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  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank


    I don't like the clickbait title but Hajo Meyer was a respected Dutch Jewish physicist.
  • Climate Change (General Discussion)
    1964 was the US surgeon general's report. I worked on the public awareness research for the tobacco industry during my studies as a part time paralegal.

    The 60s is therefore generally considered the time a reasonable person should have been aware of the bad effects of smoking but it could've been much sooner - as early as the 1920s if there weren't so many doctors willing to promote cigarettes in return for payment.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Funny how you keep insisting on that interpretation. What does that say about you?

    Edit: edited your comment after my reply. Also classy.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Still making excuses for the inexcusable and victim blaming at the same time. Classy.
  • Climate Change (General Discussion)
    Tobacco delayed a backlash for 30 years.Mikie

    Try over a 100 years. And really even before that it was known but tobacco companies were already peddling propaganda at the time. There were plenty of people worried about the bad effects of smoking around the 1900s but there wasn't any statistical proof. That came in the 1940s which led to more propaganda.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    You're just biased and the guardian is a leftist rag.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    This has been my point for nearly a decade because of what Likud stands for and Herut before that. This is just accelerating due to the 7 October attack and now obvious but it's been the game plan for them for decades now. A slow genocide is still a genocide.
  • 50 Year Old Man Competing with Teen Girls in Swimming Competition
    His club seems to be Dufferin Aquatic Masters. https://www.swimming.ca/en/swimmer/5257113/

    But it seems some open tournaments are effectively almost exclusively frequented by young girls, with some participants in their 20s and last age group from 16. So he's an outlier in age and trans on top. Maybe he had a good reason but this isn't reported on.

    As to whether trans women are allowed to compete, that depends on the rules. I think it's perfectly logical to demand trans people only get to compete in their original sex.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    History will view them poorly.Mikie

    Why wait for history? I already do.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Antisemitism has once again become normalized; Jews are seen as the oppressors by 2/3 in Gen ZBitconnectCarlos

    This first part has nothing to do with antisemitism and it's simply true if we ignore the convenient conflation nobody here has busied.
  • An irony, perhaps, in the Leftist takes on Immigration and Palestine.
    Immigrants don't have rights but we have all committed to allowing refugees to gain asylum. So I think we should be ignoring refugees here because they actually have a right to asylum and countries generally have an obligation to keep them safe.

    The immigration problem is grossly exaggerated in the Netherlands - and probably most other European counties. Most immigration is labour migration: people who are asked to work here because we either don't have the people or nobody local wants to do the work.

    Those workers generally bring families too. They are exploited and now about 75% of homeless people are labour immigrants who were abused by perfidious secondment companies.

    But in general agree with the sentiment that a sovereign states can make immigration rules (excluding refugees) but the debate is often fact free and has very little consideration for the effects on businesses that rely on an influx of foreign labourers. Especially if we want to manage an energy transition now that nobody in the Netherlands knows how to build something as everybody was pushed to academic studies because we culturally look down on manual labour. And that's biting us in the ass.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Which I haven't. That's entirely your interpretation. It seems you still don't understand what an analogy is. But please continue focusing on what you apparently think is a "gotcha".
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    For 75 years their policies have failed, utterly, to produce a security situation that Israel can build on for the future.Tzeentch

    That's because "security" is the fig leaf for illegal land grab. It's not a failure, it's the defining feature of their policies.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I have no interest in discussing this with you other than pointing out the obvious that once again is a stupid post.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    You fail to understand this court case is also about international opinion. The plausability assessment by the court will affect the political position of allies vis-a-vis Israel.

    For instance, this ruling will affect the court case in the Netherlands that Oxfam Novib started against the government, increasing the likelihood the court will order the government to stop providing material support (parts for planes in particular).

    Edit: plus, such an interim judgment was unlikely to go that far too begin with.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Just finished listening. The ruling is relatively weak. Most of the things the court told Israel to do, they are already supposed to do under the Genocide Convention. Only the report in a month is beyond existing legal obligations.

    Despite the weakness of the ruling, I do believe the negative inference is interesting. The fact Israel is ordered to comply with the law seems to underline the fact they are in fact not doing that at this time. Combined with the plausibility of SA's claim genocide is happening, I think it's likely years from now Israel will indeed be convicted of at least genocidal intent and possibly genocide, unless it radically improves the humanitarian aid to Gaza.

    My 0.02 USD.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank


    Ruling starts around 1 hour into the video.
  • The Great Controversy
    I think great leaders ride on a wave that is created by the circumstances of the moment. I think we should be paying more attention to the masses and what is driving them. Why are so many clinging to a tribe, instead of their own comprehension of the good?Athena

    Did you know Tolstoi and Dostoyevsky had an entire discussion about whether great men were great or simply people at the right time at the right moment? This resulted in War & Peace and Crime & Punishment.

    I'm a historie totale guy myself (camp Tolstoi).
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    That's not how criminal law works though. So I see no reason it would here. Unless you mean "reaponsible" as something else as layman's version of "guilty". In which case you should explain what you mean.

    Edit; how I understand it now: if I kill someone in self-defence, then I'm not "responsible" for his death but my attacker was.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    That's an unjustified appeal to moral equivalence that ignores context. These actors are not operating in a vacuum.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Once again: understand what an analogy is. Everybody understands beating a dog just makes it aggressive; this is no different than people. Why abused kids often become abusers, why dangerous neighbourhoods raise dangerous people.

    And you have it reversed. Their actions result in who's better or worse. It's because Israel had no rights to the occupied territory, so armed resistance is just. It's Israel having collectively punished Gazans for decades. It's a matter of applying legal and moral principles as a result of which Israel is much worse than Hamas. Any tragedy visited in Israeli citizens is by their own making, Jews sacrificed on the Zionist altar.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I've noticed that you repeatedly liken palestinians to dogs or children. Given this is the case, how can one believe that they're ready of self-rule? The international community ought to set them a proper bedtime.BitconnectCarlos

    Except I've done no such thing so the rest of your post is idiotic. Maybe figure out what an analogy is.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Yeah that's all I need to hear to ignore you as a one-sided terrorist-supporter.schopenhauer1

    Except I'm not. As I've stated before I don't condone all their methods. But nuance is difficult. The point is, why don't you demand Israel to deradicalise their insane colonisation policy, apartheid regime and war crime tactics? No, in your mind, Hamas and PA need to take steps to become peace loving hippies while being ethnically cleansed by their neighbours. It's an idiotic ask. When Israel stops its crimes, then you can expect these things.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Now I might be mistaken as a matter of fact, but I suspect that no one here - except maybe ssu - has any special knowledge.tim wood

    Yes, don't let my masters in international law and 10 years of working for Amnesty stand in the way of assuming nobody here has any special knowledge. :lol:

    They are, 1) what exactly, near as you can tell, do the Palestinians want? And 2) what in your opinion should the Israelis do?tim wood

    These questions have been answered by me regularly in this thread even in reply to you.

    I think the main problem is that some people think there's a moral equivalence between the violence of Palestinians and Israel. That requires you to deny several of the following things:

    1. Palestinians are oppressed, discriminated against and economically undermined by border control that basically functions like the worst sanctions we have in the world
    2. A gross differential in military might and state power
    3. A gross differential in political support from other countries and political representation
    4. Israeli "security" trumps Palestinian "security" pace every draft of every deal where on average there's pages upon pages on the former and very little or nothing in the latter
    5. Israeli deaths are a fraction of Palestinian deaths
    6. The multitude of discriminatory laws in Israeli proper linked to religious affiliation
    7. Palestine barely functions, Israel is a modern state claiming to be a democracy

    So when a Palestinian cheers an Israeli death, it's not the same thing. If an Israeli is killed in this conflict, it's not the same thing. To interpret the violence between these two groups as morally equivalent is wilfully ignoring context.

    Nothing in the past 20 years has given any indication Israel wants peace. If one side doesn't want peace and undermines it every time, what's the moral obligation of the other side? At what point does violence against the oppressor become a moral obligation?
    Benkei

    Here's a two-state solution and how to get there:

    1. Israel to unilaterally recognise a right for the Palestinians to have a sovereign state where the 1967 borders will be the basis for the size of Palestine
    2. stop all further settlements in WB and evictions in East-Jerusalem, recognise ownership rights in East Jerusalem
    3. repeal all discriminatory laws in Israel proper
    4. no more collective punishment of Palestinians
    5. no more blockade of Gaza and its air space and sea
    6. no more mass destruction in response to ineffectual missiles or balloons
    7. tear down the wall
    8. For the interim period, Gaza and WB remain occupied territories but they will be policed instead of military oppression
    9. Palestinians to commit to an indefinite cease fire as long as Israel maintains the above 8 points
    edit: 10. forgot: Palestinians to recognise Israel along the 1967 borders as the basis of the size of israel

    In other words, stop the crimes. There's no excuse.

    Enter into the transition period where Palestine should be set up:
    1. include the political wing of Hamas in talks as well as PA
    2. land-for-land exchanges to arrive at comparable land size
    3. Israel to pay Palestine an amount equal to all the monies spent supporting illegal settlers so it has the means to settle the new lands it receives through the land-for-land exchange
    4. Palestine to hire their own first and Israeli contractors second (which will lead to "reparations" flowing back to Israel and creating economic interdependence)
    5. have religious leaders negotiate the Temple Mount
    6. Jerusalem as independent city-state administered by Palestinians and Israelis alike
    7. gradually transition policing activities in Palestine to Palestinians
    8. Set up a special task force of like minded Israelis and Palestinians to investigate (terrorist) crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinians and vice versa, where jurisdiction will be with the state of the victim
    9. retreat from WB and Gaza and set up border controls
    10. Declare a Palestinian state
    11. Party with your Israeli neighbours
    Benkei

    Once again, very one-sided nonsense about deradicalisation when it's Israel employing extremist's measures against an entire civilian population. Hamas and the PA don't need to deradicalise when terrorist bombings are a consequence of Israeli oppression. Nobody went around telling the IRA to "deradicalise" but when they're sufficiently different all of a sudden it's barbarism, which is a convenient label for the entire region for you but is basically just racist as fuck.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    @praxis I'll rephrase his point that might take this discussion somewhere. NOS4A2 believes various acts were committed that, while lawful, constitute an immoral usurption of power morally equivalent to an actual coup.

    It could be a fair point and worthwhile to investigate if it weren't for the fact he keeps denying the actual election interference (both unethical and unlawful) that Trump pursued. In other words, the whole point is a red herring vis-a-vis this thread.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    He doesn't know shit about the subject but insists on posting crap.

    Edit: check page 76.
    Benkei

    That page is simply proof where you yourself admit you don't know what you're talking about. I didn't say I specifically spoke to you then now did I? Try again.
  • Coronavirus
    If you have Karenitus as comorbidity it's allegedly lethal by suffocation.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I would love to have a discussion with you but gave up on tim 2 years ago. He doesn't know shit about the subject but insists on posting crap.

    Edit: check page 76.

    Asking me to again set out my position is disingenuous from him. Not only have a recently explained it again I've engaged him enough in this thread in the past. But you're right. I should just ignore him.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I'm not wasting my time on an apologist like you. We've gone through this 3 years ago and again 2 years ago. Get brain surgery or something if you keep forgetting everything.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    It seems about right to you because you're dumb. There has been plenty of discussion about war and annexation of land in this thread, which is the crime of aggression under international law. That you then post a fucking tiktok style video as a sort of argument, is indeed fucking dumb.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    You have a performative answer to your question with Wayfarer and NOS4A2 answering you and both missing the point. Well done!
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Winning isn't about who's right or who is fair. Your arguments are irrelevant for the other side and they have their own problems with what "your" side does.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Jews are a religion when it suits them and a nation-race when it suits them. It's purposefully obfuscated so they can tut-tut when you critisise Israel and call you an anti-semite.

    Edit: also, all human rights treaty and countries with a constitution explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of religion. So if they choose option 1, the discrimination in Israel is even more egregious.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    yay, another win for the Dems not because of their policy ideas but because so many people hate Trump. The state of US politics was already bismal under Bush Jr. but this is just getting ridiculous.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Hausdorff is insane. The same lady who wants to sue the BBC on reporting that several NGOs had stated Israel was punishing the civilian population in Gaza. Which according to her is reprehensible moral equivalence.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I'll refer you to my dog analogy. We all know what happens to the dog that finally bites its abusive masters. Gaza will basically be razed to the ground. People will start starving in about two weeks.Benkei

    Well, that was predictable then.