alyaza

alyaza, 2 years ago

to be clear: the “they” here is the chinese government rather than the chinese people, correct? your comment is a little ambiguous

alyaza, 2 years ago

yep. Energy Minister Yisrael Katz has signed an order instructing the Israel Electric Corporation to halt the supply of electricity to the Gaza Strip. i suspect this is the beginning of many, many punitive measures to come as reprisal

alyaza, 2 years ago

the primary reason Hamas has political power and the political support to attack Israel in this manner is because Israel:

• treats all Palestinians as second-class citizens and subjects them to a system of political, social, and economic apartheid
• holds millions of Palestinians in squalid and inhuman conditions, and seizes the territory of millions more in the name of a violent settler project
• subjects the vast majority of Palestinians to state-sponsored discrimination, terror, indiscriminate bombing, and political violence
• leaves Palestinians no feasible democratic path to the rights they should have in their current state or the state of Israel, making armed struggle inevitable

you can and should condemn Hamas, but it is inarguable that Israel routinely does worse—overwhelmingly to people just as innocent as the ones Hamas is murdering—which is what makes attacks like this inevitable. you cannot do what Israel does and not expect the outcome to be violence, and it is incumbent on Israel, who holds all the actual power in this dynamic, to break the cycle and stop using every terrorist attack perpetuated against it as an excuse to roll innocent heads.

alyaza, 2 years ago

Cool so I respond to an antisemite saying that Israel refusing to supply power to a state that just declared war on it is punitive, and your response was to say it’s Israel’s fault.

i mean, yeah. Netanyahu is saying he’s going to basically reduce Gaza to rubble when 99% of Gazans are innocents and can’t leave Gaza because Israel is blockading them. Israeli bombs have killed far more innocents than actual terrorists in the Strip as seen in my citation. this is the exact behavior that allows Hamas to thrive. Israel, as a state, has the power to not do this and to seek more productive options—but does it anyways because it simply doesn’t care about the humanity of Palestinians and considers all of them acceptable collateral damage in killing Hamas members.

alyaza, 3 years ago

The health ministry’s August 3 dispatch is being celebrated for its protection of queer Vietnamese in medical settings and as fuel for an ongoing petition for the legalisation of same-sex marriage. […] Based on this, and citing the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) removal of homosexuality and being transgender from the International Classification of Diseases, it goes on to outline five primary guidelines for the health system.

Education should be strengthened so all medical providers have correct knowledge about “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,” it says, and that queer people must be treated equally in medical environments. In addition, LGBTQ identity cannot be treated as a disease, while involuntary treatments are prohibited and mental health services can only be provided by experts on sexual orientation and gender identity. Lastly, supervision and inspection of medical facilities should be increased.

pretty substantial!