Marijuana is its own special category, but club drugs (which for some reason include date rape drugs), inhalants and steroids are all in a "miscellaneous" category together?...
Young voters don't vote as much as other demographics, but they definitely do vote. I think it was 40% turnout in 2016, but don't quote me on it. Anyway that 40% is definitely disproportionately republican, but there's a good number of democrats there. The idea that the Democrats have nothing to lose by antagonizing young people is wrong.
I mean yes and no. Have you seen the protests in Israel? Yeah those aren't because the Israeli public suddenly cares about human rights; they're equal parts because Netanyahu wants to get rid of democracy in Israel and because of his disregard for the hostages' lives in his assault on Gaza, so they are doing their job. And let's remember that their real role hasn't come yet; these hostages are there for after the "war" ends because without any hostages Israel will be turning Gaza into beachfront real estate.
Have you even heard of Yasser Arafat or the history of the region?
We did, but let's hear your explanation.
All, EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR of Hamas resources go to rockets to shoot at schools and towards their own goals of ethnic cleansing
Correction: Every single dollar of Hamas's resources goes to rockets that force Israel to spend ridiculous amounts of money to stop them. They can also be used in saturation to deal more serious damage to Israel's economy, as they are right now by forcing evacuations for some one hundred thousand people. Now it's not pretty, but you won't be taken seriously if you don't acknowledge the reason they're launching these rockets.
Their leadership are old rich men living in comfort abroad.
Uh... No. Their leadership has two sides: Leaders in Gaza who actually manage the organization and command the fighting, and leaders abroad who get funding and negotiate with Israel and other countries. What do you expect? For their Gaza leadership to just ride an airplane from Gaza airport and attend diplomatic meetings? Because Israel blew that up 22 years ago. Point is: To function as a resistance organization Hamas needs some of its leadership to live abroad out of Israel's reach.
Nobody despises Palestinians more than other Arabs.
I hear this a lot but nobody really justifies it. As an Egyptian at least according to my experiences it's very incorrect.
Okay attitudes towards the hostages can be unrealistic, but I think you're missing a few key points.
First of all, the hostages aren't meant to prevent Israel from completing its genocide. That's just not the reality on the ground. They're meant to pull the negotiations in Hamas's favor. What I meant by "to prevent Israel from turning Gaza into beachfront property" was "so the eventual ceasefire agreement doesn't have Gaza becoming beachfront property as part of it". Again, "as part of the ceasefire agreement". The only thing the hostages are doing now is losing Netanyahu face at home; I'm 100% aware that they're not holding back the IDF (Hannibal directive anyone?). That said, they have been a central part of negotiation between Hamas and Israel. They're not the end all be all of genocide enders, but they're very much valuable because the Israeli government can't sacrifice Israeli civilians' lives for a war half the population agrees doesn't have a clearly defined goal. Or, well, they can, but the protests a few days ago show why that's a bad idea.
Hamas already released 150 hostages once just to acquire a four-day ceasefire.
Correction: So technically it was a week but that aside, the idea was for a pause that would become "something more enduring" in Biden's words. It didn't work and that's why Hamas is now not accepting anything less than a permanent ceasefire. I doubt they went into the deal expecting that it'd end in a week with no progress.
Do you think Israeli resolve to finish up their genocide is less than the post-9/11 paranoia and rage in the US?
In a way, yes. Again, remember the protests from a few days ago. The Israeli public is pissed that the hostages aren't coming back home. This is half the reason they're opposing the war over there. Meanwhile the genocide, while definitely having their blessing, is a more top-down affair. Could be me misreading the situation, but it seems to me like Israelis are more invested in the hostages' safe return than in this particular genocide. At least enough of them are that people are calling on Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire deal.
The hostages alone won't save Gaza, but their existence or lack thereof will and has had a large effect on negotiations, and it's natural to think it will have more when Israel is more serious about trying to end the fighting (which will happen eventually; they can't go on like this forever (hopefully)).
I literally said otherwise. At this point you're just looking for an argument or want to believe everyone who disagrees with you is a terrorist supporter.
So you're making good points generally, but the protests I'm referring to clearly demanded a ceasefire so the hostages can return. They explicitly said that they wanted Netanyahu to make a ceasefire agreement and return the hostages.
Uh... I do not, in fact, like Hamas or the general state of anti-Semitism in the middle east. I just recognize that it'll only go away after, not before, Israeli Apartheid. Also Hamas updated their charter in 2017 to accept a two-state solution so... Yeah.
Israeli society, already working on some 30+ (or 70+ depending on how you count it) years of dehumanization of Palestinians,
Yeah make that a hundred.
A large proportion of them would still be upset if it was a ‘permanent’ ceasefire,
The protesters are actually calling for a ceasefire and have been for a while so at least it's not as one-sided as you seem to think. No idea about the ratios though, so feel free to drop them if you've seen them.
As I said - there are more ways than negotiation to achieve this.
Yes, but none will actually work. How many hostages has Israel retrieved outside of negotiations? From a purely strategic point of view force is not working if your goal is to retrieve the hostages (which we know it's not). Israelis aren't upset because the IDF is attempting to retrieve the hostages using force; they're upset because force can't work without sacrificing a significant fraction of those hostages as both we and the Israeli public have learned in the past few months.
You’re also missing the fact that regardless of the target, the attack was launched from a civilian structure.
So:
1-All above-ground structures in Gaza are civilian structures. Do you think Israel would allow Hamas to have an above-ground military base?
2-It was launched 350m from a civilian shelter. In Rafah, one of the most overcrowded cities on Earth. It's a surprise there's a place that far from a civilian shelter.
Also actually read the comment and post before replying.
But that doesn’t mean I have to think Hamas are the good guys.
Okay Hamas are not good guys, not at all. While I don't think persecuting war criminals is viable in Gaza even if they wanted to, even setting that aside they have a lot of not very good deeds under their belt. That said, they can't be blamed for taking hostages. It sucks for them and their families, no doubt about that, but on the other hand we have 2mil+ people's lives at stake. The hostages, and the Israeli administration's blatant disregard for their lives, have been a decisive issue in pitting the Israeli public against the government. They're also Hamas's only card in negotiations, or in other words the only currency Hamas has to pay for Gazan lives and "freedom". It sucks that lives are being used as currency, but that's a case of don't blame the player, blame the game. Of course the actual treatment of hostages during and after October 7th is a different story and there's some Hague-worthy nonsense there, but the statement "Hamas took hostages on October 7th" has nothing indictable on its own.
It did. The IDF was made from Jewish paramilitaries like Haganah and Irgun that existed way before 1948, and were made into/declared a formal army on 26 May 1948, or four days after the massacre.
I don't agree with "while isolated rapes may have taken place, there was insufficient evidence to support allegations that rape had been 'widespread and systematic'."
I mean it turned that that there was no widespread and systematic rape no?
Let me just tell you, you'd have been on the wrong side of history during the Troubles.
Now that aside, if you think there's only one terrorist organization involved in the current war you need to rethink, well, everything about the conflict, because everything Hamas does Israel does times 10 to 100.
I don't think it's about being smug. It's about pointing out the important fact that none of this is new except the scale. Divide by 100-1000 and this is just daily life in Palestine.
For the hostages. I mean it's not like I don't want the hostages to return but most of them are definitely not there for the genocide. See: How 88% of Israeli Jews support the war, and 94% think Israel is using too little or just enough fire power.
No; they just arrest activists and journalists (sometimes but not always have their lackies at the PA do it). Actually shuttering a newspaper is a first AFAIK.
So I slightly misremembered the 88% question; it's whether the answerer thinks the number of Gazans killed is justified by the war. General support for the war doesn't show up, but it is high (75% backed a Rafah operation back in March).
"We are serious about welcoming students that have been suspended from U.S. universities for supporting Palestinians," an official at Sanaa University, which is run by the Houthis, told Reuters. "We are fighting this battle with Palestine in every way we can."...
Historically, I've perceived Reddit as slightly left leaning, with strong pockets of conservatives. Recently though, a vast majority of comment sections seem to excuse violence, such as in this thread (TW: police brutality), where people say things like...
Russia has been shipping refined petroleum to North Korea in volumes that may violate the U.N. Security Council's restrictions, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on May 2, according to Reuters.
I generally consider calling Democrats fascists to be a massive exaggeration, but if it looks like a fascist, quacks like a fascist and acts like a fascist, it's a fascist.
I mean tbf (at least in my case as an Egyptian) it's not just the high salaries. Maybe Egypt is an extreme case but this country just has no future. The regime isn't just dictatorial; it's also dumb. There's almost no money going to scientific research, the system as a whole was outdated 50 years ago, the military is monopolizing everything and undercutting the market because they can use slave conscript labor and don't pay taxes, etc etc. I'm firmly of the opinion that this is at least partially caused by Britain's unwillingness to fully decolonize in the 1920s and their godawful decolonization in the 1950s, but the fact remains that these countries have a duty to their people that they're not fulfilling, and that's why brain drain happens.
As a living example of said brain drain, salaries were near the bottom of my priority list when I made the decision. I was more concerned about living somewhere where I don't need to worry about being arrested because I said my opinion on the internet (or even just complained about prices) or because I do my prayers at the mosque (I was actually told by my mother to not go to the mosque all the time because I might get arrested. It's that bad). Below that were things like a sane administration that actually cares about things being even just barely functional, a decent education system and academia and the ability to have confidence that the country will actually exist in 20 years. Living in a wildly different country (especially as a Muslim in Japan as is my case (halal food is a pain to get here)) is such a pain you couldn't pay me to do it, but it's hard to turn down actually getting to have a future.
What I wanna say is that it's not just the Global South being undercut by the West; many Global South countries are failing at fulfilling their responsibility towards their constituents, and that's why they're leaving. Now how much the West was involved in creating this situation is another story, but you can't reduce it to just high salaries. Global South governments, as a rule, aren't interesting in solving their own problems. That's why the problem solvers go solve Western rich people's problems.
Okay I hate the West as much as any other guy, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. China 1400 years ago isn't in any way the same as China today. Nowadays it's that most Muslim Chinese groups are accepted as Chinese (the Hui are about as Chinese as the Han, for example) and that's why they can practice Islam in peace; otherwise you're treated like the Uighurs. Also foreigners in China are absolutely treated as outsiders; that's just a fact.
Okay honestly as a fellow Muslim (I think you mentioned that somewhere else before???) what you're doing right now is actually shameful. Just a week ago one man was arrested because he was advising people to not drink or smoke. Uighurs are literally sent to concentration camps and are subjected to forced labor and there you are defending their treatment because you don't like the West. You need to rethink your priorities, seriously.
here’s an interesting fact, they are the only Turkic people who still use their centuries old script, and haven’t been secularized and westernized unlike Turks in the former USSR or Turkiye.
I mean yes that's the problem. Islam is no longer foreign to China; again the Hui are as Chinese as the Han. Islam is not, in fact, xeno in China. The Uighurs are, being Turkic people.
Western rights groups have been mostly silent.
What? The Palestinian cause has progressed light years thanks to the work of groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. They came late to the party but they have not been silent, no way.
Why hasn’t anyone in the middle east chatted shit about the Uyghurs?
Because there's absolutely no awareness about the issue here. Or about almost anything concerning Russia and China. People here thing Russia is their friend and Ukraine deserves it for having a Zionist president while forgetting that it's Russia behind Al Asad. Also China is, when all's said and done, on good terms with the Middle East and general Muslim world. I don't think anyone is too excited to damage that relation by acknowledging the Uighurs' suffering.
Boasting that you have more immigration than random countries like Japan is just odd.
He's not boasting; he's saying that immigration would do a lot to solve their problems; and he's correct. I hate Biden's guts but he's correct here. For context Japan is a notoriously xenophobic country and currently sits at a 2%. They're not "a random country".
In perms of the percentage of its population tho, 15% is somewhere in the middle of the pack, well behind countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland etc.
I mean people deciding to come to your country isn't proportional to your population, or really related at all. It'd be like expecting China to have the same 15% as the US (for context that'd be about 250 million people). That's just not how that works.
Pretty sure the US could let in a lot more immigrants if it wanted to.
I mean yes that's the case for everyone. I'm saying the number of people applying to immigration to the US isn't four times that of Germany, for example, so even if they accept people according to the exact same criteria Germany will have a bigger percentage.
I'd expect the number applying to the US would be hundreds of times higher than the number applying to New Zealand.
How so? Western, and especially Anglosphere, countries all get ridiculous amounts of immigrants. Also remember that New Zealand is a stone's toss away from South East Asia. It's a very attractive immigration destination for pacific islanders and Asians.
The way my daughter's middle school health class classifies drugs is insane. ( lemmy.world )
Marijuana is its own special category, but club drugs (which for some reason include date rape drugs), inhalants and steroids are all in a "miscellaneous" category together?...
As Israel Begins “Final Phase” of Genocide, Biden Slams Pro-Palestine Protests ( truthout.org )
Just two months ago, Biden said that the invasion of Rafah is a “red line” Israel must not cross....
Journalism ( lemmy.world )
Republican US senators sent threatening letter to ICC prosecutor over possible Netanyahu arrest warrant ( www.jurist.org )
Hamas accepts cease-fire proposal for Gaza after Israel orders Rafah evacuation ahead of attack ( apnews.com )
Western media launders israeli lies to manufacture more consent for Genocide ( lemmy.world )
Israel set up a miiltary base ~2 miles from the Ker Shalom crossing to prepare for their Rafah Genocide....
Israelis laughingly describing how they raped underage girls and mass executed Palestinians in cages during the Nakba ( streamable.com )
Most moral army btw
Gaddafi was one of the weirdest leaders in modern history ( lemmy.world )
Gaza war surgeon feels ‘criminalised’ after being denied entry to France ( www.theguardian.com )
Prof Ghassan Abu-Sitta says Schengen-wide ban imposed by Germany appears to be attempt to silence witness testimony...
Israel to close Al Jazeera news network in the country ( www.cnn.com )
Netanyahu's Cabinet votes to close Al Jazeera offices in Israel following rising tensions ( apnews.com )
Houthis offer education to students suspended in US protest crackdown ( www.reuters.com )
"We are serious about welcoming students that have been suspended from U.S. universities for supporting Palestinians," an official at Sanaa University, which is run by the Houthis, told Reuters. "We are fighting this battle with Palestine in every way we can."...
When did reddit turn Facist?
Historically, I've perceived Reddit as slightly left leaning, with strong pockets of conservatives. Recently though, a vast majority of comment sections seem to excuse violence, such as in this thread (TW: police brutality), where people say things like...
White House: Russia supplies North Korea with fuel above UN cap ( kyivindependent.com )
Russia has been shipping refined petroleum to North Korea in volumes that may violate the U.N. Security Council's restrictions, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on May 2, according to Reuters.
Biden Echoes Fascist Rhetoric in Speech Denouncing “Lawless” Pro-Palestine Protests ( truthout.org )
“Order must prevail,” Biden said in a veiled threat against the wave of pro-Palestine protests....
Biden calls US ally Japan ‘xenophobic’ along with Russia and China ( www.cnn.com )