Now if they could just take this lesson and apply it to the rest of the 'information' that is supplied by the media environment they have immersed themselves in.
I remember when debate was getting started about the ACA (Obamacare). I was debating it with my friends older brother. He is the kind of Catholic that will shame you for not going to church.
So he's ranting about the merits of universal healthcare and I asked him what Jesus would do. Let's just say he didn't like that. He later blocked me on social media and it was the last discussion we ever had.
The last time they tried a Civil war they failed, and destroyed their own economies in the process. That time, they had some of the best generals available. This time they have Boebert and Trump to lead them,
The U.S. government has a professional army. They have nothing. And when the vast majority of the country lives paycheck-to-paycheck, you're not going to get a lot of (male, obviously, 'cause ladies is too fragile) bodies on the front lines when people can barely feed their kids on two incomes. Not without a draft. Good luck with that, Texas.
I dont think you know about the rednecks in Texas. They all have guns and have played Call of Duty. That makes them enough of a trained militia in their eyes to make a go at it.
It's not about what they believe they're capable of, it's about what they can actually afford to do. If you have two kids and a house you're just barely able to afford and are in a large amount of debt despite both adults in the household working full time jobs, you're not likely going to let your kids starve in order to fight a war of secession.
Now I wonder. Does Texas even have the ability to draft people into its own "army?" I'm sure they'd have plenty of volunteers itching to fight "the gubment," but the Selective Service my friends were a part of was for the US military.
I suppose if they secede, they can do whatever they want. They will claim sovereignty. So I suppose they could have a draft. I just don't think it would work out well for them.
I understood that pro-union misinformation and propaganda and poor understanding of history is orders of magnitude less harmful than pro-confederate, but it still bothers me. Lee was an incredible general. Jackson, Longstreet, even Early were excellent tacticians. The union could not field anyone who was a match for them until Grant and Sherman.
I haven't seen that part disputed? To my knowledge there was a very good reason Lee was the superintendent at the US Military Academy and was even offered a Union command before Virginia seceded, and this pattern holds with his underlings too. A lot of Confederate victories were beating odd against bigger Union armies.
On the contrary, I think your comment is a bit of a stretch in the other direction. Leaving variances in talent among individuals aside, the officers on both sides were broadly comparable because they had all gone through the same West Point training and were colleagues in the same chain of command, with the same strategy and doctrine, until the Southern ones turned traitor.
Lee almost took it too, he didn't want to secede but he felt like he was betraying his fellow statesmen in Virginia. People forget that before the civil war people didn't think of themselves as Americans, they thought of themselves as citizens of whatever state they were from.
From what I've read, before the War people said "...the United States are..." and after they changed it to "...the United States IS..."
Also, I like the stories that the British had agents who privately encouraged the South to fight the North in order to keep America weak. Putin didn't invent anything new
Wait… wasn't there a huge invasion of South American immigrants about to hit our border in 2020? What ever happened to them? And what about the roving bands of Antifa attacking small towns?
These fucking idiots believe whatever the fuck is fed to them. They don't remember all the times that info was wrong and realign. That's why they're dangerous: they aren't operating on even the appearance of facts.
They have the memories of goldfish. Remember Jade Helm, where supposedly Democrats were going to put Republicans in Walmarts converted into concentration camps? When that didn't happen, did all those MAGA idiots who believed it say, "huh. Maybe I should rethink things?" No, they just forgot it was even a thing they said was going to happen within a day or two.
I saw a cop bodycam video with someone who was talking about (jade jelm) that during the time it was supposedly happening / about to happen. Absolutely stunning.
The guy who chased an officer in the Capitol on J6 (Douglas Jensen) reportedly kept asking FBI agents if they knew who Q was or if they were in on the op. I think he was confused why they weren't a part of it or some such drivel. These people mostly have the lowest media literacy and ability to work through logic. They are 100% id-driven. The small amount that think rationally run the grift at the top, such as Bannon and that ilk.
I didn't know anything about JH until sometime last year. Here's from Wikipedia:
Jim Shea of the Hartford Courant wrote that the conspiracy theories included: a "psychological operation aimed at getting people used to seeing military forces on the streets" so that they do not realize when an invasion actually takes place; an international operation aimed to seize people's guns; recently closed Walmarts used by the military to "stockpile supplies for Chinese troops who will be arriving to disarm Americans"; and a military plan to "round up political dissidents" and "remove key political figures" who may be against the imposition of martial law.[17] Other theories have described Jade Helm 15 as a "secret plot" to impose martial law, confiscate firearms, invade Texas, and institute "total population control."[18]
Seriously, who the fuck can believe this stupid shit? We're gonna have a foreign power come take your guns? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
Conservatives have only enough thought to register emotions. No ability to question a narrative.
I guy I worked with says he stayed up all night holding a loaded AR when "BLM protesters were going to break into houses in small towns across America" and then said it was a good thing he did it... after absolutely nothing happened... anywhere...
I am so confused about these people sometimes. It's like how they simultaneously say that the January 6th insurrectionists were all secretly Antifa but also they're Trump-loving patriots who are being treated unfairly by the courts.
Sounds a bit like my dog. When she sees another dog being walked past the house, she makes an alarm bark to let me know there is an invader coming. Then , due solely to her alarm (and not at all because they're just on a walk), the interloper moved along, and called off their imminent invasion. "See", my dog barks at me. "You're lucky I'm here to protect you from that bitch...."
They are walking here. Imagine for a second that you had to walk to the store...be honest, we're Americans, it would take years. You would probably never make it back home if it was winter, at night or full summer. It's a trek. Now imagine walking from guatemala (prenounced watemalla). They are coming 😁. And when they get here, they're going to dangerously tired. So dangerous in fact that we just gotta send people there.... To help.
Well, it started when Nixon posited that conservatives needed a republican news outlet to frame political problems in a way that always casted republicans in a good light, that way a media-landslide like Watergate wouldn't happen again. Fox News was born, and has slowly been pushing our society into what it is now.
So, to answer your question, the snowball started rolling about 50 years ago.
In the scenario in your comment, that very same news network told a bunch of gullable, trained idiots that we are being invaded, in order to make republican policy look good.
It's mostly an embedded clip from MSNBC; clicking the linked article can be informative!
I'm also not sure what bias you are accusing Meidas Touch of in the headline (since we know you didn't get any further than that)? Is it the part about the maga convoy being confused? We know they are easily led from one moral outrage to another without really understanding the issues.
The part about there not being an invasion at the border? It's obvious there isn't anything of the sort happening, because the people that are claiming it's happening are the same ones who just said that they refuse to do anything about it for a year, until (they hope) Trump is president.
I’m also not sure what bias you are accusing Meidas Touch of in the headline (since we know you didn’t get any further than that)?
If only someone had provided a link that would have answered that question, you know, in the post you replied to. I guess you were the one who couldnt get that far.
Sure, but all the MBFC link proves is that Meidas Touch has an unapologetic left-leaning bias, and they tend to only bother running stories that support that bias. Unlike many other "mixed" factual reporting news sites, they're not in that category for lying and/or spreading misinformation. This suggests that the article is true. There's no value in your original insinuation that there's something wrong with the source of this information, as per your own link.
MeidasTouch does not have a reputation for giving factual information, and its extreme bias makes it inherently untrustworthy.. and despite what you claim about them not lying/spreading misinformation, mediabiascheck cites 3 different times they've failed a fact check because they were spreading false/made up information.
The real question is why you think its not okay to call out bad sources if they are left leaning. Which is what you surely seem to be implying, with your blatant misrepresentation of whats on the mediabiasfact page about mediastouch and how hard you are trying to defend meidastouch despite a documented history of being fast and lose with facts and truth.
But you wont answer that
No, I wager you'd be more inclined to drill into one factual thing in one article and use that to handwave away meidastouch's problematic patterns, because your bias is more important than reputable sources and factual reporting.. because thats what you're already doing here, and now.
Overall, we rate MeidasTouch Left Biased based on the negative portrayal of Donald Trump and Republicans and the promotion of Democratic candidates. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to a lack of transparency with funding and the publication of one-sided content that can be misleading.
?
Just working with your sources. I don't care about Meidas Touch. I hadn't even heard of them before I stumbled into this thread.
I think it's okay to accept that everything and everyone has a bias. Removing bias from all reporting is simply impossible, so instead we work to understand our bias' and the bias' of others and instead call out non-factual reporting. So, to answer your question, I think it's okay to call out bad sources for being bad regardless of their lean, but I also don't think having a noteworthy lean makes a sourcebinherently bad.
I don't appreciate the straw man you're attempting to build for me. Trying to angrily have my half of the conversation while spewing a pile of assumptions about what I think is a bad look. Unless the look you're going for is "a random idiot", which, I mean, when someone tells you who they are, believe them.
MeidasTouch does not have a reputation for giving factual information
prove it, where are the lies and misinformation?
The real question is why you think its not okay to call out bad sources if they are left leaning.
No, the real question is why you think left leaning bias = bad source.
MBFC says this:
Overall, we rate MeidasTouch Left Biased based on the negative portrayal of Donald Trump and Republicans and the promotion of Democratic candidates. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to a lack of transparency with funding and the publication of one-sided content that can be misleading.
None of that has anything to do with false 'facts' and the like, bias doesn't equal bad source until said bias leads to the degradation of truth in the reporting.
trying to defend meidastouch despite a documented history of being fast and lose with facts and truth.
again, where is the proof? You can't just speak things into existence. YOU are the one bringing this accusation, so YOU are the one with the onus to provide proof of said accusations.
The ruling has been massively downplayed by the german media with headlines like "does not order ceasefire" when it ordered Israel to "stop killing members of the group", basically ordered them to stop committing acts of genocide. At this stage they could not be any clearer!
They also ordered under 80. the immediate provision and humanitarian aid. On the same day Israel comes up with this accusation about some 12 out of thousands of aid workers being member of hamas. Then Germany among others cuts of humanitarian aid, directly in violation of the ICJ order. Which now makes Germany complicit in the genocide.
If Israel is allowed to continue a million innocent civilians could easily die horribly from starvation, thirst or disease, as well as just exposure.
The Court considers that, with regard to the situation described above, Israel must, in
accordance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza,
take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article
II of this Convention, in particular: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or
mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (d) imposing measures
intended to prevent births within the group. The Court recalls that these acts fall within the scope of
Article II of the Convention when they are committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a
group as such (see paragraph 44 above). The Court further considers that Israel must ensure with
immediate effect that its military forces do not commit any of the above-described acts.
The Court is also of the view that Israel must take all measures within its power to prevent
and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the
Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip.
The Court further considers that Israel must take immediate and effective measures to
enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the
adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Israel must also take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the
preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of Article II and Article III of
the Genocide Convention against members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip.
My point is that the judges did not unanonimously called it genocide. I just don't want fake news being spread. The ruling has much more nuance than that.
All this nonsense can be removed with one simple statement. One simple argument.
Gaza is as dense as New York City.
If they wanted to commit genocide deaths would be far higher than 30,000.
Also you're ignoring the absolute fact that has been demonstrated many many times, that palestinian terrorists like Hamas embed themselves within civilian infrastructure and hide among civilian populations.
This is why Israel has to warn people before they bomb a certain area. And of course the terrorist escape due to these warnings as well.
Does that sound like a genocide to you?
Not if you're honest it doesn't.
If Israel wanted to genocide Gaza the numbers would be far far higher we're talking over a quarter million deaths. It would be absurdly easy. It's important that you be honest internally otherwise you make the world worse despite what you might think are noble intentions.
I'm actually not and genocide doesn't have multiple definitions which is a thing that unfortunately people who claim to be progressive love to do... I'm progressive myself but I draw distinction between myself and many progressives by calling myself a moderate progressive. I don't try and redefine words to fit my ideology.
Genocide means to try and wipe out totally a people or an ethnicity through means of violence or deliberate actions. Things like the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide are good examples as is the Khmer Rogue terror in Cambodia.
However horrifying examples of violence on a grand scale like the rape of Nanking during World War II do not count because they are not attempts to eradicate an entire ethnicity or people nor do they end up having that impact whether the intention was or not.
If the rape of Nanking does not qualify as a genocide then there's no way in heck the Gaza war does. I need you to be honest and have integrity so that we can make the world better. As progressives we will only have ourselves to blame if we let emotion and passion override logic and truth. Because it WILL make the world worse long-term.
I'm in favor of a ceasefire at this point but it is absolutely not a genocide nor was it ever.
Note the words "acts committed with **intent **to destroy, in whole or in part"
Also "Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;" There is evidence of Netanyaho and other ministers doing this. Just now some minister was talking about settling Gaza, again implying the total removal of Palestinians.
On 28 October 2023, as Israeli forces prepared their land
invasion of Gaza, the Prime Minister invoked the Biblical story of the total destruction of
Amalek by the Israelites, stating: “you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our
Holy Bible. And we do remember”.446 The Prime Minister referred again to Amalek in the letter
sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers.447 The relevant biblical passage reads
as follows: “Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but
kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses”
This is Israel's stated intent! If we let them continue, that is what we have to assume will happen! 1.5 million refugees inside Gaza, locked in, no power, not enough food and water, most hospitals bombed, population density of new york. What do you think is going to happen?
It's called the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide", not the "lets sit back and discuss the finer technical details until they are all dead before we judge" convention.
There is a story how all this is obfuscated at CNN but similar is happening in German public broadcasting. Germany admirably protests against the AfD, but the government is making Germany complicit in Genocide again.
So under this ridiculously broad definition any war whatsoever is genocide.
We both know that's not a good definition nor is it really an accurate one historically. Nor is it what the vast overwhelming majority of people think genocide means.
And if the vast overall majority of people think one thing of a word that it doesn't matter that a book says this is the actual meaning because people collectively decide what the meaning of words are.
Either way even this broad approach fails anyway because Israel is not trying to destroy Palestinians They're trying to destroy a terrorist group that routinely murders people en masse.
They’re trying to destroy a terrorist group that routinely murders people en masse.
Ok. Do you think after this bombing campaign - one of the most intense in modern history - in your judgement if you look at what the 1.5 million Palestinians are going through: Do you think there are now more or less of them wanting to fight for Hamas?
Hyperbole. Why don't you stick to the actual facts? It's okay to be wrong. In fact being wrong is an opportunity! It's an opportunity for growth and improvement! You literally cannot do either of those things unless you acknowledge that you're wrong at times.
No I'm genuinely curious. If those are the state goals of the campaign that justify all this slaughter, you must think this is eventually going to stop before it becomes a genocide? You must think eventually "oh we got the last hamas fighter, now we can leave!".
If you don't think that, honestly to yourself, then you must agree that at best the motivation is blind raging hatred (racism) or vengeance or political opportunism, or at worse the motivation is a "final solution" for the palestinian question.
I think the solution is a permanent occupation and annexation of Gaza using this as a pretext. This is something that I support because a two-state solution is not practical considering the geography of Israel and turns Israel into Swiss cheese when you look at the borders on a map.
Israel holds the high ground morally ever since they were attacked during the wars of the 20th century. There's not a shred of religious influence in my support. It's purely the fact that they've been the underdog throughout the 20th century and attacked endlessly by their neighbors yet they have been gracious to them in victory and yet all it has inspired is further enmity and war. That is why I side with Israel. When Egypt attacked them in the 1960s they took the entire Sinai peninsula and they gave it back out of Goodwill. How have they been repaid for their generosity in victory? They were attacked in a defensive war and then took enemy territory and then gave it back out of generosity. And what was the reward? Terrorist attacks and more war of aggression. Israel has made some mistakes in the way they've handled the Palestinian situation. There have been times when they have unnecessarily harm civilians and they certainly don't have blood free hands. But they are light years cleaner than all their neighbors. They are absolutely 100% the lesser of all evils in that area.
So I support the occupation of Gaza and I support the permanent annexation of Gaza. Its very clear to me that that's what this is about. But annexation and occupation do not equate to genocide. You can annex a territory and give it citizens civil rights. Over time they become more like the original state. They become israelized. Romanized. Americanized. Etc.
When Israel controls all of the territories within its borders including the West Bank then there will be peace. And they should give civil rights to those conquered peoples and treat them with respect.
A one state solution to create a Israel/Palestine and an end to Apartheid is the only sensible long term solution. I fully agree.
But we are further away from that than we ever were. Not even the most progressive voices in politics suggest that. I think you're very unaware how bad things have gotten in Israel, how far into fascism they have gone.
There are only few independent dissident voices that are not part of competing geopolitical camps (e.g. rt, aljazeera) but they exist: Democracy Now and The Majority Report w/ Sam Seeder. They interview actual experts or professors about these topics instead of pundits. I strongly suggest you search for "Israel" for articles from those channels to get a different perspective.
Look at the corruption of Netanyaho and how they removed the PLO and propped up Hamas for political gain. Look at their laws that criminalizes expressing support for Palestine (suggesting a one state solution would most likely get you arrested in Israel). Look at the fervent fascism blooming there. Look at all the war crimes, and look at how they occupied Gaza for more than 50 years and what that does to a people. Look at the talk about the biblical story of amalek.
And I don't think it makes sense to argue from history, e.g. why Israeli's deserve a homeland and why the arab states had a problem with that. But before 1950 there was apparently very little anti-semitism in arab states so the opposition is political. If you want to talk about the wars around the time, you'd also have to talk about how Israel came to live where Palestinians used to live before (Nakba). The Arabs had no hand in the holocaust. From there perspective Israel was a colonial enterprise by white European people that displaced the people who lived there for a millennium. Unfortunately that gets us nowhere.
Saying Israel holds the moral high ground and is somehow pure is absolute madness!
You can also argue that Israels geopolitical role in the region is to be a proxy for US empire interests - to destabilize and control Arab countries in the region and prevent democracy in Arab countries. Because that would make them much harder to control and exploit for resources. You can find much in declassified or even public documentation. This is at least partially true and has a major effect on the situation.
Israel effectively occupied and controlled Palestine for 50 years and had that long to turn things around. Using education, propaganda and stability to create a lasting peace. But they simply didn't and still don't want that, they want a country all to their own based on their identity as Jews and not be "outbred" by Arabs.
So how can you get to a one state solution when there are so many geopolitical and cultural forces pushing to the exact opposite direction? We do not even have mainstream press reporting accurately on any of this, so you can't even have a discussion based on reality.
For a working democracy you need modest prosperity, education and safety. The prerequisites are worse than ever for both parties.
BTW the US alleges that what China is doing to alter the culture of uyghur is a "cultural" genocide. Which btw was a reaction after the US funded radical Islamic separatists in China.
To stand by Israel and say "they wouldn't go that far" is not learning from history.
I will admit that I know nothing about Israel's current politics other than that Netanyahu is corrupt and if not for this war he'd likely have been impeached and ousted. I appreciate this post and all this information.
The British first started settling Jews in Israel when it was British Palestine.
It was British territory. You have to respect conquest and annexation. If you don't then I could make a case through roundabout historical arguments that Israel belongs to the Jews anyway because they were there thousands of years ago in 700 BC and Arabs were not! That would make us occupiers of native American land. Where does the madness end? An endless attempt to make things right in history by going back to the first peoples of the land? In that case all of England would need to be repopulated back in Northern Germany. Half of Northern Italy would need to be repatriated in Belarus.
We would somehow need to move all of South America into Spain.
Australia would become deserted and returned only to the aboriginals.
It's unreasonable to not respect conquest and annexation. Is it moral, no? We don't have the PHYSICAL capacity for perfect justice when it comes to a question of this large magnitude. I subscribe to realpolitik.
So if we're trying to maximize justice for those still alive and not judging up ancestral grievances of who conquered who... We need to focus on practical considerations only for the people currently alive not who was living there 100 years ago.
Furthermore I would say that displacing some Palestinians to give refuge to a people that were recently genocided on mass in World War II is a moral goal. Is it a perfect solution? No. Is it a reasonable and mostly good one? Yes.
How should it have been handled?
They should have bought the land from Palestinians. In many cases they did. But that didn't stop false claims of colonialism.
I'm all in favor of giving Palestinians reparations but after that it needs to be in exchange for releasing all claims to the land. And they need to be resettled with equity and dignity in friendly Arab nations with a compatible culture.
You want to talk justice, it doesn't become easy, it gets very messy very fast and I'm fine with the taking on that approach. But I have the stomach for it and I'm not sure the vast majority of people do.
There's yet another solution that could be equitable for all. That of a UN protectorate. As far as I'm aware that's the only perfect solution. But it's the least practical and the most unlikely because it makes literally no one happy despite being what's truly just.
A UN protectorate would make sense anyway because technically the whole world has cultural claim to Jerusalem and the surroundings.
And it could lay the foundation for a sensible and accountable democratic world government.
But conspiracy nuts won't ever allow that. And there's other less fantastical reasons for opposition as well that are more grounded in self-interest and selfishness and monetary reasons.
It’s unreasonable to not respect conquest and annexation.
Yeah that was my point, it's unproductive to dredge up the history, you have to find reasonable solutions to allow people a dignified life now. And the majority of Palestinians are actually on board with that.
I’m all in favor of giving Palestinians reparations but after that it needs to be in exchange for releasing all claims to the land. And they need to be resettled with equity and dignity in friendly Arab nations with a compatible culture.
I'm not sure if you can seriously believe your justification for pushing out the Palestinians. Especially since you're constructing a narrative based on Jews "deserving" this because of holocaust - which justifies it based on ancient history again and makes it explicitly a European colonial project. Which it was. Anyway - displacing them is not an option, the "friendly arab neighbors" are a different ethnicity and don't want them. That again is racial bias to think "they are all the same".
So yeah the only viable solution would be a one state, and that AFTER Israel has been "denazified". Because that's what they are more or less now. Fascists who believe that there can never be peace between those "sub humans". They kept millions of people in occupied areas, and actively suppressed any peaceful movements in the illusion that this is somehow sustainable. FYI a modern definition of fascism is a belief in “Inequality through mythological and essentialized identity”. Israel now is basically the US after 20 years of Trump rule. We (US and EU) need to stop supporting them.
I've grown up with this propaganda in my head too that the arabs are just violence terrorist and bomb etc. And that the Jews need to be protected. But to say "never again" most of all means to prevent genocide. Israel's regime now calls everyone who criticizes them antisemitic and actively seeks to create anti-semitism for their own political gain.
And I would have loved to stand back and not get involved in this, but my government made my country complicit by aiding Israel perpetrate this genocide. I just hope it's not too late.