I've been talking to an Israeli girl for the last few months... Interesting to see things from their perspective. Ya know, if I had to hide in shelters from rocket attacks almost everyday, witnessing a stabbing that happened right next to a date I was having, etc, I'd probably be pretty fucking jaded as well.
The recent pulling of UNWRA funding was pretty telling imo :/ what are you supposed to do as a state when you have a bunch of kids being radicalized by billionaires living in Qatar to kill Jews n that it would be an honorable death doing so..
This same girl was thankful for the illegal Israeli settlers in the west bank because they act as a buffer to keep the Israeli center safe as they pull ire to them vs where she lives. I know it is a talking point, but I'd be curious to hear y'all's answer on why the Egyptian border looks the way it does vs the Israeli one with Gaza.
Talking to this gal initially, I viewed it as trying to understand the perspective of a true believing Nazi German who happened to be ludicrously hot. The saying of "when you start into the abyss for too long, the abyss stares back" is too true >_< she calls the Palestinians rats quite frequently. I'm sad to say that hearing about her life, I've come to understand why she thinks the way she does. Even if I heavily disagree with a lot of her opinions and her fact checking.
Just yesterday I was talking to her about the tankboi killing those journalists in Lebanon. Her knee jerk reaction was that it was lies. Had to coax out of her which foreign media source she trusted based off what she had seen... It was fucking fox (of course). So I linked her a fox article about it, and it was quite entertaining feeling the gears turn.
I don’t think people understand what it’s like from an Israeli perspective. They place all the blame on Israel. Not saying Israel is innocent, they aren’t, but between the two sides, Israel is the reactionary party.
I have less concerns we could turn Israel pacifist.
Hamas will never be peaceful. It’s up to Gaza’s people to change that and reject the violent poking of Israel.
I mean… what kicked this off this time? Hamas committing horrific acts.
Ya know, if I had to hide in shelters from rocket attacks almost everyday, witnessing a stabbing that happened right next to a date I was having, etc, I'd probably be pretty fucking jaded as well.
That's hilariously quaint next to life as a Palestinian. Hell, a stabbing? That's quaint next to life in the hood of the USA. Maybe ask her to consider the Palestinian perspective next. They lost their land and haven't been able to return. 78% of their water is bad. They can't control their borders, imports, or exports. They can be held for months without trial or charge. The noise is so bad from the buzz of drones they can't sleep. Israel restricts their calories to the bare minimum (calls it "putting them on a diet"). They raid their areas occasionally to kill some people and take more prisoners (call it "mowing the grass"). They bomb their hospitals, apartment buildings, refugee camps, and other civilian infrastructure. They get their trees and agriculture pulled by Israeli settlers who get defended by troops. Unemployment is rampant. Israel controls their electricity, which doesn't work multiple times a day, their trash, and all other parts of their infrastructure. All they have is unguided rockets that occasionally kill their own, while Israel has a state of the art rocket defense system that prevents almost all of their deaths, jets, bombs, helicopters, and always the latest in military gear and tech. The Palestinians are maimed en masse during peaceful protests like the Great March of Return. The list goes on and on.
The Nazi comparison is right. Imagine some Nazi saying they're thankful the government is moving the Jews away from them by putting them on these trains. It's more of a buffer zone from the scary Jewish ghettos. They bring up the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and how they saw people die from the scary Jews.
That's basically what she was saying. There's no concern for the citizens at all, and no realization that the "scary" situation is completely of their own making due to their own occupation and blockade of civilians, who will then rightly get angrier and angrier as time passes without a solution allowing their own sovereignty.
Hackers linked to the Chinese government are targeting critical U.S. infrastructure, preparing to cause "real-world harm" to Americans, FBI Director Christopher Wray says.
Water treatment plants, the electric grid, oil and natural gas pipelines and transportation hubs are among the targets of state-sponsored hacking operations, he told the House of Representatives Select Committee [...]
"They're not focused just on political and military targets. We can see from where they position themselves across civilian infrastructure, that low blows aren't just a possibility in the event of conflict, low blows against civilians are part of China's plan," Wray said.
At this point, Boeing should not be given the benefit of the doubt unless and until they are able to restore confidence in their QC processes and safety-first culture in general.
More to the point: the bean counters running the company need to be replaced with engineers who know what it is this company is doing and what they build. It's not an overnight fix, but so long as the C-suite is trying to go "lean and mean" every 5-10 years, this will happen again and cost lives.
McDD really did an unbelievable amount of damage to Boeing. It’s an incredibly sad byproduct of the saga of deregulation and regulatory capture, alongside the massive downscaling of antitrust litigation and legislation.
Two were confirmed miltants. Problem is that they were there to get medical treatment... Israel could have arrested them and given them a trial, but instead, they chose to shoot them and terrorize and risk the lives of all the patients in the hospital.
From the title, you'd think these men were armed and inside the hospital terrorizing people. Turns out one of them was getting treatment there. The Israeli forces that killed those three (who were getting treatment or visiting someone getting treatment) were also dressed as civilians (nurses and doctors)
Truly the most pathetic and most cowardly army in the world.
Hamas claimed one of the dead in Ibn Sina hospital as its member. The allied faction Islamic Jihad claimed the other two, saying they were brothers. Ibn Sina said one of the brothers had been receiving treatment for an injury that paralysed his legs.
No trial, no evidence except that from the Israeli side, just a field execution. No threat from these men whatsoever... and one of them was had a mobility disability too.
Pretty sure killing wounded combatants who have no means of resistance is a war crime. It's even worse since it happened inside a hospital which should be shield from any fighting. Most moral army is acting as a bunch of war criminals as usual.
I still think it would be cleaner if they used the official mechanism for this, ie. stripping then of voting rights, rather than resorting to extra-legal tactics like these which is essentially just blackmail.
They can't. Hungary was protected by Poland and now will be by Slovakia. The EU Commission can theoretically act independently but in practice, this is political. And the EU Council can only take official action if Hungary has no friends at all.
This will just help Orbán, because he can legit say now that the EU hurts Hungarians on purpose. Not him, but all Hungarians. He was telling this for years, without any proof, but now EU just did him a favor, thanks...
The current freezing of EU fund things are somewhat working. And he can't use them to make himself look like a victim. He likes to speak about himself as "We Hungarians", and this just helps him with that.
This stops working when the matters that Orban is vetoing are time-critical. Like military aid for Ukraine.
Orban is creating a situation where the EU has two bad alternatives to choose from, and he doesn’t think they’ll turn on Hungary. But they might, because at this point, most of Europe seems like they’d prefer Ukraine being in the union over Hungary. So if Orban calls the EU’s bluff, there’s a very good chance that the EU will call Orban’s bluff and kill their voting rights, with full knowledge that it would strongly push Hungary towards leaving the Union. It’s a trade off; everyone’s done the math at this point. We’ll see how it actually pans out in the coming weeks.
I'd take Ukraine instead of Hungary any day. I feel bad for the Hungarians and suspect the reason for the problem is Kremlin propaganda trying to divide the EU, but at a certain point enough is enough. They can be an example for other countries, like Brexit.
I get your point, but at the other hand Orban has been doing everything he can to get the EU to take an action like this ao he can use it for his narrative against them.
It's high time that Hungarians decide if they want in the EU or not. The sooner they make that decision the better.
And yes I fully realize that the democratic process is broken in Hungary, and that any attempt to pretend this will be a democratic decision will fail, and that Hungarians will have to take to the streets eventually.
No way around it. I'm their neighbor and we've been through this stuff ourselves and it was hard but it's something that needs to be done if they hope to ever regain democracy. Eternal vigilance and all that. Postponing it only makes it worse.
We will stand with them but it's not a problem we can solve for them.
Whatever the EU does will help Orban. So why not try this approach? Hell Orban is already doing half the work, making sure the country's economy goes down the shitter.
Just accept the fact that no matter what the EU does, Orban will stay popular. The brain of the average Hungarian voter is mush anyways.
Either he leaves the EU and everyone is happy, or the population fed up with the economy tanking will finally get rid of him.
Either way it's a win for the rest of the bloc.
It's just a pity for the people who didn't vote for him and aren't able to move
It may be me, but this all doesn’t sound like a stable relationship. Plus, it will give other EU members (especially where the growing ultra right wing anti-EU parties are reigning) more reason for their own Brexit-like plans.
You have to draw the line somewhere. Enough is enough. They've been nothing but cooperative until now and all the goodwill has been taken advantage of and painted as weakness. It's about damn time they switched from passive to active pushback.
And it's not going to provide anti-EU people with anything they haven't dreamed up themselves long ago. Have you listened to anti-EU propaganda? It's mostly demented, wild conspiracies.
The EU is an association of like-minded societies. If Hungary doesn't feel like it belongs anymore they can start considering withdrawing.
Poland has a pro EU government now, albeit society remains split. Still if they wouldn't align with the EU, they would have to align with Russia. They are fiercly against that.
Slovakia and Hungary are in the same boat. Orban doesn't really want to leave the EU. He knows that aligning with Russia would kill the countries economy and he either gets to rule over rubble or the people will kill him.
They instead want to play the EU and Russia by playing both sides for as much opportunistic gain as possible. By not playing, the EU calls the bluff.
It shows dips in 2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, and the pandemic.
Now compare that to ECB's report on unit profits where only twice (2009 and pandemic years) did profits dip ... and in fact in 2022-23 profits have risen dramatically.
Workers have always been short changed and these stats show it.
Wyden, who released the Dec. 11 letter, called upon U.S. intelligence officials to stop using Americans' personal data without their express knowledge and consent, saying it was unlawful
Anybody able to explain how this is unlawful?
Is there a restriction on intelligence gathering agencies that would apply?
I don’t believe this is right or fair but I’m not clear on how it’s illegal.
reuters.com
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