@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org
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raccoona_nongrata

@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org

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raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

And Hamas is not actually representative of Palestinians. The majority of people in Gaza are literally not even old enough to have voted last time there was any kind of election.

What Hamas actually is is a group that was funded and propped up by Netanyahu to create an intractable boogie man that Netanyahu could then point too and say “look, Palestinians don’t want a solution, nothing Israel can do about the situation, guess we have no choice but genocide.”

‘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...

raccoona_nongrata, (edited )
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

Ironically, I think censoring these kinds of innocuous influencer types is probably a counter-productive move by the CCP (as far as their fascist goals go) compared to silencing actual out-and-out political activists.

I think it’s easier for people in China to accept the silencing of active political dissidents and shrugg them off as “probably extremists”, but censoring a popular entertainment figure forces people in China to ask the question “Why?” which only really leaves the one conclusion; that they’re living in a techno-fascist state. That’s the question the CCP doesn’t want people asking.

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...

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

I’ll believe it when Biden takes even the most modest of practical moves to pressure Israel to stop.

Not speeches about Hamas, or “hiding behind civilians”, or lamenting how bad Israel feels about killing kids, but actual pressure.

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

If they survived their contact with IDF, yeah.

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

While I personally don’t think Julian Assange did anything ethically or morally wrong, and the US government’s dogged pursuit of him was unjust, he did leak military intel which is much more serious and legally significant than what people often get jailed and harassed for in China. Like, I would not expect to leak info about the military in any country and just walk away as if nothing happened.

People have literally been jailed for making Tweets in China, people have been punished as retaliation against someone in their family being a dissident, we really shouldn’t be comparing the two countries as if they’re the same, regardless of the numerous major issues the US has. And even if they were the same, it doesn’t make anything China does even slightly more justifiable.

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

Czecholslovakia already had a significant far-right demographic, I don’t think this is something that can be blamed on the US, this is just the result of conservativism anywhere.

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

This is kind of an absurd take, Americans didn’t invent mass killings. There have been shootings and killings far longer than the US has even been around. Whatever problems the US has you can’t just lay every problem at their feet. It reads more like you’re trying to force some kind of political narrative than anything else.

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

No one should be able to lie to themselves about what the far-right government in Israel is doing in Gaza now.

If three naked Israelis waving a white flag and speaking Hebrew are summarily shot on site without a question, and that the only reason the murderers even thought to question after the fact is because one of the murder victims looked ‘western’, how the hell can anyone actually claim to believe the lie that the IDF is taking care not to kill civilians?

Surely this will wake people up to the reality that this is, and always has been, a mission of ethnic cleansing. It’s has got to be undeniable at this point.

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

Doing the right thing once doesn’t wash the blood from your hands for another crime.

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

“We have good intel that those infants were hamas.”

Or alternatively

“What do you want Israel to do? Just let Israel not exist? Why are you anti-semitic?”

raccoona_nongrata, (edited )
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

Gaza is in far worse of a state, yeah, but make no mistake that Palestine is under Israeli control as well. Every aspect of Palestinian life is subject to Israeli rule.

I think this is one of the biggest misunderstandings that gets exploited by the Israeli far-right; Palestine is not a country, it does not have independence or autonomy. Even Hamas itself is a consequence of Israeli influence.

I’m not trying to be argumentative or anything, but it’s really important that people understand the dynamic of power in that region. We’ve been lied about the reality for years to make it seem like this is a “both sides” kind of scenario.

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

I mean, can you really kidnap people who are already in an open air prison that you use as a bombing range?

raccoona_nongrata, (edited )
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

Same old strategy as every colonizer ever; brainwash the ones you can and strip them of their cultural identity, bury the ones that won’t bend in the mass grave out back.

Same reason there was a massive spike in orphanages as the Uyghur progrom got under way in Xinjiang and communities started vanishing. The CCP sees the necessity of inserting itself between parent and child to stop cultural continuity.

Gaza’s Largest Hospitals Close, Premature Babies Taken Out of Incubators, Israeli Forces Reportedly Entered Hospitals and Fired at Patients (www.democracynow.org)

“Five kids in the pediatric [Shifa Hospital] ICU left alone in Rantisi Hospital, and we don’t know what’s going on with them. The communications were lost, so they might be dead or alive,” one of the doctors said....

raccoona_nongrata, (edited )
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

We don’t know if those premature babies were Hamas sleeper agents. You know, Israel just out there with “no choice” but to kill those babies, bomb those hospitals and apartment blocks. Gotta have their war against…whoever.

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

And according to the the Torah, Israel was originally founded in genocide. It’s seen as righteous and necessary, dashing the infants against the rocks, child brides, wiping out the tribes of Canaan and all that. Yahweh was all for it.

The main factor as to whether one Abrahamic group or another will commit to genocide is generally just whether they are in power or not. Whenever there is a Christian majority, or a Muslim majority or, as we’ve seen over the last fifty years, a Jewish religious majority, they set about oppressing whichever of the others are a minority.

It’s the Abrahamic philosophies themselves that are poisonous and sustain this spirit of neverending conquest. You’ll never have anything resembling peace in the middle east until the people there move past bronze age beliefs about how they are entitled by god to own some piece of land and everyone else is just collateral or second class citizens. Likewise with christianity in the west and everywhere else it’s been spread.

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

The median age in Gaza is 18…half the population is literal children because no one lives long enough to grow old. The reality of what Israel is doing to the people in Palestine is not something that can be hidden from and handwaved away any more.

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

They’ll just end up killing many more civilians than Hamas has murdered and cementing the next generation of extremists.

That’s basically Netanyahu’s entire MO. This attack has been a real boon for his brand of politics, especially given his recently waning support and legal troubles.

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

So genocidal slaughter then, sounds about what one would expect.

An invasion would bring heavy casualties on both sides and questions about whether Israel can devise an exit strategy for the conflict

I found this a bit amusing in a grim way, in what universe has Israel ever indicated that they have or want an exit plan from Gaza or apartheid occupation? They want to own Gaza/Palestine, theynow have an excuse to rampage and slaughter on a new level so they’re taking it.

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

Palestine is effectively an open air prison, it is occupied for all intents and purposes and Israelis have colonized progressively more and more land, regardless of any kind of empty political gestures.

Israel has a right to exist, not a right to run an apartheid state.

raccoona_nongrata, (edited )
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

If being attacked entitles one to retaliate with violence, then Israel has earned the attack that happened by miles.

There has been none of this kind of outrage when Israeli MPs and soldiers brutalize Palestinians, kill international reporters, bomb news stations and residential centers, indiscrimnately kill women and children.

If you don’t believe that violence warrants violent and wanton reprisal, then you should be against the Israelis laying siege to Gaza.

deleted_by_author

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    raccoona_nongrata,
    @raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

    I mean, if you pen people into an area, blockade critical resources, bulldoze their homes, drop bombs on them, shoot women and children, raid their holy places arbitrary and tear gas people at worship you create an environment where people will organize and resist violently.

    raccoona_nongrata, (edited )
    @raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

    You have to look at the power balance. Israelis shoot people for throwing rocks, they bomb civilian city centers for rocket attacks that get reliably shot down by the iron dome, they tear gas mosques because they don’t like people “gathering”. Israel has killed more Palestinian children alone than Palestinians have killed Israelis total.

    It’s not that Hamas are blameless, it’s that Israel has all the power here, so they bear the responsibility for pursuing a better alternative then simply murdering people and shutting down homes and businesses to punish the population.

    Consider if your home town was being slowly taken over by some powerful outside force, your child or sibling killed, your house bulldozed so the occupiers could build their own colonies. Would you not feel you have a right to defend yourself? Or would you lay down and take it?

    raccoona_nongrata,
    @raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

    Yes, and this is why the experience of individuals can’t be taken as an indication of whether there is or isn’t a problem.

    China is a huge country with a long history and cultures of its own, the people there are like anywhere else mainly concerned with just living their day to day life. But we learned from the middle of the last century that people can be living a relatively normal life directly adjacent to some of the most heinous crimes against humanity our species has ever seen.

    There’s a lot of value that the people of China could contribute, culturally and economically, if they were in a position to actually freely and openly engage with the rest of the world in an honest way. Some incredible cinema, for example, came out of China prior to the new age of censorship and hyper-aggressive information control brought in by Xi. I just wish that the CCP was out of the picture so that could happen again, China has so much more to offer.

    raccoona_nongrata,
    @raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

    I’m not anti-China, I genuinely wish the best for the people of China. I’m anti-CCP.

    I don’t think China will really be able to engage or cooperate with a world community in any meaningful way until the CCP is out of the picture. There’s simply zero trust there from anyone.

    raccoona_nongrata,
    @raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

    In some ways, yes, certain factions within the US government have been untrustworthy. However, I think people do not understand that China is still on a completely different level. There’s a reason that the US is broadly trusted by its allies (or was, largely, up until the recent decade of overt campaign of internal sabotage).

    To compare the US and China is like comparing Kent State to Tienanmen Square. Were they both violations of fundamental human liberty? Yes. Are they at all comparable as reflections of the viability of each respective state’s potential to sustain human liberty? No.

    The US is in a conflict with itself, between far-right, corporate factions and those groups that actually defend some semblance of democratic liberty. This fact is the proof of the difference, that some meaningful element of democracy does exist in the US. The US has the ability to course correct. In China rule has been consolidated under a single man, unchallenged now, who has created hundreds of prison camps and a surveillance state unmatched even by the US. He ran literal execution vans in his run up to power.

    Convincing people that the crimes committed by China against its own people and those they’ve colonized are normal is a way of lessening the seriousness with which those crimes are regarded. You have to ask yourself if that’s really the goal you want to be serving. You’re not required to sing the praises of the US, but acknowledging the meaningful degree of difference is critical to preventing the world sliding further into an authoritarian paradigm.

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