Andrew McDiarmid

The Spence analysis is truly a sight to see.

This is - without exaggeration - absolutely batshit crazy nonsense.

The narrative that she used her vehicle to charge at or attempt to attack officers is false. And it's not "well you see it one way, I see it another" false. It simply is flatly contradicted by every available fact on very clear unobstructed video.

Twitter thread in Spanish by José Mario de la Garza, a human rights lawyer in Mexico, translated using Google Translate: 1. Overthrowing a dictator sounds morally right. No one mourns a tyrant. But international law wasn't built to protect the good, but to restrain the powerful. That's why it prohibits force almost without exception: not because it ignores injustice, but because it knows that if each country decides whom to "liberate" by force, the world reverts to the law of the strongest. 2. The problem is not Maduro. The problem is the precedent. When military force is used to change governments without clear rules, sovereignty ceases to be a limit and becomes an obstacle. Today it is “overthrowing a dictator”; tomorrow it will be “correcting an election,” “protecting interests,” “restoring order.” The law does not absolve dictatorships, but neither does it legitimize unilateral crusades.

Cont’d: 3. The uncomfortable question is not whether a tyrant deserves to fall, but who decides when and how. Because history teaches something brutal: removing a dictator is easy; building justice afterward is not. And when legality is broken in the name of good, what almost always follows is not freedom, but chaos, violence, and new victims. The law exists to remind us of this, even when it makes us uncomfortable.

Maduro isn't the problem: he's the face of the problem. Removing him from power would be merely opening the door. Behind him is the machine: Rodríguez, Cabello, the military command, the operators of repression and plunder. If you only change the person at the top and leave the system intact, what follows isn't democracy: it's a reshuffling. And there's something even more difficult: Chavismo didn't just capture institutions, it captured daily life. Economy, media, bureaucracy, employment, fear, favors, blackmail. A country can't be "de-Chavistaized" by decree or by an electoral miracle. The real transition begins when that network is broken without setting the country ablaze. The challenge is enormous, and it's also a moral one: to unite without vengeance, but without impunity. Targeted justice for those most responsible, truth for the victims, guarantees that the rest will dismantle the system, and a plan for people to live again—not just survive. Because freedom doesn't come with a new president: it comes when the state ceases to be a threat.

Best thing I’ve read this morning, from a human rights lawyer in Mexico. Translation is in the ALT-text.

Justice is not wrath.

A small (personal) example of this book’s intellectual dishonesty:

My father-in-law is reading In Covid’s Wake, and excitedly told me he found a passage where I’m quoted. The quote in question is me saying the FBI worked to censor speech on social media.

Huh? When did I say that?!

Worth bringing back this briefer on how encryption protects and promotes human rights www.ohchr.org/en/documents...

So Bari Weiss’s first real editorial intervention at CBS is to repress coverage of American concentration camps.

what the actual fuck are these dumb motherfuckers doing

Three Tweets That Capture The Entire Elon Musk Free Speech Con We’ve spent years calling out what a hypocrite Elon Musk is on free speech. But sometimes the universe Elon hands you a gift: three tweets in the span of a little over a week that demonstrate…

"Elon’s entire incoherent free speech framework collapses into a single coherent principle: speech I like is protected, speech I don’t like should be punished.

This is what happens when someone who never understood the actual principles of free speech tries to cosplay as a free speech absolutist."

I've been thinking about this bit and steeling myself for the start of this discourse all day.

These people are evil. Never stop saying so. Don’t be intimidated into shutting up.

Evocative update to "series of tubes" for a new generation

since that clearly woke a lot of you up too, please tell the USGS about it here earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

I overcame a year's inertia and finally cancelled last week. Harder and harder to be shocked these days, but this one is mask-off nuts.

👇

bsky.app/profile/davi...

Oof. I miss the Durbin who pushed legislation to promote openness and *prevent* platforms from capitulating to repressive governments

I was told these people were “free speech absolutists”

bsky.app/profile/mere...

can’t believe I voted for the leopards sparkling my compliance in advance if it champagne from I am not going to survive another month of these posts

Great follow-up for anyone who listened to that "wha' happened?" NYT interview with Andreesen

Good on Commissioner Bedoya

Extra hands by andwew

🙌 but all of California needs to call Adam Schiff's office tomorrow 😬

I'm always lurking! Learning that you and my brother share an abiding interest in Hip Tanaka -- totally worth my yearly (+/-) content creation

Kid Icarus (title theme) on piano YouTube video by doug mcdiarmid

youtu.be/iZjAXoDz4gw?...