In recent years, China’s LGBTQ+ community has been swept up in the Chinese Communist party’s broader crackdown on civil society and freedom of expression. In May 2023, a well known LGBTQ+ advocacy group in Beijing announced it was closing due to “unavoidable” circumstances. Last February, two university students filed a...
I wouldn’t call it freedom. If she’s treated like other “security threats” within China, then she does not have freedom to travel. She’s likely limited to her city at most, perhaps even just a small area within and has to regularly report to local police. Think of it like probation for people convicted of actual crimes in the West, except without court order, for an unlimited amount of time and with the constant threat of being tortured/disappeared looming over her head. If Xi ever feels like tightening the thumb screws on the Chinese people even further, she’d probably feel the effects before many others. All of this comes with social consequences, as many friends and business partners will be scared away.
Did some PR firm buy all of these different independent organizations and journalists - or are you just using a variety of the old antisemitic accusation of a Jewish controlled press and institutions?
Are you going to deny all of this evidence? Don’t you think that many so-called “pro-Palestinian” protests just happen to be staged in Jewish quarters by coincidence?
The first “pro-Palestine” protests were on October 7, before even the first Israeli bomb had been bombed in response, as terrorists were still busy slaughtering civilians in Israel:
No. I’m honestly trying to educate, even though I’m absolutely disgusted by your comments. None of what I wrote is inaccurate and by my own standards, this is not a very long comment either. If that’s too much reading for you to the point that you feel overwhelmed, then that’s your problem and I hope that at least someone else can get some use out of it.
Do you have any actual arguments or are you just going to hide behind this platitude? Imagine having the audacity to tell Jews that the hatred, discrimination and violence they are experience isn’t real. Would you do the same with POC or LGBTQ+ people? Deny their suffering outright, because it doesn’t fit into your narrative?
This isn’t Israeli propaganda, it’s just journalism. Times of Israel isn’t a government outlet and the rise in global antisemitism and violence against Jews is undeniable.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this nonsense from the Namibian government will achieve absolutely nothing, except for driving the two countries apart again and setting back reconciliation by a considerable amount. Namibia doesn’t have anything to bargain with, which means they need the goodwill of Germany if they want more money - which they won’t get by being mock outraged over core German foreign policy principles.
As I have repeatedly said… Just because Biden has repeated the US company line of unequivocal support for Israel, etc etc (Because even among democrats it’s political suicide to say anything else). That doesn’t mean that he hasn’t been trying the entire time to get Israel to stop the bullshit. This is more or less a...
To touch on one point mentioned in the article, I think the release of the tax revenue should come with clear conditions. The PA has a massive martyr’s fund that they are using to pay out the relatives of those killed, injured or imprisoned in the conflict, primarily terrorists. They are paying out hundreds of millions each year:
The withheld amount is much smaller than this fund. It would make no sense to allow this to continue, since the very same PA that wants to administer Gaza after this war is over is also heavily financially supporting and incentivizing continued violence.
I made a post on r/civ (Civilization games subreddit) showing a really funky shaped randomly generated river I saw and most comments were fine but one guy was convinced that I went through the comparatively monumental effort of opening the map editor and changing the river for karma, as opposed to just starting the game and...
The death toll in Gaza has climbed to at least 20,000 Palestinians. At least 1 in 200 people living in Gaza are now dead. 1 in 4 remaining Palestinians in Gaza are starving to death. I just can not comprehend this amount of violence and death in such a small area in such a short time. This is at a scale unheard of in any other...
aren’t we like, three days removed from the IDF killing obviously surrendering Israeli civilians
We are a week removed from the IDF going forward and openly admitting to their soldiers having made a mistake and acting against both standard protocol and direct orders. As inexcusable as the conduct of the soldiers responsible for this is, the transparent and honest manner in which this incident was communicated to the public is exemplary. You are right that this does raise uncomfortable questions over how normal this kind of conduct of IDF soldiers is though.
the actual root of the problem
The actual root of the problem is that the UN came up with a flawed two-state plan for Palestine in 1947, one that Israel agreed with and the Arab nations didn’t, prompting them to fight a war over it. Which they lost, against a tiny isolated nation under a weapons embargo that literally had to salvage tanks from scrap yards as the attacking Arabs were using the latest gear. Then they tried a few times more, losing again every time and in between, various Palestinian groups have tried again and again to do their worst. Each time, they lose, each time, Palestinians lose territory and power as Israel gets stronger with each military victory, because that’s how wars have always worked. Arab nations also occupied Palestinian territory for decades, oppressing Palestinians there worse than Israel ever did, but that tends to get glossed over these days.
When Israel does actually make concessions, like when they pulled all settlers out of Gaza, invited tens of thousands of Palestinians to work for several times the wages they would get in Palestinian territories, they get thanked with more violence in return, showing the Israeli public that extending the hand does nothing to calm this conflict down, so with each terrorist attack, they shift further to the right politically, electing politicians who promise strength and keeping Palestinians at bay instead of compromising. That’s how you get injustices like indefinite detention of Palestinians. Cause and effect.
Do you even know that Israel was working on finalizing a deal for the Palestinians to get access to gas fields on the coast of Gaza, which would have given them energy independence and a huge influx in cash? Talks were ongoing until literally the day of the terrorist attack, but now it’ll never happen.
This is at a scale unheard of in any other modern conflict.
Here are some ongoing wars that are more destructive:
Ethiopian Civil War: Up to 600,000 dead, up to 100,000 last year alone.
Russo-Ukrainian war: Around 200,000 dead, up to 95,000 this year.
Insurgency in the Maghreb: Up to 400,000 dead, around 14,000 this year.
Myanmar civil war: Up to 210,000 dead, at least 15,000 this year.
Yemeni civil war: More than 380,000 dead and 85,000 of those were just kids starving to death from 2015 to 2018.
Your submission is a prime example of confusing the attention a conflict is getting in the media with its actual scale. Yes, it’s a horrific war, but nobody is getting helped by hysterical hyperbole and shockingly few people care about wars when they are not in the evening news or on their favorite social media service 24/7.
It doesn’t help that your sources are just as hysterical:
In just over two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II
The Ukrainian governments estimates 25,000 dead in that city alone. Over 31,000 people died in Aleppo and up to 500,000 or 0.6% of Germans died due to Allied bombings (which is more than the 1/200 in Gaza for those following along). Is nobody fact checking anything anymore?
Not to be the opposite of a Debbie Downer here (Debbie Upper?), but the fact that 75% of civilians in a high-intensity conflict like this one are not starving is extremely unusual and shows that aid is reaching them. You also turned 25% starving into 25% starving to death, knowingly or unknowingly, and there is actually a difference. Doesn’t bring any food to their nonexistent table, but again, hyperbole. Right now, 50% of people are starving in Syria, despite the conflict there having died down significantly, but nobody gives a damn and not even that UN buffoon seems to know, even though it’s literally his job to know that. Hell, 16.6% of Indians are starving and there’s peace in most of the country. 13% of Americans are food insecure and the only war that’s currently going on there is the “War on Christmas”, at least according to Fox News.
Netanyahu can get bent, but for all the terrible things he’s responsible for or permitting, braindead settlers included, this war is not one that his government started. They’ll end it, then they’ll get kicked out of office by a furious electorate as soon as it’s done and then Palestinians can piece their lives together and maybe tell the next people like Hamas to get just as bent as Netanyahu instead of starting yet another pointless war with the strongest nation in the Middle East in the next five to fifteen years. What did these Hamas idiots think would happen after staging the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust? Everyone else in the Middle East joining in on the murdering of Israelis with no staging time and against a nation armed with nuclear ICBMs? Ridiculous - and ordinary Palestinians and Israelis got to bear the brunt of this absurdity while uninformed people on the Internet get all high and mighty thinking they’ve got the morality of this irrational conflict figured out.
So unguided rockets vaguely aimed at cities, suicide bombers (including the use of children and mentally impaired people as suicide bombers), random stabbings, random shootings are “armed struggle” now? The mere fact that they are using children, old and handicapped people as suicide bombers, including in this current conflict, shows that if there’s one side not valuing Palestinian life at all, it’s Palestinian leadership.
How on Earth do you deal with this kind of political leadership? It’s not just Hamas, that’s how all sorts of groups and Palestinian governments have fought for many decades. How do you achieve “long-term piece” in this kind of situation? Like I said, any kind of concession gets answered with violence and any past peace deal, including the last one that would have resulted in 95% of the West Bank in Palestinian hands, gets rejected by one side and one side only. The current settler problem wouldn’t even exist had Arafat not walked away from the Camp David summit after saying no to every proposal. He lived out his days as a billionaire though, so I guess we know why he did it. I guess he feared for this power and wealth, just like Hamas’ leadership with their billions. Gotta keep that conflict going so that aid comes in that they can then steal from the people right out in the open while delusional idealists - no offense - meander on about high-level concepts like apartheid and oppression, blind to the actual reality.
Seriously read this, including the full report. It explains so much about this conflict.
perhaps you can understand how some of us would conclude that Israel might not care very much about Palestinian civilians
They care less about Palestinian civilians than they do about their own soldiers, but they care enough about them to invest massive amounts of resources into warning them, into getting aid to them and into getting them out of the parts of the strip that are most dangerous to them. That’s more than can be said about anyone else in this conflict. Is it perfect? Hell no, but nothing in this world is and nobody in their right mind would expect them to be perfect.
based on the sheer number of them they’ve killed to this point
We don’t even know how many have died. Seriously, we have zero clue, only made-up numbers from Hamas - who also don’t differentiate between civilian and military deaths, by the way - and rough estimates from everyone else. All we know for certain is that thousands have died. That’s it. It took Israel weeks to come up with the total death toll on their side after the October 7 massacres and that’s in a much more controlled environment, yet everyone immediately accepts whatever the “Gaza Health Ministry” under full Hamas control pumps out. I’ve lost count of how many have sent me articles from BBC, Reuters, NYT and whoever saying that they reported on the numbers and I should take them seriously and yet every single time, these articles cite the same Hamas organization or someone who cites them.
Again, this is a terrible war and thousands have dying in it, but it’s not just a war of bullets and bombs, but also one of information being used a weapon, including misinformation, like completely nonsensical comparisons that I debunked earlier. So many educated, well-meaning people appear to lose all sight of reason, anything resembling critical thinking skills in this and for what? Do any of these people really think that it actually helps Palestinians?
that it was militarily necessary to do that sort of damage even though it was inevitable large numbers of civilians would be caught in the crossfire?
I honestly don’t know, but I can guess why they are doing it that way. I read one report that in one suburb of Gaza City, almost half of all buildings were rigged with explosives by Hamas. In another place, there were traps using speakers that played children’s cries, in yet another location, Hamas used an old man as a suicide bomber. How do you fight in such an environment? Israel is choosing a cautious approach using air power and tanks, which limits the risk to their own soldiers - and successfully so, given the low death toll on their side we’ve seen. I totally get that they are prioritizing that over protecting civilians that have been taught from the crib to kill all Jews. Should they instead choose a riskier approach that might endanger their own people? I think every nation would prioritize their soldiers over civilians from the opposing side. It’s still awful, there’s no way around it, but seriously, what choice do they have? It’s just terrible options and those in charge in Israel have to pick the least terrible one.
in favor of Fatah who at least seem willing to work toward a peaceful resolution
Fatah has a “martyr’s fund” worth hundreds of millions that they use to pay out to the families of those who die in the fight against Israel, including members of Hamas. They paid millions to the families of terrorists who died during the October 7 attack.
Abbas literally has a PhD in Holocaust denial. Fatah are really no good options either and on top of that, they have zero credibility among Palestinians due to how ineffective and corrupt their government is.
and through selectively looking the other way when money and weapons are funneled through back-channels to the group
They also did it, because they thought they could pacify the group, make them interested in governing and enriching themselves instead of waging war. It seemed to have worked for a long time, as evidenced by billions siphoned off into in off-shore accounts, but hindsight is 20/20. The thing is though, there was significant international pressure against Israel to allow these funds into Gaza, including from foreign governments and humanitarian groups, many of which are now using the fact that the Israeli government permitted the transfer of these funds against it or are even frequently distorting it into “Israel funded Hamas” or “Israel created Hamas”.
Like I said, there are only terrible options. This seemed like the least terrible one at the time and since there are no magic wands, there are rarely ideal solutions.
Those conflicts all took place over years. The Israel war on Gaza is blowing through the roof the rate of civilian deaths
Yes, because this is a high-intensity conflict. Small area, lots of fighting and, unlike in most other conflicts, one side is doing everything to get the civilian death toll on “their side” as high as possible by hiding their military infrastructure behind civilians, stealing supplies and preventing people from leaving. Hamas didn’t even build any bomb shelters for ordinary people even though they knew Israel would answer their massacres with bombings.
the level of indiscriminate targeting of civilians and infrastructure
If they are targeting civilians, then why are they warning them?
Doesn’t make any sense. If they were actually out to murder civilians, they’d certainly not be doing this and they’d also not need more than one bomb to kill a single Palestinian.
And yeah, of course infrastructure gets targeted in a war, because how else would you cripple the enemy’s ability to sustain a fight, but that’s not indiscriminate, because you can’t indiscriminately target things. Either you target things, then it’s not indiscriminate, or you are just lobbing bombs indiscriminately, but then you are not targeting things. Sorry to be all pedantic, but please at least try to use the most generic buzz words in this conflict in a reasonably logically consistent manner.
The conflicts you mention are largely Civil Wars
This isn’t? If you support the whole “From the River to the Sea” nonsense, and it looks like you do, then this is one divided country in the midst of a civil war.
total deaths of the conflict (as you do not share any sources).
Probably/hopefully too high, but the truth is that nobody knows, except that the number of verified deaths are only a small fraction of the total in Ukraine. There are so many places in Ukraine that were simply wiped out - with no warnings for civilians, nor escape routes, unlike in Gaza.
Speaking of nobody knows, the fog of war in the Israeli-Hamas war is just as thick. The only numbers people are repeating all over, including most self-proclaimed experts and politicians, are those released by Hamas, who have every interest in the world to paint a picture as horrific as possible in order to put international pressure on Israel to end a war Hamas started so that Hamas can regroup and do the same thing all over again, as they have repeatedly announced.
Knowingly or unknowingly, you and so many other people are carrying water for this terror organization. What we should do is support Israel in the eradication of Hamas while also getting as much help to the civilians caught in the crossfire as possible and put pressure on Hamas to release the hostages and surrender. The shorter this war is, the fewer people on both sides will suffer. For as flawed as Israel is, especially with the current government in charge, they are still the least flawed nation/group in the entire Middle East. Very low bar, I know, but that’s as good as it gets. Have you ever thought how your country, no matter where you are from, would have reacted to an event like October 7? Even some bastion of democracy and freedom like Denmark would have probably done the same if not worse as Israel in response. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep a watchful eye on this (hard not to, given the number of journalists per square meter over there) and influence Israel into fighting this war as humanely as possible, but again, let’s not get hysterical.
The only thing that’s threatened by US military bases are their imperial ambitions in the region. There’s a reason why even Vietnam is seeking US protection. You know that the US isn’t going to attack China first.
Especially in China. That’s a place where it’s not uncommon for very high ranking members of the government/party/major companies and public figures disappearing for months on time if not indefinitely. If it can happen to those people, it can happen to bearers of bad news much further down the line. Not to mention, Xi has been busy purging anyone who even looks remotely competent/threatening (same thing, really) for a while now in the very old-fashioned sense of the word, which isn’t exactly conductive to a smooth running state either.
China is stumbling towards an invasion the same way they stumbled their way into and through COVID. The consequences of this dangerous ineptness will be similar for the world.
People were saying the same about Russia before he invaded Ukraine. The moment we see a buildup of troops at the coast near Taiwan, the countdown to the invasion is ticking down. I do not think it’s a matter of if, but when. Could be this year already. I do not believe that the so-called PLA is even remotely capable of successfully conquering Taiwan, since they have zero experience with any kind of complex military operation (least of which any combined arms and naval landings, let alone the most challenging one in military history), but I think the end result will still be an enormous amount of destruction and suffering, as well as a major and long-lasting economic crisis.
The arrangement with Taiwan is different though. A war between the two Chinas would see direct US involvement, not just the sending over of old weapons that are well past their expiration date.
‘It’s difficult to survive’: China’s LGBTQ+ advocates face jail and forced confession (www.theguardian.com)
In recent years, China’s LGBTQ+ community has been swept up in the Chinese Communist party’s broader crackdown on civil society and freedom of expression. In May 2023, a well known LGBTQ+ advocacy group in Beijing announced it was closing due to “unavoidable” circumstances. Last February, two university students filed a...
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Namibia rejects Germany’s Support of the Genocidal Intent of the Racist Israeli State against Innocent Civilians in Gaza (nitter.unixfox.eu)
cross-posted from: midwest.social/post/7496184...
Biden "running out" of patience with Bibi as Gaza war hits 100 days (www.axios.com)
As I have repeatedly said… Just because Biden has repeated the US company line of unequivocal support for Israel, etc etc (Because even among democrats it’s political suicide to say anything else). That doesn’t mean that he hasn’t been trying the entire time to get Israel to stop the bullshit. This is more or less a...
Gaza war's staggering toll reaches a grim milestone: 20,000 dead (apnews.com)
Why are redditors like this?
I made a post on r/civ (Civilization games subreddit) showing a really funky shaped randomly generated river I saw and most comments were fine but one guy was convinced that I went through the comparatively monumental effort of opening the map editor and changing the river for karma, as opposed to just starting the game and...
The UN says more than 1 in 4 people in Gaza are starving because of war (apnews.com)
The death toll in Gaza has climbed to at least 20,000 Palestinians. At least 1 in 200 people living in Gaza are now dead. 1 in 4 remaining Palestinians in Gaza are starving to death. I just can not comprehend this amount of violence and death in such a small area in such a short time. This is at a scale unheard of in any other...
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Satellite images show China made an apparent USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier target out in the desert (www.businessinsider.com)
China's Xi says reunification with Taiwan is 'inevitable' in New Year's address (www.france24.com)