Bay 12 Games Forum

A third round of voting - after a Republican meeting on Thursday apparently got very heated and they decided not to give McHenry more powers - results in a further increase the number of Republicans who voted against Jim Jordan. He’s at 25 now.

Apparently his supporters are threatening his colleagues for not supporting him because that’ll change their minds, sure. Jordan claims no responsibility and has asked that the threats to stop.

It’s the internet (or worse a politics thread), you’re not allowed to make jokes.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-us-canada-67149185

Live updates from the Beeb, should anyone be interested.

Where the boots made for walking?

Nah it’s cool. I have a tendency to overexplain things, as I’m sure you noticed.

The current situation with the hospital is such a bright illustration of how Israel is losing the informational war.

It seems like nearly everyone accepts claims that

1) there are 500 dead
2) It is a result of Israeli airstrike

as facts despite the only source of both statements is HAMAS.

I erroneously attributed that to the school strike, meant to say that in the last post. I don’t think people are just accepting it though. The BBC are reporting what Hamas said (hospital was attacked, hundreds of casualties, Israel are responsible) because that’s what news demands now. If you’re not the first to report something, you’re the last. The BBC have their live updates going. And that was where they said they would work to independently verify what’s going on (one of the updates mentioned them speaking to an “unnamed doctor” who reported some other things, like the hospital being 80% shut down and other things I can’t recall right now).

As for Israel caring about civilian casualties, I think their restraint in making Gaza a smoking crater is more to do with them caring about world governments’ opinion of them. They suffered a terrorist attack which buys them a whole lot of leeway, but that doesn’t grant them carte blanche to bomb them back to the Stone Age.

Quote from: hector13 on October 17, 2023, 11:52:20 am

Edit: and an Israeli bomb hit a school where 4,000 people were sheltering.

There must come a point when even the most ardent supporter of Israel will come to the conclusion that the folk in charge don’t even care where their bombs fall.

That strikes me as a somewhat naive takeaway. For example, Ukrainian bombs have been confirmed to have (on occasion) hit schools, children, and worse; is it because leadership don't care where their bombs fall?

Ukraine has at the very least given the appearance they try to hit military targets.

Israel has, in the 10 days since the Gaza-Israel war started, made what was already a considered humanitarian crisis even worse. See previous post for things that were off the top of my head.

The things that make me question in Israel’s case that they don’t care where their bombs land are things like a bomb falling on a safe route that Israel designated (PPE: though presently unconfirmed it was an Israeli bomb afaia), and hitting the UN school/shelter, which the UN agency in charge of claims to have told “relevant parties” of the location’s coordinates.

This pales in comparison to them refusing to allow supplies through their border to 2.3 million people, and giving half of them a day to move to where the other half are, which would be an infeasible task if all of them had received the message with the full 24 hours and had fully-fueled cars ready and loaded to get moving. They’re also still dropping bombs in Southern Gaza, where they’ve told the folk in the top half to go.

PPE: Israel isn’t being condemned for refusing to supply Hamas. Israel is being condemned for making life worse for the millions of Palestinian civilians which wasn’t exactly paradise before they blockaded them. This implies they consider civilian deaths to be an acceptable consequence of targeting Hamas.

I don’t know what they do to confirm the numbers, but the BBC at least doesn’t just take the numbers from things like the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, though they do report the numbers they say - such as 500 killed as a result of school bombing - but that they also claim to independently verify such claims.