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Dead Reckoning posted:once the FBI paramilitaries decided to make their move, they shut down that little prorest/occupation with worrying efficiency. Oh man you're so close to figuring out that the brutal violent police state you're cheering for every day is actually bad for you too 
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Dec 3, 2016 07:05
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Dead Reckoning posted:If they don't believe the government will ever treat them justly, why are they filing suits in U.S. courts and arguing with the ACoE about its jurisdiction? Either they weren't acting in good faith, only planning to accept the government's decision as legitimate if it went their way, or your explanation makes no sense. No this argument makes no sense. It's perfectly possible to believe a law is unjust yet also recognize that it's in my self-interest to file suits in court in case I win. For example, innocent people in Guantanamo don't lose the right to complain about their imprisonment just because they also let a lawyer represent their interests. If I were in Guantanamo and had the opportunity to illegally escape I would certainly take it even if I had also tried to get released from within the court system. Dead Reckoning posted:Here’s the thing: you can't reject the legal system when you don't like it, then lean on it the rest of the time, like to keep people from arbitrarily stealing your poo poo. Everyone has pet issues, and we resolve those conflicts through the legal system. Of course you can. I am capable of believing that some laws are just and other laws are unjust. And it's perfectly reasonable for say a gay Texan in 2001 to expect the state police to protect me from being raped or murdered even if I habitually break laws against sodomy. "You committed illegal sodomy therefore you forfeit all access to the justice system and can be raped and murdered at will" is a poo poo argument and even you are smart enough to know that. E: Let's follow this line of thought to its stupid and absurd conclusion: I catch someone jaywalking rather than lobbying the city council to add a crosswalk, they have forfeited their right to police protection and are free game to be robbed and killed by anyone. Hm yeah I think this little legal theory of yours might work out badly for society. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Dec 3, 2016 |
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Dec 3, 2016 07:12
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Jarmak posted:What. Law. Is. Unjust. Arguing that the law is just and the Sioux should abide by it for that reason is a fine argument, but that wasn't the argument I was responding to.
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Dec 3, 2016 08:55
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Dead Reckoning posted:Here's my take: I don't believe in letting people I sympathize with pick and choose when to obey the law, because some real assholes that the law keeps in check would like to have the same privilege, and I have no empirical way of showing that my sincere beliefs are better than their sincere beliefs. Okay but if we're going with complete moral relativism we also have no empirical way of showing that breaking the law is better than following it. This argument is bizarre because you're completely relativist when it suits you and you claim we have to treat the Sioux and the KKK exactly the same way, but then you switch to an absolutist position that it's immoral to break the law for any reason. Dead Reckoning posted:On your larger points, I think there is a difference between declaring that a general law is unjust ("there should be no speed limits") and declaring that enforcing the law against you specifically or in this specific case is in just ("there were no speed limits when my ancestors moved to this territory, so I shouldn't be constrainted now.") Principles of law have to be generally applicable; if one person gets a heckler's veto, everyone gets it. Even people I fundamentally disagree with. But where do you draw the line on the other side? You're saying civil disobedience is always wrong because bad people could use it for bad goals, but the other side of that coin is: if we have a moral imperative to follow and enforce all laws just because they're the law then that justifies a lot of horrible poo poo that was done according to proper legal procedure. Dead Reckoning posted:The whole point of civil disobedience is not to break the law and get away with it. The lesson is not that you have the right to break laws you don't care for with no consequence. Uh weren't you arguing like forever that it was good that the jury nullified all charges against the Malheur protestors who occupied property that wasn't theirs, converted federal vehicles, etc?
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Dec 3, 2016 09:13
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Polygynous posted:ok, so how many unarmed people do the police have to kill for you to care, ballpark? I assume the answer is "as many as it takes to get a little more oil on the market"
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Dec 3, 2016 09:18
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blowfish posted:Big Oil making a dumb expensive mistake that will make Big Oil less profitable? I won't stand in their way. Environmental and cultural impacts of a construction proposal are a cost/benefit analysis. If you think the benefits of this construction are zero or negative, then you are implicitly admitting the protesters' position is correct.
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Dec 3, 2016 14:11
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Except according to you this is a bad and wasteful money-losing project that isn't worth the cultural desecration or environmental risks, so those "randoms" are correct in this case. If a project is a bad idea, which you agree this one is, then shutting it down is a good idea and doesn't logically compel us to shutter every infrastructure project regardless of merit.
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Dec 3, 2016 14:28
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Well no that's not true at all. Blocking construction brings attention to the issue, if we reevaluate the construction because of this attention and we find out that you're right and it is a worthless project that is not worth the cultural and historical damage or the environmental risks then we can stop construction for those reasons without giving everyone a heckler's veto on everything forever. The civil rights movement is an analogy here: the civil disobedience drew national attention to bad laws and we said "holy poo poo these laws are bad" and repealed them because they were bad and not because they were disobeyed. We are capable of repealing bad laws without being compelled to now overturn every law good or bad any rando chooses to disobey. Your argument makes zero sense, if we agree the project has negative benefit then it shouldn't be done, there's no moral imperative that we must press ahead and always do wasteful and awful things whenever opposition exists because anything less would be allowing heckler's vetoes.
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Dec 3, 2016 16:12
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CommieGIR posted:Also: Something being classified as "Infrastructure" does not essentially make it "Good" or "Necessary" Bizarrely, he acknowledges this and argues that we should waste money on bad unnecessary projects out of spite to make sure we never agree with opponents of bad unnecessary infrastructure projects 
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Dec 3, 2016 16:18
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Dead Reckoning posted:So if a direct action group started just randomly killing refinery workers to intimidate them into not showing up for work, and it was effective in doing that, you would consider that legitimate? So is your position that so long as I personally own enough oil to destroy human civilization, it's my right to burn it all if I wish?
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Dec 4, 2016 15:46
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I don't really see how anyone who cites winning in war, conquest, and slaughter to confer a ~*~*moral treaty right to the land*~*~ can possibly object to protesters using force to stop the pipeline. At most you could say it's a tactical error because the protesters are too powerless to win if the US Government decides to attack them, but in this case the protesters did win so I guess they had a ~*~* moral right to disrupt construction after all 
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Dec 5, 2016 01:39
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Dead Reckoning posted:That is a distinction without a difference. The property owners could appeal to the Lakota government about it, no matter what happens it will be "legal" and therefore morally correct.
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Dec 5, 2016 02:12
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Dead Reckoning posted:An ownership right is by definition the right to exclude. If the tribal government is never going to interfere in the current owners' right to occupy their property or pass it on by intestate succession or sell their land to any party as they saw fit, how exactly would the tribes be exercising their newfound property right? Would they be extracting rents or taxes from the owners, at whatever rates they chose? If your assertion that nothing would change for the owners is correct, then the tribe by definition cannot extract any benefit from the change in sovereignty from state to reservation. If this is the case, why is this so important to do? If they decided to do any of those things I'm sure it would follow proper Lakota legal procedure, the morality of which is not to be questioned by the likes of us.
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Dec 5, 2016 02:28
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Dead Reckoning posted:EDIT: I just want to add that I really enjoy Brainiac and Commie insistently maintaining the fiction that we don't have to consider the issues around property confiscation because nothing will change for the land owners, and then VS accidentally breaks kayfabe with "well when the tribe confiscates their property, it will all be tidy and legal  I was repeating your own argument back to you, you dunce.You really are a black hole of un-selfawareness. You've spent how many weeks now whiteknighting the government taking private land to give to an oil company, whiteknighting an oil company bulldozing religious sites, and cheering them to bulldoze over people in the way of their profits because all the proper legal procedure was followed. And then you melt down into rivers of  when even contemplating the idea of a government using its own proper and tidy legal procedures to arrive at an outcome you don't personally like.
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Dec 5, 2016 04:03
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Gobbeldygook posted:Look at you continuing to be a dumbass. That's what their laws actually say (PDF, pg 2). The maximum punishment for any criminal offense under Standing Rock Sioux tribal law is one year and/or up to a $5,000 fine. Do you think everyone in Rapid City, South Dakota should be forced to live under Standing Rock Sioux's tribal laws, ruled by a tribal council they are not allowed to vote for? It's a really simple question. You can say yes, no, or continue to troll. Well judging by your other posts in this thread, as long as the theoretical treaty that allowed this were approved by the senate according to proper channels, you would be fine with it so who cares.
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Dec 5, 2016 04:07
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Dead Reckoning posted:I'm not really sure what sick own you think you're going for here. Doesn't matter, the Constitution provides that treaties are the supreme law of the land. If the President and US Senate transferred sovereignty to the Lakota government it would be 100% legal and constitutional and there would be no legal recourse for anyone complaining it constitutes a "taking" because of something the Lakota might theoretically do. And well, all you care about is that proper legal procedure is followed so what's the problem. And if the new government decided to take land or impose taxes, well the current government already does this and you're totally fine with it as long as all the paperwork is filled out correctly, I'm sure the Lakota government would have nice-looking paperwork too so again what's the problem.
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Dec 5, 2016 04:21
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I mean okay, but "the Army Corps of Engineers decides no pipelines ever again and the government agrees to just let them have that authority" is an outcome that's clearly beyond the power of the protesters to achieve so I don't know what you want here. Oil is still being used guys, let's all give up and die then.
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Dec 5, 2016 04:44
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Dead Reckoning posted:Also, no matter how many times you repeat the bolded part, it isn't true. I care about laws being just, but I don't think that every legal outcome has to be just. OK well the law would be just by definition because the US government also taxes property owners and steals their land to give to private companies on a whim and you already agree that's just so no change in the powers of government here. You could argue that a specific outcome of these just laws might be unjust if it's the tribe making the decisions instead of people you like such as politicians owned by oil companies, but that's irrelevant because outcomes don't have to be just so what's the problem.
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Dec 5, 2016 05:12
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Dead Reckoning posted:You're not really understanding my position regarding the relationship between the law and justice at all. It isn't relevant to the post you quoted though, which is merely a question of facts, not justice. Maybe you could explain it again because it sounds completely incoherent to me, since you abandon your "morality and unjust outcomes are irrelevant" legalism the moment someone suggests a legal course of action that may lead to outcomes you don't like, now suddenly you want to talk about morality. Dead Reckoning posted:What's your position on Gobbeldygook's question? Irrelevant. It would be legal to do, and both he and you agree that as long as legal processes are followed the morality and justice of the outcome is irrelevant, so why do you suddenly want to talk about morality now? Dead Reckoning posted:Do you think the U.S. has an obligation to return the 1868 treaty land to the tribes? They obviously don't have a legal obligation to do so (because the US makes the laws), but I think it would be the right thing to do. And if the US did do that (which they never would lol), it would be legal. And I don't see why "but they might use eminent domain against landowners" is an argument against that, both because the US government already does this for corporate welfare purposes, and also because there's already a billion dollars in an account marked for the Sioux which could be used to pay off landowners. But I'm going to guess that magically a government-determined payout as compensation for that government abrogating landowners' *~*~ God-given property rights*~*~ is not acceptable to you in this case for some mysterious reason even though it's perfectly okay by you to do to natives.Dead Reckoning posted:If so, what do you think distinguishes that from the Mexican cession around the same time? Well for one thing, the descendants of the people living there at the time of the cession don't actually want to live under the control of the Mexican government, whereas the descendants of the Sioux whose lands were stolen did go to court to get that land back.
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Dec 5, 2016 05:57
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Dead Reckoning posted:I guess he should have said "if franchise is not limited to those who are recognized by the government as members of the tribe, the way it is now" but is he wrong? If the 1868 territories were reincorporated into the reservation, the tribes would either have to deny representation to the majority of citizens who are not members of the tribe, find some means of ensuring a demographic majority in the territory, abolish democracy, or find their government run by a white majority. There are plenty of ways this could be handled. A power-sharing agreement like in Northern Ireland. A constitutional protection for cultural heritage sites and waterways and w/e the tribe cares about with strict enough supermajority requirements that it's defacto impossible to amend them away without the tribe agreeing with you. An upper house with regions having equal representation instead of representatives proportional to population, like the US Senate has. There are all sorts of examples of systems deliberately designed to protect a minority from a majority while preserving democratic principles, it's not like some new and unprecedented problem that's never been handled before anywhere ever. The US Constitution itself contains safeguards against majority rule. I mean as long as we're spitballing theoretical governments in the impossible world where the US actually upholds its historical treaty obligations.
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Dec 5, 2016 06:08
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linoleum floors posted:laughing so hard at the morons in this thread frantically trying to shift the goalposts so it looks like they aren't retarded for spending hours arguing that the protestors are wrong and will never affect anything Right. This is pretty much a textbook example of why direct action can be a very effective way of achieving political change. Here you have a company doing something unpopular: most people if you ask them aren't in favor of corporate welfare, they don't want oil companies using eminent domain and bulldozing historical sites for a bit of extra profit, and they want investments in green energy instead of doubling down on more fossil fuel infrastructure for a commodity that's killing the planet. But most people are also busy and don't have the time/inclination/patience to actually call their reps and fight and win endless political campaigns against the oil lobby every time they pull this poo poo, so politicians can take the money and count on people not noticing or resigning themselves to the outcome. But a few hundred or thousand people go stand in front of bulldozers and suddenly instead of just quietly taking campaign donations and letting some permits go through, those politicians have to be publicly a-ok with oil companies murdering a bunch of ordinary people for profit and poo poo it's an easy call to back down from that, no one wants to be the blood for oil guy at reelection time.
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Dec 5, 2016 06:30
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Dead Reckoning posted:Again, you aren't understanding me. I'm not arguing for or against returning the territories to the tribe at the moment, I'm arguing that returning the territories to the tribes would inherently involve taking them from the present owners based on the way tribal lands are currently administered by the U.S. government. Would you agree with me? Well, as currently constituted no the tribal governments wouldn't have this power. Even if the tribal governments were theoretically made completely sovereign they wouldn't inherently take anything from the present owners, and even if they did the US Government also has and exercises that same power all the time so really all you're complaining about here is that people you don't like might have that power. Dead Reckoning posted:I'm not clear on what you are saying. Are you saying that, if a majority of Mexican-Americans living in the Cession wished to return the territory to Mexico, you would be in favor of it? Self-determination is a pretty significant difference. If Mexican-Americans were so abused by the current California government the way Indian tribes are by state and federal governments that they created a representative government for themselves and sued for self-determination in court I'd say the situation would be significantly different enough from our current reality that their complaints should at least be considered. This is just a red herring, no one wants what you're talking about except maybe an insignificant number of weirdos, why bring it up. Dead Reckoning posted:Yeah, unfortunately political arrangements designed explicitly to protect the voting power of a minority ethnic group against an ethnic majority have a rather inauspicious history, and aren't really compatible with American ideas about democracy. It's different when you are talking about protecting civil rights, but when you're talking about actively suppressing the voting power of the majority in order to retain political power for one ethnic group, well, I don't think it's a good idea. So you're against the US Senate then? It's blatantly anti-democratic and suppresses the voting power of the majority in order to retain political power for certain minority groups (the residents of less populous states). You're against the 3/4 of states requirement to amend the constitution, which again allows a minority of the country to actively suppress the will of the majority? It would not be hard to write a constitution that protects the rights of a minority and de facto requires their consent to abrogate those rights: that's literally what large parts of the US Constitution were created to do.
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Dec 5, 2016 06:47
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Dead Reckoning posted:Because you aren't actually drawing a legal distinction, or even a universally applicable moral one. You're saying that Indians are disadvantaged enough that the law should respect their ancient claims to territory, but in your opinion Mexican-Americans are not. Self-determination is a very important concept in law, actually. My argument isn't that Mexican-Americans aren't disadvantaged enough, my argument is that they literally don't want this to happen (and the reason they don't is because they're not disadvantaged enough to prefer Mexican rule to US rule). It's a total red herring. In an alternate reality where they did have enough grievances to organize a government and demand self-determination yeah sure I think it would be good to at least consider what they had to say. If California government were so bad that millions of people wanted Mexican rule of all things then gently caress at the very least we need to fix a lot of poo poo, stat. Dead Reckoning posted:The Senate isn't explicitly designed to maintain the political power of one ethnic group, so it isn't relevant. But anyway eh you could write a theoretical constitution facially neutrally that still has the desired effect: "three quarters of the local governments must agree to any construction that imposes on these culturally significant sites" *local boundaries just happen to be drawn that 1/3 of them have majority Sioux populations* or whatever. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 5, 2016 07:28
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Doc Hawkins posted:I think their intention is to have you to admit that it would be bad, and that therefore the world is a better place thanks to past and ongoing oppression of native peoples. Unless the natives seized the territory by force and imposed a treaty on the US Government that ensured they'd be able to genocide the white population, then they would have the Mandate of Heaven and the treaties and genocide would be a sound moral basis for the Sioux nation's private property rights.
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Dec 5, 2016 07:47
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Dead Reckoning posted:Well, I'm trying to figure out what people are actually advocating, so I can decide if I'm in favor of it or not. You're saying that tribes only exercise sovereignty over their members, not the land of the res, but VitalSigns and Commie seem to be arguing in favor of some new arrangement where the tribes exercise sovereignty over territory. Either the tribes don't gain any additional sovereignty, in which case I'm trying to figure out what the purported benefit would be, or they do and I'd like to nail down what people mean by that and the justice of seizing the land from its present owners. But the original situation is pretty different too:
Dead Reckoning posted:
You asked me if, theoretically, the tribes gained sovereignty over a majority of non-Sioux people and allowed them to naturalize and vote, how would the Sioux's minority rights be protected. I listed several ways real free democratic nations deal with minority rights today: power-sharing agreements (Northern Ireland), regional rather than population-based representation (the US Senate), deliberately-drawn minority-majority districts (the US Voting Rights Act), and pre-agreed constitutional protections with supermajority requirements to change later (pretty much every modern democracy). None of those things amount to ethnic supremacist government.There's also another obvious solution: the tribe might agree to forgo their claims on Pierre and other areas with heavy non-Sioux populations to avoid this issue while still regaining sovereignty over the Black Hills and the rest of the 1868 treaty borders. Although I'm not sure why you care about these details because according to the morality you've put forth in this thread, if the Sioux had enough firepower it would be 100% moral to ethnically cleanse these areas and then if anyone complained their courts could rule "oops it was bad to do that we know better and we'll start respecting everyone's rights beginning from five minutes ago, and hey we're already living in your houses so here's less money than its worth go away now", and you'd would doubtlessly agree that well it isn't a perfect system but best of all possible worlds, can't have sore losers complainin bout stuff all the time, etc. (I mean not really, because your morality is selective and only, mmm, "certain people" get the benefit of being allowed to steal land and then wrap themselves in property rights 5 minutes later when their victims ask for it back, but it's funny to watch you dance around this and try to project your selective morality on everyone else). VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Dec 7, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 16:44
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you're trying to pretend that ethnicity is comparable to state of residence to obfuscate that you were arguing for an ethnic supremacist government.
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This sudden demand for a universal morality derived from first principles that is applicable regardless of context is baffling because the entire legalistic case for the US government having a moral right to dispose of the land is based on which army won some battles 150 years ago which is as contextual as you can get. E: actually I think this is just DR's schtick to shut down debate, you can look at the vaccine thread and find him demanding everyone create a complete morality from first principles with no ambiguity or edge cases before we can vaccinate kids for polio VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Dec 16, 2016 |
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Dec 16, 2016 05:22
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"Oh wow killing you and taking your land is harder than I thought. Sell it now or we'll come back with more guns and kill you all later." A+++ morality, a just and equitable transaction that respects liberty and natural rights.
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Feb 7, 2017 02:48
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blowfish posted:you picked the one single treaty between the sioux nation and amerikkka where it was the other way around The Sioux invaded the United States and forced the Army to buy land the Army didn't want? Nah. Just because the Sioux defeated the invading force and got better terms than expected doesn't mean we should assume that means the Sioux wanted to sell the land. For one thing, if the Sioux were just dying (lol) to sell, the invasion wouldn't have been necessary in the first place.
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Feb 8, 2017 05:05
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I'm aware that they've used that treaty as a basis for disputing subsequent takings yes, but I'm not convinced that their using it in a legal argument somehow confers some retroactive moral legitimacy to the invasion. That merely demonstrates that they considered it the legal strategy most likely to succeed. Right off the bat: the courts don't have the power to set aside treaties so I don't think we can conclude much from someone declining to make a doomed argument in court. People accept the legality of laws they disagree with all the time when they're arguing cases and this doesn't prevent them from making a moral argument in other venues that the law is wrong and should be changed. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 13:21 on Feb 8, 2017 |
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Feb 8, 2017 12:28
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*casts raise thread* The Standing Rock Sioux Claim ‘Victory and Vindication’ in Court: A federal judge rules that the Dakota Access pipeline did not receive an adequate environmental vetting. quote:A federal judge ruled in favor of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe on Wednesday, handing the tribe its first legal victory in its year-long battle against the Dakota Access pipeline.
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Jun 16, 2017 08:33
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