16·
3 days agoFeel like pure shit.
catonkatonk [none/use name]
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Joined 7 months ago
Cake day: December 25th, 2023
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I think there is probably some Hazing rituals that IDF members go through where they are made to do horrible things to Palestinians
Actually I do remember reading something about this from someone who had served in the IDF. I can’t remember the source and my memory isn’t great, so keep that in mind, but they said something like, in the early days of their service, recruits were made to go into the West Bank and arrest some random Palestinian. They’d let them go eventually, but the point was to march into someone’s house and parade them in front of their neighbours before driving off with them.
There was an interview from within the entity that had a portion deleted that has stuck with me since I first read it:
“The genre of the dancing soldiers may seem amazing to us Israelis as a nation. It’s fun. It’s great for morale, but it doesn’t look good in any other context. And that’s exactly the thing - this association: the soldiers are not private individuals. The world does not look at a reservist in Gaza as a neighbor from my building, and the soldiers are not ‘all our children’. In the eyes of the world, soldiers represent an army. On the other hand, think about all the TikToks that come out of Gaza - there is no tendency to point to them and say ‘this is all Hamas propaganda’. A separation is made there between the citizens of Gaza and Hamas. But in the Israeli experience, we don’t distinguish ourselves in this way. Our society is militaristic, for us militarism is great, it’s part of who we are, but in foreign eyes it is not perceived positively.”
The wolves are self-aware.
At the same time, it struck me as deeply strange that the question would even need to be asked. Many Israelis come from other parts of the world where they would be not have been raised in that specific Starship Troopers-esque society*. And yet they acclimatise to such a degree that they kind of forget how genocidal glee looks like to the outside world. It’s bizarre.
*Yes, yes, I know, but there’s degrees to it. When Americans saw Abu Ghraib, it was not the majority position that the soldiers should have been even crueller.
I can’t get a read on Boric. Very confusing individual. Can any kind comrades tell me what he’s all about.
I legitimately have seen comments like “this was under Trump” or “This was four years ago”. Death to America.
Is this in the constitution too: https://www.npr.org/2022/07/08/1110577439/zelenskyy-has-consolidated-ukraines-tv-outlets-and-dissolved-rival-political-par
Seems like a bad constitution in that case.
While demand is forecast to peak before 2030, continued investment by oil producers, led by the US, would by then result in more than 8mn b/d of spare capacity, the IEA wrote in its annual report on the industry released on Wednesday. This “massive cushion” of extra oil could “upend” the efforts of Opec+ to manage the market and usher in an era of lower prices, the IEA said, adding that the level of spare capacity would be unprecedented outside the coronavirus pandemic. While demand is forecast to peak before 2030, continued investment by oil producers, led by the US, would by then result in more than 8mn b/d of spare capacity, the IEA wrote in its annual report on the industry released on Wednesday. This “massive cushion” of extra oil could “upend” the efforts of Opec+ to manage the market and usher in an era of lower prices, the IEA said, adding that the level of spare capacity would be unprecedented outside the coronavirus pandemic.
What was that thing Yellen was yelling at China about again…
Alternatively, they have been forced to adopt a brazen and unapologetic posture because their facades cannot stand up to even the mildest scrutiny anymore. Nobody is seriously buying what they are selling, but some continue to pretend that they do believe it just because they are team sport-brained. We are at a possible inflection point. The truth has no longer has any believable denials obstructing it.
From the UK, and that is definitely the image we’re given of it. Austere concrete blocks in Eastern Europe, empty shelves in supermarkets, boxy cars that are twenty years behind the times. If we’re taught anything specific about USSR’s economy in general education, it’s that central planning resulted in famines and shortages, partly because planners could not have enough information about the market, and partly because of corruption from the producers who had no market incentive to exceed quota or become more efficient.
At the same time, in the first year of my economics degree, I was taught that the USSR kept pace with, and at times, even exceeded US GDP until around the seventies. There were lots of graphs.
Which one of these factions is Sturmer leading.
11·1 month agoThe immensely frustrating thing about him is that he would be the perfect politician for the moment if it wasn’t… for those things. We need someone on the left who not only doesn’t give a fuck about lib sensitivities, but actually goes out of their way to point out that libs are disgusting, immoral, shameless and violent. That libs have lost all moral and pragmatic credibility, and have no business policing the respectability of anyone else. Exactly the way Galloway does. Instead all we get from most of our left politicians is varying degrees of cowardice, timidity, and deference to a machine that has no intention of allowing the left to succeed. But Galloway is throwing some of the most marginalised and vulnerable people in this country under the fucking bus to get approval from a bunch of red-faced fucks. He doesn’t even need to do it!
Usual caveats about electoral politics etc etc
I’m going Green. The Worker’s Party is Galloway turning a dial labelled “transphobia” while looking at his audience for approval.
Meanwhile, the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese news outlet al-Akhbar reported that Britain has warned Lebanon that Israel will launch a large-scale offensive in mid-June whose extent and duration are not known and advised Beirut to “make the necessary provisions for the war.”
Dronerbox is with him as well I think. You know, just in case we want to objectively and scientifically measure the potential funniness that Hamas could inflict.
https://x.com/Israel_katz/status/1794977866297328058 ( https://nitter.poast.org/Israel_katz/status/1794977866297328058 ) Israel prohibits the Spanish embassy in Israel from providing consular services to West Bank Palestinians and vows, “those who harm us, we will harm in return”.
In one way this reminds me of their threat (possibly in action) to cut off PA from tax revenues that they collect on their behalf. In that, whenever western nations do something Israel doesn’t like, Israel reacts by punishing Palestinians, and not just the Hamas-indoctrinated baby terrorists of Gaza who threaten Israel with their pacifiers, but in the West Bank. This collective punishment against a population that didn’t even wrong them is barely mentioned by the western press.
It’s worth looking at past times when Israel has used this argument. https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/special-sessions/session9/fact-finding-mission
The Mission’s attention has been drawn to a well-known incident in which women and children followed calls to gather on the roof of the house of a Palestinian man who had been informed by the Israeli authorities that his house would be targeted. This incident has been documented in video footage in the public domain and is referred to in submissions received by the Mission as evidence of the use of human shields. The Mission notes, however, that the incident occurred in 2007. No such incidents are alleged by the Israeli Government with regard to the military operations that began on 27 December 2008. The Mission received no reports of such incidents from other sources. On the contrary, in one case investigated by the Mission, a Hamas official received a phone call from the Israeli armed forces to the effect that his house would soon be targeted. He evacuated the house with his family and alerted the neighbours to the imminent threat so that they, too, were able to leave their homes before the missile did indeed strike
Finally, on this issue, it is relevant to mention that the Israeli Government has produced no visual or other evidence to support its allegation that Palestinian combatants “mingle routinely with civilians in order to cover their movements”.
- The Mission is unable to make any determination on the general allegation that Palestinian armed groups used mosques for military purposes. It notes that, in the one incident it investigated of an Israeli attack on a mosque, it found no indication that the mosque was so used.
- On the basis of the investigations it has conducted, the Mission did not find any evidence to support the allegations that hospital facilities were used by the Gaza authorities or by Palestinian armed groups to shield military activities and that ambulances were used to transport combatants or for other military purposes.
- On the basis of the information it gathered, the Mission found no indication that the civilian population was forced by Hamas or Palestinian armed groups to remain in areas under attack from the Israeli armed forces
And so on. Page 218 onwards, on the other hand, describes the IDF using Palestinians as human shields.
So what about since Oct. 7th? Here’s Amnesty International’s findings on the investigation of three strikes with heavy civilian casualties:
In all three cases, Amnesty International did not find any evidence that there had been any military targets in or around the locations targeted by the Israeli military, raising serious concerns that these attacks amount to direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, which are war crimes. Israel has not provided any information about the attacks in Rafah, and has only provided general allegations, which it later contradicted, regarding the attack on al-Maghazi.
Meanwhile, there are numerous examples of Israelis using Palestinians as human shields. Marching Palestinians in front of them as they move into territory. Sending a Palestinian into a hospital to warn them to evacuate, and then shooting that same man dead when he left. We know that IDF operatives dressed as doctors and nurses and entered a civilian hospital to shoot patients in their bed. IN THE WEST BANK.
Are there Hamas installations in close proximity to civilian buildings? Gaza is one of most densely populated areas on earth, so it would be impossible for that not to be the case. But it also wouldn’t be unusual, and there are IDF facilities near civilian buildings as well. My city has an army barracks in a fucking residential area, I suppose that justifies my liquidation in the event of a war then.
Because all this doesn’t even touch on the fact that this argument is trotted out to justify the unjustifiable: “They were hiding amongst children, so we had to kill all the children”
An argument that is morally vacuous at best. Apply it to any other situation: “There was a shooting in a school so we bombed the school.”
62·1 month agoIs it true that if someone takes a kid hostage, you’re justified in killing the kid? Sounds fucked up, the idea that killing someone who is doing Bad Things is more important than protecting the life of an innocent child. Hmm. Not sure about this “international rules based” order the crackers keep talking about.
24·2 months agoThe US casually asking Germany to further damage their own economy again. And Germany will do it, too, the crazy bastards!
It was a better outcome that was expected. Labour’s vote share is weak. Keir’s vote share in his own constituency halved. He’s become the least popular opposition leader to ever win by any metric. The lowest turnout in, like, a hundred years despite this nominally being a regime change election shows a lack of belief and enthusiasm for the current system. Greens did historically well. Independents from the left did historically well. Not just the ones that won, but the ones that came strong second. Many of Labour’s seats were won on a knife edge. It was not a resounding victory of the kind Blair won, which imo was the worst case scenario. Yes, FPTP means none of that technically matters. But also, it does, because many of Labour’s MPs know they’re on thin ice if they want to win again.
The predicted outcome was a license for absolute red tory arrogance. Wes Streeting was gleefully rubbing his hands at the prospect of selling off the NHS, but maybe winning by only 500 votes will make him think more carefully about that. Or maybe it won’t. Maybe he doesn’t care about being re-elected because he’ll have a gravy train waiting at the station when he leaves.
But I still think there’s something worth celebrating, because despite the compliant media, despite the total Conservative collapse, Labour barely got a better share than they did in 2019 and a significantly worse share than they did in 2017. There is an appetite for left politics, it is a spectre that is haunting the UK. It’s not going to be sated by elections and establishment politics, I’m not under any illusion about that. But the poor turnout indicates that nobody else is either, which is significant. The desire is there, the disillusionment with the current system is there, the results show it.
The danger was always that Farage would be the main beneficiary of this failing system, but this election indicates to me that there is absolutely an opening for the left to win people over.