I can’t find the pork ban on the link you provided. The closest I saw was “Quarantine inspection of animals, plants and their derived products” which isn’t a prohibition of anything in particular, and the link to the relevant authority literally goes to a dead page.

The guy was from Indonesia and routed to Taiwan via Hong Kong. There’s a good chance there were no signs or announcements in a language he could understand.

Check what though, that’s the issue. I would never think that my carnitas burrito from Chipotle might catch me a 10k fine.

And let’s be real, there’s no reason to put that “(maybe)” in there. Are you suggesting the dude was like, “Ahahaha, my dastardly plan is in motion! I’m going to snuggle 4oz of pork hidden away in my lunch, in direct violation of import controls. It’s so clever because I have absolutely no discernable reason I would want to do this on purpose!!!”

And what are you recommending me check? Google every item on the “ingredients” list on my coke zero to make sure I’m not smuggling red dye number 33 into a country that bans it?

Most civilized countries don’t fine people $10k for breaking laws that it would be very reasonable they have no idea exist.

I mean, I don’t know that that changes my point at all, but if you’d really like me to rephrase it:

I don’t Google every item in my suitcase to make sure the the type of cotton my socks are made of won’t get me immediately deported and fined $10,000 that I don’t have.

I mean, that headline implies intentionality, no? I doubt the guy knew that his lunch would get him slapped with a $10k fine.

I know I don’t Google every single item in my bag to make sure that something like the type of cotton my socks are made of doesn’t get me thrown in jail.

Did you read the article? They haven’t lost their tax exempt status.

They were getting large donations from the police department, and the police department stopped donating because of their support for BLM.

I mean, you could project based on the casualties already incurred I suppose.

Looks to be about 65k Americans military members died in the Pacific theater, and we were still a long ways off from reaching mainland Japan, and the fighting was only gonna get worse the farther in we got. And that’s just Americans. It doesn’t count the Japanese casualties, which by all accounts dwarfed the American numbers.

200k civilians were killed in the atomic bombings. Now, it’s worth noting that those are civilian deaths, which one can argue have a higher moral weight than combatant deaths.

So, all that said, in plain numbers I think it’s an extremely safe bet that far more than 200k more people would have died in a blockade/land invasion scenario. But, you could argue that it’s apples to oranges since the bombs were on civilian targets.

It’s also worth noting to that the 200k dead to resolve the war were all non-American, which doesn’t make it any less of a tragic loss of life, but matters in the “political” sense. If you are at war, and you are handed a solution that can end the war without sending any more of your own people to die, do you as the leader have a moral responsibility to do it? Like, if you have the choice in front of you to either bomb a civilian target, killing 200k “enemy” civilians but ending the war, or sending even 100k American’s to their deaths, knowing that you are the one responsible for making sure those men and women get home safe, can you in good conscience choose the latter? Is it better to choose the latter? I wouldn’t want to have to make that decision, but I also am loathe to second guess the decision of the person who has to make it.

I feel like the narrative surrounding the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings has changed enormously since I was a kid.

I remember learning that, while tragic, the number of lives lost in the bombing paled in comparison to the numbers of lives being lost and that would be lost in winning the war by conventional means. That it was a way to minimize further bloodshed.

I’m not super well read on the subject, but is that not true? Or, if it is true, does it not matter?

I’m mostly just trying to figure out what caused the shift.

That is one of the arguments most often used against gun control as well.

Yeah, I don’t think I’m gonna defend the guy who got shot here. According to the article he was a real piece of work, and it seems like he was a credible threat to the life of the officer he put in the headlock.

I don’t think the officers did anything wrong in this one. Broken clock twice a day and all that.

I don’t think I know a single person who was boycotting Chick-fil-A who stuck it out.

I agree with everything you said being the goal of the protests, but that wasn’t my question.

My question was, “is this particular protest sign arguing for the abolition of the state of Israel?”

The sign seems to be advocating for things beyond what are listed in your post, which is why I asked the question.

Maybe I’m reading into the verbiage too much, but I have trouble coming up with an interpretation of “liberate Palestine” that is both a coherent and doesn’t involve the dissolution of the state of Israel.

Maybe it’s just going for vibes, and there wasn’t much thought behind the choice of words, but it’s the actual choice of words that threw me off.

I don’t think that’s what I’m implying though. I’m all for signs that say “end the genocide” or “equality for Palestinians.”

I think my question is, does the sign in the thumbnail imply that the state of Israel can’t exist without genocide?

I think it absolutely can, and that’s why I was questioning the message on the sign, as it seems to oppose what you claim most of the protestors want.

Genuine question. The sign in the thumbnail says, “We want Palestine to be liberated.” What does that mean?

Is it advocating for the dissolution of the state of Israel? Like, “liberated” implies the removal of an occupier, no?

It can’t just mean “stop the murders,” right? Like, if that’s the case it was say to liberate the “Palestinians,” not “Palestine” right?

I just ask because I feel like the messaging on this is a bit all over the place at times, and calls for the abolishment of the state of Israel seem a bit extreme to me, and I’m trying to figure out if that’s the actual stance people are taking.

Not sure why this is getting down voted? Like, we can agree that genocide and antisemitism are both bad at the same time, right?

Like, just because Israel’s actions against Palestine are evil, does that necessarily require someone to embrace the Holocaust? Clearly not, right?

And I realize that Zionist =/= Jewish, but it’s dancing a fine line, no? At the very least it’s a call to violence against a Jewish adjacent group that I think feels pretty deeply uncomfortable.

Maybe I’m alone in that though. :/

I feel like you’re taking a bit of a dissonant position here, no?

If it would be a moral tragedy to kill a cat and eat it, why is that not true for a cow? If life eats life, it’s not murder for me to kill and eat the cat, correct? So why is it a moral evil if killing and eating the cow is not?

I think you’re saying that this is just one of the “fucked up” stances that society has taken? But then why participate in it?

I’m fine with either answer. Either “eating meat is fine because animal life is less valuable than people’s dietary needs/preferences,” or “vegetarianism is the only moral option, as all life is equally valuable,” but it seems to me like any answer in the middle is hypocrisy, no?

Haha, we responded at like the same time lol. Wild.

And fair on all counts, but it does seem at odds to an “a life is a life” position, no?

Like, I’d assume you would be more upset if they were farming humans for meat than you are that they raise chickens and cows for meat, no?

And are you against all farming, or just factory farming? If an old school farmer raises a cow in a field, and then kills and eats it, is that acceptable?

And are fish’s lives not valuable? Less valuable than a chicken’s or a cow’s? It’s still a life, no?

I’m truly not trying to be combative. I’m actively trying to understand how to jive these two positions.

Fair. I’d be curious how you square that with the idea that “a life is a life”?

I don’t mean that in an accusatory way. It just seems like an inherent contradictions to me.

And to be clear, not that you’d save your cat over a stranger or enemy. Like, I know people who would save inanimate objects before either because the emotional connection is that strong

I mean more in the abstract that human and animal life are of equal value.

Like, would you support the farming of people to sell their meat at the grocery store? I’d assume not, but then it feels like a contradiction to me, and I’d be genuinely interested to hear how you square that circle.

I feel like the idea that an animal life is worth less than a human life is demonstrably true at a societal level though, right?

Like, we don’t sell human parts at a grocery store to eat, and I feel like people would call it a moral tragedy if we did.

If an animals life is equivalent to a humans, then meat is in fact murder, no?

Yeah, I didn’t mean it as a jab. I just thought it was an interesting assertion that “a life is a life” in this context. Seemed a strong stance, and I wondered how far they carried it.