#Gaza / Egyptian source: U.S. “has accepted” Israel's plan for a military operation in Rafah as part of a deal to avoid a wider attack on Iran
According to an Egyptian source, Egypt is preparing militarily along the Gaza border in anticipation of a potential Israeli military operation in #Rafah, Palestine. The source claims the U.S. “has accepted Israel's” plan for a military operation in Rafah as part of a deal to avoid a wider attack on #Iran. Egypt is diplomatically working to delay or cancel the Israeli operation, focusing on protecting civilians and ensuring aid can continue to flow. Egypt is also increasing the capacity of displacement camps in Khan Younis and coordinating with both sides to manage the expected influx of displaced people.
@oatmeal : whether the Biden administration did or did not agree upon such an insane "deal": let's be patient until an official USA source officially confirms or officially denies it.
This conflict is becoming much bigger if it leads to #WW3. It is in Putin's interest to have WW3 (no more weapons to #Ukraine), and he may help achieve WW3 by exactly stating the OPPOSITE in fake news. Russian trolls are all over the place.
At the very least, he benefits from confusion.
And as I said before, more regimes may benefit from WW3, or from the opposite (keeping the conflict localized). It is hard to know who to believe.
Which is why I wrote in my profile that you should not (blindly) trust me. Even if Erik van Straten is my real name (which it is, but anyone can claim that): I'm not the only person called "Erik van Straten".
Looking at reputation usually helps a lot, but even then you may be deceived.
The terrible human toll in Gaza has many causes.
A chilling investigation by +972 highlights efficiency:
An engineer: “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed.”
An AI outputs "100 targets a day". Like a factory with murder delivery:
"According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”"
"The third is “power targets,” which includes high-rises and residential towers in the heart of cities, and public buildings such as universities, banks, and government offices."
“Levy describes a system that has almost reached perfection. The political echelon wants to maintain the status quo, and the military provides it with legitimacy in exchange for funds and status.”
“Levy points out the gradual withdrawal of the old Ashkenazi middle class from the ranks of the combat forces[…]:
• the military’s complete reliance on technology as a decisive factor in warfare;
• the adoption of the concept […] of an army that is “small and lethal”;
• the obsession with the idea of #deterrence, which is supposed to negate the other side’s will to fight; and
• the complete addiction to the status quo as the only possible and desirable state of affairs.”
Here is a follow-up of
Yuval Abraham's investigation:
"The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties" https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
If uni rankings are useful at all, it's not on reputation. We could use rankings on (say) % of students on financial aid; % of faculty tenured or tenure-track; % of tenured faculty who are women, minorities; ratio of teachers to administrators; ratio of avg faculty salary to head football coach salary…
Read #QuinnNorton about #whiteness:
"The great thing about the divide-and-conquer of creating white-skin #privilege is that you don’t have to give people thusly bought off anything more, and American power structures didn’t. In places with black #slavery, the whites suffered terribly.
"There is a simple truth to American history for the majority of people who have ever been American: the worse the black experience, the worse everyone else’s experience, including whites. Driving down (or eliminating) black #wages, while always agreeable to whites, drove white pay lower than their European counterparts for most of our history."