Is this an old person thing? Do people actually do this?

I think most people agree that rugby teams are too heavy. Players are under too much pressure to bulk up, beyond what is healthy. Bigger pack weight does give a big advantage in a match, but it does not make rugby a better game.

There should be a maximum team weight. Maybe 1500kg for 15 players. Teams can still use very heavy players, but they must keep the total team weight under a limit. So being very heavy is a slight disadvantage for a player. The existing incentive will be reversed, to keep below a limit, to a healthier weight.

Very heavy players will still be selected, only if they are skillful enough to be worth keeping, despite the difficulty they create in keeping the team under the limit.

This does reduce the advantage very heavy peoples like the Europeans have over lighter peoples like the Asians. So it might be unpopular among supporters. I think it would instead make things more interesting. It would mean more teams can seriously compete in international events.

After reading what Varadkar said about genocide yesterday (“Varadkar rules out joining South African genocide case”), there are many things you could say. I’m going to gloss over whether a man who contradicts himself in mid argument is fit to be in government, and focus on a bigger issue.

Genocide is where somebody selectively kills part of a population because of their race, religion, ethnicity, creed, etc.

It is not necessary to kill every member of of the target group, to commit a genocide.

Genocide is a two part process. The target population is first isolated in a certain place, then massacred. If non-target people are first given the opportunity to leave, before the massacre starts, then that is further evidence of genocide.

Common definitions of genocide (and there are several) focus on intent. Intent is difficult to prove. Definitions of crimes only make sense when they focus on the actual act, not on speculation about actor’s intent.

A bombing is not a genocide, nor is a massacre. Isolating a certain population inside a walled off region, and then bombing it, is a genocide. Isolating a people in a certain region, then withdrawing the supply of water, or blocking the importation of medicine, is also genocide. Driving into a town and shooting everyone, is not genocide.

After reading what Varadkar said about genocide yesterday ("Varadkar rules out joining South African genocide case"), there are many things you could say. I'm going to gloss over whether a man who contradicts himself in mid argument is fit to be in government, and focus on a bigger issue.

Genocide is where somebody selectively kills part of a population of a certain race, religion, ethnicity, creed, etc.

It is not necessary to kill every member of of the target group, to commit a genocide.

Genocide is a two part process. The target population is first isolated in a certain place, then massacred. If non-target people are first given the opportunity to leave, before the massacre starts, then that is further evidence of genocide.

Common definitions of genocide (and there are several) focus on intent. Intent is difficult to prove. Definitions of crimes only make sense when they focus on the actual act, not on speculation about actor's intent.

A bombing is not a genocide, nor is a massacre. Isolating a certain population inside a walled off region, and then bombing it, is a genocide. Isolating a people in a certain region, then withdrawing the supply of water, or blocking the importation of medicine, is also genocide. Driving into a town and shooting everyone, is not genocide.

I find most news sources and people think of all wars the same way. But that means they only understand the wars superficially. The two recent talked about ones, Palestine and Ukraine, are good examples.

***

Russia and Ukraine are very poor countries, with memory of extreme poverty and famine. They are obsessed with food security. The recent changes in Ukraine, the coup d'état, the broken peace treaty, etc, don't directly harm Russia, but they are perceived as worsening Russians' food security. This is a the thing that most frightens Russians. They must do everything they can to protect themselves against risk of famine. That is why there is a war.

When Russians say things like "we are acting against an aggression against us. This invasion is purely self-defense."

If you want to stop the war, you must address those concerns.

***

Israelis are obsessed with the old testament. It says that they are exceptional. Jews are God's one true people. They are precious and other people are disposable. It defines a chunk of the middle east that belongs to the Jews, and says it is their destiny to recapture it and expel or kill its inhabitants. It gives examples where a small crime can justify going to war. It justifies genocide by Jews against other tribes.

That is why there is continuous expansion of Israel into Muslin lands, including massacres and expulsions of Muslims by Israel. But any similar crime against an Israeli is leads to disproportionate and collective punishment against his whole people. That's why Israelis don't have a problem with this activity.

When Israeli statesmen say things like "they are just animals" or "what do you mean innocent Palestinian" this is what they mean.

If you want to stop the war in Palestine, you have to address that underlying rationale.

WASHINGTON – Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg condemned Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sunday over a campaign video that criticizes former President Donald Trump for his past support for LGBTQ Americans.

“I just don't understand the mentality of somebody who gets up in the morning, thinking that he's going to prove his worth by competing over who can make life hardest for a hard-hit community that is already so vulnerable in America,” Buttigieg said during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union.

The video, released on the DeSantis War Room Twitter account on Friday, the last day of June’s LGBTQ Pride Month, has been criticized by gay-rights groups and even some Republicans as bordering on homophobia. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg

It shows footage of Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention saying he would do everything in his power to protect LGBTQ citizens. He had been pledging protection from terrorist attacks weeks after the shootings at the Pulse Nightclub, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history at that time.

The video also highlights “LGBTQ for Trump” T-shirts sold by the former president’s campaign and his past comments saying he would be comfortable with Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympic decathlete who came out as a transgender woman in 2015, using any bathroom at Trump Tower.

Shifting gears, the video also shows images of DeSantis, who is seeking the GOP nomination for president, accompanied by dark, thumping music and promotes headlines about legislation he signed into law restricting transgender rights. The images are spliced together with footage of muscular, shirtless men and several Hollywood actors, including Brad Pitt, seen wearing a leather mask from the movie “Troy.”

Asked by CNN to respond to the video, Buttigieg, who is gay, said he was going to leave aside “the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up, shirtless bodybuilders and just get to the bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space, which is, again, who are you trying to help.”

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Supporters of affirmative action demonstrate Thursday outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington.

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

To the editor: The overturning of affirmative action in college admissions by the U.S. Supreme Court does not simply show that the court is out of step with public opinion, which it clearly is. Nor does it simply reflect a partisan point of view.

This decision distorts American history. Our history and present society are not colorblind. Race is a factor in every aspect of life, but there have been real personal and cultural advancements stemming, in part, from affirmative action.

It is even more troubling when the affirmative action decision is seen alongside last year’s abortion decision. That decision also distorts history by harkening back to a vision of women as subservient without control of their own bodies and destinies. It ignores women’s professional and personal advancement, which at its core is based on personal autonomy over one’s body.

It is too simple a solution to ask the justices of the Supreme Court to reacquaint themselves with our history — for them to come out of their marble tower and learn about the changes in our history over the past 50 years. But we have to start somewhere. The justices should protect our heritage and history, not dismantle it.

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Marcy Sheinwold, Laguna Woods

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To the editor: Now that the Supreme Court has struck down affirmative action in college admissions, I wonder if will also prohibit admissions based on athletic prowess.

Or does the conservative majority place a higher value on the ability to sink baskets from outside the three-point line than it does in enrolling a diverse university student body?

Larry Harmell, Granada Hills

..

To the editor: In 1996, California voters decided to abolish the discriminatory effects of racial preferences in college admissions by passing Proposition 209.

Then, in 2020, after a dramatic change in the state’s demographics over a 24-year period, proponents of affirmative action decided that the time was ripe to repeal Proposition 209 and put Proposition 16 on the ballot. It was decisively rejected by California voters, in favor of retaining the ban on racial preferences.

Apparently, in its editorial, The Times misses the point that the Supreme Court may have taken a cue from the people of California in deciding to outlaw affirmative action in college admissions.

Jim Redhead, San Diego

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To the editor: Justices appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote have struck again. To listen to entitled fossils try to spin their hate under the guise of judicial fairness would be hilarious if it weren’t so bleak. We have sunk to the equivalent of “separate but equal” being offered as legal rationale again.

I truly believe the justices in the majority know they actually represent the minority. There is desperation mixed through all their specious garbage.

I never dreamed I would live in a time where a president could be elected while losing the popular vote twice in 16 years. I never dreamed I could live in a time where supposed legal giants would be so immoral with their pouting Wall Street Journal editorials and arrogant senses of entitlement.

How many more dominoes that protect our precious freedoms have to fall before the electoral college is abolished and Supreme Court impeachments and term limits are enacted?

Mark Diniakos, Thousand Oaks

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To the editor: The Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action in admissions does not have to mean, as California has shown, the end of diversity at universities. Affirmative action was meant to be an adjustment to compensate for disparities in primary education. A focus on improving primary education is what is needed.

No eighth-grade history teacher should be faced with teaching students who struggle to read, nor should an algebra teacher have pupils who are unable to do long division. Moving students forward in school due to their age must stop.

If focused resources assured that all elementary school students were capable of reading, writing a paragraph, understanding arithmetic including multiplication, fractions and percentages prior to moving on to middle school, the need for affirmative action would diminish.

Replacing traditional grade levels with performance levels would narrow gas in learning while maintaining the value of a college degree, which is lessened if basic education that should be taught prior to college has to be offered at universities.

Glenn Egelko, Ventura

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Elections are always high-stakes affairs in countries experiencing democratic backsliding. This was true of Turkey’s recent presidential election — described as “free but unfair.” Likewise, when Poles go to vote this fall, democracy itself will be on the line.

Since coming to power in 2015, Poland’s populist Law and Justice (PiS) party has politicized the judiciary, harassed civil society and worked tirelessly to drive independent media out of business. It has capitalized on the politics of fear and grievance, pitted urban voters against rural constituencies and touted a mythologized version of Polish history.

In this sense, the PiS has been following in the footsteps of both Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán, whose country can no longer even be considered a democracy, though it remains a member of the European Union. The difference is that Poland’s de facto leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, has left the presidency to someone else — Andrzej Duda — thereby shielding his influence from vigorous scrutiny.

Ultimately, only Poland’s voters can decide their country’s political future. But that is no reason for complacency on the part of the international community, especially the world’s democracies. Full-blown authoritarianism would inflict incalculable damage on the West while a war rages next door.

A Polish government that eschews democracy, the rule of law, and European unity would embolden illiberal forces elsewhere, including in the United States, where Donald Trump is leading the Republican field ahead of next year’s presidential election.

Another PiS victory might also weaken Poland’s position as a bulwark against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperial designs. Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, Poland has provided sanctuary for millions of refugees and has served as the main conduit for Western military supplies flowing to Ukraine’s armed forces. Poles can identify with the refugees’ plight, which recalls the barbarism they suffered at the hands of the Nazis, including the destruction of Warsaw on Hitler’s orders (while the Red Army, on Stalin’s orders, sat on the opposite bank of the Vistula and watched).

The PiS government deserves high praise for its support of Ukraine, which stands in stark contrast with the Orbán government’s “Hungary for Hungarians” stance and grotesque embrace of Putin. But its commitment to this approach may have its limits. In an apparent attempt to secure farmers’ votes, it announced in April that it was halting imports of Ukrainian grain, though it must be said that Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia also have prohibited grain imports from Ukraine, and all have done so with the EU’s blessing.

Fortunately, the U.S. and the EU do have some leverage that they can use to prevent Poland from threatening foundations of the post-Cold War order, including Poland’s obvious reliance on NATO for its security and the EU for financial support.

The EU must adopt a constructive yet firm approach to the Polish government, backed by the enforcement of the rule-of-law conditionality that was imposed on diplomatic and financial support for both Poland and Hungary last year. Already, the EU has withheld billions of euros that were supposed to go to Poland.

Moreover, the European Court of Justice has imposed a massive daily fine on the country — recently reduced from 1 million euros to 500,000 euros — over its refusal to comply with EU demands to alter its 2019 judicial reforms, which the ECJ ruled violate EU law. The EU must back this ruling with even more institutional and financial muscle. The restoration of judicial independence is nonnegotiable.

Democratic and humanist values — the values for which the Ukrainian people are now fighting, at extraordinary cost — are at the heart of the post-Cold War European order. Fortunately, Polish civil society remains robust, with younger generations increasingly leading the fight against PiS’s depredations. They are committed to preventing further democratic backsliding and upholding European values, even if Kaczyński is not. And they deserve greater support from their Western allies.

The large Polish diaspora in the U.S. and Western Europe is uniquely positioned to help, along with the broader international community. Brave Polish NGOs — such as Women’s Strike — are fighting on the front lines to defend women’s rights, under direct threat from PiS. We must amplify their voices, as well as those of Poland’s increasingly threatened LGBT+ community.

It is up to today’s Poles to take up the mantle of the Gdansk shipyard workers whose strike in 1980 led to the establishment of the anti-authoritarian Solidarity trade union and social movement, which ultimately brought down communist rule in Central Europe in 1989. But Poland’s friends must also support those Poles who embody this spirit. Without solidarity, Poland may well lose its democracy.

Kati Marton, chair of Action for Democracy Advisory Council, is a journalist, human rights activist and the author, most recently, of “The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel.”

A state government should not be able to sue the federal government just because it disagrees with a federal policy. This principle, affirmed by the Supreme Court in an 8-1 decision on Friday, should be obvious.

But in recent years, as the country has become more politically polarized, there have been a proliferation of suits filed by states to dismantle White House policies. Blue states, including California, did this during the Trump years and the trend has intensified with red states taking the Biden administration to court.

Friday’s ruling in United States vs. Texas is a perfect illustration. In 2021, the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security announced its priorities in arresting and deporting those who are illegally in the United States. There are more than 11 million undocumented individuals in the country, but only several hundred thousand can practically be deported each year. The Biden administration said that it would focus its arrest and deportation efforts on suspected terrorists or dangerous criminals, or people who unlawfully entered the country recently.

Texas and Louisiana sued the administration in federal court claiming that federal laws require it to arrest more people pending their deportation. But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, writing for the majority (only Justice Samuel Alito dissented), ruled that the states lacked standing to sue. The decision was also a rebuke to the federal district court in Texas and the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, both of which ruled that the states could sue the federal government over a policy disagreement.

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It is a longstanding principle that for a federal court to hear a case, the plaintiff must show that it was directly harmed, that the defendant caused the harm and that the harm could be remedied by a court decision. The court said that neither Texas nor Louisiana met that test.

In the past, the standing issue was often used by the Supreme Court to dismiss suits seeking to change the law in a progressive direction. For example, 40 years ago, the court dismissed a case involving use of chokeholds by Los Angeles police officers for lack of standing to sue, concluding that the plaintiff could not show that he was likely to be injured in the future. And suits seeking to protect the environment have been dismissed for lack of standing.

Although I think the court is often too restrictive in its standing rulings, Friday’s decision closely follows from earlier precedents and rightly limits the ability of states to sue in federal court because they disagree with a presidential policy.

The practical effect of the court’s analysis is its recognition that the government must make choices in enforcing the law. Thus, the Department of Homeland Security must set priorities in arresting and deporting non-citizens and it is not for the federal courts to second guess those choices. As Kavanaugh wrote, “If the Court green-lighted this suit, we could anticipate complaints in future years about alleged Executive Branch under-enforcement of any similarly worded laws — whether they be drug laws, gun laws, obstruction of justice laws, or the like. We decline to start the Federal Judiciary down that uncharted path.”

This is actually the second time this month that the court restricted the ability of states to sue when they dislike federal policy. Last week, in upholding the federal Indian Child Welfare Act — a law that says priority should be given to Native American families when Native American children are placed for adoption in foster care — the court again dismissed a claim by Texas that the law was an unconstitutional racial preference. In a 7-2 opinion by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court concluded that the state of Texas could not show that it was injured by the federal law.

Friday’s decision is a double-edged sword. It will mean that when there is a conservative Republican president, states like California will be limited in their ability to sue. But the court did not close the door to all suits by states, only that they must meet the standing test. While the law in this area certainly is not new, the court did the right thing by applying it in this case.

Erwin Chemerinsky is a contributing writer to Opinion and dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.

A cure for the common opinion

Birds have feathers. And birds fly. But the feathers are not to aid flight. And I'll prove it.

Dinosaurs evolved from reptiles. And birds evolved from dinosaurs (theropods). After all that evolution, much is still similar. Birds still have beaks and make nests and lay eggs in them. But birds and theropods have a new body shape (their legs that go straight down from their bodies), feathers, skin, and they lay hard eggs.

Compare photos of a chicken and a veliciraptor. Then compare their skeletons. There is not much difference at all. It is like comparing prehistoric and modern crocodiles.

The flying animals in dinosaur times did not even have feathers, but the flightless therapods did. And most modern flying animals do not have feathers.

Some birds have evolved feathers with special aerodynamic properties. But then bats have evolved skin, and insects have evolved wing-tissue with the similar properties.

Birds also evolved special bone structure to aid flight. Saying feathers are for flight is like saying bones are for flight.

Theropods evolved feathers, but they did that millions of years before they started flying. Many of them never evolved to fly at all, including many extinct dinosaurs and many living birds. The ability to fly is distinct from the bearing of feathers. There is no connection at all.

...unless they also condemn the USA for invading Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.

Most European territories serve the USA's geopolitical goals. Sanctions against Russia right now are part of that. There's nothing moral about it. It's simply a service to the USA for being in its sphere of influence. There is nothing, not a single shred of integrity in that.

If you find a territory which sanctions Russia for its crime, and also the USA for its crimes, you can recognise it as a real principled act.