It is a sad day in history when the leader of the Israeli government hates his neighbour so much that he is willing to absolve the most notorious war criminal in history, Adolf Hitler, of the murder of six million Jews.
Damn. Cut right to the core, without any bluster or hyperbole - because it wasn’t needed.
Before we low-key split from Pakistan, they had a similar symbiotic/parasitic relation as the US does with Israel. Seen as a good ally/possible partner diplomatically and with military utility for bases and CENTCOM power projection. And though Pakistan was never really ‘on side’ for a couple of reasons, they kept themselves under the radar and out of our ire - until we found Taliban militants regularly getting refuge and medical care over the Afghan-Pak border, and capped off with discovering Bin Laden in Pakistan.
Israel is hardly a ‘vassal’ or even protectorate. The US has significant leverage, but Israel has remained cordial with Russia and China even if that means snubbing the US - Israel refused to export anti-ship and cruise missiles to Ukraine, in deference to Chinese and Russian interests. Israel has options now to split from the US (painful as it may be) unlike in the 60/70s when the Soviets were funneling weapons to Egypt and Syria, and Israel required US support.
All that to say, Israel can (and may yet) tell the US to kick rocks again, and I don’t think the west is ready for the reality of what enforcing a ceasefire/no-fly zone would mean.
Believe it or not, STRAIGHT TO RWANDA
Legally a person cannot be made ‘stateless’ - unless they have an alternate citizenship to fall back on, you cannot revoke theirs, no matter how reprehensible they are. The ISIS volunteers from Europe weren’t made stateless, just very dead or arrested
Hamas needs to be destroyed.
Great yes let’s end Hamas. That will totally and 100% solve the security situation across the region. Because as history has clearly shown, Israel spending decades assassinating leaders, marginalizing Fatah to blunt peace talks, killing the Fedayeen in the 60s and 70s, and a ‘weapons free’ policy outside Israeli borders DID IN FACT prevent October 7th. Sound policy, clearly no reason to reexamine or revise.
It is a farce to pretend that constant violence will bring Israel permanent security, unless genocide is part of the plan. You cannot attack a people, deny them a pathway to live with dignity, and be shocked when they don’t like you and fight back.
Palestinian people ought to rebel against Hamas, but Hamas is as popular as ever, at least they were until October 7. Not sure how the public feels, now.
You’re joking right? You seriously expect them to come out into the streets and pick up weapons to expel Hamas? The starving people who were bombed from their homes?
Hamas, ISIS, Jihad, Houthis, it's all the same shit with slightly different flavors.
No. Not remotely, unless you only see ‘Islamist’ and ‘Iranian supported’ and then ignore every other aspect that makes their motives and ideology different. ISIS is actively beefing with the Taliban, they just sent two suicide bombers back to back against Taliban collecting their paychecks. PIJ and Al-Quds only this last year started limited operational cooperation, and that’s over now. Lions Den don’t work with anyone else in the West Bank, and the Houthis are actively fighting multiple factions.
I disagree with the UN reporter.
Rapporteur, not reporter. An expert appointed with a mandate to investigate, not a friendly/hostile journalist. Big difference in the weight you should give her words, and the seriousness of the allegation.
Any famine in Gaza is the fault of Gaza's leadership
False. Israel ratified the ICESCR in 1991 which includes “physical and economic access at all times to adequate food” as a basic human right.
(Hamas) which led Gaza and its people directly into a seige without having adequately prepared. Well, Hamas prepared for themselves. They have plenty of food and are hiding in tunnels.
Not so much anymore. The top leaders in Doha, sure they’re living good. But the recently escaped and released hostages all spoke of rapidly deteriorating conditions with less food each day for themselves and their captors. The blockage of food is hurting everyone - civilian, militant, hostages too.
They're just leaving the public to suffer and die while they go hide and retweet Al Jazeera articles, which is par for the course for Hamas, which uses entire cities as human shields. They had their chance to grow up and they utterly failed.
You completely missed my question so I’ll repeat it - If they want martyrdom, why help them in the information war? Why give your opponents ready-for-press psyops? Why would you ever permit the civilians to starve to death, because you didn’t cooperate with aid inspections, or force the shitheads body-blocking the crossings to move?
The UN is a diplomatic platform, that occasionally goes kinetic with peacekeeping or aid missions. The majority of the UN is bureaucrats of various levels, talking to other bureaucrats of various levels, to work together.
The UN is also the world police, but much more like a bounty hunter than a SWAT team. Any enforcement actions taken, are VERY targeted, have very well defined limits and rules, and basically requires a sponsor nation(s) to actually go Do The Thing. Which also requires the UN to agree to all those limits, rules, etc and to agree that enforcement is required.
Very often the UN gets bogged down by geopolitical influence issues, like with Syria in the 2010s. The no-fly zone that kept Gadaffi’s Air Force from stopping the uprising, wasn’t a UN action.
I keep seeing you roll into these discussions acting like “it’s just the facts, dreamer” makes you the only adult in the conversation, and you repeatedly fail to recognize the non-kinetic impacts and repercussions of Israel’s/IDF’s/Likud-Coalition’s/Netanyahu’s course of action.
The US is very publicly putting Israeli leadership/Netanyahu on notice that they are evaluating the scope and depth of the relationship - that is huge. A US non-veto was played off as a ‘stab in the back’ despite Bibi and crew being well aware of US red lines over their shitshow of a war and the total absence of plans for after the war. Israel’s duplicity over aid inspections and crossings has worn down diplomats and NGOs across the world, the UN special rapporteur has directly stated that any famine that occurs is a direct result of Israeli policy.
You also keep pushing this idea that Palestinians want/accept death as a political tool to gain freedom, and that somehow frees us from trying to avoid their deaths? That speaks far more to the depth of humanity and how you value human life, than anything else. Accepting your base realpolitik approach, if they want martyrdom deaths to made Israel look bad, why grant them their wish? Why play into it?
Ambassador Robert Ford (retired) spent his entire diplomatic career in the Middle East and North Africa since 1985, including being appointed as Ambassador to Syria by Obama, and by Bush Jr as Ambassador to Algeria.
AIPAC. We honestly need to ban foreign money in our elections at an absolute minimum, because the Netanyahu-Republican enablement allows an external power to force the hand of a President/diplomatic service. In this case it is tying us to a madman, whilst the US is trying to hold together Bretton Woods and the Pax Americana.
The ‘calculated support’ of Israel seen as necessary has isolated the US internationally and made us look like hypocrites - while the global south is watching.
the border has literally moved thanks to the Nordic countries getting into NATO and no longer being neutral
angrygoose.jpg Why are they now in NATO? It couldn’t possibly be because:
Given how Putin has gone complete clown show into revanchist ideology and is trying to restore the Russian Empire, it’s completely logical for the Nordics/the world to seek alliances for protection.
The UK took the best of everything it encountered, and added it to it's own, like the Borg.
The Empire was built from the Agricultural and Industrial Revolution, and the +15 year head start the British got over the rest of the world. The coupling of massive domestic economic growth with an international system of spoils and conquest lead to the Age of Sail and the gilded era for Britain, not an adherence to objective, rational facts and ideas.
The advantage of developing earlier lead to much of the leading research, science and practices coming from Britain, but they certainly had enough hubris to ignore better ideas that weren’t their own
As of September 2019, under the EIPA, the Minister of Foreign Affairs must deny exports and brokering permit applications for military goods and technology if there is a substantial risk that the items would undermine peace and security, or could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws, acts constituting an offence under international conventions relating to terrorism or organized crime, or serious acts of gender-based violence.
Turkey is blacklisted since 2021 for cause, and if you’ve followed the way they’ve dealt with Kurdish rebels and civilians, it’s completely clear why. Same with Israel and Gaza/Lebanon, the IDF and IAF have repeatedly demonstrated an astonishing lack of restraint towards civilians if doing so means they cannot pursue their military objectives.
The needs of Israel outweigh the Netanyahu.
Him trying to doggedly ‘crush’ Hamas (an impossible goal politically) whilst refusing to see the larger picture is an outstanding dereliction of duty to the country as a whole
The northern border is increasingly heating up with Hezbollah targeting IDF bases directly and with larger ordnance - in a few months it has progressed from lowly ATGMs and 80s tech, to Grad and Burkan rocket artillery. There’s now more frequent attacks on northern towns and settlements because of their increasing firepower brought in
International condemnation is widespread, your neighbors to the east and south are publicly taking about ‘changes in security treaties’ with Israel and threatening unilateral action, an ICJ judgment that is sustained into war crimes investigations, and top US official and leaders are talking about ‘red lines’ and implicitly threatening continuing US military aid - that’s a big problem.
Even if you accept the ‘4D chess’ angle that Bibi is dealing with Iran Hamas completely to remove that threat before taking care of Iran Hezbollah, that ignores the global reality that the world, not just the Arab/Islamic world, isn’t going to sit by and let you ignore ~2 million Palestinians, today or tomorrow.
Israel is totally capable of winning the battle against Hamas, no doubt. But by doing so they will loose the wider war, isolate themselves politically, and make their own survival harder without friendly nations in a rough neighborhood.
The money that runs this country wouldn’t stand for the level of disruption that’d cause to the ongoing grift to slow/stop. Same why we likely won't ever crash out on the deficit, the rating downgrade scared them so bad the Republicans made a deal ASAP last time
What’s terrifying is if the money decides to go in and join in the ‘creative destruction’ via another Business Plot and co-opts authoritarianism
The lathe & knee mill thing is being nibbled away under the ‘ghost gun’ fears - yes 80% is a weird line in the sand but we have to define it somewhere between “non-descript block of metal” to “legally now a gun”. Not sure how that’s going to survive legal test, the law there needs a refresh tbh
I’m really more surprised to see 3D printing not being targeted/trolled by copyright and IP lawyers. There was some limited activity with Games Workshop and people scanning wargaming miniatures to cheaply 3D print instead of paying (exorbitant) retail prices, but hasn’t gone far beyond banning non-official minions at official events
Hamas has to be destroyed now and if Israel has to annex all of Gaza to do it, that's the moral and just outcome. Terrorists don't get to have a state.
You are familiar with the origins of Israel and the ongoing campaigns of Jewish terrorism against both the British overseers and the Arabs, right? And the tit-for-tat escalation responses following soon after, leading to the Nakba, leading to the present day scenario.
Or the modern origins of the United States, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Myanmar, etc history tends to blur the line between terrorist, rebel, and resistance fighter once the violence settles. Do they all deserve subjugation by the strong, because they rebelled and resorted to violence? Or do we recognize them for the current/former colonial holdings they are/were, admit that European drawing lines on maps don’t know everything, and that the people living there need to work out a solution to borders, population transfer, restitution, etc, while the international community tries to stop abuses happening?
The Tamils were denied autonomy or self governance in their own country after the colonial powers left - sound familiar? They rebelled and had their own state for decades until the Sinhalese majority decided to crush the rebels, causing over 20,000 civilian deaths in five months of the final offensive (sound familiar?) , atop the displaced and civic destruction. The issue of Tamil self-determination is still not really resolved, to this day, and remains a friction point - sound familiar?
Ireland had Sinn Fein running the Republic for decades as the IRA’s political wing, and that stood down as part of the peace process. Irish republicans arent super happy, the Nothern Irish more so - but they are at peace. Until Brexit opened the old wounds, there was very low levels of sectarian violence outside of marching season. Very different outcome.
Palestinians after Camp David weren't offered any real choice, and still are not seeing a way out besides a “maybe, sorta, potentially if allies help and pay for it, but we still control you” future by Israel in negotiations - but that is predicated on total surrender and capitulation by Hamas. That same week Israel stole another 650 acres of land designated as Palestinian in Oslo II - that Israel signed and was internationally recognized. Why would you capitulate to a state that openly breaks trust, offers nothing today for your complete surrender, and talks vaguely about a ‘suitable security arrangement’ while cabinet ministers drone loudly for ethnic cleaning and annexation?
Neither side are responsible actors here; both are repressing internal dissent heavily, both have broken and reneged on treaties and ceasefires, both have taught their society to hate the other, and the international community shouldn't support either while they both pursue a path of destruction. Isolate Netanyahu, let the Israeli courts send him to jail, and let the people vote new leaders who don’t court openly racist Kahanists that accelerate sectarianism and the violence it requires.
Responsible? No.
Able to stop the bloodshed? Very likely so, if he has the willpower. And they are trying to push on him to take concrete action. Abstaining from using UNSC veto is an easy lever he can pull as head of the Executive branch, as is using the ‘bully pulpit’ to criticize Israel’s actions and highlight the behavior of the extremists in the Likud coalition cabinet. Neither require congress or the courts, just the will to act
You got a source for that claim, or are you just parroting the DNC’s party line here? I didn’t find anything even implying this was astroturfed when searching
But both these sites HEAVILY predate AI or LLMs. Which then raises the question, how robust is their ToU & ToS from 2009? Can a corpo lawyer convincingly argue the limits of ‘legitimate use’ as completely unlimited?
…now that the marketplace has been altered.
Zoom was disruptive in the market because the other options SUCKED - Skype, GotomyPC, WebEx, etc all did a lot of rapid maturing during the pandemic to catch up to Zoom, and this ‘bundling’ of Teams with Office has built user lock-in via Office 365.
Well played Microsoft, once again ducking a well deserved anti-trust suit. ‘Historic injury’ should count equally as ‘current injury’ for prosecution, arguably especially so if that historic injury is what created your current market share