way Airlines while McNabb and Fraser managed the supply routes through Azerbaijan.

[Mister Mets]

Sounds like he is cutting close to sealioning.

How so?

This is a public forum. No one's butting into a private conversation.

And you've got that combination covered quite well with this continued nonsense.

The standards have been explained plenty well already. But hey, keep running those goalposts around while you try to defend someone inciting and encouraging violence.



They were but unfortunately now we have that loser Musk in charge and he's got no problem allowing scum like Ted Cruz to repost the pictures.

Of course Musk is currently on the "They're going to assassinate me for revealing the truth!!!" train so he could theoretically not be aware of it.

I'm looking at the responses here. These have not been explained and not been explained plenty.

thwhtGuardian thinks she should be banned from social media for use of slurs. That does still leave an opening for someone else who does the same thing, but is more measured in their commentary. He later suggests "be civil" as a catch-all policy.

Tendrin thinks she knows what she's doing, but doesn't quite translate that to a moderation policy.

Dalek thinks she should be banned and prosecuted for trying to incite violence, but what's the standard that we want social media administrators and prosecutors to use to determine that? Should it just be up to their discretion?

[Mister Mets]

My Uncle aways told me

"When debating someone and they go out of their way to show you who they will are? Let them because their hateful words will do more for winning the debate for you then anything you could say."

It is a BS dodge to use things like "Well what policy would you intact? What do you want to see?" as a light weight defense of a horrible person rather then condemning the person and their hate speech.

All that should be said is

"This person is saying hurtful, dangerous things and it needs to stop."

Anything else is pure BS and is wrong.

On this forum, I don't need to persuade the regulars about the flaws of libsoftiktok.

If people here think she should be arrested, that is an important argument.

The policy questions matter, and they're usually more important than the individual. And whatever standard is articulated for libsoftiktok will apply to people in other situations, like anyone reporting police brutality.

In the absence of actual standards, it gives conservatives or whoever else the opening to create their own standards.

There's no flaw in saying, "Don't defend transphobic people". Transphobic comments are terrible. Period. Don't repeat them. Don't "what about..." them (like you just did) Don't defend them. It's that easy because everything about transphobia is wrong. And that you think that there is a question about if mutilations is a hurtful word is very telling. Especially after being told repeatedly that it's horrible.

Just like racism or homophobia or Islamophobia, there's literally nothing to make up your mind about. They're just people living their lives and if you treat them differently or start trying to add equivocations to how they should live their lives then you're a terrible person.

The moment people are criticized for saying something true about a bad person, we lose the ability to have honest discussions.

I cant believe this is even a debate. I cant believe this has gone on for so many pages.

It is simple. When it comes to Libs of Tiktok and other that promote hate speech and violence then the ONLY answer should be

"These people are wrong, their words are dangerous, and they should not be given a platform."

And a person who refuses to do that repeatedly is just as vile.

End of story.

Who will determine that their words are dangerous and that they should not be given a platform? What are the standards they use to determine that?

That is a much more important question than one person online, even with a following, being vile.

[thwhtGuardian]

How so?

This is a public forum. No one's butting into a private conversation.


I'm looking at the responses here. These have not been explained and not been explained plenty.

thwhtGuardian thinks she should be banned from social media for use of slurs. That does still leave an opening for someone else who does the same thing, but is more measured in their commentary. He later suggests "be civil" as a catch-all policy.

Tendrin thinks she knows what she's doing, but doesn't quite translate that to a moderation policy.

Dalek thinks she should be banned and prosecuted for trying to incite violence, but what's the standard that we want social media administrators and prosecutors to use to determine that? Should it just be up to their discretion?

It's a policy that works, like I said, is there a list of slurs you can't use here on CBR?

No.

Despite that though, is there a lot of confusion about what is and isn't appropriate here?

No.

So explain how "be civil" doesn't work.

And Tenderin's " Thinks she knows what she's doing" is the same, "don't yell fire!" standard I talked about. And it's not bout "thinks" it's that we all know(and you should too!). The message was very transparent: they never posted about the gay scene in Colorado before the shooting in Colorado Springs...but after the shooting posts objections about several other clubs and events in the area.

Do you need help connecting the dots there?

It's been posted before without light dawning so I guess I'll spell it out: the message is, "Good job, now here are some other places you guys should do next!" And it's a message that doesn't take some secret decoder ring to read, the intent was crystal clear.

Like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded area, that's a comment that could very likely cause harm to the wider community which is a very obvious "no-no"

And again, it's something that has been dealt with here at CBR. There have been cases of bad users here of publicly listing the addresses and phone numbers("doxing") of other users or comic professionals or columnists they don't like...and they get swiftly banned, because again the message is clear, "Here's their personal information, you guys do you!" and that's an act that could very easily lead to harm so it's an obvious no-go.

Again, it's not hard.

Don't defend these kinds of people or their actions.

[babyblob]

Who will determine that their words are dangerous and that they should not be given a platform? What are the standards they use to determine that?

That is a much more important question than one person online, even with a following, being vile.

The standards are simple and one that you seem unable or unwilling to accept as you keep tap dancing around it.

Use a slur - banned

Promote and retweet hate speech - Banned

Encourage violence against a group - Banned.

This is a standard that should be help up for everyone.

it is not a "Well what about this what about that?"

It is freaken simple.

Everyone knows slurs and hate speech are vile and have no place in this world.

You tweet about drag shows needing to be shut down just hours after a mass shooting at a gay club? It is clear that is encouraging violence. There is no debate on that. They should be banned!

Use the N Word, Use the F word for gays, use a slur on Latinos or Asians = Banned!

Why is that so hard to understand?

if you keep debating that fact you are either encouraging that kind of talk, or for what ever reason you are ignoring the argument that those words are vile and dangerous. I dont know which one would offend me more.

[Tendrin]

Like I said, Mets wants to talk about standards of conduct because he doesn't want to talk about what Chaya is actually doing. It's not our job to conjure up content moderation policies. We're not lawyers and developers or congress. We're just people who can see plainly that someone is regularly targetting, inciting, doxing, and attacking a minority. Individuals who have been highlighted by Libs of Tiktok have received death threats, bomb threats, and others all because Chaya/LibsOfTiKTok chose to target them in frequently out of context and misleading ways.

Mets himself has offered the hoary old explanation that LibsOfTikTok just 'highlights Lib sillyness'. When evidence contrary to that point and her connection to real event has been pointed out, it has been passed over without comment to instead demand we articulate a content moderation policy for social media that he instead wants us to spend our time creating and defending for him to poke holes in.

So let's not indulge him. It's not the point.

[thwhtGuardian]

On this forum, I don't need to persuade the regulars about the flaws of libsoftiktok.

If people here think she should be arrested, that is an important argument.

The policy questions matter, and they're usually more important than the individual. And whatever standard is articulated for libsoftiktok will apply to people in other situations, like anyone reporting police brutality.

In the absence of actual standards, it gives conservatives or whoever else the opening to create their own standards.

The moment people are criticized for saying something true about a bad person, we lose the ability to have honest discussions.

Who will determine that their words are dangerous and that they should not be given a platform? What are the standards they use to determine that?

That is a much more important question than one person online, even with a following, being vile.

There is no good reason to say anything contrary about terrible human beings, especially without at least acknowledging they are otherwise vile(which you strangely haven't done, I wonder why?)

[worstblogever]

Meanwhile, all the people I know who are performing at drag shows have "side hustles" like volunteering at pet rescues, medical charities for children's cancer wards, helping rehome desperate families.

They do more Christian-like work than any supposed "Christian" evangelical out to promote violence against them by sharing accusations like "Grooming!" against them.

Some folks just need to learn the lessons they should have years ago in "Too Wong Foo" or "Kinky Boots" or something. The only thing stopping queens and kings from improving your community either through their art or their life off stage is your own homophobic obsessions.

It's like living alongside the X-Men as one of their human friends, and seeing them keep having to save a world that hates and fears them.

[thwhtGuardian]

Meanwhile, all the people I know who are performing at drag shows have "side hustles" like volunteering at pet rescues, medical charities for children's cancer wards, helping rehome desperate families.

They do more Christian-like work than any supposed "Christian" evangelical out to promote violence against them by sharing accusations like "Grooming!" against them.

Some folks just need to learn the lessons they should have years ago in "Too Wong Foo" or "Kinky Boots" or something. The only thing stopping queens and kings from improving your community either through their art or their life off stage is your own homophobic obsessions.

It's like living alongside the X-Men as one of their human friends, and seeing them keep having to save a world that hates and fears them.

The lesson goes back further than that, Dr. Seuss' "The Sneetches and Other Stories" should pretty much clear up any questions about people who might look or act differently than you do, and it's standard reading at age two.

There is zero reason to be questioning whether "mutilation" is an appropriate term to use to describe the trans comuunity.

[worstblogever]

The lesson goes back further than that, Dr. Seuss' "The Sneetches and Other Stories" should pretty much clear up any questions about people who might look or act differently than you do, and it's standard reading at age two.

There is zero reason to be questioning whether "mutilation" is an appropriate term to use to describe the trans comuunity.

The only time I had to deal with genital mutilation was when some dumbass dude was admitted through our ER because he tried to cure his ED by putting a TV antenna into his urethra and then use that "sustained erection" to have sex. It had the catastrophic damage effect that any smart person not desperate to get laid could have predicted.

The urinalysis sample came up as a giant blood clot in a specimen cup that in our attempts to pour it into a vial and run it slid out akin to a can of cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving. We just called the ER and told them, "What do you think the result was? It's a situation more of 'is there urine in this blood?' than 'is there blood in this urine?'"

And hey, just like that, I've defended the trans community and with this anecdote somehow written a story worthy of a Warren Ellis comic. It's a great morning.

[Tendrin]

oh my god wbe.

[worstblogever]

oh my god wbe.

I may just start changing the subject by finding medical stories in the news when folks get transphobic, come to think of it.