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Messages - hector13

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751
General Discussion / Re: Non-EU europe thread (with Russia, Israel and Australia included)
« on: November 12, 2023, 10:55:24 pm »
Quote from: Strongpoint on November 12, 2023, 10:39:38 pm
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If the goal of Israel is to destroy Hamas (or the like), they ain’t going about it the right way. People having their homes and communities destroyed aren’t going to be philosophical about the matter. Equally so, all of Hamas isn’t in Gaza, so even if it was razed to the ground and all the tunnels filled with concrete, Hamas still exists, or get re-created by some of the Palestinians whose families have been destroyed in Israeli strikes that live elsewhere.

If the goal of Alies is to destroy Nazi Party (or the like), they ain’t going about it the right way. People having their homes and communities destroyed aren’t going to be philosophical about the matter. Equally so, all of Nazi Party members aren't in Germany, so even if it was razed to the ground and all the tunnels filled with concrete, Nazi Party still exists, or get re-created by some of the Germans whose families have been destroyed in Allied strikes that live elsewhere.

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The only correct thing here is that if Israel will go for another unfair, cruel, and idiotic occupation policy, there will be a new Hamas or a rebirth of it. Just like there would be a new Hitler if occupation of Germany would be unfair (note that German Neo-Nazi are far more popular in Eastern Germany and think why)

Of course there’s nothing unfair, idiotic, or cruel about their current policy in Gaza, is there? ::)

Quote from: Strongpoint on November 12, 2023, 10:44:28 pm
Quote from: feelotraveller on November 12, 2023, 03:57:12 pm
You walk down a Sydney street chanting the N-word you'll find yourself behind bars quick smart.  And the reason for that is that the community, police and government understand it as hate speech.

BTW, are the guys who chanted "Gas the Jews" and "Fuck the Jews" in Sydney around a month ago are behind the bars already? Or did they do it to pressure the Australian government to lobby for a ceasefire, too?

https://www.reuters.com/world/police-investigate-pro-palestinian-protest-sydney-opera-house-over-alleged-anti-2023-10-10/

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Protest organiser Palestine Action Group Sydney defended its right to protest "apartheid" in Israel but said a small number of "vile antisemitic attendees" had no place in their movement.

"We are an anti-racist and anti-colonial movement and we refuse to fight racism with racism," the group said in a post on social media.

"If you are an antisemite, you are not welcome at our rallies and are not a part of our movement. As we did today, we will ask you to leave and we will continue to do this."

Keep trying, one day you’ll be able to find a way to paint all pro-Palestinian protestors as anti-Semitic. I believe in you.

752
General Discussion / Re: Non-EU europe thread (with Russia, Israel and Australia included)
« on: November 12, 2023, 05:58:44 pm »
I’m not the one saying things have to mean one thing and one thing only always and forever regardless who says it.

753
General Discussion / Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« on: November 12, 2023, 04:57:26 pm »
Wet wipes are also useful in keeping the area clean. Only use one though, else you’ll clog your pipes.

754
General Discussion / Re: Non-EU europe thread (with Russia, Israel and Australia included)
« on: November 12, 2023, 04:56:26 pm »
Quote from: Rockeater on November 12, 2023, 06:43:05 am
The airstrike campign + limited inceursuon is not going to destroy HAMAS, causing the people in Gaza to suffer with no alternative is the reason they join HAMAS in the first place.
A diplomacy option would be to support a less hostile group and not literally support HAMAS as a bullwork against the PA, to not shoot peaceful protestors in Gaza in 2018-19, to actually try for peace and not continusly prevent palastinan families to return to the homes they were kicked out of.

Quoted for truth.

If the goal of Israel is to destroy Hamas (or the like), they ain’t going about it the right way. People having their homes and communities destroyed aren’t going to be philosophical about the matter. Equally so, all of Hamas isn’t in Gaza, so even if it was razed to the ground and all the tunnels filled with concrete, Hamas still exists, or get re-created by some of the Palestinians whose families have been destroyed in Israeli strikes that live elsewhere.

Quote from: scriver on November 12, 2023, 06:56:48 am
Quote from: hector13 on November 11, 2023, 03:47:08 pm
“From the river to the sea” is also a contentious one. I don’t doubt that there are anti-Semites that do use it to mean extermination of Jews on that land, but there are others that use it to mean they want peace there. Jumping to the conclusion that everyone there, who was broadly peaceful, was using it to call for the elimination of Jews is a ludicrous jump to make.

If you think the people using a slogan calling for ethnical cleansing are doing so for peace then you show a severe lack of critical thinking. How can it not be immediately obvious to you how that is just antisemitic apologism?

Because allowing language to be essentially stolen by the most extreme elements of society means we wouldn’t be able to talk about anything. Interpreting something in the worst possible way is how to shut down dialogue - it’s something abusers do - on what is a relatively ambiguous statement. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Free from what? Free to do what?

When Israelis use the phrase, do they use it to mean they want to exterminate Jews from the area? Heck, Likud used the phrase in the 70s, do they want to eliminate the Jews?

755
General Discussion / Re: Non-EU europe thread (with Russia, Israel and Australia included)
« on: November 12, 2023, 04:35:25 am »
Quote from: Strongpoint on November 12, 2023, 03:45:04 am
Quote from: hector13 on November 11, 2023, 10:30:32 pm
A question for you: do you actually think it’s possible for Israel to commit war crimes in this conflict? What would the line be for you?
When there is a war, there are war crimes. I have seen relatively reliable evidence of war crimes committed by the Israeli Army in this war, like executing Hamas fighters who clearly tried to surrender

The problem begins when everything one side does is called a war crime. Don't supply resources directly to the enemy? WAR CRIME. Doing any air strikes that cause any collateral casualties?  WAR CRIME. It is hard to spot actual ones.

Hamas clearly have the ability to smuggle materials to build rockets, which means they clearly have the ability to smuggle in other things, like food, and water, and fuel. Who exactly is the blockade punishing if it doesn’t affect Hamas? Gaza wasn’t exactly a paradise prior to the conflict. I’d call this a crime against humanity, at best.

Israel has to do everything possible to minimize civilian casualties. I’ve mentioned before that cutting off electricity makes it harder for people to get evacuation notices, but even if they did, Israel is still bombing areas that they’ve told people to evacuate to; refugee camps; hospitals; they’re also not letting anyone leave via their border. That I’d be pretty comfortable calling war crimes.

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There are myriad ways Israel could have responded to the October 7th attacks
Can you name a few?

Boots on the ground.  They have special forces, Mossad, diplomats, money, prisoner swaps. Bombing the shit out of Gaza is just the easy option.

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Like they’re fighting around and bombing near a hospital in Gaza City “because Hamas” have tunnels underneath the hospital, or they bombed an ambulance convoy “because Hamas” use ambulances to shuttle people and materiel around.
But both are true. As soon as one side uses hospitals and ambulances in this way - bombing them stops being a war crime. This is why there are rules for not using hospitals this way.

No, it doesn’t stop being a war crime unless certain conditions are fulfilled:

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Such loss of protection is an “exception” involving three elements where the medical transport is: used to commit acts harmful to the enemy; due warning is given; and there is a reasonable time for the warning to be heeded. With the first of these, acts harmful to the enemy can, according to the ICRC, include “transport of healthy troops, arms or munitions, as well as the collection or transmission of military intelligence.”

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Because Hamas” basically culminates in things like bombing media headquarters providing critical coverage in Gaza
Yeah, this one was a rather transparent lie. "Hamas intelligence" wasn't the target. But if you are acting as propaganda for one side of the war, you will get hit. USA bombed the infrastructure of media of Irag for "some" reason, too.

The US doing something doesn’t make it any less awful. My point is “because Hamas” is not a good enough excuse, and allowing it to be used over and over as justification eventually makes the above (and worse!) acceptable. Yes Hamas is a disgusting terrorist group, that doesn’t justify doing disgusting things.

756
General Discussion / Re: Non-EU europe thread (with Russia, Israel and Australia included)
« on: November 12, 2023, 02:35:30 am »
I didn’t say they shouldn’t respond to the attacks from Hamas, I said ignoring the human shields is the problem. There are myriad ways Israel could have responded to the October 7th attacks, but they did what they always do and step up the bombing campaign, now with the added wrinkle of blockading electricity and fuel so at some point people aren’t going to be able to get online for warnings, and dropping leaflets means having to go outside and why would you go outside they’re dropping bombs out there!

The main problem with ignoring the human shields is it allows a “because Hamas” excuse to become an acceptable excuse to do horrible things.

(I think there’s a word for it that something is repeated so often and is accepted as truth to justify doing ever more horrible things that I can’t think of that probably describe it better but I am drawing a blank here. I thought cliché would cover it but that doesn’t feel right.)

Like they’re fighting around and bombing near a hospital in Gaza City “because Hamas” have tunnels underneath the hospital, or they bombed an ambulance convoy “because Hamas” use ambulances to shuttle people and materiel around.

“Because Hamas” basically culminates in things like bombing media headquarters providing critical coverage in Gaza “because Hamas” were using the building, which somehow escaped the notice of many groups of seasoned journalists.

If any other country in the world were bombing hospitals in an area under military occupation, there’d be an uproar from world governments across the globe, sanctions and censures aplenty. Israel gets military and financial aid.

757
General Discussion / Re: Non-EU europe thread (with Russia, Israel and Australia included)
« on: November 11, 2023, 10:30:32 pm »
A question for you: do you actually think it’s possible for Israel to commit war crimes in this conflict? What would the line be for you?

758
General Discussion / Re: Non-EU europe thread (with Russia, Israel and Australia included)
« on: November 11, 2023, 10:10:27 pm »
You’re stupid enough to suggest pro-Palestinian protests with hundreds of thousands of people in them are huge anti-Semitic hatefests, so why not? Hate as a motivator doesn’t tend toward peaceful protests, yet the only conflicts were when counter-protesters were shouting racial, anti-Muslim abuse at the larger protests and clashing with police, despite protests across major cities in the UK.

As for the rest… I used to think you had sensible takes.

Child combatants are rarely a problem when your main way of attacking your enemy is dropping bombs on them so… citation needed on the proportion of child combatants to child deaths.

Hamas using human shields doesn’t really make it okay for Israel to kill the human shields, and the human shields don’t really have much choice when the terrorists move in, do they?

The ceasefire isn’t “just” being called because people are dying in a war zone, it’s so aid can get in and give people the basic necessities Israel has denied them when they stopped everything getting in. It’s been a while since I checked, but there were 500 aid trucks going into Gaza daily prior the war starting, and only about 20 daily when they were allowed in via Egypt mid-war. I can’t imagine the need for aid has reduced while Israel is displacing millions, so that’s nowhere near good enough.

759
General Discussion / Re: Non-EU europe thread (with Russia, Israel and Australia included)
« on: November 11, 2023, 03:47:08 pm »
Quote from: Strongpoint on November 11, 2023, 02:03:28 pm
Quote from: hector13 on November 11, 2023, 01:17:33 pm
They’re calling for an end to the conflict not the extermination of the Jews.

Yeah, sure. It is all about supporting victims of a conflict!

No.  It is not about caring about innocent victims, we have many wars with innocent victims, and they don't gather crowds.

False.

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It is not about caring about the right of a nation to self-determination because I fail to see protests supporting, for example, Kurds, against whom Turkey takes unlawful military action quite regularly.

False.

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It isn't Muslim solidarity because I see no anti-Chinese protest, who outright ban Islam in a Muslim region and keep Muslims in concentration camps.

False.

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It isn't solidarity with Arabs either, few gave an F when Assad, together with non-Arab intervents in the form of Russia and Iran, killed Arabs in masse. Neither is there any interest in stopping the war in Sudan...

False.

Unless your assertion is that they aren’t doing them anymore? There’s only so much a crowd can protest before it bell becomes an incoherent call for “something different”.

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What makes this conflict unique? Israel is one of the sides, that's what. It means that the core motivation of those protests is either hatred of specifically Israel or hatred towards "the West" and "its Israeli outpost on Muslim lands" or good old antisemitism.

Of course it has nothing to do with this newest page in the conflict being a month old and having been in the news every single day since. The BBC have been doing rolling updates since it started.

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Besides, I am neither deaf nor blind. I see and hear their slogans. Those are not slogans of people wanting peace. "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free" and "Globalize the Intifada" are quite clear. And those are not the worst stuff that can be heard.

I didn’t say there was zero anti-semitism in the crowds. Folks who hold those views will be emboldened by the anonymity of a crowd to share them, in much the same way the far-right protesters were emboldened to be there by the false claims from the British Home Secretary that the pro-Palestine protests would target the Cenotaph on Armistice Day - which they neither were planning to or spontaneously did - and the police treat left-wing protests and right-wing protests differently.

“From the river to the sea” is also a contentious one. I don’t doubt that there are anti-Semites that do use it to mean extermination of Jews on that land, but there are others that use it to mean they want peace there. Jumping to the conclusion that everyone there, who was broadly peaceful, was using it to call for the elimination of Jews is a ludicrous jump to make.

PPE: LW got it in before me, but whatever, I’ll post this and read that now.

760
General Discussion / Re: Non-EU europe thread (with Russia, Israel and Australia included)
« on: November 11, 2023, 01:17:33 pm »
Oh fuck off with that nonsense, the police say there are 300,000 people and most of the people being arrested are the far-right counter protesters.

They’re calling for an end to the conflict not the extermination of the Jews.

Edit:

BBC quote, emphasis mine:

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We’ve finally been able to make it over Vauxhall Bridge to the south of the river, along the protest route.

What strikes me is the amount of people coming back over the bridge - effectively retracing the steps of the march, and then dispersing.

More seem to be making their way back from the US Embassy - the location of the end of the march - towards Victoria station and Westminster.

Chants critical of PM Rishi Sunak are repeated over a megaphone and there is a smoky smell from some flares which have been set off.

I haven't seen any trouble from these crowds of people.

There were also reports of people bringing their kids to the protest. You don’t bring your kids if you expect violence, unless you’re from Niddrie.

761
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: November 09, 2023, 07:32:15 pm »
The same candidate was mayor in the early 00s and then in prison for corruption for 7 years before going back to being mayor afterward.

If Bridgeport want that as their leader, a little bit of electoral fraud isn’t going to swing it either way. I think it says more about Bridgeport than it does about the Democrats.

762
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: November 09, 2023, 01:35:31 pm »
Fackin’ unions and bleeding heart liberals we need to go back to enslaving the poor.

763
General Discussion / Re: United Kingdom Bunker Thread - Politics & Economics
« on: November 09, 2023, 01:33:36 pm »
Quote from: Loud Whispers on November 09, 2023, 11:45:58 am
Quote from: hector13 on November 09, 2023, 11:31:10 am
There was Eric Pickles too for a time.

To be perfectly honest it seems like there are a lot of dicks in the Tory party…
Jeremy Hunt is a massive... Dick
Jeremy Cunt… Hunt *cough*

Some of those look very deliberate.

Fakeedit: link probably NSFW btw.

764
General Discussion / Re: United Kingdom Bunker Thread - Politics & Economics
« on: November 09, 2023, 11:31:10 am »
Quote from: Loud Whispers on November 09, 2023, 10:26:12 am
Quote from: Starver on November 08, 2023, 04:18:53 pm
"Top official urged Johnson to remove Hancock" was the abbreviated headline used to link to this article...

But I initially read it as the (equally entertaining) "Top official urged Hancock to remove (his) Johnson"...
If only Ed Balls had stuck around long enough to help Johnson with his Hancock problem

Then there was that one Tory serial molestor who was Pincher the pincher

There was Eric Pickles too for a time.

To be perfectly honest it seems like there are a lot of dicks in the Tory party…

765
General Discussion / Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« on: November 09, 2023, 09:53:08 am »
Totes agree with LW. They love you and don’t want you to suffer, so accept the help while it’s there. It’s a lot better than being so anxiety-ridden you can’t focus on your studies.

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