but in the vast majority of cases Israeli operations don’t intend to harm civilians.
That is categorically untrue. What do you think the intention of bombing the Gaza strip is? The population density there is too high for precision airstrikes to be a possibility. What do you think Israeli settlers stealing the homes of Palestinians is? Israel has bombed the offices of journalists and killed them before. How is that not intending to harm civilians. Just because Israel uses the cloak of plausible deniability and fancy language to say that they don't target civilians, it doesn't make it true.
It's not a buzzword, it is apartheid. South Africans who have fought against apartheid and suffered under it agree, that Israel is an apartheid state. I know because I have I have talked to them. If you can't agree with that, there is no use having a conversation.
If you want to discuss how the Palestinians have accomplished nothing but their own suffering, while having nothing to show for it, then I'm all ears
If you want to defend acts of Israeli apartheid towards Palestinians, I'm not going to listen. I'm South African, I oppose apartheid everywhere. As Nelson Mandela said, our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian people.
I will not defend the killing of civilians by any side. That is morally unjustifiable. I will be clear however, that violence begets violence, and Israel has been indiscriminately bombing civilians (a terrorist tactic), and stealing land and homes for decades. The way to end this is to stop the violence, and come to the negotiation table. A two state solution of some sort is a compromise that is desperately needed to ease tensions.
"It is of no use for Israel to talk of peace, if they still hold onto the Arab territories of which they conquered."
Want to guess who said this one?
The Palestinians have been pushed to breaking point by decades of apartheid. Obviously terrorist acts and killing civilans by any side is unjustifiable, but general Palestinian resistance against Israeli military targets and soldiers is self defence at this point. And let's be very clear, you can't steal Palestinian people's homes, kick Palestinians out of their land, and joyfully watch Palestinians being bombed in an open air concentration camp , which Israeli settlers have been doing to Palestinians, and not expect a response in turn. You reap what you sow.
"We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians ... Choose peace rather than confrontation. Except in cases where we cannot get, where we cannot proceed, or we cannot move forward. Then if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence."
Nelson Mandela
I guess the time has come where Palestinians cannot move forward, and have to use violence.
Redditors complaining about CSAM? Last I checked Reddit had a subreddit called r/18_19 (a porn subreddit for adult teenagers aged under 20) with over 1.5 million subscribers. I sorry, but there is no way that all the posters there are over 18, given Reddit's lax verification practices on NSFW instances. That's some "trust me bro" nonsense. Reddit had r/jailbait and violentacerz not even a decade ago. Spez was there back then too.
I have never seen any CSAM on Lemmy. If it's an issue, it should be dealt with the utmost urgency and concern though.
(e.g., one of their politics mod making a mod-flaired comment about how "The United States is not a racist nation,"
Lmao what? The heart of the global empire is somehow not racist now, despite all the evidence to the contrary? After all the police killings of unarmed black men, how can anyone believe that?
Samsung moving to four years of OS updates, and 5 years of security updates, is what pushed Google to adopt this new policy, as Google only offered 3 years of OS updates beforehand. So Samsung will probably try match Google again.
I've never even watched an episode of star trek before, but the memes here are still funnier than 99% of the stuff on Lemmy, and I'm glad you had a great birthday 🎂🥳
We are at the stage (and have been in it since 2008) in which the old school imperial powers are trying to restore the order of neoliberalism, but are increasingly failing to do so. The invasion of Ukraine has just made that even more apparent than it was before. The bank bailouts of 2008 didn't do much to restore order, sanctions against Russia and China are proving increasingly ineffective, and austerity politics are not steadying the ship as they did in the past. It is impossible to go back now.
And how long did neoliberalism last? From the early 1980s to 2008 in its entirety? A quarter century or 25 odd years only? With the peak of "end of history" neoliberalism not even lasting a single decade, from December 1991 to September 2001.
Was all the death and destruction that enabled such a system to exist even worth it? Even from the cynical point of view of capital, this seems like an abject failure.
I love the truth bombs that Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski also dropped in his 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur!
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Amazing truth bombs there. No way any of this could have aged badly since then...
![aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/8bbb73eb-136e-47f0-87c2-46efd8e70fc9.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=128)