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...
Biden has pushed for supplemental aid, and he doesn’t have to. He can signal that he’ll veto any additional aid. He can certainly put pressure on Democrats to repeal already-appropriated aid, and he’d even pick up a number of Republicans on that. I also seem to remember a thing where Trump was blocking delivery of approved aid to Ukraine (with the illegal part being that it was for a quid-pro-quo), so stopping aid is certainly possible for a president.
But instead he’s pushing for more aid to Israel’s military. So once again, performative.
This month the Weibo account Weibo Finance, which has more than 1.5 million followers, issued an instruction against posting any comments “that bad-mouth the economy”. The post appears to have since been deleted. Bloomberg reported that several other finance influencers had been told by Weibo to “avoid crossing red...
Scale is half the problem. There is a reason that climate destruction, world-spanning wars, nuclear weapons, etc. all took off the same time that population exploded. You can’t separate scale from technology from destruction. I’m not arguing for de-dev, but the complex, “scalable” systems we’ve built and now rely on are literally either designed to kill us or are inadvertently killing us (emission, plastics, deforestation, PFAS, etc.
I’m not sure where you got the idea that I’m advocating being unprepared for evil? Even in Anarchist systems, which do not have systems of authority, the use of force to counter someone hurting you is well understood.
If your argument is that state systems will scale large enough to destroy non-state systems, I agree, but then you’re just agreeing with what I said about the state setting itself up as a threat that must be participated with in order to counter (i.e. in this case arguing, “if you don’t want the state to consume you, make your own state”). That doesn’t make those other systems bad, it makes states bad. “Might makes right” is not generally considered a very modern or positive way of interacting with each other.
Communism is a very doable system, the problem is that people have false expectations of it and what it should look like (largely thanks to Leninism).
Collaborative, democratic consensus, is the normal way that groups of people work. Coercion is not, but that is how majoritarian systems work, and it is how states work. People have been living under Western nation-state and administrative-state systems for so long, within defined borders that denote both behavior and identity, that it’s tough for people to take how things work on a micro scale (e.g. family or friend-group dynamics), and apply that thinking at larger scales. The common response is, “but someone will always try to take charge/ seize power”, and that is true, but before the time of the modern state, you could walk away.
Now the state itself has become a self-perpetuating threat to its own citizens (which you can’t leave without subsuming yourself to another state), and majoritarian democracy is just used to maintain the state through the illusion of choices that hold that threat at bay. “Don’t let ‘x’ get in power, because if they do they’ll hurt those of us that are ‘y’.” You can’t fuck off and make a community that doesn’t allow ‘x’, because a state will come along and destroy or seize it.
Not attributing the particular mass shooting, but attributing mass shootings as a phenomenon, yes.
Don’t try to play dumb about your choice to call it a “lifestyle”. No one calls stabbing attacks “the British Lifestyle”, or anti-Muslim legislation “the French Lifestyle”, despite those things being common to those places, and them being infamous for them.
I was talking with a friend today about Hallmark movies because we all seem to have at least one grandma who loves them around this time of year, and we’re hashing out the tropes they all share because they’re so formulaic that you could probably boil it down to a mad libs prompt, and something dawned on me because of one...
That’s why I try to be very deliberate in differentiating between “Israel”, which is a country and government, and “Israelis”, which are the people who live there.
As an American, I’m extremely mindful of this distinction:
Being anti-American is bigotry based on national origin.
Being anti-America is a moral and justified position against an Imperial, settler-colonialist state that kills millions around the globe.
One of the TikTok trends is to show the process of loading a projectile into a tank and firing it. Another is to put trance music to a video, along with the words “2-3, sha-ger.” This is the order that a military drone operator is given to drop a bomb, with the syllables separated so that the message is clear. The trend...
You mean where they found weapons and a tunnel with an armored door with a firing port?
Yes, that one. The one where all that was behind that door was a room with 2 cots and a table, where Israel had claimed (complete with a fancy 3D animation) that there was an entire multi-level command center with tens of rooms, housing potentially hundreds of Hamas fighters. That one, that didn’t exist.
Or the al-Shifa hospital where a surveillance camera recording shows terrorists bringing in a hostage?
This is always such a weird argument. Yeah, of course Hamas brought the hostage there for treatment. They were trying to keep them alive. They’re also the government in Gaza, so it would be no different than Israeli military bringing one of their hostages to an Israeli hospital. Are you under the impression that hospitals that treat war wounded are military targets?
Let me ask you this: How should Israel have reacted to the terror attack on October 7? What would, in your eyes, an appropriate, justified response look like? Please be honest.
Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Then, I’d say they should have conducted a ground invasion backed with actually targeted strikes on Hamas targets using precision weapons that the US is so enamored with.
and also permitted foreign aid through the border crossing with Egypt
Permitted a pittance, after blocking all of it initially.
I’m not Israeli.
That just makes your caping for their genocide and ethnic cleansing even more ridiculous.
The right-wing leader appeared on multiple cable news shows to speak on the current state Israel’s monthlong siege on Gaza, which human rights experts have warned amount to ethnic cleansing and war crimes....
“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....
I actually loved Jezebel, because it was maybe the only news site I encountered (as a dude not particularly in the know), that actually talked about women’s issues like my wife does.
People got very upset that they were opinionated, but that’s the whole point; why would you expect anything else on a site literally named Jezebel?
“Your honor, I know it might seem oddly coincidental that I mostly shoot at criminals that are standing next to schools, but I assure you that the large number of child casualties is not my intent. In fact, it’s the kids’ fault that they let the criminals stand next to them!”
Sure, but it wasn’t saving any Palestinians lives in the process OR the goal. Most Israelis weren’t opposing Netanyahu because they were against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, they just didn’t like what he was doing to prevent punishment for his corruption. They wanted to replace him, but it would just be with another genocidal guy.
If I came into your house and drove you by force into the garage, I don’t think you’d want a “2-house solution” that allows you to live there, either.
And no, I don’t think that essentially saying, “why don’t the Palestinians wait around being killed quietly, to see if the youths protesting today will massively change Israel’s trajectory when they get into politics in 20 years?” is a reasonable, measured, or humane stance.
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...
China cracks down on negativity over economy in bid to boost confidence amid record high youth unemployment and struggling property sector (www.theguardian.com)
This month the Weibo account Weibo Finance, which has more than 1.5 million followers, issued an instruction against posting any comments “that bad-mouth the economy”. The post appears to have since been deleted. Bloomberg reported that several other finance influencers had been told by Weibo to “avoid crossing red...
Prague shooting: Gunman dead after killing more than 15 at Charles University (www.bbc.com)
Something disturbing about Hallmark movies
I was talking with a friend today about Hallmark movies because we all seem to have at least one grandma who loves them around this time of year, and we’re hashing out the tropes they all share because they’re so formulaic that you could probably boil it down to a mad libs prompt, and something dawned on me because of one...
Biden says Netanyahu must change, Israel losing global support (www.reuters.com)
On TikTok, the war in Gaza is a game (english.elpais.com)
One of the TikTok trends is to show the process of loading a projectile into a tank and firing it. Another is to put trance music to a video, along with the words “2-3, sha-ger.” This is the order that a military drone operator is given to drop a bomb, with the syllables separated so that the message is clear. The trend...
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu says Palestinian civilians being killed en masse are simply “collateral damage” (www.huffpost.com)
The right-wing leader appeared on multiple cable news shows to speak on the current state Israel’s monthlong siege on Gaza, which human rights experts have warned amount to ethnic cleansing and war crimes....
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....
Advertisers Don’t Want Sites Like Jezebel to Exist (www.404media.co)
Don’t fall into the trap of ‘picking sides’ over Gaza: Hamas’s attacks were unconscionable, razing Gaza to the ground would be abhorrent. In both cases, basic humanity is at stake --- [Opinion] (feddit.de)
Cross-posted from: feddit.de/post/5185724...