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Zaktor

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Biden Puts Arms Shipment to Israel on Hold Amid Dispute Over Rafah Attack (www.nytimes.com)

President Biden paused an arms shipment to Israel last week to prevent the U.S.-made weapons from being used in a long-threatened assault on the city Rafah, administration officials said on Tuesday night, a sign of the growing rift between Washington and Jerusalem over the conduct of the war....

Zaktor ,

That’s my concern. Don’t like this being referred to as a pause, because that could very well be just delaying them a week and wanting the symbolic snub to be enough. We’ll see what it turns into, but this is just an inkling of hope until the rejection becomes both more explicit and more public. He drew a red line, they’re crossing it.

Zaktor ,

And a particularly unqualified and ideological appointment, even by Trump standards.

Zaktor ,

She’s been extreme the whole time. Sometimes extreme measures are warranted.

Zaktor ,

Yeah, this doesn’t feel like it could be more premeditated. He tried it multiple times.

Zaktor ,

So when someone wants to end the suffering

You’re not referring to her, right? Cause she didn’t want to die. She told him that when he first tried to kill her.

Zaktor , (edited )

Nah, usually the “wants to end the suffering” is referring to a suffering person dying or being killed, especially when an extremely sick person died in the event being described. Sometimes it’s used to reference just drugging yourself up beyond safe limits to remove chronic pain, generally also a very sick person. It’s pretty much never used to refer to killing someone else to free yourself from debilitating financial obligations. This isn’t an American thing, this is a poor word choice thing.

He is evil. He may have been suffering as well due to the evil system we live in and wouldn’t be in a humane system, but he could have just walked away or declared bankruptcy or divorced her or killed himself. All of those things are still harmful to her, but they’re better than being murdered. Whatever his hurts were, she didn’t deserve that. A bad circumstance doesn’t mean you can murder an innocent person you vowed to love and support and not be a bad person.

After Raids, NYPD Denied Student Protesters Water and Food in Jail (theintercept.com)

Students arrested during the police crackdown on protests at universities in New York City last week were denied water and food for 16 hours, according to two faculty members at Columbia University’s Barnard College who collected reports from students who were inside....

Zaktor ,

This is quite an ironic comment.

Zaktor ,

We had a perfect enforced experiment to show that remote work for many positions was just as effective, that people were happier, the environment improved, and that big societal changes were totally possible. Then rich people decided the ideal goal for society was just doing all the same bad shit we’d been doing for decades.

Zaktor ,

Yeah, but the CEO personally profits from RTO, while the company profits from reducing their office footprint. Easy choice. He’s not loyal to the company and neither should @CosmicTurtle0 be.

Zaktor , (edited )

Not in the US. They took that away, I think with one of Trump’s “tax cuts”. Now you can only claim it if you are a business (like a contractor or an independent lawyer).

Zaktor ,

Also, when would that ever not be the top category? “Things cost too much” seems like kind of a supercategory covering most of the others. Maybe “lack of money” could compete.

Zaktor ,

I’ve got an inkling that the two chucklefucks wearing American flag overalls to a protest about two foreign nations may not be the brightest…

Zaktor ,

Yeah, but the context matters. Columbia is the one that’s been leading news stories, received the bulk of the commentary about “outsides agitators”, and had some of the more extreme policing just occur that they’re trying to justify.

Zaktor ,

Most “tech bros” aren’t even techies, they’re businessmen. Sam Altman and Elon Musk didn’t invent anything and don’t have a high degree of technical aptitude. They got where they are by investing and hyping things other people make. The only household name “tech bros” that actually have some claim to have done something intelligent in tech are the Google founders. I guess maybe Zuckerberg since he was at least involved in the coding of Facebook, though it’s hard to call Facebook innovation rather than, as Galloway points out, luck. But at least he wrote some code in the project that made him famous.

Zaktor , (edited )

Surely, Germany would have made clear the particulars of the ban to Abu-Sitta.

On what do you base this wonderful faith in governments to clearly explain their bureaucracies?

If this is the case, is this just a consciousness raising stunt on by Abu-Sitta?

So what if it was? This is framed like the story is about whether governments explain themselves well and if he knew about his EU-wide ban this story would be unfounded and manipulative, but whether Germany explained its actions well enough is not the issue, it’s that a country banned someone for speech and then extended that ban to most of a continent.

Employer of visiting nurse who was killed didn't protect her and should be fined, safety agency says (apnews.com)

A home health care company failed to protect a visiting nurse who was killed during an appointment with a convicted rapist at a Connecticut halfway house and should be fined about $161,000, federal workplace safety officials said Wednesday....

Zaktor ,

And considering that they work across 17 states, paying someone to be a security escort in any risky situation is probably more expensive. Employees don’t get murdered that often, so might as well just set some money aside and pay the fine when it happens.

Zaktor ,

And not just “threw its weight” as in said they support their incumbents. Multiple members of the leadership team recorded robocalls for him. Jim Clyburn flew down to Texas to campaign for him in the primary! He won that primary by 289 votes.

Zaktor ,

Hakeem Jeffries, notably a donor to Cuellar’s primary campaign against a young progressive woman after Cuellar’s house was raided by the FBI in Jan. 2022 related to these corruption charges. Then Hakeem Jeffries endorsed him again in Aug. 2023, more than a year before his next election. Wonder if the endorsement still stands.

Zaktor ,

Would you not consider South Africa liberated through the abolition of apartheid? The white people in South Africa didn’t get removed, they just no longer got to oppress the black South Africans. South Africa certainly wasn’t free prior to that.

And I’d just like to point out that messaging criticisms like whether a particular protest sign says liberating “Palestine” or “Palestinians” is a very unimportant criticism relative to an ongoing genocide. These aren’t people with power. Even if their protests were successful isn’t not like their specific wording or viewpoint about what justice in Palestine means is going to translate to anything more than the actual protest demands - divestment from Israel, possibly at best less permissive US military support. You don’t need to say “I oppose Israel’s oppression… BUT”.

Zaktor ,

This is certainly just an opinion, but I think for a protest to be effective, it needs a fairly concrete set of goals, with well defined expected outcomes. Without that, the people you are protesting against have absolutely no incentive to change.

And to be clear, I think that the student protests going on do have well defined goals.

You have to realize this all just reads like someone who wants to “just ask questions” and meander about vague misgivings to downplay and discredit the protest right? You lead with focusing on messaging like you’re at an ad agency critiquing a professional campaign, divert to a well-worn excuse that protest movements don’t have clear goals, say that they do have clear goals, and then imply most of the protesters spending hours out there protesting somehow don’t know them.

Like maybe you are just earnestly working through these thoughts and feelings, but this is basically the exact same things people who are JAQing off because protest makes them uncomfortable would say.

To give you context in case you’ve never experienced it, my first protest was against the Iraq war. It was seemingly well organized by a some major groups with institutional knowledge about setting up protests. People were bussing in to DC and the marching route was pre-planned and organized with cops along with way just to be sure that people stuck to the roads that were blocked off and there wasn’t any confrontation with counter-protesters. And still, with all that structure, there were groups there protesting for marijuana legalization and communism and in-group sign wavers talking about Bush v. Gore. Trying to nitpick about “Palestine” or “Palestinians” or whether some people who are demanding divestment also calling for other more optimistic results is just misunderstanding how protests work.

This is a student protest. There isn’t a protest boss who can go around and approve the wording on signs. Individuals can rally and self-organize to kick out someone saying something egregious like “death to the Jews”, but this idea of “policing the messaging to keep it clear” is just not something you’re ever going to get from a protest that isn’t a single pre-existing activist organization with a hierarchy and top-down decision making.

There are no perfect protests, and people asking why they aren’t perfect are often trying to discredit them rather than out of sincere support for the protest goals. That might not be because they don’t approve of the goals themselves, just that they’re a secondary concern to a desire for order or political concerns or just plain not liking protest as a means of change.

Zaktor ,

In most mass protests there isn’t a source of authority that could decide who gets to be in the place the protest is. There’s organizers and speakers who can ask them to leave, but if the problematic attendees don’t just go along with that they don’t have any inherent authority to kick them out. That doesn’t mean saboteurs don’t get kicked out, but it’s more in the form of a bunch of people self-organizing to shout them down or put a human wall between them and the rest of the group. The student protesters have done this a few times when opponents try to infiltrate their ranks.

But it’s not something you pull together because someone’s sign isn’t well tuned or one of hundreds or thousands of voices is demanding Exxon Mobile be immediately shut down when the actual goal is ending fossil fuel subsidies. Partly because you don’t want to fracture a movement by kicking out your allies and partly because this is an entirely social endeavor organized among strangers and it’s hard to get that arranged if people aren’t instantly convinced it’s necessary.

Zaktor , (edited )

And in 36 hours we’ll see the centrists have recalibrated their scales and move rightward yet again. Surely they just need to take one more step to the right before they’ve triangulated Tom Cotton into electoral doom. Republicans would never just take the validation of their messaging as a win and sign to move further right.

To be clear, this is framed as speculation about the future, but it’s a description of the past. Tom Cotton thinks calling college students pro-Hamas is good politics because centrists accommodated and shadowed their previous messaging. The Josh Gottheimers of the world will continually sabotage the party to play centrist and if he’s not made a pariah by the rest of the party calling it abhorrent, he gets to define what “the Democrats” are in the media.

Example: “Scoop: Democrats turn up the heat on Columbia University”

Zaktor ,

The only “outside agitator” I’ve heard them refence is a 63 year old woman who’s been involved in peace and environmental protests. They obviously can read her Wikipedia page the same as us, but choose to only refer to her with boogeyman terms. She’s exactly what you’d expect a 63 year old female peace activist would look like but they want you to conjure up images of a grizzled Antifa veteran clad in black and tossing Molotov cocktails.

nbcnews.com/…/veteran-activist-joined-columbia-pr…

Zaktor ,

They might be being deceptive/deceived. There have been some protests where their policy is to only arrest non-students, so counting people who were “arrested” will have a different sampling than the people who are protesting. I certainly haven’t seen any reputable claim that most protesters on campuses are non-students.

Zaktor ,

Israel: “Oh that’s too bad, I guess the Gazans should all just move away. Temporarily. For humanitarian reasons. They can move back 16 years from now.” wink

Zaktor ,

I love that the pictures I keep seeing come out of these protests are just young nerdy kids. I’d prefer they weren’t being manhandled by fucking commandoes, but the imagery really conveys the reality vs. the “outside agitators” narrative.

Zaktor ,

That’s exactly my feeling as well. This is Iraq War media manipulation/propaganda all over again. Like it’s not a coincidence that nearly all the politicians and nearly all the mainstream media just seem to mistakenly imply there’s violence going on. Maybe one reporter got mistaken information, but all of them? All at the same time? And no politician had any ability to just talk to a respected person on campus to hear the protesters’ view?

They’re all willing to briefly mention some platitudes about the right to protest, but studiously avoid talking about why they are. Do we even know where the various political figures stand on university divestment from Israel? That’s the main demand. We’re hearing a lot about their concerns about antisemitism and violence and the rule of law (usually without examples, just “trust us it’s happening”), but no one’s willing to address their actual cause. At least during BLM they’d say “Black Lives Matter” before saying the same crap about violence and outside agitators and whatnot.

Zaktor ,

I remember my university held an event every year with some fair rides and stuff, and there were guys with rifles walking around everywhere securing things.

That’s uh, not how things are done in most universities… Truly insane that we think people with rifles walking around public spaces are a necessary and reasonable security precaution.

Zaktor ,

I like how you actually went to the university in question and you still get downvoted and told “nah, that’s normal”. That guy in green is only barely distinguishable from a soldier in a warzone. How many spare magazines of ammo does he have in his kit?

Zaktor ,

It’s fucking May Day. These reporters are either morons or intentionally blurring the lines between regular May Day vandalism by anarchists and the pro-Palestine movement. I’m sure there’s plenty of overlap, but seeing broken corporate windows and anarchy signs on May Day should make it obvious the core motivation. I have a hard time believing neither the cops nor the media in Portland are familiar with anarchism or May Day.

Zaktor ,

That Starbucks vandalism sure looks like a May Day protest by anarchists. They may also support Palestine, but you have to be pretty clueless to see anarchy signs and a bunch of vandalism against corporations on May Day and not include any of that context. That window was probably getting broken whether or not Palestine was being genocided.

Zaktor , (edited )

Wonder what other things they’ll make illegal to compare to Nazis. Cause once you’re banning disparaging speech, why stop there?

Zaktor ,

I should have realized an entire nation cutting ties for a genocide was more likely than a university just not investing in it.

Zaktor ,

As are most Americans.

Weird to correct someone and then just add in an extra bonus fact that’s wrong. Unless you’re claiming “not sure” is “fine with”, which it isn’t. “Fine with” is “acceptable”.

About four-in-ten U.S. adults (38%) say Israel’s conduct of the war has been acceptable, and 34% say it has been unacceptable. The remaining 26% are unsure.

And more importantly, these aren’t random samples of the population. Dem/Lean Dem respondents said Israel’s conduct is unacceptable by 52-22.

Zaktor ,

They quashed a near total ban because a handful of Republicans either didn’t like how extreme it was or didn’t like how difficult it made their reelections. They didn’t seize control and boot out the radicals. Arizona’s radicals enacted a 15 week ban in 2022 that’s now back to being the law of the land.

'Horrific' violence at UCLA after counter-protesters attack pro-Palestinian camp (www.bbc.com)

Violence erupted at the University of California, Los Angeles after pro-Israeli counter-demonstrators attacked a pro-Palestinian campus encampment. Bubbling tensions on the campus boiled over following the alleged breach of a “buffer zone” between the rival groups.

Zaktor ,

Don’t need to go all the way back to the Klan: Video shows Portland officers made deal with far-right group leader

Zaktor ,

Michael Reinoehl killed a fash, then the police executed him in a suburban neighborhood. There’s no scenario where a leftwing person kills a fascist in self defense and their police buddies say it was a good shooting.

Zaktor ,

Alt-Right just likes attacking leftwing protests. No actual political beliefs required. It’s the physical version of owning the libs.

Zaktor ,

There were two attacks on different days, so it could be separate groups, but a Jewish professor who intervened said a lot of them were speaking Hebrew and one carried a Chabad flag.

Exclusive: Israel planning ring of checkpoints to prevent men from fleeing Rafah (www.middleeasteye.net)

Israel is setting up a complex system of checkpoints that will prevent men of “military age” from fleeing Rafah in preparation for its offensive on the southern Gaza border city, a senior western official familiar with Israel’s plans has told Middle East Eye on condition of anonymity....

Zaktor ,

Yeah, it’s still genocide if a country restricts itself to only killing the men. And Israel very much is not restricting itself.

Zaktor ,

1% of $56B is actually $560M. That’s how astronomically stupid this package is.

Zaktor ,

Not if you jerked off 4 people at a time.

Zaktor ,

It’s lovely to imagine a country where Palestinians and Israelis live together in peace and harmony. But in practice, there’s no form of such a state that is an acceptable outcome for either side in the short or even medium term.

The Israelis that would threaten violence to resist a one-state solution are the same ones who are doing violence against Palestinians now. There’s no two-state solution that is an acceptable outcome for those pursuing Israeli dominance over the entire area. There were white South Africans who also found the end of apartheid unacceptable. Some people will just be unhappy with any solution that isn’t total dominance.

But Israelis and Palestinians already are semi-integrated. Israel has a sizable Arab minority and Palestinians from the occupied territories have been working in Israel. Gaza is undergoing famine now because almost all their food, power, and water come from Israel. Most people there aren’t rabid fundamentalists, they just want to live their lives, and that often involves trade or other interaction with people living just a few miles away.

It’s not easy to transition from apartheid to integration, but it’s been done before, in a place that also had terroristic resistance, brutal oppression, and hardliners that wouldn’t “accept” it. And a two-state solution isn’t radically more feasible. It sounds easy to just say “set the borders and stop fighting”, but there’s huge issues like the right of return and the status of east Jerusalem that make setting mutually acceptable final borders a tall task.

Zaktor ,

Fuck yeah! He was sternly rebuked! The law is not to be messed with. I’m sure his lawyers just made an oversight in telling him the rules and now there will be no more shenanigans.

His local campaign stop in Harlem allows him to make a serious play at winning his native state despite its heavily Democratic lean.

Uhhh… Maybe leave this level of political interpretation to a domestic paper, Guardian.

Wait, the author is American? Wow.

Also, click through to the link even if you don’t like to read stories before commenting. There’s an image halfway through of a brown bodega owner looking very concerned about Trump being in his store and holding on to his young son tightly. It very well might have been a great interaction with one of the odd minority Trump supporters, but damn it if the image doesn’t tell a whole story.

Zaktor ,

The trick is giving your 8 year old just enough alcohol to get them in the zone, but not too much. It’s hard to ride that line as an adult, but for children it’s even tougher. Missouri mom just went a little over and their kid’s driving went to shit. She’ll do better next time.

'My school abandoned me': California university cancels pro-Palestinian student's commencement speech (www.middleeasteye.net)

The University of Southern California has cancelled a scheduled commencement speech by Asna Tabassum, citing unnamed security concerns after her selection as valedictorian was met with a wave of online attacks directed at her pro-Palestinian views....

Zaktor ,

The school had Obama in the crowd. He wasn’t invited to speak, he was just an attendee. And they hosted Milo Yiannopoulos because a campus student club invited him. That wasn’t a university solicited event that was “worth it” and the alternative of “just don’t have him” would have been way less intrusive than changing how commencement ceremonies run.

There just isn’t an unmanageable risk. And their annual budget is $7.4 BILLION dollars, so if there was a legit risk paying for security would be a rounding error. It’s a patently absurd excuse.

Zaktor ,

LOL, my “narrative”. Just an amazing failure of self-reflection.

You’re bending over backward to ignore the obvious: that this is a pretense for a political/financial decision in an environment when universities who haven’t been sufficiently pro-Israel have had threats from donors and been hauled in front of Congress and organizations and individuals in academia making pro-Palestinian statements have been disbanded or muzzled. Your stance on this is at best woefully naïve and at worst intentionally dedicated to FUD via concerns about mass casualties from undefined terrorists and nonsensical suggestions that making a YouTube video is a substitution for a major public speaking event. That you wrote that as a serious alternative kind of reveals how you’re not just trying to see all sides.

Zaktor ,

I gave you good faith. Until “put up a YouTube video”. After that you don’t deserve further faith. That’s not an endless well that you can draw on while making obviously bad faith suggestions.

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