#many times the media justifies crime

[mondoreb]

End Times Prophecy Headlines: January 23, 2023

End Times Prophecy Report.com HEADLINES MONDAY January 23, 2023 And OPINION “And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.” —Matthew 24:4 “The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.” —Fyodor Dostoevsky ===INTERNATIONAL UKRAINE: Ex-SEAL dies in Ukraine; 6th known American killed in war RUSSIA:  Biden administration…

[arabian-batboy]

So the EU just suspended all aid to Palestinians in Gaza, which is happening at the same time as the same time Israel is cutting all electricity, fuel and food from Gaza with the Israeli Defense (?) Minister calling them "human animals" while continuing their indiscriminately bombing campaign on Gaza due the Palestinians resistance groups currently retaliating against 17 years straight of Israel's illegal blockade and war crimes.

Apparently its okay to perform collective-punishment to 2 millions Palestinian civilians, half of whom are children, living in the world's most densely population are and biggest open-air prison, for the actions of a few hundreds armed fighters (who again, have the right to resist their occupation)

However, all Israeli settlers are innocent angels and you should never ever hold them accountable to any of the IDF's many crimes or Palestinians being ethnically cleansed from their homes, even though almost all Israelis have served in the IDF and all of them are literally living in stolen Palestinian homes, so statically speaking, the average Israeli settler has more blood on their hand than the average Palestinian by a large margin.

Matter of fact, Western countries should continue giving them their full unconditional support as well as more billions of dollars for free and complete impunity to continue committing even more war crimes in "self-defense," because no Israeli should be held accountable for the crime of any Israeli and while all of this is happening, you will of course continue having the bothsideism crowd crying about how "all killing is bad!" while completely ignoring how the killing is severely disproportional and that the side doing most of the killing is the occupier side with one of the strongest nuclear-power army in the world, who have the entire world on their side with absolutely no consequences whatsoever to their crimes.

So no, not all killing is bad, that's not the reality we're living in, because if "all killing is bad!" then the systematic-killing of so many occupied Palestinian civilians wouldn't be so encouraged/justified while the death of some Israeli occupiers-settlers in retaliation wouldn't be treated as the world's biggest crime against humanity.

-

Palestinians made a document that contains templates for letters to US, UK, & Canadian politicians, media outlets, and companies in relation to current events in Palestine as well as petitions & other resources. If you live in any of these countries then please select a template, edit it to your preference and send according to the instructions on the relevant page.

Here is a link to it (please share it): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-RUOHHiEtr7uoclQgWN-tCWOihnHIp5hym89aNePi_E/mobilebasic

Aside from that, please protest, support the BDS boycott and spread awareness as much as possible.

[slyandthefamilybook]

so this is something that's been on my mind for a while. I wish I could make a big magnum opus post on it but I don't have the energy

I've noticed in my travels that antisemitism seems to be one of the only forms of bigotry that's not self-evidently wrong. People may think they think it is, but I don't think they do. Every time antisemitism comes up as a topic, I see Jews sharing posts with twin explanations: one on why something is antisemitic, and one on why that's a bad thing

I've seen this a lot, and have fallen into it myself, although recently I've been trying to stop. On a post about Bibi changing his last name to "sound more indigenous": "Imagine if someone said this about Black people". On a post blaming Jews for what Israel does: "Imagine if someone said this about Chinese people". On a post accusing Jews of owning too many industries: "Imagine if someone said this about Asian people".

There was a post that went around claiming the IDF harvested the organs of Palestinians with very little evidence. (There are some great posts debunking that but that's not what this post is about.) I remember looking through the comments and one of them stuck out to me. I can't remember the wording exactly, but it went something like: "Israel heard about blood libel and thought why don't we just do that?". Ignoring the fact that blood libel is about the accuser, not the accused, this comment played over and over in my head. I thought about it as I went to sleep that night. Here was a person admitting that the thing they were saying has a strong resemblance to blood libel, but saying it anyway. It struck me that the underlying thought here was "it's not blood libel if it's true".

Once I realized that, I was stunned. I suddenly heard right-wingers in my head saying "it's not racist, it's just a fact that on average Black people have a lower I.Q.". And suddenly everything clicked into place. I know it might seem like an elementary idea, but it genuinely had never occurred to me

In the eyes of bigots, racism protects power. Antisemitism protects truth.

I've often said that all conspiracy theories eventually lead back to the Jews, and this newfound realization fit in nicely. A popular neo-Nazi slogan I've seen recently is "the goyim know". This idea that Jews have something to hide has saturated the political spectrum

Antisemitism is itself a conspiracy theory.

I realize that makes it sound like I don't think antisemitism is real. That's not what I'm saying, it absolutely is. But the way people talk about it is unlike how they talk about any other form of racism. The Jews are a shadowy cabal, who meet in secret to deplatform people who dare speak out against them. This is something we see on the right and the left, from Kanye accusing the Jews of destroying his career, to leftists accusing the "Zionists" of controlling social media.

Spouting antisemitism now becomes a moral good, a political necessity. It's the most important thing in the fight for truth

I understood then, why people on the left are so comfortable calling out accusations of antisemitism as "frivolous", "unserious", "over-used". How they think people are using antisemitism to silence them. You can't just say something is antisemitic and walk away. It won't stick. You also have to sit there on your computer for the next 2 hours, looking up sources to debunk their claims. You have to appeal to the truth. With any other form of bigotry, it's understood by leftists that whatever the facts may be, they don't excuse racism. The number of Black Americans who commit crimes doesn't justify saying Black people are all criminals. The number of First Nations people who own casinos doesn't justify playing off that stereotype. But when it comes to the Jews, it's open season. You can say anything you like about the Jews, as long as you think it's true. Being told that it's antisemitic isn't enough.

This is a great example of just that. "Yes it's antisemitic, but it's also true." The accusation of antisemitism becomes an accusation against the truth. So when it comes to people who really believe in what they're saying, it all just bounces off. This is why people never seem to learn. They hop from conspiracy theory to conspiracy theory. As long as someone assures them it's all true, the bigotry doesn't really factor. They apologize not when confronted with their own racism, but when confronted with the facts.

In this way, antisemitism has become baked into society, especially Christian societies. Because why wouldn't it? Yes, the Jew is greedy, yes the Jew is sneaky, yes the Jew is bloodthirsty. But the Jew is above all a liar. They lie about their names, their culture, their history, their victories, their defeats

I wish I knew how to end this post. Some sort of call to action, some idea of how to fix this going forward. But I have no idea. I suspect if I did, we might not all be quite where we are right now

[feybeasts]

The thing that kills me is- history has shown us time and time and time again that people in positions of power who fuck up immensely like this then try to cover up, use half-truths and outright lies, and try to keep a lid on a growing scandal never

never

come out of it on top. Chernobyl, Watergate, the BP spill, these are more extreme examples, but even in the realms of social media, the likes of James Somerton show us that when one is caught in the act of doing something wrong- as our dear CEO has now- doubling down, justifying a shoddy decision based on the flimsiest pretext, no matter the scale of the original failing or crime, always makes it worse.

“the cover-up is worse than the crime” is a tired old phrase, but it bears water in every case I’ve ever studied as a history buff. The only way to save face is to turn 180, apologize honestly and profusely, and learn a lesson, take your well-deserved licks for what boils down to your failure.

Because here’s the thing. The more you dig in, the deeper you dig the hole you’re putting yourself in, and no matter the scale of the initial mistake, it gets harder and harder to climb out of that hole until you can only find solace and support in the crazies who nobody gives credence to as a matter of course, as so many techbros who think themselves gods of tolerance have, or it explodes in your face (figuratively, of course. Don’t call the FBI, that’s called a “comical exaggeration,” take note.)

It’s PR 101. Don’t argue out your fuck-up, show some goddamn humility before your actions humble you in a way that is many times more devastating to your reputation and bottom line.

[mariacallous]

The great fault of the global left is not that it supports Hamas. For how could Western left-wing movements or left-inclining charities or academic bodies truly support Hamas if they were serious about their politics?

No one outside the most reactionary quarters of Islam shares Hamas’s aim of forcing the peoples of the world to accept “the sovereignty of Islam” or face “carnage, displacement and terror” if they refuse.  You cannot be a progressive and campaign for a state that executes gay men. An American left, which includes in its ranks the Queers for Palestine campaign group, cannot seriously endorse lethal homophobia in its own country.  They will turn a blind eye in Palestine, as we shall see, but not in New York or Chicago.

Finally, no left organisation proudly honours the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the fascist tradition that Hamas embraces with such sinister gusto, although in a sign of a decay that has been building on the left for more than a generation, many will promulgate left-wing conspiracy theories which are as insane as their fascist counterparts.

No, the problem with the global left is that it is not serious about politics. It “fellow travels” with radical Islam rather than supports it. The concept of “fellow travelling,” with its suggestions of tourism, dilettantism, and privilege, is well worth reviving. The phrase comes from the Bolsheviks. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 they looked with appreciation on Westerners who supported them without ever endorsing communism. Artists, writers, and academics who were disgusted with the West, often for good reason, I should add, were quite happy to justify Soviet communism and cover up its crimes without ever becoming communists themselves.

Leon Trotsky put it best when he said of fellow travellers that the question was always “how far would they go”? As long as they did not have live under the control of communists in the 1920s or the control of Islamists in the 2020s, the answer appears to be: a very long way indeed

W.H. Auden said, as he looked back with some contempt on his fellow travelling past, if Britain or the United States or any country he and his friends knew were taken over by a “successful communist revolution with the same phenomena of terror, purges, censorship etc., we would have screamed our heads off”. But as communism happened in backward Russia “a semi-barbarous country which had experienced neither the Renaissance nor the Enlightenment”, they could ignore its crimes in the interests of seeing the capitalist enemy defeated.

You see the same pattern of lies and indulgence in the case of Hamas. Journalists  have produced a multitude of examples of fellow travelling since 7 October but let one meeting of the Oakland City Council in the Bay area of San Francisco speak for them all.

A council member wanted the council to pass a motion that condemned the killings and hostage-taking by Hamas, who, in case we forget, prompted the war that has devastated Gaza, by massacring Israeli civilians. The motion got nowhere

According to one speaker Hamas did not massacre anyone, a modern variant of Holocaust denial that is becoming endemic. “There have not been beheadings of babies and rapings,” a woman said at the meeting. “Israel murdered their own people on October 7.”  Another woman said that calling Hamas a terrorist organization is “ridiculous, racist and plays into the genocidal propaganda that is flooding our media.” Hamas was the “armed wing of the unified Palestinian resistance” , said a third who clearly had no knowledge of the civil war between Hamas and Fatah.

“To condemn Hamas was very anti-Arab racist” cried a fourth. The meeting returned to modern Holocaust denial as a new speaker said the Israeli Defence Forces had murdered their own people and it was “bald propaganda” to suggest otherwise. A man intervened to shout that “to hear them complain about Hamas violence is like listening to a wifebeater complain when his wife finally stands up and fights back”.  

Anyone who contradicted him was a “white supremacist.”

Of course they were.

Now if theocrats were to establish an Islamist tyranny in the Bay area, I am sure every single speaker would scream their heads off, as Auden predicted. They can turn into fellow travellers as there is no more of a prospect of theocracy threatening them than there was of communism threatening readers of the left-wing press in the UK and US in the 1930s.

A serious left would have plenty to complain about. Consider the Israeli position after the breakdown of the ceasefire. The Israeli state is led by Benjamin Netanyahu, a catastrophe of a prime minister, who left his people exposed to the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. His war aims are contradictory: you cannot both wipe out Hamas and free the hostages.

Worst of all, the Israeli defence forces are to move to the southern Gaza strip where two million Palestinians are crammed. Just war doctrine holds that a military action must have a reasonable chance of success if the suffering is to be permitted. How, reasonably, can the Israeli army expect to find guerilla fighters hiding in a terrified population?  According to leaks in the Israeli media, Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of state, was warning the Israeli government that, “You can’t operate in southern Gaza in the way you did in the north. There are two million Palestinians there.” But he was ignored.  A radical movement worth having would surely be putting pressure on the Biden administration to force Israel to listen to its concerns.

The radical movement we have will not engage in practical politics because compromise is anathema to it. Any honest account of the war would have to admit that Israel has the right to defend itself against attack. It is just that the military position it finds itself in now may well make its war aims impossible and therefore immoral.

You can see why practical politics has no appeal. Where is the violent satisfaction in sober analysis,  the drama in compromise? Where is the Manichean distinction between the absolute good of the Palestinians and the pure evil of Israel?  

Meanwhile, ever since the Israeli victory in the Six Day War of 1967, you have been able to say that Jewish settler sites on the West Bank were placed there deliberately to make a peace settlement impossible, and ensure that Israel controlled all the territory from “the river to the sea” forever.

A serious left might try to revive a two-state solution by building an international consensus that the settlements must go. Once again, however, that is too tame an aim. For the fellow traveller watching Palestine from a safe distance, satisfaction comes only by embracing Hamas’s call for the destruction of Israel. Some progressives try to dress up the urge to destroy by pretending that Jews and Palestinians will go on to live together in some happy-clappy, multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state. But most must know they are advocating a war to the death. What makes their position so disreputable is that, if they thought about it calmly, they would know it would be a war that only Israel could win. It is the Israelis who have the nuclear weapons, after all.

The worst of the global left is dilettantish. It advocates a maximalist position which has a minimal chance of success - just for the thrill of it. David Caute, a historian of fellow travelling with Stalin and communism said that the endorsement of communism by fellow travelling intellectuals in the West “deepened the despair” of Soviet intellectuals. “In their darkest hours they heard themselves condemned by their own kind”.

The 2020s are not the 1930s. I am sure that, if I were a Palestinian in Gaza, my sole concern would be the removal of Israeli forces that threatened me and my family. I would either not care about demonstrations in the West or I would receive some comfort from the knowledge that people all over the world were protesting on my behalf.

Nevertheless, a kind of betrayal is still at work. By inflaming and amplifying the worst elements in Palestine the global left is giving comfort to the worst elements in Israel, which are equally determined to make a compromise impossible.

The New Statesman made that point well when it ran a piece by Celeste Marcus.   She came from the Zionist far right, and was taught doctrines that dehumanised Palestinians. She grew up and grew away from the prejudices of her childhood and became a liberal. But after she moved into her new world, she “recognised immediately that progressive leftists feel about Israelis the way radical Zionists feel about Palestinians: these are not real people.”

The result is that for all its power on the streets and in academia the global left is almost an irrelevance.

“To influence Israel,” she writes, “one must be willing to recognise it. Since leftist leaders cannot bother to do this, they cannot be of real use to Palestinians. This is a betrayal of their own cause.”

The dilettantism of fellow travelling always ends in betrayal and denial for the reason Auden gave: terror is always more tolerable when it happens far, far away.

[dizzymoods]

During the Troubles, Civil Rights Leaders went to Ireland to learn about the plight of the Irish people and to support their fight against colonialism.

Standing on the success of their nonviolent principles which led to civil liberties here (to whatever degree the CRM was successful) and in their ignorance of the history of Ireland, they tried to get the IRA to adopt nonviolent, peaceful civil disobedience.

At the end of their tour of Belfast, where they learned the history and politics of Irish resistance, all of them come to the conclusion that here violence is necessary. The Irish have exhausted all other means including nonviolent ones. Even if some of the CRM leaders maintained nonviolence as paramount, they understood that certain exceptions must be made because — regardless of if they approve of violence or not — their job is to support colonized people and follow their lead.

There is a lesson here that we should apply to the Palestinian struggle.

I’ve seen people pearl clutch over seeing so many dead Palestinians as part of the colonial violence of the camera. This misses the point of why those images are being shared.

Last decade many Black americans, myself included, talked about the commodification of Black death. videos of state murder plastered on every news channel 24/7, going viral across social media platforms connected to the legacy of lynching postcards and gator bait. We demonstrated that those videos rarely got an indictment and only once a conviction. Many of the families of these victims of police murder made it clear they don’t want the image of their loved one to be of death. The reason why we share Michael Brown’s graduation photo instead of the photo of his corpse is because Lesley McSpadden demanded it. With all this in mind, we understand that in most cases the sharing of those images are antiblack.

The Palestinians do not have that history. The Nakba never happened, despite israelis calling this the second Nakba. genocide joe said 40 israeli babies were beheaded after it was found out that the story was some wingnut footsoldier’s lie, not even official israeli hasbara. It was like 2 weeks ago that genocide joe said the number of murdered Palestinians (at the time around 5,000 Palestinians were martyred — the number is now over 10,000) was a Hamas lie.

Linguistically there is no murdered Palestinian. All the headlines read “x amount of israelis killed and some palestinians died”. visually there is no dead Palestinian. official israeli hasbara is trying to flood social media with videos of patient-actors getting into place in Indonesian medical training programs to “debunk” the countless videos of martyred Palestinians.

The denial of the scale of israel’s genocide of the Palestinians is so bad that reporters in Gaza are holding dead children in front of press cameras because Palestinians do not die and are not murdered.

The profit motive of these images is actually in their absence. not their over saturation like with Black americans. The west needs israel as a destabilizing force in the middle east. The strategy of the western media then is to bury these images, to not give them a second of attention. So logically the Palestinian strategy is to proliferate these images to show just how horrifying israel’s crimes are.

Two things can be true at the same time; what works for you doesn’t necessarily work for me etc.

The other thing i’m seeing are liberal frameworks to understand genocide. Of particular ire is desirability politics. *jujubee voice* just say white supremacy.

Desirability is tertiary at best. israel is genociding Palestinians because they want control over Gaza and the West Bank (and Lebanon too). They are not genociding Palestinians because Palestinians are “undesirable.” They make Palestinians undesirable to justify taking their land. Talking about this psychoanalytic bullshit distracts from the primary reason for the displacement and mass murder of Palestinians: the taking of their land.

~*desirability*~ is just one way that israel tries to justify its crimes. Desirability is a circular logic that can only make sense once you manufacture its premise irl. It means nothing without the material conditions it claims are true. Its super easy to call someone an animal after you put them in a cage. It’s super easy to call a people dirty savages after you restrict their access to water. It’s super easy to call someone violent after you sequester them in small, barely livable spaces and stress them with bombings and check points.

It’s also — there’s a way in which opposition to something reifies the very thing that you oppose. Toni Morrison continues to beat everybody’s ass. What does it do when you see a baby with half a skull and say “this happened because she is undesirable”? Undesirable to whom? Not me.

Palestinians are not so passive as to oppose white supremacy and desirability. The Palestinian people are a proactive people. Palestine is the issue. Palestine has a people. Palestine has an ecology. Palestine has life. Palestine is life. Palestinians fight for life. life can neither exist nor blossom under white supremacy.

Any analysis that does not begin with this is a distraction. And distractions only benefit the colonizers.

[kataraslove]

as someone who has recently read the reckoning of roku, it’s really not the anti fire nation propaganda that a certain subsection of fandom is making it out to be. yes, gyatso says those words to roku, but he’s angry - at both the world and at himself for the death of his sister. he later apologizes to roku. the book does not paint gyatso out to be in the right, and neither does it paint all fire nation citizens to be in the wrong. the narrative even makes a distinction between the good fire nation citizens (ta min and roku) and prejudicial fire nation citizens (sozin, primarily), and some morally ambiguous ones like dalisay, but they’re more or less abolished from any accountability for partnering with sozin.

avatar the last airbender does not do a good job at displaying much of the context associated with the crimes of the fire nation, aka the climate and perspectives that justified sozin eradicating the air nomads and many of the benders in the southern water tribe. we know from avatar that sozin wanted to conquer the rest of the world for fire nation domination and expansion, but we’re not given much insight into the causal factors that allowed him to conduct genocide and colonialism, beyond “he was able to do it all in one day with the power of the comet,” and “he was a very bad man.”

the reckoning of roku provides the context for all of that, the factors that contributed to sozin’s blood-thirst. which means seeing sentiment from sozin that view the air nomads - and their pacifist ways of life - as inferior and below human. the novel doesn’t particularly attempt to humanize sozin, not in the way that other medias do when exploring the backstory of their villain. at the end, the takeaway from the novel is that sozin is on the road to becoming the ultimate fascist we all know him for, but this time we’re provided more context into how he became that fascist, and why roku hesitated to kill him.

is it more critical of the fire nation than most of the franchise? yes, i would say so, and having a filipino author be the one to offer that commentary is an excellent decision by avatar studios. but the extent of the critique is still more or less along the lines of “this one guy was truly the operations behind it,” which is still consistent with what we’ve seen in atla. there’s nothing too radical introduced in terms of colonial theory, unlike what parts of the fandom are saying.

which leads me to my final point: if this is how badly a subsection of fandom (aka fire nation worshippers and zutara shippers [not mutually exclusive]) are reacting to the simple notion exploring how sozin committed genocide, then they’ve hit further rock bottom than i can imagine. not only that, but this type of reactionary behaviour risks alienating other parts of the fandom; for instance, fans of the avatar novels who otherwise would have given the ship and the shippers grace.

in other words, many of these hardcore shippers “criticizing” the roku novel have no one to blame but themselves if their behaviour leads to the alienation of regular fans. this loud subsection of fandom is so caught up in their one-sided, imaginary fantasy where everything in the franchise somehow revolves around aang/kataang vs zuko/zutara, that the Evil Bryke are always targeting them, to the point that they’ll fail to realize that the fire nation and fire nation characters are often absolved from accountability across the IP, and the fire nation is explored much more than the other nations are.

[horreurscopes]

So, I could be out-of-bounds here since I think you meant it as dark humor, but what did you mean in the tags of that 'israel-hamas war' post? I suspect you(and op) are criticizing that framing because Israel is obviously demolishing much more than 'Hamas'(and probably doing a terrible job of actually targeting terrorists- they seem content to reduce Gaza to rubble even if the brass of Hamas escapes). I'm guessing that by saying "joining the Israel-Hamas war on the side of Hamas" you mean, if they're going to conflate Palestinians with Hamas unilaterally, then you're saying, whatever the media wants to call Palestinian civilians- you still support them. I am asking anyways though bc, given reports of increasing antisemitic activity in the US and Europe, I am worried about the potential for blurring lines between the cause of Palestinian civilians and the alt-right individuals who are likely masking their antisemitism in the context of being anti-Zionist. Although Israel's government has been the source of Palestinian loss for decades, (it seems to me that) even joking about supporting terrorism is enough to reinforce the persuasion that Israeli/Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs must be mutually-exclusive peoples. I don't think it's fully rational per se(tho I'm not claiming to have all the relevant information myself, and I'm white US American goyim so like- grain of salt-), but I think that existential fear is the incredible hurdle facing Zionist Jews. (Idc too much about the opinions of non-Jewish Zionists bc I don't grant that they are dealing with the same emotional complications at this time, although that doesn't stop me from arguing w my acquaintances abt their callous acceptance of US/Israeli propaganda.) I just think..... isn't it overall harmful to allow anti-semitic rhetoric, even used sarcastically, to enter the genuine humanist cause for Palestinian liberation? Or, have I misunderstood, and you actually are not in opposition to Hamas, or something else I didn't think of?

hi! thank you for approaching the question thoughtfully and with curiosity, i really appreciate it. i was being kind of flippant with that meme, but this is the only ask i'm going to reply to on the matter given that i am neither jewish nor arab, so i'm going to answer in earnest:

hamas is a political resistance movement with an armed wing, much like the black panthers party was, and like the bpp, a large part of the organization is dedicated to social welfare and civic restoration.

they have stated that they are not against judaism, but against the zionist project. they openly support political solutions.

labeling hamas a terrorist group is a propaganda tactic used by the united states and israel to justify the horrors of settler colonization.

hamas is palestine, a part of it, even if palestinians like any other demographic on earth, are not a unified, single-minded people. to declare hamas a separate entity falls prey to the imperialist lie that there is an enemy to fight "fairly" within the people they are displacing and exterminating.

am i rejoicing in the deaths of israelis? of course not. killing civilians and taking civilian hostages is a war crime, whether it is committed by the opresor or the oppressed. the israeli government is not its people, and many jews, within israel as well as in the US, are bravely risking their lives to publicly dissent the criminal acts of the israeli government. all loss of human life is a tragedy.

no one should ever be faced with the choice between annihilation and murderous violence after exhausting all other forms of peaceful protest and being massacred like animals.

but why is it that we consider a resistance group formed within a population with a median age of eighteen a terrorist group, and not the IDF, a US-backed military force with an annual budget of twenty billion dollars?

i am currently reading hamas and civil society in gaza by sara roy to learn more about hamas and the history of israel in palestine. i'll remember to post more excerpts which i am admittedly terrible at.

but all of the information above can be found by reading wikipedia. investigating with duckduckgo searches (not gonna pretend google isn't prioritizing propaganda, to be fair), and reading reliable news coverage like aljazeera and the many journalists who are at risk of, or have lost their lives, reporting on the ground.

i have also appreciated reading posts from @determinate-negation @opencommunion @fairuzfan @ibtisams and @bloglikeanegyptian amongst others

in conclusion:

[xclowniex]

So if that terror attack on Lebanon is justified for the death of those 12 Druze children (which I'm sure you wouldn't be as heartbroken about them if they were killed by the IDF instead), what should the IDF punishment be for killing thousands of Palestinians children and how many Israeli civilians are you willing to let die in order to get to those Israeli terrorists? Assuming you think Israelis should even be punished for killing children (or that the word terrorists can be used to describe someone that isn't Muslim)

I wasn't going to answer this as I know it's obviously in bad faith but I'll bite

Stop putting your US centric views onto me. Here in New Zealand, we considering March 15th a terror attack. If you don't know what happened that day, a white supremist opened fire on two mosques in Christchurch. The white supremist who did it? He is a terrorist. I consider him a terrorist. All the media here considers him a terrorist. He is a terrorist.

New Zealand has designated a few white supremist groups and individuals as terrorists

Do you know who else is on this list?

Hezbollah.

Do you know who is not on this list? The IDF. You can check for yourself too

To quote the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, which is ya know, laws surrounding terrorism, the IDF currently is exempt from it.

"However, an act does not fall within subsection (2) if it occurs in a situation of armed conflict and is, at the time and in the place that it occurs, in accordance with rules of international law applicable to the conflict."

(Sub section two refers to civilians being harmed or killed)

Fun fact about war crimes! Individuals get arrested for them and designated as war criminals, not everyone who is apart of the military. Bibi can be arrested for war crimes. Any individual IDF member who did the war crime can be arrested for war crimes. Whatever the Israeli version of John Smith is, who has never committed a war crime during his service, cannot be arrested for a war crime, and therefore cannot be labeled a terrorist.

But wouldn't Hamas and hezbollah be excempt from being a terrorist group as they're in an armed conflict? They've both committed terrorist acts outside of armed conflicts, ergo, terrorist organizations.

Also, you can read the act I was quoting if you want

https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2002/0034/latest/DLM152702.html?search=ts_act%40bill%40regulation%40deemedreg_terrorism+suppression+act_resel_25_a&p=1

So, now that we have established that the IDF has not committed a terror attack as they're currently in armed conflict with Hezbollah, the rest of what you said falls apart, but to address it.

1. I would be equally as sad if the IDF killed 12 druze children

2. I think that any IDF members who have committed war crimes + bibi should be arrested for war crimes as I've stated so many times

3. If I lived in an ideal world, all hezbollah members would simply be arrested and there would be no loss of life. But we don't live in an ideal world. Hezbollah won't allow themselves to be arrested. Hezbollah also remains an active threat. If IDF members who have committed war crimes + Bibi refuse to be arrested and are still an active threat to people (key word active threat), yeah killing them would be best. Considering the exploding pagers had a mortality rate of 0.3%, and not all of that were civilians, I would expect a mortality rate of less than 0.3% of civilians near the individual war criminal to be killed.

Oh whats that? Not the answer you expected yeah I thought so. How about instead of frothing at the mouth trying to find a gotcha you can use to dehumanize me, you actually A) read up on laws* and definitions and B) read through my blog first because I've said many times that individuals who have committed war crimes should be arrested

*I know that NZ law may differ from laws elsewhere but they're pretty similar in the US, Canada and the UK

[yzy-dragon]

I absolutely ADORED S2E9 "Three Stories" of Link Click and was a bit surprised to see the discontent here on Tumblr, and I totally understand the reasons why people didn't like it, especially in the context of the pacing of the rest of S2 (which I also have some opinions on but I won't talk about that here), but I also felt the need to just get my heart out why I love it so much. A bit of background, I'm Chinese American but have lived in and visited China numerous times.

Music and theater. As a western classical musician and an amateur Chinese opera singer enthusiast (I saw someone else post about the possible inspo this episode got from Chinese opera), I VIBED with the artistic direction of this episode SO much. The three-part structure was almost like a sonata/symphony (and remember that one scene where Qian Jin was air-conducting in a previous episode!!) or scene changes in a Chinese opera. Nothing needs to be said about the animation style that hasn't been said already, but I like how scenes from the three individual "stories" were interwoven and reused like leitmotifs. Especially that crazy, tortured laughter. Idk if any of the parallels were intentional on the part of the director, but it's what I got from it due to my personal experiences. I know that's a highly subjective takeaway though, which brings me to my next point....

Qian Jin's "tragic" backstory. I know a lot of people were upset that the extent of Qian Jin's tragic backstory was "oh his wife cheated on him", but I think the "basicness" of his struggles was the whole point (by the way, this segment displayed various attitudes towards work, family, marriage, individual pride, and life in mainland China so subtly but so well!). I also don't think sympathy was the main thing we were supposed to feel for him, although of course there is some. The whole "tragicomedy" aspect of Qian Jin's story is that it's not some horrible, terrible, rare thing that happened to him, but a common problem faced by so many hardworking but busy married men trying to provide for their families: infidelity. But Qian Jin sees himself as the main character of an elaborate play that rivals the great dramatic classics (which, funnily enough, often depicted very DRAMATIZED versions of a rather basic series of events). And his viewpoint is validated when....

Qian Jin meets the twins. That segment is still largely from Qian Jin's perspective, because we still don't really know how LTC and LTX even feel about him. But for Qian Jin, it's a stroke of fate and fortune that could only possibly happen in theater. He's very far removed from reality at this point. Reality is that a cop whose job it is to investigate violent crime comes across two kids who are the victims of a violent crime. Again, nothing particularly special or even coincidential. It's comical like that.

The fairy tale section.  Unlike the first two, I think this segment is from Xixi’s perspective, which not only justifies the cartoony artstyle but also makes it heartbreaking, due to her childlike innocence.  Like Qian Jin, she also perceives her reality as something it’s not, but unlike him, she doesn’t have delusions of grandeur of being a tragic protagonist.  It’s just a little fox trying to survive in a forest full of predators and hunters.  

All that tortured laughter. I’ve actually noticed in a lot of Chinese media that they like to use laughter as a way of signifying a person’s complete mental breakdown due to the tragedies they’ve suffered.  It’s a very internal thing that has people on the outside going, “WTF?”  In this episode we have a lot of characters crazily laughing together at the same time and it seems like they’re relating to each other, but in reality they’re all trapped in their own nightmarish hells and motivated by selfish purposes. 

Back to the topic of Qian Jin, even though he (innaccurately) may see himself as the hero of his own story, it's not enough for him. He wants to use Cheng Xiaoshi to change the past. He wants to become the director of the play.

I know a lot of people were disappointed this episode didn't advance the plot, especially in regard to Cheng Xioashi and Lu Guang's storylines, but I was actually prepared for a backstory episode and couldn't have been more satisfied. Again, I have other opinions on the rest of S2 but at least standalone, I think this episode was nearly perfect. And I really wasn't expecting this, but it's really elevated Qian Jin to one of my top characters.

[outlanderskin]

The Thing About Rationality and Logic

Someone who was stopping shipping once told me that she was doing it because she was a very realistic and rational person and her life was based on logic. So I asked her if by that she meant that people like me live in fantasy or are irrational. So, I patiently explained that what made me a shipper was exactly logic, more than imagination or fantasy. Because the logical explanation for many events in S&C's trajectory would be that they are together, but they don't want the outside world to know that they are.

I'll cite some examples: when you have a best friend and someone in that person's family dies, what logically do you do? You see, we're talking about best friends, very close people who publicly say how much they value each other and are close. The logical thing would be for you to show solidarity, post condolences and behave publicly in a discreet manner, in solidarity with the loss of that person you love so much, especially because you (by logic) probably have known the deceased relative. The logic would be stay by your best friend's side, support the family. But what we saw in that sad august days, (showed ostensibly for us to believe) was something that no logical answer about "best friends/siblings" could explain. The only way to explain the narrative created in those days would be that they are two people with a cordial, but superficial, relationship and I believe that from what has been stated by the two all these years, not even the Antis deep down believe that they are not close. . Again I ask: what is the need to hide that you were supporting your best friend in an extremely painful moment in anyone's life? Many people (famous or not) do this publicly, because after all it is not a crime, it is the expected logical behavior. So... Why hide it? We know what really happened because this a logical thing, but the others believe firmly he was not there for her.

Let's move on to another point: the man of the year award (or something like that); How can you logically explain that you chose your mother, your best friend and your co-worker to thank, as the most important women in your life? You who apparently had many "girlfriends", who still gets along well with your discreet ex-girlfriend who lives on another continent, who has others close female friends, but didn't mention any of them along with your co-worker. I've seen several men receiving tributes and the Acknowledgments always include the mother, another older woman of reference and the wives, girlfriends, fiancées. The only time I saw a co-worker mentioned (and that was after his mother, grandmother and wife), was when the achievement was due to his work at the company, so it was logical to mention the department secretary. What would then be the logical explanation for that speech?

Something that also defies logic: if I have a best friend and that person is in a relationship, I will obviously include that person's boyfriend/girlfriend on my list of people with whom I am always cordial. I'm not going to publicly act like the person doesn't exist in my best friend's life. We have a wonderful example of how CD & LL treat each other's boyfriends/girlfriends and they don't hide it. This is how it is when we think logically.

Another little point where logic calls us: your male best friend might talk about a female artist with admiration...you don't need to tell him "behave", after all he's not your husband. The most you can do in the case of friendship is admire her or say you don't like her, never act like you're jealous.

Maybe it's just me, but I never went on my best friend's social media to complain because everyone in the photo was wearing a suit and he wasn't. I also never apologized or justified why he didn't wear a tie. I do this normally with my husband. Because it's logical for wives to do this.

These are just small points, where thinking logically justifies what we believe. So anyone who thinks that we are not rational, live outside of reality or do not have logical reasoning is mistaken, or has not yet stopped to think logically.🙃🙃

[supermaks]

I wanna scream about the p2 but max is so funny bro.. He kills me fr 😭

He on god finished fp2 went to his motor home and got on twitch wid his lil gaming friends complained about the car and quoted khias my neck my back flirted wid crane HEAVILY logged off like that’s the vibes we’re getting for this weekend . Also implied he kills men in official f1 media. I’m completely fine wid this 😊 . I hope he has a lovely time and commits many crimes, all of which justified

[probablyasocialecologist]

People of conscience around the world are rightfully shattered, enraged, and sometimes feeling powerless. Many feel compelled to boycott any and all products and services of companies tied in any way to Israel. The proliferation of extensive “boycott lists” on social media is an example of this. The question is how to make boycotts effective and actually have an impact in holding corporations accountable for their complicity in the suffering of Palestinians? The BDS movement uses the historically successful method of targeted boycotts inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the US Civil Rights movement, the Indian anti-colonial struggle, among others worldwide. We must strategically focus on a relatively smaller number of carefully selected companies and products for maximum impact. Companies that play a clear and direct role in Israel’s crimes and where there is real potential for winning, as was the case with, among others, G4S, Veolia, Orange, Ben & Jerry’s and Pillsbury. Compelling such huge, complicit companies, through strategic and context-sensitive boycott and divestment campaigns, to end their complicity in Israeli apartheid and war crimes against Palestinians sends a very powerful message to hundreds of other complicit companies that “your time will come, so get out before it’s too late!” Many of the prohibitively long lists going viral on social media do the exact opposite of this strategic and impactful approach. They include hundreds of companies, many without credible evidence of their connection to Israel’s regime of oppression against Palestinians, making them ineffective. That being said, all peaceful popular efforts, including boycott and divestment, to hold all genuinely complicit corporations (and institutions) accountable for supporting Israel’s grave violations of Palestinian rights are justified and called for. It is perfectly legitimate, for instance, to boycott companies whose Israeli branch or franchise has supported Israel’s unfolding genocide in Gaza, some of which we mention below in the grassroots organic boycott targets section. Also, a company or product may make perfect sense as a boycott target in one context or city but not another. This context-sensitivity is a key principle of our movement. Regardless, we all have limited human capacity, so we’d better use it in the most effective way to achieve meaningful, sustainable results that can truly contribute to Palestinian liberation. We therefore call on our supporters to strengthen our targeted campaigns and boycott the complicit companies named on our website to maximize our collective impact. The following are the current top priority boycott targets of the global BDS movement.

[mariacallous]

From the order in which members of The Beatles should be listed to the origins of the Pavlova dessert, “edit wars” have dominated Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, since its inception. Though many of these online discussions pertain to cultural icons and phenomena, some have taken a more sinister turn—especially when it comes to controversial or politically sensitive topics such elections, protests, or wars. This has become particularly apparent in the case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, shaped by multiple competing and ever-evolving narratives.

Started in May 2001, the Russian-language Wikipedia is among the world’s top six Wikipedia sites and, until recently, has remained a popular source of information in and about the country. However, over the last two decades, it has become embroiled in controversy, largely due to the Kremlin’s state-sponsored disinformation plaguing the platform.

Reliant on government sources and edited by Russian editors, Russian-language Wikipedia pages have often featured pro-Kremlin narratives, especially in relation to Russia’s war against Ukraine. For example, while articles in English have clearly indicated the illegal and disputed nature of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its occupation of Donetsk, the Russian-language pages have previously downplayed the role of the Russian military and portrayed Donetsk as a people’s separatist republic (though it has since been changed and is now consistent with the English version).

Another example is the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. While the English-language version acknowledges that the flight was shot down by the Russian military, which is the international consensus, Russian Wikipedia has called it a “catastrophe” without any attribution of guilt. There are also many inconsistencies having to do with famous historical figures appropriated by Russia, such as those of King Volodymyr the Great or Nestor the Chronicler, both of whom lived in Kyiv.

Over the last two years, Russian courts have fined the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, several times over content related to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, according to a 2022 report, multiple groups of “sock-puppet” editor accounts, which have coordinated their activity to rewrite pages relating to Russian-Ukrainian relations while using false identifiers. These groups have actively undermined Western and Ukrainian information sources and instead endorsed Russian narratives and state-sponsored media.

Though Russia briefly banned Wikipedia in August 2015, it has now taken its digital offensive campaign to the next level.

Earlier this year, Vladimir Medeyko, the former director of Wikimedia Russia, launched an alternative platform called Ruwiki. The new platform started out as a copy-pasted version of the original Russian-language Wikipedia, exploiting a technicality of Wikipedia’s open-source agreement. Today, the new platform contains up to 2 million articles in Russian, as well as 12 other regional languages spoken in Russia, and is not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation.

Unlike the well-established Wikipedia model, in which any user with internet access can create, edit, or update articles, which then undergo rigorous community moderation, Ruwiki works in a different way. While any user can contribute content, it is subject to review by a narrow circle of undisclosed, likely government-sanctioned “experts” to avoid “mistakes” and adjudicate “complex issues.” But it is no secret which issues are considered “complex” by the Kremlin, whose disinformation machine has been working relentlessly to justify its invasion of Ukraine and vehemently deny the war crimes committed there.

Ruwiki is an isolated digital ecosystem that has created an alternate reality. In this version, Holodomor, the man-made famine under Stalin’s rule that killed up to 8 million Ukrainians by some estimates, never happened. Ukraine’s regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and, of course, Crimea are missing from the country’s internationally recognised administrative map. The 2022 Bucha massacre, in which more than 400 Ukrainians were tortured and killed by the Russian military, is explained as an unverifiable “provocation.” And of course, the platform promotes Russia’s official (wrong) narrative that NATO “provoked” the Russian invasion and that NATO soldiers have participated in the war on behalf of Ukraine.

Ruwiki is the perfect example of the “splinternet”—the fragmentation of the global internet into smaller, divergent, and disconnected spaces. Sometimes, splinters form organically on platforms due to cultural and linguistic preferences of their users. But more often, it is a result of targeted government policies that restrict access to certain websites and services in an attempt to curtail free speech. These measures are often undertaken by authoritarian regimes under the guise of digital sovereignty, ensuring the state’s autonomy and control over its communication and digital infrastructures.

In 2011, Iran’s National Information Network (NIN) project, which envisioned the creation of an absolutely independent online ecosystem back in 2011, is a famous case of digital authoritarianism. Another example is Turkey’s new amendments to the Press Law, which came into effect in 2022. The law increased government control over social media and news platforms and has been dubbed as a “draconian” censorship law by media rights activists and opposition leaders.

Similarly, Russia’s Sovereign Internet Law, adopted in 2019, grants the Kremlin the power to isolate the Russian internet from other countries. The law requires Russian internet service providers to hand over many of their powers to the state, including the ability to directly censor unwanted content and prevent users from accessing alternative ways of seeing banned websites.

While these measures to nationalize the internet might seem benign from the perspective of maintaining technological autonomy, such concentration of power in the hands of the state also comes with an unprecedented ability to surveil its domestic population. Since 2019, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has direct access, complete with encryption codes, to access any messages transmitted via Russian social media platforms or stored on servers located within the country.

These splinternets undermine the idea of a unified and global internet. They create isolated pockets of content that is easy to censor and can only be accessed by users from within the state, thus cutting them off from internationally produced content. As numerous studies show, such fragmentation is a pathway to a rapid deterioration of democratic discourse on platforms that institute it.

Take, for example, Truth Social, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s social media platform, which routinely echoes radical right-wing narratives on immigration, gun ownership, and the 2020 election. Another example is Ukraine’s 2017 decision to ban Russian social media platforms, VK and Odnoklassniki, in the interest of national security, after the platforms had become a toxic cesspool of hate speech, racism, and xenophobia, with well documented calls to rape and murder Ukrainians.

Similarly, in 2022, Russian TikTok blocked all non-Russian content in Russia. Once splintered from the rest of the platform and left unchecked, it became a hotbed of Russian war propaganda.

However, Russian propaganda on TikTok is not limited to its borders alone. Recent research indicates that accounts affiliated with Russian state media, especially Russia Today and Sputnik, have enjoyed a wide international reach, with their content being shared in multiple languages. Once those accounts were flagged by the platform as Russian state-affiliated in 2022, they became inactive and switched to newly created, unlabelled accounts to avoid detection. Another action, which flew under the radar, was Russia’s use of political influencers to sway public opinion in the United States, ahead of its upcoming presidential election.

In light of these disturbing developments, we can reasonably expect to see Ruwiki move along the same historical pathway. Though other countries like China, Turkey, India, and Pakistan have either banned or threatened to ban Wikipedia, Ruwiki’s full control over facts will allow the Kremlin to retell history on its own terms—including denying its war crimes in Ukraine.

This—combined with the targeted destruction of Ukrainian books, the rewriting of Russian school curriculum, and the murder of Ukrainian public intellectuals in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories—will help Russia justify its expansionist goals and cement its colonial dominance over the region.

This digitally mediated historical revisionism is particularly dangerous in light of the increasing use of the internet as the ultimate source of information, especially among Russia’s youth. Splintered from the rest of the world, they will be coming of age in an alternative Kremlin-manufactured version of reality where “nothing is true, but everything is possible.”

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

There was another independent terrorist attack today, this time in Samaria, in the area of Yitzhar. The victim is reportedly a young Israeli man of 19 years, and he's in a serious state, while the terrorist is said to have been neutralized. The craziest thing at the link is a small summary about the Palestinian terrorist activity in these parts. In Judea and Samaria alone, an area geographically disconnected from Gaza, where Hamas does operate, but which is not under its rule, just from Oct 7 to Jan 15, there have been no less than 2600 (!) terrorist attacks recorded.

Bassem Eid, a Palestinian journalist and human rights activist, has published an op ed at Newsweek, where he's writing to his fellow Palestinians, asking them to stop blaming the Jews for the starvation Hamas is causing in Gaza.

We already knew that the IDF has been using millions of leaflets, phone calls and text messages (millions of each) to warn Gazans to evacuate from dangerous war zones, and that in itself costs a lot of money. I don't think I've ever come across any country investing this much money in evacuating the population of the other side in a war. But now, I saw a TV report on how the IDF is trying to do even more. I've found the footage that they showed, a short vid of an IDF drone, that has speakers attached to it, so it can announce to the residents of a specific project in Khan Younis to evacuate it:

The IDF has also shared an intercepted phone conversation, where they recorded an UNRWA teacher, who is also a Hamas terrorist, talking about his part in the Oct 7 massacre, where he brags about having kidnapped an Israeli woman. The call took place 7 hours after the massacre began. In this context, and while the UN continues to express itself in a way that unjustly vilifies Israel, it's no wonder that Israel's envoy to the UN has been called back for consultation, something Israel hasn't done in 8 years. Honestly, I think at this point it's clear that it's not just that the UN has been biased against Israel since before Hamas had started this war. As Israel continues to expose the complicity of UN workers in the Oct 7 massacre, the UN now also has the motivation to do its best to discredit the one country that can prove its guilt better than any other.

I generally don't talk about the negotiations for another hostage deal. It's a lot of emotional ups and downs to follow them, and I also know many reports are denied quickly, some can be just plain false and made by people eager for attention, while other can even be statements intentionally made to pressure one of the sides in one direction or another. I follow the reports, but IDK which ones I believe myself, even when they come from normally reliable media sources. However, I've heard this report on multiple Israeli news sources, and I tend to believe it reflects the genuine belief on Israel's part, so I'm passing it on. Apparently, the Israeli officials in charge of negotiations now believe that Hamas is intentionally not agreeing to any deals, because it wants escalation during Ramadan. It tracks for me, it's clear that the idea of fighting during Ramadan will be used as parpaganda against Israel, even though Hamas are extremist Islamists, who have no issue with violence during Ramadan, and even the US has made it pretty clear through Blinken's statement, that they currently see Hamas as the side saying no to a truce as part of a hostage deal.

It took way too long for this committee to be appointed, it took them too much time to do anything while the world either denied or justified the crimes perpetrated on Oct 7, it's releasing its port 5 months after the massacre, when the initial info started coming out just days after it, but an independent UN envoy has finally officially confirmed that there is "clear and convincing evidence" regarding the sex crimes of Hamas, committed against victims on Oct 7 itself, and against the hostages since then.

This is 22 years old Noa Farage.

She was a surfer, was planning to travel to South East Asia for 6 months, and volunteered as a scouts counselor. She was very excited to go to the Nova music festival, because it was going to be her last time hanging out with her best friend Roni before her trip. On Oct 7, Roni survived, but Noa was murdered by Hamas terrorists.

May her memory be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[girlactionfigure]

There are several groups of people you’ll see on the internet today. 

1- A group with total moral clarity. They know that murder, rape, and kidnapping of any innocent person is wrong, always. The fact that Hamas did this to women, babies, and the elderly just sharpens this group’s clarity that this is a war between good and evil. 

2- A group of naive, generally ignorant people who know little about the conflict and base their opinions on the fake news they see on BBC, CNBC, and the rest of the antisemitic media. These people are 9/10 times, anti Israel. 

3- A group that draws an equal sign between Hamas and the IDF, as if there are two sides here. These people are morally bankrupt and will be remembered as such. 

4- A group that supports the Palestinian narrative that justifies what Hamas did by lying and spreading falsehoods like occupation and innocent targeting of Gazans. These people are downright supporting murder and should be punished accordingly. Their day will come. 

5- A group that uses this war to justify their deep hatred of Jews. People like Roger Waters, the squad, and many others. Let them join all the other enemies of the Jewish people throughout history starting from ancient Egypt, all the way to Ancient Greek, Romans, Nazis, and all the rest. 

6- A group with violent protestors and actual criminals who incite and carry out violence against Jews. They should be jailed and the key thrown away forever. Amen. 

7- A group of actual terrorists, generally radical Islamic terrorists, with the occasional participation of neo-Nazis. If ever there was a justification for the death penalty…

I think that pretty much covers it. Did I miss anyone?

In a normal world, these groups wouldn't focus on this war if not for their obsession with Jews. More people die in car accidents and crime on US streets than in this war. It's a sick fixation. When Israel was falsely blamed for bombing a hospital with 500 casualties, it dominated headlines. Now that the truth is out, it's no longer newsworthy.

This isn't a war between Jews and Arabs or Israelis and Palestinians. It's a battle of good versus evil, So choose your side wisely.

hilzfuld