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The Police State, Powered by Palantir - Truthdig
ICE’s mass deportation tech is undergoing an upgrade.
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The Police State, Powered by Palantir
ICE’s mass deportation tech is undergoing an upgrade.(Image: Adobe)
Michael Kwet / TruthdigContributor
Last week, the news outlet 404 Media reported on leaked documents showing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is paying tech software giant Palantir tens of millions of dollars to upgrade its software services. The updates indicate that President Donald Trump is preparing to accelerate the mass deportation agenda he announced during his inaugural address with a pledge to send “millions and millions” of immigrants back to their home countries.
The documents reveal that Palantir is intensifying its relationship to ICE, “including finding the physical location of people who are marked for deportation.” Once people are tracked down, no place will be safe, since the administration has ended a policy that restricted ICE arrests at sensitive locations such as schools, hospitals and sites of religious worship. Another new solution, Immigration Lifecycle Operating System — or ImmigrationOS — seeks to improve enforcement efficiency and provide “near real-time visibility into instances of self-deportation.” The upgraded services also include Palantir’s Investigative Case Management System to enhance “complete target analysis of known populations” and “update the tool’s targeting and enforcement priorities.”
The ICM case management system is at the core of Palantir’s services to ICE. Created in 2014, ICM brings together data from “separate silos,” including those hosted by other agencies, such as the CIA, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. This is standard practice in the tech industry, a product of advances in technology such as cloud computing (to pool vast databases of data) and so-called “artificial intelligence” (to make sense of the big data repositories). Microsoft, for example, assembled its flagship policing platform, Microsoft Aware (also known as the Microsoft Domain Awareness System), for the New York Police Department to integrate information from a variety of databases for indexing, analytics, monitoring and investigations. From there, Microsoft modified its platform to service prisons via its Digital Prison Management Solution.
Palantir does more or less the same thing: centralize databases into a single platform and perform big data analytics. The company was created to service the U.S. intelligence community, with early funding from the CIA’s venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel. As it succeeded, it expanded its offerings for police, militaries, intelligence agencies, health care providers and more. Now the surveillance giant is worth $220 billion, thanks in large part to government contracts, which provide the majority of its revenue. Platforms like the ICM and Microsoft’s Aware are large, complex applications that are expensive to build, install and maintain, so they need clients like governments with deep pockets.
Birds of a feather flock together, and Palantir’s leading founders, Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, are unabashed right-wing ultranationalists, making them a natural fit for the Trump administration. Unlike many of Silicon Valley’s leading icons, Thiel was an open supporter of Trump during his first campaign, and the corporation reached record lobbying expenditures in 2024, marking it as a “Trump trade” for investors. According to the Campaign for Accountability, there is an extensive revolving door between Washington and Palantir, which has hired officials from the White House, CIA, Congress and Pentagon to work for the company.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Baltimore Field Office director Matt Elliston listens during a briefing on Jan. 27, 2025, in Silver Spring, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
It isn’t just undocumented migrants who are at risk. The administration has already revoked the visas of nearly 1,700 students and recent graduates, many of them for supporting Palestine or committing minor infractions. Palantir’s surveillance platform can also target U.S. citizens that the Trump administration may attempt to send to El Salvador, using executive orders to bypass civil rights and liberties. Many human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Mijente and the Immigrant Defense Project, have condemned these moves and Palantir’s record, but taken together, civil rights and liberties organizations have mixed recommendations for solutions and tend toward reforming systems produced by the likes of Palantir — e.g. through transparency and legal restrictions on surveillance practices — rather than forming a unified demand to abolish the digital police state.
Palantir is no stranger to popular backlash. In 2018, social justice advocacy group Mijente put Palantir in the spotlight through its #NoTechForICE campaign. In response to criticism over the current contract, Ted Mabrey, head of Palantir Commercial, has suggested that the company will continue building technologies for carceral, military and intelligence agencies. He noted that Google — which once withdrew its work on drone analytics for the U.S. military’s Project Maven — has become more open to resuming such work, suggesting that current backlash is a temporary phenomenon.
For those concerned with the state of civil rights and liberties, advances in surveillance technologies should be of paramount concern. While it’s possible the latest news will spark a new campaign, Palantir and other tech giants are continuing to advance the 21st century police state.
it cannot be allowed to be normalised
ICE arrest Virginia man in court despite judge dropping charges against him
Protests erupted on Wednesday, with more than 100 people gathering outside a courthouse in Charlottesville to oppose the arrest.
www.newsweek.com
also Kneecap the political Irish rap band have now been put under investigation for supporting Palestinian human rights to not be genocided, by the UK counter fucking terrorism unit of all fucking things, psychopathic fucking kunts at every twatting level how dare any of them claim to hold any crumb of moral high ground, genocide is bad it's fucking horrific did we not agree on this basic fact as part of the social agreement of human rights a long time ago??ICE Arrest Virginia Man in Court Despite Judge Dropping Charges Against Him
Published Apr 24, 2025 at 10:38 AM EDT
Federal immigration authorities detained a man at the Albemarle County Courthouse in Charlottesville, Virginia, after a judge had dismissed charges against him.
"Following the dismissal of a misdemeanor state charge, our client exited the courtroom into the lobby and was physically detained by three men," public defender Nicholas Reppucci told Newsweek. "The men showed no identification that they were law enforcement, nor that they had a valid arrest warrant."
Newsweek has contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for comment.
Why It Matters
President Donald Trump, who returned to office in January, has pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. His administration's hard-line immigration agenda has sparked concern about the involvement of federal agents in local legal proceedings—in this case particularly regarding the lack of transparency in their actions at courthouses.
The Albemarle County Courthouse, which houses the General District Court and the Circuit Court, in Charlottesville, Virginia, on October 23, 2020. Steve Helber/AP
What To Know
A man who appeared in Albemarle County General District Court on April 22 to face assault charges had those charges dropped but was taken into custody shortly afterward by three plainclothes individuals.
Video footage obtained by 29 News shows a man being approached and restrained in an unrestricted portion of the courthouse lobby by multiple individuals, one of whom is wearing a full-face balaclava. Though bystanders asked what was happening, the individuals did not present a warrant or official identification when requested.
Despite the concerns raised by those present, the man was placed in handcuffs and escorted from the building, with the video ending as he was removed from the scene.
"It is extremely unusual for law enforcement to not show a badge of authority demonstrating they were legally entitled to seize the individual," Reppucci said. "Even more inappropriate and problematic, one of the individuals was wearing a mask to conceal his identity (which is illegal under Virginia state law)."
He added that the Charlottesville public defender's office was "working hard to develop and fine tune a new protocol to protect all our clients and their support networks moving forward."
The public defender's office was representing Teodoro Dominguez Rodriguez, who was arrested along with another man by the masked agents.
Read more ICE
Albemarle County Commonwealth Attorney James Hingeley, who was not present at the time of the arrests, said in a statement that he was investigating the incident. While he expressed relief that no one was injured, he voiced concerns that arrests of this nature by ICE could potentially lead to violence.
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He told Newsweek, "ICE operations conducted in the manner of the courthouse arrests on April 23, where lawful authority to arrest was not displayed, constitute a grave danger to our community."
The county courthouse is under the jurisdiction of Sheriff Chan Bryant. In a news release, Bryant said the federal agents showed paperwork and credentials to the bailiffs before making the arrests.
"When the agents were presenting their identification and credential, none of the agents were wearing any face coverings. The agents informed the bailiffs at that time that they were there to detain two individuals who had court cases in the Albemarle County General District Court," Bryant said.
"The federal agents showed the bailiff their paperwork and photographs of the individuals they were looking for and waited outside the courtroom until the conclusion of each case," he added.
In response to concerns over the recent incident at the Albemarle County General District Court, state Senator Creigh Deeds and Delegate Katrina Callsen submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to Albemarle County.
The lawmakers, who seek to obtain answers regarding the presence and actions of plainclothes Department of Homeland Security agents at the courthouse, plan to make the findings publicly available.
Protests erupted outside the Albemarle County Courthouse on Wednesday, with more than 100 people gathering to oppose the arrests.
What People Are Saying
Public defender Nicholas Reppucci told Newsweek: "The decision to execute an immigration seizure at a state courthouse is horrible public policy. Inevitably, this detention will have a severe chilling effect on peoples' willingness to come to court on all matters of disputes, both civil and criminal. Individuals will be less likely to pursue civil protective orders or abide by lawful subpoenas; witnesses on both sides of any issue will be less likely to appear in court. As a result, local courts will be less efficient, less accurate, and less just.
"Additionally, people will be less likely to call the police if they observe criminal activity or are the victims of a crime. They will be less willing to provide important pertinent information to law enforcement and less likely to intervene to help others if they see people being victimized. There will be a significant increase in unreported crime across all categories. It is not just the undocumented community that will be negatively affected, but everyone who lives in, works in, or visits Charlottesville. Our community is less safe and just than it was a few days ago."
Albemarle County Commonwealth Attorney James Hingeley said in a statement: "The information I have reviewed so far indicates that these alleged law enforcement agents did not display a badge or other indication of authority that would empower them to make lawful arrests in these circumstances. I am grateful that no one was hurt in this operation, but I am also greatly concerned that arrests carried out in this manner could escalate into a violent confrontation, because the person being arrested or bystanders might resist what appears on its face to be an unlawful assault and abduction."
Sheriff Chan Bryant said in a statement: "I want to be clear to the citizens of Albemarle County that the safety and security of the citizens and its courts are the top priority of our office. At no time was this a raid of the courthouse. These individuals were identified by the federal agents and taken into custody with paperwork in hand for them. Which would be the same practice whether it be Albemarle or Charlottesville police, state agencies or federal agencies."
Delegate Katrina Callsen wrote on X, formerly Twitter: "Senator Deeds and I penned a letter to Albemarle County requesting more information regarding the presence of plain-clothed Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents operating at the Albemarle County Courthouse."
What Happens Next
It remains to be seen whether further information surrounding the nature of the arrest will be released.
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now judges ain't safe
water feeling warm yet?US officials arrest Milwaukee judge for obstructing immigration operation
By Sarah N. Lynch and Andrew Goudsward
April 25, 20255:36 PM
U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel attends the annual White House Easter Egg Roll event, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 21, 2025. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo
WASHINGTON, April 25 (Reuters) - U.S. officials arrested a Wisconsin judge on Friday and charged her with helping a man evade immigration authorities in what appeared to be a dispute between President Donald Trump's administration and local officials over immigration enforcement.
- US alleges that Dugan helped man evade arrest
- Crowd protests Dugan's arrest, chants 'free the judge now'
- FBI Director Patel deletes social media post on arrest
In a criminal complaint, the U.S. Justice Department said Hannah Dugan, a Milwaukee County circuit judge, refused to turn over the man after immigration agents showed up to arrest him in her courtroom on April 18, and that she tried to help him evade arrest by allowing him to exit through a jury door.
Dugan is charged with obstructing a proceeding and concealing an individual to prevent arrest.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service said Dugan was arrested at the courthouse where she works on Friday morning. She was due to appear in federal court in Milwaukee later on Friday. A crowd formed outside the courthouse, chanting "free the judge now."
A spokesperson for the FBI could not be immediately reached for comment.
The arrest comes as the Justice Department has directed federal prosecutors to pursue criminal cases against local government officials who interfere with the administration's immigration crackdown. Such resistance was widespread during Trump's first 2017-2021 term in office.
FBI Director Kash Patel said on social media that the FBI had arrested Dugan for interfering with the attempted arrest of Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, whom he described as an "illegal alien" now in custody. He later deleted that post, which he made before the case against Dugan was unsealed in federal court.
Wisconsin court records show that a man by that name who faced misdemeanor battery charges related to domestic abuse appeared in Dugan's courtroom on April 18.
According to the complaint, Dugan became "visibly angry" and commented that the situation was "absurd" when she discovered that immigration officials were there to arrest Flores-Ruiz.
Dugan ordered the immigration officials to go and speak with the chief judge and then escorted Flores-Ruiz and his attorney through a door which led to a non-public area of the courthouse, the complaint said.
Carl Ashley, chief judge of the Milwaukee court, declined to comment.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, citing sources it did not identify, said Dugan steered Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to a private hallway and into a public area but did not hide the pair in a jury deliberation room as some have accused her of doing.
Trump launched a sweeping immigration crackdown after taking office in January, declaring a national emergency and surging resources in a bid to arrest and deport record numbers of immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
Dugan was first elected as a county judge in 2016 and before that served as head of the local branch of Catholic Charities, which provides refugee resettlement programs among other services. She spent much of her early career as a lawyer at the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, which serves poor people.
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I was reminded of this argument:
No, rule utilitarianism has the tools to oppose tyranny regardless of the harshness of repression. Act utilitarianism must run it through a calculator, and weigh the harshness of repression as if those fighting against it are responsible for it; as if the utilitarian is responsible for the reactions of all non-utilitarians or all agents generally. This is, if not self-evidently too demanding for a moral theory, at least obviously counterintuitive. And the widespread (but not entirely complete) acceptance of act utilitarianism, provides a background of incentives for the would-be tyrant: the tyrant should react to disobedience as harshly as possible not because of the deterrent effect of doing so but because it makes it (according to the prevailing moral theory) immoral to resist him. But this can only ever be, of course, a local maximum of utility; there are obviously better worlds possible if the tyranny is cleared away. Even so, individual decisions-- individual acts-- guided by a utility calculation will tend toward obedience because the resistance of others cannot be guaranteed especially in the context of harsh repression.
The rule utilitarian has a simple answer to this that the act utilitarian cannot manage: to lose a country, a world, a galaxy or universe to confinement to such a local maximum is distasteful enough that moral agents should guard against it even if they do not personally see any hope that their action could decide the matter one way or the other; that the mere example, the precedent, of resistance to tyranny, hopeless or not, can be enough to satisfy the requirements of morality; that there is indeed such a thing as integrity and such a thing as moral responsibility that extends not to every result of an action but only those for which the action is the proximate cause: that the resistance to tyranny is not morally responsible for the tyranny itself. This kind of attitude and the resulting set of rules that it suggests for responding to tyrants is likely to lead to greater utility in the very long term but, crucially, not in every individual tyrant's case nor especially every individual action. This historical norm, properly cultivated, cannot be so precisely analyzed to figure into a vulgar act calculation because such a norm will reverberate into the future with incalculable effects, nor can the maintenance of the norm be guaranteed from earlier precedents: it can only be encouraged. Such an attitude is as close to a value in itself as an instrumental value can be: without a utilitarian metaethics, it could very well be appropriate to consider it an intrinsic value. With a utilitarian metaethics, we have some idea of why we should only half-mistakenly regard it as such.
Put another way: act utilitarians will consider all consequences of an action, which you consider too onerous and difficult to do, while rule utilitarians can disregard some of them for convenience.
Tyrants are incentivised to harsh repression not by the utilitarianism of their victims, but by simple fear, an unavoidable human reaction that exists in any case.
Very grandiose. But as has been explained before, act utilitarians can manage these considerations quite easily; they are not unique or special to rule utilitarianism. An act utilitarian will, however, actually look at how such principles are served by their actions, rather than throwing their own (and others') lives away.
When the democratic socialists send you a text.
Hey 'Blank'
Please go away. The last time I knocked doors with a progressive org they told me not to go to college, and to knock more doors for free. Fuck off. I don't care if the world burns from Donald Trump even if I didn't vote for him. Your ideas suck and will lead the country to a recession. Furthermore about the last time I knocked doors it was for Sherrod Brown who just recently lost because he couldn't campaign against JD Vance. Also the first time I knocked doors was for Dennis Kucinich who was the campaign manager for RFK who is legislating many people's rights away and is an anti vax moron. Thanks for that progressives/socialists of Columbus Ohio.
-Get Fucked
Hey 'Blank'
Please go away. The last time I knocked doors with a progressive org they told me not to go to college, and to knock more doors for free. Fuck off. I don't care if the world burns from Donald Trump even if I didn't vote for him. Your ideas suck and will lead the country to a recession. Furthermore about the last time I knocked doors it was for Sherrod Brown who just recently lost because he couldn't campaign against JD Vance. Also the first time I knocked doors was for Dennis Kucinich who was the campaign manager for RFK who is legislating many people's rights away and is an anti vax moron. Thanks for that progressives/socialists of Columbus Ohio.
-Get Fucked
it isn't just onerous and difficult, it's actually unjust and in some cases preposterous.
You can't just dismiss a problem with your philosophy and what its large scale adoption incentivizes because there exist other incentives for that same thing. In fact that makes it worse, since your moral philosophy reinforces the effectiveness of an existing method of control. A population that follows act utilitarianism not only has that fear, it is encouraged by their ethics to be controlled by that fear, and to suppress other unavoidable human reactions like spite for being controlled and dominated through brutality.
Prima facie irrational and decidedly not act utilitarian responses to harsh repression-- scaling resistance against it up with its harshness rather than down-- alter the incentives of would-be tyrants and tend to make the world a better place in the grand scheme of things. Perfect act utilitarians can be controlled as if programmed like robots; the better they are at vulgar moral calculation for every action and the more committed they are to the act utilitarian moral philosophy, the more easily controlled they can be by those without any such scruples. Like saints they will take responsibility for every action that follows theirs and so if knifing a concentration camp guard is responded to with a nuclear bombing, they will consider that nuclear bombing as if it were their own fault. This problem doesn't go away by making the calculation probabilistic either.
Considering the outcomes of one's actions is not preposterous. It is, in fact, something we're supposed to learn in school.
I haven't dismissed it on the grounds that there are "other incentives for the same thing". I've dismissed it on the grounds that you haven't established your purported incentive actually functions in any meaningful way. You've offered a rather obtuse theoretical reason, which most people wouldn't recognise.
I just also explained the mechanism by which repression actually works, which is nothing to do with what you said.
If those are consequences of such an approach, then act utilitarians can consider them. You still labour under this bizarre misapprehension that act utilitarians must disregard certain consequences of their actions if those consequences are broad, societal, or diffuse. There's no reason that's true. Whack it on the scales.
So to clarify, if an act utilitarian was in that situation that one guard would survive, but if a rule utilitarian was in that situation, everyone in the city would be incinerated?
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post got buried fast by sandstorm of nonsense in other thread, so hopefully will meet more eyes if placed here;
this seriously is a must watch for anyone knowing anyone not yet understanding the horrors and motivationa of what's occurring in Gaza, or even those already conscious who maybe haven't heard the uncensored, unlaundered reality on the ground
ah well that didn't last long huh
www.bbc.co.uk
www.bbc.co.uk
www.dexerto.com
this seriously is a must watch for anyone knowing anyone not yet understanding the horrors and motivationa of what's occurring in Gaza, or even those already conscious who maybe haven't heard the uncensored, unlaundered reality on the ground
ah well that didn't last long huh
BBC Two - Louis Theroux, The Settlers
Louis Theroux returns to the West Bank to meet some of the Israeli settlers living there.
Louis Theroux - The Settlers
Fourteen years after his first visit, Louis Theroux meets some of the growing community of religious-nationalist Israelis who have settled in the occupied West Bank.
www.bbc.co.uk
There’s a simple way to watch new Louis Theroux documentary The Settlers for free - Dexerto
If you’re outside the UK, there’s an easy way to watch the new Louis Theroux documentary The Settlers for free.
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The fact that we had Trump once and then again shows that they haven't though. And I don't think that's the right way to look at this. What's happening right now isn't happening because people didn't know any better (they did), and now that things are getting shittier by the day they'll finally learn (they won't). Suffering won't make people smarter or better, it'll just make them suffer. Not that there's a solution to this other than educate people better and teach them empathy so that shit like this has a lower likelihood of happening, but the fallout of this second Trump term is not going to teach people anything. Well, nothing that benefits society as a whole at least.
Not that I'm doing much to make things better. I'm just weathering the current and hoping I get to see better times, but I'm certainly not expecting there to come a day that comeupance will finally by served to those who deserve it, or for those responisble to face the consequences of their actions.
Donald Trump sends election message to Canadians: "cherished 51st State"
"No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER."
www.newsweek.com
But we're not talking about considering them. Even deontological ethics typically recommends that. Act utilitarianism goes well beyond considering results; in fact it is even more specific than being dictated by the likely results: it prefigures what is good and bad and how much each thing is good or bad in granular fashion, and rather than judging the resulting situation as a whole, it boils it down into an actuarial calculation. And not only that, but we're talking about calculating an optimal course of action that accepts moral responsibility for the reactions or possible reactions of other agents. That, for example, blames a shooting victim if they are killed while disobeying someone threatening them with a gun; it is not simply risky to do so, according to act utilitarianism, but to the extent that a threatening gunman is likely to pull the trigger as a result of disobedience, it is actually immoral to disobey such a person multiplied by the extent that you were going to enjoy the rest of your life. Which is preposterous.
And we can easily get weirder with it. If racial supremacists derive lots of happiness from abusing a minority population, then the task for the act utilitarian is to figure out how to maximize the sum of the pleasures (or whatever other measure of utility) minus the pains of each. Rule utilitarians have no problem saying not to abide racial supremacism; act utilitarians need to (no doubt boldly) investigate the matter; maybe televising atrocities committed against the minority population, or spreading it via social media-- the disruption or ending of only several lives-- can give a much larger population of racial supremacists enough happiness that, actually it is moral according to act utilitarianism. Because act utilitarianism makes little distinction between the happiness of e.g. enjoying a cake and the happiness of torturing children except as a matter of quantity and any consequent pains that must be put on the other side of the ledger: it all counts and the pleasure of violent racists that they take from their violent acts is, for act utilitarians, at the very least a silver lining: a proper act utilitarian will see israelis celebrating the massacre of Palestinian medics as, apart from the massacre itself, a good thing; the murder is not good, but the enjoyment of it is. And since act utilitarians take a quantitative approach, there would be a number of violent fascist israelis (and Hindutva Indians, apparently) at which point the pain of genocide is outweighed by the pleasure of racial domination of Arabs by Jewish supremacists. But then, there are all these other people who are distressed by images of children eviscerated by shrapnel; to maintain their happiness, maybe censorship is the act utilitarian ideal. (Are you beginning to see why I say these calculations are fraught?) I maintain that the tastes of the audience aren't really relevant to the morality of genocide despite the fact that enjoyment and repulsion are both quite obviously relevant to utility.
Now, I can look at such scenarios and decide that the fact that people are deriving pleasure from such things is actually bad. I can say, actually I don't care about the pleasure of violent settlers; fuck 'em. If I were an act utilitarian, I would have to consider such thoughts profoundly immoral-- why must I be such a killjoy? Why must I yuck the yum of those engaging in mass murder in a racial apartheid system?
The point is that an act utilitarian would blame the resistance for that incineration and would treat its possibility as a reason to think resistance is immoral.
If a population of committed act utilitarians were in an extermination camp operated by a nuclear power, the extermination camp could operate with perfect obedience because of the possibility that retaliation for resistance would extend to enough people outside the camp, or even that it would accelerate the pace of the killing within the camp such that it would actually be immoral to interrupt their own slaughter. Indeed, they might not even need guards to enforce it (it might look like the orderly and voluntary filing into disintegration machines in A Taste of Armageddon). A population of rule utilitarians by contrast would not be likely to feel so bound; a benefit of not having so ridiculously demanding a moral code that there is one optimum course that may demand unconscionable personal sacrifice and any deviation is wrong.
The point is that act utilitarians cannot do it well. A quantitative approach is far inferior to a qualitative approach when it comes to such things. I'll tell you what's bizarre: the notion that a high probability that there will be global thermonuclear warfare in the next few years would meaningfully change the morality of seemingly unrelated issues like the maintenance of certain judicial norms simply because it defines the duration that those norms would be relevant. But that is how you would do an act utilitarian calculation about it! In this (hopefully) hypothetical scenario, gosh, we're all gonna die anyway in the next few years, I guess we should be more short-termist and care less about setting questionable precedents. Does that reasoning actually strike you as sound? And if not, why not?
Does he not understand that Canada would a blue state to degrees that would make California look like Kentucky? Or does he just think they'd all bow down before him in gratitude?Trump negging a country.Donald Trump sends election message to Canadians: "cherished 51st State"
"No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER."
Egolord Donald Trump says "I run the country and the world."
'I run the country and the world,' Donald Trump says in Atlantic interview
President Trump said he's having more fun the second time around and again teased an unconstitutional third term in an interview with The Atlantic.
www.usatoday.com
A) No, it wouldn't make California look like Kentucky, that's silly.
B) Donald Trump doesn't care about advancing the Republican Party's interests.
He'd just make Canada a territory and no vote for you.
Its bizarre he keeps coming back to that, I guess his toadies are just telling him he's really popular here.
Except that he keeps saying "51st state" and I don't think he even knows how territories work. (I mean, it's super-likely that he got all excited about being a commonwealth of the UK because it has the word "wealth" in it.)
No, this idea that act utilitarians must necessarily go extremely granular and mathematical is just an odd misapprehension. It applies no more to act utilitarianism than any other moral philosophy.
That is indeed preposterous! Thankfully it's just a bizarre strawman scenario. "Multiplied by", lol.
The rest of the paragraph is extrapolation upon extrapolation of these suppositions and strawmen about what act utilitarians must value and how they must weight those things. But act utilitarianism imposes no such objective valuations and no such weighted scales. You're assuming them for the benefit of these scenarios. The flaw isn't in the idea that the actors should weigh the consequences of their individual actions rather than compare them with a universal rule; the flaw is in the weird valuations and scaling you've introduced.
I take from your skillful avoidance of a straight answer (and the substitution of the scenario with another, more contrived one) that the answer is yes; if a rule utilitarian was in the position you originally outlined, the city and everyone in it would be incinerated.
You still insist that act utilitarians cannot think qualitatively. Obviously they can. They must, in fact, just as must rule utilitarians.
It doesn't strike me as sound, no. Because the damage done by letting those norms lapse would be enormous: bad enough if there was thermonuclear war, because of the injustice and suffering brought about in the interim; exponentially bad if thermonuclear war was avoided. And there would be no meaningful benefit to letting them lapse either, or at least none you've outlined.
Now let's tweak the likelihoods and severities a bit. Let's say an individual is the last person in their workplace after the others have headed home, and the action they're considering is raiding the staff fridge of their colleague's lunches. Then the news alerts come on that thermonuclear disaster is certain and imminent.
An act utilitarian will, at this point, recognise that eating those lunches will no longer have any adverse impact on anyone. Am I to understand that a rule utilitarian would solemnly endure their hunger pangs, because of the rule that stealing lunches is bad-- a rule that exists solely because stealing lunches causes the colleagues discomfort and hunger, even though the scenario renders those consequences completely immaterial?
You can de facto it if there's enough momentum towards it. It's been done throughout history. But it's cruel to the highest order, horrible, and I assume we have evolved past it. Guess not.
Any "annexation" of Canada that does not include full citizenship to all Canadians, is going to end really badly for everyone involved. Even giving all Canadians full US citizenship right away would be very unlikely to turn it into anything but a quagmire. It's just that treating Canadians as an occupied people with few rights is going to accelerate the process. Resistance groups will get more support, protests will get violent and soon enough the US is executing a 100 Canadian hostages for every US soldier killed.
ICE Invades Wrong Home, Steals Their Life Savings, and Then Leaves
A woman says armed federal agents stole from her family and left their home trashed. “I know it was a little rough this morning,” one of them later told her.