I read this more as “Heads of 3 top US colleges refuse to trap themselves in what was likely to be a performative thread of anti-Palestinian questions from one of Congress’s most shameless clown-people (Elise Stefanik).”
To be clear, from the article itself:
The university leaders all personally criticized anti-Israel activism.
On second thought, it may not have even been anti-Palestinian per se, but rather more careless exploitation in pursuit of CRT-adjacent nonsense.
Some Republicans sought to paint campus antisemitism as a product of universities embracing “the race-based ideology of the radical left,”
good. i found a ton of these nasty little things in my backyard when i moved into my current house. the house was (no surprise) previously occupied by a bunch of undergrads.
Yet with Gazans facing a humanitarian catastrophe, Hamas’s stockpiles raise questions about what responsibility, if any, it has to the civilian population.
I find statements like this pretty fatuous.
Ethically all humans have a responsibility to see that these civilians won't starve or lack medicine.
Hamas is hoarding it and won't share with civilians.
Israel is also refusing to share with the hapless civilians
it's trying to prevent the rest of the world from sharing either.
It's stupid to say I'm not allowed to give a homeless guy a hot meal because there's a rich guy nearby.
Hamas is their government, and as such, has a responsibility to those it governs.
And the supplies are literally under the feet of the people who need them. Not something dependent on outside shipment.
Hamas made a decision to start a war, and now they’re choosing to let people suffer for PR points instead of moving supplies up and out of their tunnels to the people.
Eh, this is the kind of thing people say to absolve themselves.
"Sure that neighbour kid's getting starved and abused by his parents but it's his parents' responsibility to feed him, not mine".
"Sure, the Rohingya are getting genocided by the Junta but after all the Junta is technically their government who are responsible for their safety, not us".
Last time anyone voted in Hamas was 17 years ago. Meanwhile literally half the Gazans are aged 18 or younger. Far too younger to have voted for Hamas let alone for this nightmare.
If you just send in food, Hamas will take the bulk of it, same way they supplied the tunnels in the first place. Only real way to solve the problem is to get rid of Hamas.
So let us send even more. I'd rather civillians no longer starved. Even if it means bad actors take some too.
We saw the flaws with the aid sanctions against Ethiopia earlier this year. Some corrupt officials were re-routing some of the aid intended for the famine in Tigray. But when the UN and US halted all food aid in response, starvation deaths in Ethiopia rose.
I understand that Israel don't mind starving the civilian population of Gaza as collatoral damage in their war with Hamas, but I do mind. The fact remains that starvation of civilians during war is illegal under international law. And I support that law.
this is just not a well founded assumption. humanitarian aid was going into Gaza, and was being distributed to the people there before Israel cut off the supply. you’re trying to engineer a false dichotomy, where the only solution to the ongoing humanitarian crisis caused in part by the denial of necessary resources is more denial of necessary resources. like, just think for like a moment. Hamas has a surplus of resources to supply their own forces. they aren’t reliant on humanitarian aid. not allowing food and other resources to get into Gaza only negatively affects the civilian population, and does very little to harm the supposed actual target of this indiscriminate violence. like, even if nearly all of it was just taken by Hamas, the quantity that remained would almost certainly still help innocent people survive this conflict, and that’s a worthwhile pursuit in and of itself.
but whatever, i bet you’ll just move the goalpost again. we cannot act based on what Hamas “should” be doing if they were acting responsibly. Hamas isn’t taking responsibility for the death and destruction being waged against the Palestinian people, they aren’t providing the resources they have, they aren’t distributing them to those who need them. and seeing that situation, we should act to prevent the suffering of these people who are not being served by the government that is supposed to represent them, instead of actively preventing aid from reaching into the region.
You are searching morality in something, where there is none. This is urban warfare - WAR - and quite frankly - not letting Resources through Israeli border crossings - is nothing compared to things done in other wars. Especially as Egypt could deliver aid into Gaza from their border - But they chose not to.
Everything you said is wrong. Egypt is trying to let aid through, Israel has repeatedly bombed the roads in each time they’re fixed; preventing aid. Also, as you so aptly pointed out, it’s war. The first thing a functioning country does in war is ration food so the soldiers can stay fed; even if it costs civilian lives. This has happened many times. That Israel is purposely starving civilians knowing full well it won’t affect the soldiers, just for propaganda, is frankly evil.
@dumdum666 that's a hard disagree from me. I think you fundamentally misunderstand what ethics and morals are. Either you believe something or you don't.
If you come upon some people raping some kid in an alley that doesn't mean it's somehow okay for you stand there and just watch because "this is rape and quite frankly worse things were done in other rapes".
The argument "other people could have chosen to help and didn't, therefore it's fine for me to not help either" doesn't cut it.
If you, personally, think it's morally fine to starve civilians and children that's one thing - luckily many disagree which is why it's deemed a war crime.
But you should own your views on that. Don't try to argue that there's some special ☆magical place☆ where there's no such thing as right or wrong and ethics suddenly don't exist.
If you come upon some people raping some kid in an alley that doesn't mean it's somehow okay for you stand there and just watch because "this is rape and quite frankly worse things were done in other rapes".
The argument "other people could have chosen to help and didn't, therefore it's fine for me to not help either" doesn't cut it.
All right, then take a plane to Egypt and start to personally deliver that aid, if you just can’t stand by as the moral and ethical pure person you are. No? Took your mouth too full? Maybe you are a Keyboard Warrior after all?
If you, personally, think it's morally fine to starve civilians and children that's one thing - luckily many disagree which is why it's deemed a war crime.
It is a war crime if it is actually done to starve the civilians, yes. And you love to throw around accusations, don’t you?
Why aren’t you fighting that the women and young children can flee - to Egypt or maybe even into Israel? That would actually be useful, don’t you think?
If you think physically being in a situation is a prerequisite for caring about it, I don't know where this conversation can go. You seem to be veering into personal attacks.
None of this is a valid criticism of my point. I think it might be time for us to stop, since we are clearly talking past one another.
There’s some truth to that. They have something to fight for, the men were fighting to free their own sex slaves and ban their own vices, no wonder they weren’t motivated.
I feel like I’m being gaslit into thinking there’s this huge outbreak of antisemitism when all I’m ever reading about is Muslims being murdered?? why are we constantly talking about antisemitism and only antisemitism
I’m pro-Palestine all day but I don’t like this line of questioning. The only reason I see to make this argument is to try to erase the very real horrors the Jewish people survived.
However debate lords are still gonna want an answer (not trying to imply you are one). If I had to respond I would say:
English is a living language. The definition of words is determined by how we use them. Think of “literally”. It meant one thing but it was so misused that the definition had to change because the common use was completely disconnected from the textbook definition.
The words “Semitic” and “anti-semitic” did not come into existence at the same time, similar to matter and Antimatter. “Anti-Semitic” is specifically “anti-Jewish” because that how the phrase was used.
It’s not a word whose definition comes from the literal sum of its parts, it refers to a specific phenomenon.
Interesting that you use the idea that English is a living language to push back against people using a term in a way you’ve decided is incorrect. Seems like you don’t think English is that alive after all if you refuse to incorporate all Semitic people into the concept of antisemitism.
You can’t cite descriptivist arguments to defend your prescriptivist attitude towards the term antisemitism. It betrays your own bias and deflates your argument.
Language evolves, just like you said. Which is why people are realizing the double speak nature of this idea that antisemitism is only when you’re prejudiced against a specific Semitic people group and the others don’t get a term to describe prejudice against them. Your position is an Orwellian attempt to deny a group of people the ability to specifically identify their oppression and it’s sad.
You can argue about it all you like, but if you say the word “antisemitism” then people will assume you mean anti-Jewish sentiment. Because that’s the agreed-upon meaning. Pineapples aren’t really apples, but that doesn’t cause confusion because people know what the word “pineapple” means.
Like you said, language evolves. People are deciding that the definition you follow is very limited and constrains dialogue by being needlessly exclusionary. So they’re seeking to expand the definition to its logical conclusion.
You can throw a fit about other Semitic people being recognized or you can accept that language changes to fit our current understanding of the world.
Antisemitism still refers to prejudice against Jewish people. It’s also being extended to all Semitic people as to disallow them the ability to categorize prejudice against them is to obfuscate and to an extent even deny their own reality.
In January 2020, House Representative Jonathan Carroll introduced the bill HB 4049 which adopts a contested definition of antisemitism equating criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish discrimination. The language of the bill draws heavily on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Antisemitism in which “Delegitimizing the State of Israel by denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and denying the State of Israel the right to exist” is labelled a form of antisemitism. The bill would make public schools and universities culpable for failing to treat discrimination as defined by the bill in the same manner that they treat discrimination motivated by race.
I wonder how that stands up with Israel now bombing hospitals. Are we still going to be expected to defend them now that they are committing the same atrocities that was once done against them?
We murder anyone lesser and make those who are mentally disadvantaged suffer …unless a pictures being taken.
We are Devils in disguise. Elite false gods in denial. A collective fascism born to genocide all those that live as natural human beings. So we can feel safe and have a false perception of reason to quell existentialism that we pretend we don’t have.
The easiest way to deflect criticism is to claim it’s racism or antisemitism. China does the exact same thing. It’s obvious and lazy. I can’t believe people still fall for it. Israel is not the representative of Judaism. They have a far right militant dictator running their country right now who is killing many innocent people. The fact that they are still recognized as a country is beyond reason at this point.
he smashed the statues because he considered them “to be idolatrous and contrary to the Torah.”
followed by
The man’s lawyer, Nick Kaufman, denied that he had acted out of religious fanaticism.
If you say so! Its horrible that someone who isnt even from an area thinks they have the right to destroy another place’s cultural heritage and history because they feel it goes against their religion.
this is the kind of shit all authoritans dream of: complete control over everyones lives and forcing people into their information bubble to solidify power
so watch out who you vote for or shit could go downhill fast
@underwire212 imagine that you can tune in on Spotify, YouTube or wherever you want and listen to whatever you want. Imagine that you can legally buy whatever newspaper from the local shop, or go to whatever internet website and legally read whatever news you might find there, whether it is a government website, a conspiracy website, a satirical website or whatever. Legally. That's what democracy makes it special. This is what freedom is all about.
Here in Romania, during communism, if you were caught listening to Radio Free Europe, you would be prosecuted immediately. If you listened to AC/DC, Beatles, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Sex Pistols, Led Zeppelin or other iconic Rock bands back in the day, you would be labeled as a potential risk for the society, possibly extremist, and followed 24/7 by the secret police. You could have a police record with this, all with this nonsense like what were you wearing, where were you going, what you were doing etc., and it would weigh down hard on your career. Your phones could be tapped, your mail could be tampered, especially if you sent it outside. The secret police was so well infiltrated in the society that anyone could report you. Anyone could be a collaborator, and you wouldn't be aware of it. Imagine you throw a party, and you make some random jokes about the regime, or that you all listen to one of these bands. In your group of friends, it was enough for just one of them to be a collaborator. You can imagine that all of you might be fucked, the next day if you're lucky enough, on the spot if not.
There were cases of spouses reporting to the secret police, parents, children, relatives of all sorts. Teachers could be collaborators as well. Priests were known to be collaborators of the secret police, as people would go to confess their sins, and then in turn, they would confess these sins of them to (you guessed it) the secret police. You just couldn't trust anybody.
It's just mind-boggling how the secret police (in Romania even aptly named Securitate meaning Security) could follow you for basically nothing. And probably the teens in the article in the OP were in a similar situation.
A friend of mine is from Romania, and I know many who lived in the former GDR (German Democratic Republic). They don’t talk often about it, but when they do their stories seem absurd, hard to believe sometimes that these things happened, and each of these stories is a reason to avoid mass surveillance imo.
@0x815 oh, wow. Yea, their stories just seem unbelievable. And also the way some people crossed the border to reach the "free world" seems unbelievable. For example, a band managed to cross the border inside Marshall speakers. Others tried to cross the Danube into Yugoslavia (which was more liberal at the time) and got shot by the Romanian border patrols. It was pretty much hell on Earth.
each of these stories is a reason to avoid mass surveillance imo.
Absolutely. Every time I hear about governments snooping inside personal communication I think of how phones were tapped and letters were read for every known or possible dissidents back then. And when an extremist party seems to be on the verge of taking power (and we do have extremist parties as well in Romania) I just think that measures like these would be the first they would implement, along with reducing democratic rights.
Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington State and Wyoming are participating.
It’s a shame more aren’t participating but I can see the reasoning behind staged access and iterative improvement. The real pity is that data they’ve already got won’t be preloaded in this stage. It would have been the nail in the coffin for Intuit and other companies’ predatory practices on lower income folks, at least as they exist currently.
Just New York and California alone. If the expected turnout is in the millions, one can only hope IBM isn’t behind the cloud infrastructure - word to Obama care.
After the ACA had such a bad start, the obama admin actually opened up "innovation" departments to invite technical experts to modernize goverment infastructure. Those teams have likely done a lot over the decade or so to prevent haphazard rollouts.
EDIT: looks like they work under the title of the “US digital corps” banner and are looking for people.
My understanding is that this program only applies to federal taxes, so I’m not sure that the particular state’s income tax laws will have much bearing on selection for participation or which stage of rollout they’re added with.
This comes after an order to evacuate a city with >0.7 million inhabitants within 24h without preparation, with broken infrastructure and broken government, with a treat of invasion.
There’s no way this happen without panic, and without people being left behind.
I fear we’re going to hear more horrific stories as the dust settles.
There were many innocent civilians living in Nazi Germany, and a lot of them died in the interest of stopping them.
We try to minimize innocent deaths in war, but when the group you are fighting against uses hospitals as military locations and innocent people as human shields, it becomes difficult to do so
There were also horrific war crimes in WW2, including the bombing of civilians. War crimes are war crimes no matter who commits them.
I don't think it's really an appropriate comparison to make, but since you are making it, approximately 0.4% to 0.6% of Germans were killed by bombing in WW2.
The death toll in Gaza is already at 0.75% of the population, and growing.
a lot of them died in the interest of stopping them.
You are conflating innocent people with armed forces in this sentence. My point was that it is not the same "them".
You are being drawn in by Israeli propaganda. Look at more balanced news sources, or just a wider range. The ‘human shield’ myth is particularly awful as it’s being used to defend murdering innocent people.
I’m not. I’m old, and have been following this conflict for decades. Hamas very often targets innocent Israelis in their attacks, and hides behind innocent Palestinians to make it difficult for Israel to target them. You can argue about whether it is justifiable or not that they do this, but there are many, many sources that they do.
I’m also old and have been following this conflict for decades but apparently more balanced sources.
Israel claimed that they were targeting Hamas at Al-Shifa but they positioned snipers who shot doctors and nurses through the windows. If you’re being forced to attack a hospital full of innocent civilians then you would be trying to avoid the innocent civilians, but that’s not what it’s about here.
Same as taking swathes of land since WW2, they are occupying massive areas that they were never given. They’re not ignorant, they know exactly what they’re doing.
Yes but what did Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and Ben Shapiro have to say about it? What about David Duke? Was he unavailable for comment? You can't just go to Elon all the time, let's get some diversity of opinion in there.
Well, it’s another silly sensationalist headline… Oh a UN link…?
“There are reports that some of those who fled the hospital have been shot at, wounded, or killed. The latest reports say the hospital was surrounded by tanks”, he wrote.
“WHO is gravely concerned about the safety of health workers, hundreds of sick and injured patients, including babies on life support, and displaced people who remain inside the hospital.”
WHO again called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza “as the only way to save lives and reduce the horrific levels of suffering”, Tedros added.
I think what they were trying to say was that at first it looks like a click bait headline, but that the dark truth is that it’s actually directly from the UN.
I read an interview last week with some hospital staff. They had to avoid windows when treating patents as if seen the snipers would shoot them. Many staff were killed that way. Just a nightmare.
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