The News Thread
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Surely the Defense had the chance to exclude that person during jury selection and chose not to, so they only have themselves to blame.
Apparently, he didn’t check the “I have been to an anti-police-brutality-rally” box on the form.
Where this one juror is concerned, I think they kinda sorta have a point if you look at the details of it, but it’s ridiculous to think that the fact that he’s been to a BLM march would make a difference to the facts of the case. And I think Chauvin’s defenders aren’t doing him a favour by telling him to fight the verdict.
The thing is, he didn’t lie – the first question specified Minneapolis, and the second one specified protests about police brutality. the protest he was photographed at was a rally to commemorate MLK’s “I have a dream” speech. It’s very much a technicality, but that’s the core of legal rhetoric.
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Oh, and uh… Israel is an apartheid state engaged in ethnic cleansing and it disgusts me that a nation founded in part to protect the victims of a genocide would engage in such behaviour.
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No, I was just posting something that is part of the whole situation there, that I feel is underreported.
ChristianLod is being reported, in the context of the overall situation and not as an unmotivated, progrom-like attack, as the article you linked to more or less describes it.
I don’t think engaging in a they-did-this-so-they-deserve kind of approach will help the situation any, from either side. Both sides seem to be committed right now to escalate this until the other gives up, which may well lead to full-scale civil war this time.
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As always it’s difficult to parse what exactly you’re saying Kalman but that last bit seems pretty clear you’re arguing the attack was provoked and justified so you can fuck right off with that shit.
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I’m pointing out a logical inconsistency in the idea that it was unprovoked. The site is holy to all three Abrahamic faiths. Yet, Israel, the Jewish State, is strict that it be a Muslim-only site. The only way they normally keep the peace there is to follow every demand the Waqf makes about conduct there, which can change on a dime, and is by definition discrimanatory to Jews. Why should a Jewish State discriminate against Jews and follow the demands of certain Muslims? It makes as much sense as the Pope giving Protestants more rights in the Vatican then Catholics.
Israel has been so careful to toe the line that the Waqf makes, even if it makes no sense, and discrimanates against Jews. This has been the policy since 1967. No Israeli official said anything about that Israel wishes to change the status quo when this is over, so there must be something that caused a temporary change in the policy, and that change did not include anything about changing the status of Jewish visitors. Whether the method was justified or not is irrelevant, there is a logical inconsistency in the idea that it was unprovoked
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Jesus, Kalman who the hell cares about any of that shit when innocent Muslim worshippers are getting beaten and gassed by police and Israel is blowing up children in Gaza?!
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I’m pointing out a logical inconsistency in the idea that it was unprovoked. The site is holy to all three Abrahamic faiths. Yet, Israel, the Jewish State, is strict that it be a Muslim-only site. The only way they normally keep the peace there is to follow every demand the Waqf makes about conduct there, which can change on a dime, and is by definition discrimanatory to Jews. Why should a Jewish State discriminate against Jews and follow the demands of certain Muslims? It makes as much sense as the Pope giving Protestants more rights in the Vatican then Catholics.
Israel has been so careful to toe the line that the Waqf makes, even if it makes no sense, and discrimanates against Jews. This has been the policy since 1967. No Israeli official said anything about that Israel wishes to change the status quo when this is over, so there must be something that caused a temporary change in the policy, and that change did not include anything about changing the status of Jewish visitors. Whether the method was justified or not is irrelevant, there is a logical inconsistency in the idea that it was unprovoked
Oh well then. If that’s the case fine, shoot up all the mosques you like. Fuck it, might as well raze them while you’re at it, if you’re not allowed to use it.
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I have no idea where either of you got those interpretations of what I meant. They’re such tortured readings of my point, I feel this applies:
You’re saying that Israel is soooo selfless for setting aside a church for Muslims to pray in – to the inconvenience of Jews even! – that they must surely have been provoked into shooting it up, which is an argument for justification so thin and contorted it’s practically an origami crane. All the while glossing over the core point that Israeli forces are shooting up civilians in mosques
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Kalman, has it occurred to you – considering how frequently you take umbrage at people “misreading” your political posts and get drawn into issuing long, dense clarifications and corrections – that maybe, just maybe, you’re not the clinically clear communicator of concepts and ideas that you think you are?
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Father Shoots Dead Teen He Found in Daughter’s Bedroom, Police Say
Trying not to delve into gallows humor here.
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Looks like one of those Israeli missiles blew up Kalman’s account, or a Hamas rocket? We’ll never know the answer.
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Therefore, randomly attacking Muslim worship cannot be the whole story,
No-one’s saying it’s random. There’s very clearly reasons behind it, but not the one’s you’re grasping at straws for that conveniently absolve the Israeli authorities and army of responsibility and blame.
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I do question why the U.S. backs Israel 100% (if that is true). If people are dying then a powerful nation that has their ears should be telling them “people dying is the opposite of good. Settle down and listen.”
Really? =P
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I am deeply pessimistic about Israel/Palestine. And I have a lot of sympathy and a lot of anger for both sides. The Palestinians living there today have never known anything but a life of mysery and violence, and most of them want nothing more than to live in peace. And you can view their situation in a way in which they only choice they have is to resort to violence and war or to watch as they are being wiped from the map by Israeli settlers.
But at the same time, their military efforts are supported by nations who never wanted anything more than to erase Israel, and who are deeply anti-semitic to their very roots. Israel was a miracle to the Jewish people, a home and country they never had, and they have had to fight tooth and nail for forever to preserve this against enemies that surround them from all sides. What they see is those enemies fighting to exterminate them from within their own country, and they lash out accordingly.
In the end, the situation there unfortunately demonstrates again and again and again and again that the worst you can see in the world holds true: that anger and violence are stronger than love and forgiveness. That hatred will triumph and people whose minds are poisoned with loss and grief and hurt and an all-encompassing thirst for revenge will keep hitting at each other until one of them is dead. That the process of peace is aduous and slow and painful and most of all fragile, and can be destroyed in an instant by death and destruction because those are oh-so-easy to achieve.
Like I said. Deeply pessimistic.
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My only addition to that summary is shitbag, hate-mongering, fear-stoking Likud politicians who have inflamed this for the last 40 years, added petrol to the flames every chance they got and have arguably won elections by how many “terrorist” corpses they racked up.
Sure, you can point to the Palestinians not being perfect, Hamas isn’t good, but are enabled by harsh Israeli measures – there’s a fucked-up dynamic – but because of the sheer and near-total power imbalance I do hold Israel more responsible.
And this whole “we can’t do anything different” attitude doesn’t fly when Israel has been a total bastard to the Palestinians for over 30 years, the harsh ‘break their will’ policy has failed the entire time. That a nation with the collective experience of persecution Israel has can subscribe to such an outlook is sad and damning, as they also know it doesn’t work.
The solution? Don’t know. Unlike N. Ireland, they haven’t hit the point of both deciding there has to be something better and have enough people committed to it no matter what happens. I’m doubting they ever will.
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I really have no opinion on who is more to blame, both sides carry some of the blame.
But the West could do more to pressure Israel.
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Israel was a miracle to the Jewish people, a home and country they never had
See that’s the root of the issue: that argument is bullshit… jewish folks had homes and countries already. “Jewish” is a religious denomination, it’s not a nationality. Granted, there’s a lot to be said about how judaism is a very peculiar thing because being jewish means something more than just believing in that religion (to them, that is)… judaism a weird mix of religious tribalism, but I digress…
The point being, you know when people say that “it’s too complicated” and all that? Well, no it’s really not.
The truth of the matter is that “Israel” is an illegal state and has been since its inception (the brits are also to blame, let’s not forget), and the jewish colonization was an invading force for all intents and purposes, like with any other colonization. And let’s remember that their colonization is STILL ongoing today, despite the fact that they’re not supposed to… oh, that AND they’re running a bonafide apartheid and are extremely bully-ish.
Problem is, you can’t say this type of things because you get labeled as a “bigot” or an “antisemite” (israelis have done massive propaganda programs throughout the decades of course) to the point where everyone feels the need to pussyfoot around the issue as if it really was all that complicated.
The creation of the state Israel and the jewish colonization of Palestine was purely a political thing, and still is to a very large degree… if I were younger I’d say something like “the best thing that could be done is turn Jerusalem into a parking lot, so maybe they’ll stop fighting over their temples”, but the reality is that wouldn’t change shit to the geopolitical interests in the region… but at any rate, my point is that it was never about “the jewish people having a home”, as much as people insist on that narrative.
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the brits are also to blame, let’s not forget
I think you can generally assume this for most of these things.
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I agree with Jon, Zionism is an insidious idea: that a people are obligated to a nation even if people are already living on the land. The Roma suffered too in the Holocaust, and have continued to be persecuted into the present; imagine if it was decided that they should get, I dunno, Scotland. And Scots became second-class citizens, and many of them were kept in an open-air prison, and they were subject to airstrikes, and when they weren’t being bombed they were denied many of the basic essentials of living. It would be too high a price. Compensation for an unspeakable horror like the Holocaust is understandable but just giving people land where there are already people living is just another form of violence.
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Yep. It’s been said Israel is a colonial state in a post-colonial world. It behaves in the same way the old empires did but the world has changed.
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He seems to have run away but I also questioned a lot of what Kalman had to say about non-Muslim worship on the Temple Mount, as someone who went to Jerusalem a couple of years ago. It’s a lot more complex than his face value assertation.
Jews worshipping on the Temple Mount (being the square in the map below that includes the Dome on the Rock) was actually decreed as forbidden by Jewish authorities (note: not the Israeli government but faith leaders) in 1967. Now as with all things religious, surprise surprise, Judaism has factions and not every faction agrees but the reasoning is that the Holy of Holies in the first and second temples could only ever be stepped into by the Jewish High Priest once a year, nobody else and no other time. As the exact location of the Holy of Holies is not accurately known the western/wailing wall was chosen as a focus of worship as it is known to be the closest area to the temple but as an external wall, safely cannot be on top of the sacred site.
Jerusalem old city is walled off and it is tiny, 0.35 square miles. If not for the fact that it’s packed with people you could run around it all in a couple of minutes. The Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Western Wall are like 2 minutes slow walk apart. Non-Jews are allowed to visit the Western Wall but also with restrictions, whether you follow the religion or not you must wear a head covering as is demanded in mosques.
While there are fluctuating controls on Christians at the Temple Mount in truth they don’t really care very much. The focus of any Christian pilgrimage to Jeruslem is the Church of the Sepulchre which is built on the supposed site of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial (as well as the stations of the Cross and places outside the walled city like the Garden of Gethsemane). I know as I was there as a sole observing atheist on a Catholic pilgrimage. We were told pretty clearly that the Western Wall was not an acceptable place to conduct Christian worship or prayers and did not do so.
So it’s a very limited sub-section of non Muslims that would actually have any great desire to worship there which is the main reason it isn’t more strongly challenged.
As with airing episodes of South Park it’s elevating a somewhat valid argument in places into an enormous matter of freedom and principle, which it validly may be for him but not that many others.
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I wouldn’t call Israel an “illegal state”
Yeah maybe not but I couldn’t think of a better word to describe that…
I think you can generally assume this for most of these things.
Ha! True that… but since I’m from a spanish ex-colony I tend to forget that =P
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I agree with Jon, Zionism is an insidious idea: that a people are obligated to a nation even if people are already living on the land. The Roma suffered too in the Holocaust, and have continued to be persecuted into the present; imagine if it was decided that they should get, I dunno, Scotland. And Scots became second-class citizens, and many of them were kept in an open-air prison, and they were subject to airstrikes, and when they weren’t being bombed they were denied many of the basic essentials of living. It would be too high a price. Compensation for an unspeakable horror like the Holocaust is understandable but just giving people land where there are already people living is just another form of violence.
Well, that comparison does miss a few key facts: In the analogy, the Roma would have to have a history in which Scotland has always been their mythical homeland, and there would have to be a significant minority of them living in Scotland anyway. Also, Scotland would’ve had to have been under different forms of foreign rule for a long time at this point, with the Celts living there never having been anything but second-class citizens and their territory regularly invaded. (And no, even if we go back to the middle ages, Scotland isn’t a good analogy for that because their relationship to the British is a bit more peculiar than that really.) Also, it’s not like those Celts would’ve randomly and out of cruelty be kept in “open-air prisons”, but that that would be a result of a situation that started with a civil war between the Roma and the Celts – as the new nations was even forming – and escalated from there.
All of which isn’t to say that I reject your overall argument. This kind of thinking, that you can just draw lines on maps and with that create, reform, partition and unify countries, was at the time already a remnant of the colonialist period and exactly the thing that had already fucked up the world beyond repair. But at the same time, having a nation-state really is what enables you to protect your people, and you can’t blame them for trying to establish one. Hell, the Kurdish people fighting to establish an independent Kurdistan somewhere is another analogy, and how do our sympathies stand where that is concerned?
I don’t know it zionism was doomed to end like this from the start; I think there could’ve been a version of this in which the Israelis managed to treat the Arabs living there better, and to live with them peacefully. But of course, there never was a chance for that, as it all started in war and that war never really stopped – in part because it was constantly fed and supported by the surrounding Arab countries. Israel and the Palestinians living there may want a peaceful co-existence, but those other countries have no interest in that. And arguing about the legitimacy and about how much sense it made to establish Israel in the first place doesn’t get you anywhere at all because what is the answer you will get from that train of thought? Another diaspora, the Jewish people just leaving Israel and scattering across the world? In a time in which nobody wants to take in refugees? The reality is the one we are stuck now, and that is one in which the Israelis will fight to survive, no matter what.
On a sidenote, apparently Theodor Herzl did consider other locations for Israel, and his favoured one was apparently Argentine, on account of there being more space there, and the zionist movement apparently even came close to accepting a proposal by the British to establish their nation in Uganda. Somewhere out there, there are some parallel realities in which Israel is in Argentine or Uganda. I’d really love to have a peek and see how that would’ve turned out.
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But at the same time, having a nation-state really is what enables you to protect your people, and you can’t blame them for trying to establish one.
The trouble with this is it’s also Western nations sort of abrogating responsibility for the welfare of Jewish people, to a degree. Instead of saying “a terrible wrong was done to you, you are all as much a part of our nations as anyone else and we will work to make sure your rights are respected and you are seen as an integral part of our society” we just sort of shuffled them off to a bit of already occupied land that we cleared for them.
Which not only left the issue of the displaced people pissed off at having to make room for them, but created this appearance of divided loyalty for all Jewish people -are you German, British, American whatever first or are you Israeli first and the other second? – which really hasn’t helped stop anti-Semitic hate and conspiracy theories.
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Jewish history in Europe developed parallel in a way with other oppressed groups in Europe that formed nations, like Czechoslovakia, Poland (which was split up between Prussia, Austria and Russia), Romania, or the countries that gained their independence from the Ottoman empire, like Greece and Bulgaria. In the 19th century these groups developed their nationalist movement that led to nationhood, I think you can see the Jews in the same way although their persecution was more extreme.
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The comparison I made isn’t 1:1, but morally I think it’s basically the same situation. You can’t just displace people from their homes, so by the same token this means Jews can’t just be expelled from Israel (although the ones in illegal settlements should have to give that land back to Palestinians). I think the post-apartheid South Africa model, where there’s one integrated state and Palestinians are made full citizens and brought into the political process, is the most sensible solution, although I don’t see that happening anytime soon given Israel’s power relative to Palestinians and their support from powerful Western nations like the US.
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And even the South African solution isn’t working out very well there…
I suppose an integrated model is more realistic than a two-state solution at this point, and probably the only road out of the horrible situation they’re in. But it doesn’t seem like there will be any progress on this anytime soon. If ever.
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Demographic projections say that majority erodes over time, disappears and then reverses. Israel already has major problems that they’re refusing to address. With the protection of the US and military superiority, they can keep ignoring them, but the problems will endure and probably get worse over time.
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It’s an enormously complex thing because many places in Israel have large Arab populations, when I went to Jaffa a third of the population is Muslim and in the centre it looked like the majority.
Then in the West Bank the settlements aren’t like an encroachment gaining land across the border, they are all randomly scattered in between the Palestinian towns. So if you declared a two state solution I can’t see those guys, who are the most militant by nature, leaving or accepting Palestinian rule. The original 1947 partition is such a clear path to disaster because it gives bits and pieces here and there so there are multiple borders in each direction.
It’s hard to get your head around the situation, we were based in Bethlehem, in the Palestinian controlled territory, crossed through the wall to go to Jerusalem with a Palestinian Muslim bus driver and an Israeli Jewish guide who got on great.
The situation for both of them changed depending where we were, he was queried crossing into Israel at the wall but on the Mediterranean coast area everything seemed very chilled and both groups going about their business. She was happy enough in Bethlehem and Jericho but when we went to a smaller town she didn’t feel safe getting off the bus. We met a Christian shop owner in Bethlehem who was a huge Palestinian patriot, selling postcards and posters of Banksy’s protest murals and the shrinking of Palestine so it’s not even just Muslim v Jew.
There are crossings between the two where you don’t even know they exist and just drive through and then the huge border wall in East Jerusalem. Between Jordan and Israel for much of the border there’s just the river which is about 15 feet across and no other barrier, despite the fact that they were at war in the 1960s. Jordan technically controls the Old City of Jerusalem via waqf despite it being inside the Israeli side of the ‘peace wall’. It’s just a very confusing place.
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Meanwhile the official Twitter account of the PM of Israel is tweeting some seriously loony macho crap that sounds like X-Men’s Apocalypse, going on how the weak crumble and are erased from history and the strong endure.
Suppose it could be a parody tweet, but in this area? It’s probably depressingly real.
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Looks like one of those Israeli missiles blew up Kalman’s account, or a Hamas rocket? We’ll never know the answer.
I just needed a break. Deleting my account was a bit extreme. I’ve sort of mellowed out and realized that the whole argument over Israel is just slogans being reworded ad nauseum, with a “healthy” amount of whataboutism thrown in. I will say that while Gar is sort of right, he’s also sort of wrong. On MW, I did use the Temple Mount as a whataboutism, but then I realized that was a bad way of going about it (given a lot of the valid points in Gar’s post), and pivoted how I was using it, but it was too little, too late, so I think I spoiled any chance of explaining my view, and in addition to trying to avoid arguing about Israel in the future, if I’m dragged in, I’ll refrain from bringing that up; it has too much IRL baggage to explain, not helped by baggage on my side on both MW and The Carrier.
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It’s real, but it’s from 2018.
He’s not a Republic serial villain, he tweeted it 35 months ago.
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Jews have had to fight to survive and when they were “weak”, living as a minority in antisemitic countries, they were slaughtered. I can understand why they don’t want to return to a situation of weakness. (Not to excuse Israel’s unwillingness to negotiate a fair deal)
It’s one thing to want to protect the homeland that they regained following WWII; it’s something else entirely when the government allows (some say encourage) their citizens to start building settlements on land that was granted to the Palestinians and then bomb the shit out of Palestinian homes and property when they try to defend and hold onto their homeland. I just cannot defend Israel’s aggression here when they effectively started the mess this time.
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Prison Guards Admit to Falsifying Records Night of Epstein’s Death But Will Avoid Jail Time
The two jail guards who were tasked with watching over Jeffrey Epstein the night he killed himself admitted they falsified records but will likely avoid spending time behind bars after they reached an agreement with prosecutors. The two Bureau of Prisons employees, Michael Thomas and Tova Noel, had been charged with ignoring their duties and lying about it. Specifically, prosecutors accused them of napping and browsing the internet rather than checking on Epstein every 30 minutes like they were supposed to on the night he was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell. Epstein, who was going to face a trial on sex trafficking charges, hanged himself in August 2019. He faced up to 45 years in prison.
The two guards had been charged with lying on prison records to make it seem as though they had made the necessary checks on Epstein before he was found dead. They had pleaded not guilty to making false records and conspiracy to defraud the United States. But now they admitted to having “willfully and knowingly completed materially false” records regarding their rounds. If approved by the judge, the deal would allow Noel and Thomas to avoid jail time as part of a supervised release program that, among other things, would require them to complete 100 hours of community service and cooperate with an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
The deal immediately led to criticism. Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican who is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and has been critical of the way the Justice Department has handled the Epstein case, blasted the deal as “unacceptable,” saying that a fuller accounting is needed of what the prison did wrong. “One hundred hours of community service is a joke—this isn’t traffic court,” Sasse said in a statement. “The leader of an international child sex trafficking ring escaped justice, his co-conspirators had their secrets go to the grave with him, and these guards are going to be picking up trash on the side of the road.”
Lawyers for the guards have said their clients were victims of larger problems in the federal prison system. They had both been working overtime due to staffing shortages. One was working a fifth straight day of overtime while the other was working a second eight-hour shift in one day. Plus, the focus on the guards ignores the fact that Epstein was left without a cellmate even though he had made a suicide attempt three weeks earlier. Thomas’ lawyer, Montell Figgins, said that Epstein had died “because of a system that failed completely.”
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“There were Hamas bases in those people’s homes!” is such goober bullshit. What Israel is doing is collective punishment and it’s genocide. Hamas rockets, which are shitty and ineffective most of the time, are a reaction to decades of dehumanizing treatment. How about Israel, the one with all the power, money, and weapons, does something about that instead of bombing kids and wiping out whole families?
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Well, let’s not forget that Hamas itself is primarily not a reaction to dehumanising treatment, but to the PLO and Fatah negotiating for peace with Israel, which Hamas completely rejects because their explicit aim is to wipe Israel from the map and establish a califate.
Hamas also wins in this whole situation. They do deliberately hide near the civilian population (to be fair, presenting an open target to the Israeli military would be suicide), and the truth is that they profit from this kind of violence every time; the more Palestinians are killed, the more support they get. And now that there’s an armistice, they’re celebrating their triumphant victory against Israel.
There are three main parties that profit from the current conflict: Hamas, Iran (who’s been helping Hamas build those rockets and is supporting them as a proxy war against Israel, let’s not forget that) and Netanjahu (whose position is now stabilised).
That’s the big problem here (as with many conflicts of this kind): The civilians suffer, but the warring parties rely on the conflict continuing and have nothing to gain from peace.
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Hamas is also the governing authority in Gaza and in charge of municipal services, making lots of non-military installations “Hamas targets.” And as the Haaretz article I shared points out, even a home that hosted a Hamas meeting once or twice becomes an acceptable target for Israel.
I agree with Arjan that targeting civilians is never acceptable but the extreme power imbalance and the number of Israelis killed vs. the much, much larger number of Palestinians killed (not just in this conflict but in all of them) makes focusing on Hamas too much misguided. It’s the same with US anti-terrorist actions in Iraq and Afghanistan that incur massive civilian casualties. We’re the ones with all of the military might, if we actually want to end terrorism (and not just fuel it so our presence there drags on and on and profits all the wrong people), the solution is not more violence but to seek restorative justice and meet the material needs of the people, which is not only the moral thing to do but will drain support for extremism. Same thing goes for Israel, with the added imperative of freeing Palestine.
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Negotiations will fail because the Palestinians have sweet fuck all to offer to Israel, who’ll want some idiotic 100% security guarantee that no peace process ever could supply. Meanwhile Israel is deep in hock to the lunatic settlers who are the biggest problem, who really believe in a 5000 year prior ownership claim, and they won’t relinquish any of the levers of control they have over the Palestinians.
If anything, talking of negitiations gives rise to the illusion of two equal sides. It isn’t so. Decolonisation would be more accurate as Israel is acting like an Imperial power.
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By occupying the territory, Israel is acting in an Imperial fashion – albeit in the absence of a state other than it laying claim to either Gaza or the West Bank.
Decolonisation simply recognises the power reality of Israel holding all the cards. That it isn’t a negotiation but a matter of Israel leaving those territories. Britain didn’t do much in the way of negotiated departures, it was more: “We’re done here, sort out all the shit we left yourselves. You don’t want us ruling you? Fuck you all then.”
Where it gets complicated is in how the future countries relate to each other and avoiding any Palestinian state becoming akin to Lebanon. i.e. A state regulatly invaded on weak pretexts by Israeli politicians wanting to boost their macho credentials.
Sadly, the evidence of the last week says Israel is far happier bombing foreigners than dealing with their settlers, who they keep backing.
While those settlements continue, no two state solution is possible – you only have to look at the fractured map of the West Bank to see how impossible it is.
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I don’t see how the settlements go, they are scattered all over the West Bank and some have been there since before I was born. I used to have the image of it being an encroaching border, like Russia’s claims in Ukraine but really it’s like if England invaded Wales by setting up random villages in each county and running them independently. Even if Israel called them off they wouldn’t comply, they did that initially and only really supported the settlers after they made pretty clear they’d do what they want.
Realistically you’d have to do it the other way round, institute the two state solution and then let the settlers decide if they wanted to stay in a Palestinian authority or move back. We’re of course nowhere near that when the settlers are currently quite encouraged.
To add to the complication it doesn’t really factor in to the Gaza situation, where nobody wants to settle but they are trapped in their little corner with supplies in and out hugely controlled.
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If there was a prize for Most Fucked Up Dynamic, Likud-Hamas would win it easily. Both say they hate the other yet get support from them.
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Yeah that’s what I’d think. Just tell them, you can stay in the West Bank, but you’d live under Palestinian leadership.
Yup. I mean this illustrates how complex it is, it’s not a case of retreating 20km, it’s all interspersed.
There are other things like environmental concerns too. The Dead Sea is shrinking annually, it caused landslides where settlements are as the water table changed beneath them. The Sea of Galilee (neither of these are actually seas by the way but large lakes) is being sucked dry increasing population. The river Jordan is turning into a trickle, on the tour we were shown the site where Jesus was baptised, now that exact spot is debateable but that the river was there is not, now it is completely dry and the river a 5th of the size it was.
For all the centuries of fighting over this land it’s pretty shit real estate. The areas bordering Jordan are desert, nothing grows, there’s a swindling water supply. We drove up all the eastern side of the land from Egypt and it’s just yellow and brown nothingness either side. It shows the hardcore element of some settlers that they want to live there when the areas bordering the Med like Tel Aviv and Haifa are so much nicer, safer and sustainable places to live in.
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I agree with Arjan that targeting civilians is never acceptable but the extreme power imbalance and the number of Israelis killed vs. the much, much larger number of Palestinians killed (not just in this conflict but in all of them) makes focusing on Hamas too much misguided. It’s the same with US anti-terrorist actions in Iraq and Afghanistan that incur massive civilian casualties. We’re the ones with all of the military might, if we actually want to end terrorism (and not just fuel it so our presence there drags on and on and profits all the wrong people), the solution is not more violence but to seek restorative justice and meet the material needs of the people, which is not only the moral thing to do but will drain support for extremism.
I don’t disagree, but for completeness sake, let’s remember that the US’ borders aren’t surrounded by hostile states that are supporting and equipping its enemies within.
But yes. It’s what Rabin tried to do in the nineties, and the region got as close to a lasting peace then as they probably ever will. But let’s not forget that while that peace process was opposed by many in Israel, Arafat’s willingness to make peace was also what led to the rise of Hamas in opposition to him.
Not that that changes anything in the final analysis. Like you say, treating the Palestinians better will take away their support of Hamas and its goals.
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It’s actually quite sad that I think all the Palestinians (and again this is more Gaza as we really have two different political situations) would have to do to gain massive traction is peaceful protest. They are providing justification for a lot of Israel’s control which would be very hard to find a defence for otherwise.
It’s an eternal problem too that in conflicts that last a long while people learn to profit out of them. In Northern Ireland a level of genuine ideological conflict was also hiding rampant gangsterism, smuggling and protection rackets. Hamas need the conflict to boost themselves politically, Israel profit hugely from the defence funds they receive that they put into military and espionage R&D.
The US will send them billions in defence aid, they’ll develop new security products with the money and then sell those back for double profit. Peace would make some individuals a lot poorer.
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From the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition:
Rule #34: War is good for business.
Rule #35: Peace is good for business.1 user thanked author for this post.
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Remember what they say about broken clocks……
They’re fucking useless?
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I think we’ll never know for sure where the corona virus came from. Scary thought: what would an actual biological attack by China look like? It might look exactly like this.
Why would the Chinese release a biological weapon like this though? They make all the world’s shit so why would they do anything to risk all that profit?
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No, it wouldn’t be. To you, me and probably the rest of the board, we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, but to those who specialise in the area? There are clear indicators of an artificially engineered virus and those would get spotted.
It is has been suggested by an acquaintance elsewhere that China would have more incentive to hit the US with a virus now, in light of how badly they responded to Covid. But the blowback and lack of total control would also likely factor into China’s political calculations.
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Year old bullshit news is still bullshit news.
I have a problem with the attitude “because X said it, and X is an evil person, it must be wrong”. This is true especially here, where Trump was just spitballing, it was just “his gut”, but there’s more evidence now then just “Trump’s random rants”. That’s part of Trump’s strategy for getting supporters: “Everything I say is dismissed without a second look”. And these scientists are not basing it on Trump, but on actual evidence, so it’s not like you’re dismissing Trump, per se, just that “it sounds like what he said”
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The whole “Orange Man Bad” simplification of the problems with Trump actually encouraged me to stay a Trump stan as long as I did. I mean, do you remember when Baghdadi was killed and my reaction to the WaPo headline was “they are secretly supporters of ISIS”? That ridiculousness was because the only other explanation that made sense to a Trump stan was “Orange Man Bad. Orange Man Kill ISIS Man. Means, ISIS Not Bad-Lie By Orange Man. ISIS Just Qur’an Study Group”, which I actually said about WaPo until the Capitol Attack. Someone hearing that, who was more of a Trump stan then I was, and still is, actually argued that since that was the paper that broke Watergate, “Nixon was Innocent, because we can’t trust WaPo at all”.
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Why would the Chinese release a biological weapon like this though?
They wouldn’t. I don’t rule out the possibility it came from a research lab but it would be a pretty stupid method of attack. Even before you question the logic of hampering your customers. The most obvious flaw being to release it in your own city first so everyone knows where it originated.
If it was genuinely a weapon you could slip it out to your target, say a busy US or European shopping mall and let it rip and there’d be no need to even look at China, the default suspect would be Russia with their recent history of political disruption and spreading deadly poison on foreign soil in the UK. You’d have a better vaccine faster so you could play the white knight to gain international influence. They are doing that with Sinovac but it’s very much viewed as a second option to better US and UK science with their vaccines having better efficacy.
So for me it could have been an accidental release from virus study in a lab but as a deliberate attack it makes no sense.
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I’ve seen the point made from a medical perspective is there would be genetic indicators that it was lab created and, with all the attention this very successful virus has received, those would have been found by now.
There’s a whole lot of dubious stuff done by China, like being cagey about where it was and when, but I don’t buy them doing something that would get them so easily caught.
Year old bullshit news is still bullshit news.
I have a problem with the attitude “because X said it, and X is an evil person, it must be wrong”. This is true especially here, where Trump was just spitballing, it was just “his gut”, but there’s more evidence now then just “Trump’s random rants”. That’s part of Trump’s strategy for getting supporters: “Everything I say is dismissed without a second look”. And these scientists are not basing it on Trump, but on actual evidence, so it’s not like you’re dismissing Trump, per se, just that “it sounds like what he said”
I have very little tolerance for covid conspiracy theories. Plus, frequently they rely on dismissing science, except for the pieces that fit.
Whoever comes out with this, I am going to consider it bullshit whether it be one day or one year old. These theories have – and will continue – to kill people. It’s not some harmless ‘what if?’.
You want to go down that rabbit hole, with a side order of defending Trump? Good luck with that.
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I don’t really know, maybe they reckoned they would come out of the pandemic with an economic advantage, but that could be nonsense.
If they had developed a vaccine before releasing the virus and then sold it to the whole world, that would be a sensible business plan.
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Ok…
Another day, another shootout in the US (number 232 so far this year) this time in California.
I don’t want to go into the usual rhetoric about “thoughts and Prayers”, gun legislation, background checks…
I would like to talk about the history of guns as a symbol in American history that has been passed on from generation to generation.
The gun has stood for among other things protection, power, and an assertion and imposing of will upon others. It has been used as a weapon on the frontier to clear territory for settlement, keep other people in line, and protection of one’s property. The fact that the NRA has a big following, gun sales surge when a future ban seems imminent shows that it is still celebrated as a symbol. As for white supremacists and others anticipating a future apocalypse and/or a race war, it is one of their main reasons for stockpiling.
Thoughts? Opinions?
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Thoughts? Opinions?
I think it is absolutely insane that there is a clear majority in the US that is in favour of proper gun control, but one powerful lobbying entity holds so much power with both parties that it manages to make that impossible.
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I often wonder if things like this just become political orthodoxy.
The NRA isn’t even that powerful any more and has no money but nobody will really dare tackle the issue even though the majority polled want them to.
It reminds me of basic income tax rates. Normally a conservative thing in the UK it was one area Labour would not touch and in fact reduced further under Blair and Brown. Polling now is saying more would be in favour of a small increase over any decrease but even Corbyn, the supposed radical leftist, wouldn’t propose it.
There’s a ‘feeling’ it seems of it being a taboo, or having a massive backlash but when Brown was reducing my income tax as a young worker from 23% to 20% over a few years it had absolutely zero impact on me. Once you factor in the allowance before you pay any tax it was probably 5 quid here or there, I didn’t celebrate a huge windfall but it probably caused the central shortfall that means I paid zero fees for higher education and now my kids generation will expect 27k.
I have veered off the point here but it seems a space where one side doesn’t want to do anything and the other is irrationally scared to do anything so nothing changes.
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Here is a whole new level of fucked up: Texas lawmakers ready to let residents carry handguns without permits
I talked to a friend of mine who is very pro-gun and even he thinks this is fucking stupid. And it is.
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Yeah the weird thing is when I went to Texas for work, we met a colleague who was a gun owner who took us to a range for shooting practice. He loved his guns but he was really careful and always emphasised the safety to 3 Celts with him who’d only watched cowboy movies and were a bit fucking stupid about it all, pointing things in the wrong places. To get a gun in Austin I had to sign the back of an A4 piece of paper, to get a beer I had to show my passport.
When we chatted later he was all for checks and permits, he wanted to keep shooting as a responsible guy and the biggest treat to that was some nutter firing off indiscriminately.
This push to remove all blocks and checks is incredibly against the grain of almost everyone, including gun enthusiasts, but it keeps going.
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I’ve no problem if you want to remove this post (not wanting to turn this thread into horror-show).
It’s dominating the news here.A Roman Catholic school in Kamloops British Columbia
Ground penetrating radar has confirmed the bodies of 215 (at least) First Nations children (some as young as 3).A horrible, shameful time in Canada’s history that just keeps getting worse.
Every question is just a covered-up lie.Vancouver Sun link
CBC link
Global News link
CTV news linksome clips
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) noted that large numbers of Indigenous children who were sent to residential schools never returned to their home communities. Some children ran away and others died at the schools. The students who did not return have come to be known as the Missing Children. The Missing Children Project documents the deaths and the burial places of children who died while attending the schools. To date, more than 4,100 children who died while attending a residential school have been identified.
The Kamloops Industrial School (later known as the Kamloops Indian Residential School) was opened, under Roman Catholic administration, in 1890. It was part of the Canadian residential school system, established as part of the government policy of forced assimilation that resulted in the oppression of generations of Indigenous children. It was one of more than 130 such schools that operated in Canada between 1874 and 1996.
Located on the traditional territory of the Secwépemc people, hundreds of Secwépemc and other First Nations children attended the Kamloops school. Students were sent there from as far away as Penticton, Hope, Mount Currie, Lillooet and even outside the province. Enrolment peaked in the early 1950s at 500. Children were forcibly removed from their homes once attendance became mandatory by law in the 1920s, with their parents under threat of prison if they refused. Students lived at the school from September to June, alienated from their family except for Christmas and Easter visits.
It became the largest school in the Indian Affairs residential school system. In 1969, the federal government took over the administration of the school, which no longer provided any classes and operated it as residence for students attending local day schools until 1978, when the residence was closed.
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This is obviously long overdue and the reparations aren’t nearly enough, but it’s still a huge and important step:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57279008
Germany has officially acknowledged committing genocide during its colonial occupation of Namibia, and announced financial aid worth more than €1.1bn (£940m; $1.34bn).
German colonisers killed tens of thousands of Herero and Nama people there in early 20th Century massacres.
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said his country was asking Namibia and victims’ descendants for forgiveness.
But activists say the aid is not enough to address the suffering inflicted.
The money will apparently be paid out over 30 years through spending on infrastructure, healthcare and training programmes benefiting the impacted communities.
“We will now officially refer to these events as what they are from today’s perspective: genocide,” Mr Maas said, adding that colonial-era actions should be discussed “without sparing or glossing over”.
The genocide began in 1904 after a Herero and Nama rebellion over German seizures of their land and cattle. The head of the military administration there, Lothar von Trotha, called for the extermination of the population in response.
Many died of disease, exhaustion and starvation with some subject to sexual exploitation and medical experimentation. It is thought up to 80% of the indigenous populations died during the genocide – with a death toll in the tens of thousands.
I also recently read about this development: it seems that in the German art world, they’re finally about to take the step of giving back the pieces that were stolen in colonial Africa. Again, this is just a first step, but I think it’ll lead to bigger ones. Hopefully all over the world.
https://www.cfr.org/blog/germany-return-some-african-art-nigeria
The German minister of culture has announced plans to return hundreds of art objects to Nigeria. Their provenance is the Benin Royal Palace—located in Benin City, which is situated in southern Nigeria—looted and destroyed by the British in 1897. Apparently, the objects will be deposited at the Edo Museum of West African Art, under construction in Benin City. Its architect—or, rather, starchitect—is David Adjaye, the Anglo-Ghanaian architect who served as the lead designer for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. When the objects will return is unclear. The construction of the museum is far from complete; Adjaye indicated that it could take five years.
The German minister characterized the return as a matter of “moral responsibility.” Some Western media are tying agitation for return of African art in European and American collections to the “reckoning” underway of colonialism and Western racism. Germany’s form of colonialism was especially brutal. The Germans, however, were not in Edo and, presumably, the objects from there were looted objects purchased on the international art market and then donated to German museums. The German decision has raised pressure on London’s British Museum—which holds seven hundred pieces of the Benin Bronzes collection, more than any other museum—and other institutions to lend or return bronzes to Nigeria. Perhaps as few as fifty pieces remain in Nigeria at present.
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Remember Tulsa…
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