You make sense, and I sort of agree so I won't downvote and just add my bit. The "prisoners" are definitely being used as negotiation leverage in every discussion with Hamas.
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Israel calls the system it uses to imprison people without trial or even charges "administrative detention". It's hostage taking under a sanitized name and in terms of #'s Israel is provably many times worse than already-terrible Hamas.
"Before October 7, the number of Palestinians held by Israel under administrative detention was already at a 20-year high. According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, there were 1,310 Palestinians imprisoned without charge or trial at the end of September, including at least 146 minors. Since then, Israel has dramatically increased its use of administrative detention, pushing the number of detainees to over 2,000 within the first four weeks of the war. (That’s out of a total of roughly 7,000 Palestinian prisoners.)"
People are often imprisoned for no other reason than Israelis don't like them. Sometimes it's social media posts. The average length of detention without trial or charge is a year. So if an Israeli soldier doesn't like you being free, you can lose a year of your life being abused in prison for no other reason. There is an appeals process, but a report showed appeals failed 98.8% of the time from 2015-17 and there were no successes at all in 2023. "The overall figure is outrageous,” Montell said. “This is a patently illegal practice. These people should be given a fair trial or released.”
I know this is a shitpost, but honestly I'm so glad I got a vasectomy. There is a history of extreme depression and some dementia in my family, so I decided to get it done so I wouldn't father a child who would have to live through that. I never got it tested (don't know if it's possible to), but discussions with psychiatrists and other doctors confirmed it's likely at least partially genetic. If I end up with a partner who wants children there are other ways to go about that. I would never force that decision on anyone else but it has really brought me some peace of mind.
Also, vasectomy + female birth control = low risk condom-free sex (provided no STIs obviously). Finally, what a tragic waste of perfectly good...pizza rolls I'm guessing? That's some "tried cooking while drunk and fell asleep" results.
There is no way that murdering top Iranian officials in an Iranian embassy
on Syrian soilwas ever going to be anything but a gauntlet thrown down. If it was almost any other country than Israel the world would be outraged. Countries like the USA and Germany didn't pull support because of things like destroying hospitals and killing innocents, so bombing the embassy of a country as reviled as Iran inside Syria wasn't going to stop them.Netanyahu knows his days in power are done very shortly after Israel leaves a condition of all-out war. Biden has told him that, his polls tell him that, and protestors tell him that. I think he's poking the local bears to escalate and stay in power by extending the conflict. Both Biden and Trump have promised support so Netanyahu is acting with the backing of the world's largest military no matter who wins. Pulling the USA and other Western countries into another war in the Middle East is his best bet of pushing that day of reckoning way down the road.
"Ground-breaking new study discovers that being loved makes people happier". I understand why it's important to formalize results like this so you have data to inform policy etc, but man...it's like reading a study about how the sun is quite warm. Parents who won't support their kids without being told to do so have some foundational family problems to sort out.
You mean like the over 460 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since Oct. 7th? Facts do not support your attempts to mitigate what the settlers did and have been doing for a long, long time now.
Well for starters it might be because there's zero proof that Palestinians had anything to do with it. Even if (and again it's IF) Palestinians had something to do with it, that's not justification for what happened. Finally, this is just another instance of the increased settler violence in the West Bank (not Gaza), which has seen over 460 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire since Oct. 7th.
I think we're on the same side, and I didn't downvote you but it's a weak word. It's like calling arms sales to organized criminal gangs "dicey". No, it's not dicey (which necessarily means there's a chance it's alright) - it's definitively unethical and illegal by the US's own laws.
The US's own Leahy Law prohibits most types of aid or training from going to foreign agents who can credibly be alleged to be committing human rights violations. The US Department of State website says "The U.S. government considers torture, extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance, and rape under color of law as GVHRs when implementing the Leahy law." Here's just one UN report from mid-February about "credible allegations of egregious human rights violations to which Palestinian women and girls continue to be subjected in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank." It specifically mentions extrajudicial killings and rape among other offenses, so...is US human rights law actually meaningful or not?
I suppose we've gotten to the level of admission where the media is calling continued illegal support "dicey". Maybe after another few months of killing and starving civilians with Western weapons and aid we can call it "concerning" or "troubling".
Poor countries paying the price for the unrestrained greed of others. Even European countries recorded thousands of excess deaths due to heat waves in the last few years, so much poorer countries like Mali are going to be especially vulnerable. Plus, if the ocean heat records being set or climate disasters of 2023 are any indication this is just beginning.
It's ridiculous. Countries like Germany are using censorship techniques from 50 years ago hoping to keep people ignorant when in fact their attempts just draw additional attention. We live in the Information Age - it doesn't matter how many accounts Germany seizes or doctors they detain, the truth of Israeli war crimes in Gaza and who is complicit is going to go public.
I'm of the opinion that as long as you aren't hurting yourself or others without consent, do what you want to. The consent thing is important because people will play contact or combat sports, do BDSM stuff, etc. - so long as it's informed go nuts. It's also important because some people can't give informed consent, e.g. kids can't agree to underage sex because they don't know about the harms and are more vulnerable to manipulation.
A couple of years ago I watched a doctor review a video of someone who likes having sex with balloons. The doctor said he would only diagnose that behavior as a problem or illness if it was hurting him or others around him. His argument was if there's no harm and it makes that person happier then what really is the problem? I was initially taken aback because it's weird right? But after some thought it really made sense to me - just because I don't relate doesn't make something bad. I don't have to want to do it myself - there's room in life for multiple (non-harmful) preferences.
In truth I think fossil fuel companies are trying to extend oil dominance for a last few years while they figure out how to corner cleaner technologies. Their press releases are meant to bolster shareholder confidence, and their policies are meant to keep them on top.
Priorities. Kill tens of thousands of civilians in a few months = I sleep (until it threatens careers). Blow up oil = serious problem deserving immediate response.
- Jump
Have you ever devoted a significant amount of time to something only to later feel it was pointless?
Sometimes, and I think that's normal, but usually upon reflection there aren't many things that are truly worthless. I totally sound like a bad motivational poster but I really believe that even poor uses of time can teach you things - even if only how to be patient, forgiving to yourself, or wiser. It's a life philosophy of mine that you should always be pushing yourself enough that you might fail (research shows that failing about 15% of the time is the sweet spot for motivation and learning). Plus sometimes just passing the time is a goal in and of itself, especially if you're doing something you enjoy. Playing a video game, listening to music, etc doesn't "accomplish" a lot but makes life better.
I'm not going to get my hopes up for a reckoning until they are actually paying. Poor public opinion and isolated lawsuits are not meaningful until it's costing the companies more than they earned via their decades of horribly irresponsible practices and outright lies. Anything less and it's just a reduction in net profits, not an actual punishment.
Taking Exxon Mobil as an example: they apparently made $55.74B net income in 2022, a 141.93% increase from 2021. Even if these lawsuits were WILDLY successful and Exxon had to pay 20B in one-time settlements, that's not even half a year's net income and no deterrent.
Flashgitz's "TRANSformers" video seems like an appropriate link here.
Is that meant as a defense of Israel or...? What am I supposed to take from that aside from Israel should stop doing unethical things so regularly that even North Korea doesn't get reprimanded as often? I'll remind you in turn that North Korea didn't -actually- bomb an embassy (so a condemnation wouldn't make sense) - feel free to swap the countries in my comment to whichever you want. That was an analogy to showcase how if it wasn't America's lovechild breaking international law no one would even consider justifying it. It was also a direct rebuttal to your prior "they're technically at war so it's ok" argument. Israel actually did bomb an embassy of one country within the borders of another country.
Agreed. Israel is going to the meetings but their proposals amount to "give us back the Israeli hostages, we'll give you a few hundred of the thousands of Palestinians we're imprisoning, and then we'll go back to killing you mmkay?" Even their ceasefire proposals are a) temporary and b) don't stop the terrible conditions of apartheid/hostile occupation the Palestinians were living in for decades before Oct. 7th.
Netanyahu has made it clear he will keep on killing Palestinians until Hamas is eliminated aka for as long as it serves his purposes. Don't forget Netanyahu's administrations are the whole reason Hamas was put in and kept power in the first place.