thebestaquaman @ thebestaquaman @lemmy.world

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11

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581

Joined

2 yr. ago

For prepaid cards, I'm talking about the kind you buy for cash at a store, that aren't registered to your identity. Essentially an anonymous debit card that can't be refilled, and can be used online. Don't know if you have them where you are?

I read about some military experts that were interviewed by a Norwegian paper. They essentially said that Israel is doing its best to chip away at Irans nuclear capabilities from several sides: Targeting everything from scientists to electric infrastructure, to centrifuges and the facilities themselves.

However, they seemed to think it was completely unrealistic that Israel would be able to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons by military means. They even speculated that even the Israelis don't see it as realistic, but that they're attacking in an attempt to delay the inevitable and hopefully drag the US into the war before it happens.

A point they made is that the facility at Fordow is too deep to be reached even with the world's heaviest bunker-busters. Iran is apparently also working on a new facility that will also be ≈ 100 m deep in the mountain.

It's absolutely true that the Holocaust hit several groups with the same brutality as the Jews (Slavs, Romani, Gays, etc.). However when the Holocaust is taught about, it's usually with a strong focus on Jews and antisemitism. Additionally, Russia has been built up as an adversary throughout the past 50-70 years. With that in mind, I don't see it as strange that the "Holocaust guilt" is centred around Jews, and that Germany finds it easier to oppose Russia than Isreal.

Don't you see that if you want to effect change, it helps to understand why Germany is doing what they're doing now?

I have no idea what brings the ICC into this, I'm not aware of cases against any other country than Isreal here.

By the way, how does trying to understand why people are doing what they do make me an asshole? I'm trying to be civil here, and I think you're being very impolite.

You're wilfully ignoring the historical context that makes it hard for Germany to oppose Israel. By doing so, you're not helping anyone.

It's laudable of you to bring attention to these other atrocities. Without creating a "race to the bottom" regarding what was worse, I still want to point out that the horror of the Holocaust was not only in the number of killed.

I'm aware of a couple of the atrocities you mentioned, but as far as I'm aware, they don't carry the clinical state-sponsored efficiency that is a hallmark of the Holocaust. When I compare Gaza today to the holocaust, that's what I'm comparing, rather than the number of killed. It's about the way Isreal has decided to wipe out the population of Gaza, and systematically does so completely unhindered.

This is a classic problem of going into one ditch, then oversteering and hitting the opposite ditch.

Germany has worked so hard on "The Holocaust was terrible, we will forever support the Jews to make up for it" that they're now supporting a genocidal Jewish state.

My point is that I understand why this is hard for them. For them to oppose Israel invokes some associations that they really want to keep far away. However, now, supporting Israel invokes the same associations. This puts them in a kind of catch-22 situation, where no matter what they do, they're invoking associations to the Nazis.

To be clear: I think the only right thing to do now is to oppose Israel. I just understand why that is exceptionally hard for Germany.

My comment was removed for "advocating violence", so I'll try to make myself clear:

First of all, I did not intend to advocate violence.

I was trying to advocate that people be vocal about the fact that there is a certain amount of violent suppression they will tolerate before they turn to violent resistance.

This isn't about condoning violence. It's about loudly warning the authorities about what often happens when protesters are suppressed using unwarranted force.

Furthermore, it's about recognising that everyone has a right to self defence, and making the authorities aware of that. If the police open fire on innocent civilians, they have a right to fight back. If the police beat a peaceful protester, they have a right to fight back. If unidentified people attempt to illegally arrest a protester, they have a right to fight back. The authorities have said things that make it appear as if they haven't recognised this, and I'm advocating that they be made aware of it.

This means:

• Loudly inform the authorities of your right to assemble and express yourself.
• Loudly inform the authorities of your right to defend yourself using force if those rights are infringed upon.
• Use violence only as an absolutely last resort.

To be fair to the Germans, I can understand how the Holocaust is integrated into them as a kind of "original sin". What was done to the Jews under the Nazis was so unspeakable terrible, and German society as a whole has done an enormous job at ingraining in themselves that nothing of the sort should ever repeat itself.

The problem is that "nothing of the sort" has translated into "opposing Jews in any way". It seems to me like Germany sees itself as bound to support Jews (and thereby the Jewish state Israel) no matter what in order to "atone for their sins", and I can understand that. However, right now, Israel is suddenly the state committing the closest thing we've seen to the Holocaust since the actual Holocaust. It's very hard for Germany to oppose Israel without tickling a part of their history that they've done a laudable job at condemning.

What Germany needs now, is to separate their history from their current politics. I understand that it's difficult, and I don't have an answer to how it should be done, but it needs to happen, lest the same crimes are committed again.

I'll add on that a lot of (most?) modern cars have some kind of "phone home" capability that can likely be tracked. Park well away from your destination, and avoid using public transportation if there's camera surveillance there.

Make sure to bring some cash and/or a prepaid card. You never know when you'll wish you had it.

A plyboard sign doubles as a shield, a cardboard one does not.

Consider bringing earplugs and/or headphones in case flashbangs are thrown.

As if an organised military of any kind has any hope of winning a guerrilla war in one of the largest, most populous, and most heavily armed countries on earth.

The ability of the American people to defeat the American army in a revolution is solely dependent on their willingness to take casualties. It's been shown time and again that a massively superior army like the US really isn't able to deal with a war where enemy combatants are also the civilian population. An exception is Israel in Gaza, where they've decided to just level everything to the ground, and massacre the civilians.

Modern vaccines are in fact so effective that they're endangering themselves. Because "no one" is seeing the horrors that vaccines prevent, people have grown sceptical that they're necessary in the first place.

I'm honestly leaning towards "skull fuckingly dumb", combined with a reckoning of how few idiots it takes to break the system.

Kennedy is a well established moron, so I don't doubt for a second that he could do this simply out of stupidity. A problem of its own is that a person appointed by the president (rather than hired by a qualified board) can even do this in the first place.

Something something swamp deutch

When the government unlawfully incarcerates people, whose responsibility is it to step up and free them?

The social contract that is a state gives the state a monopoly on violence, allowing the state to revoke individual freedom if an individual breaks certain laws. If the state starts abusing that monopoly you have a certain window to oppose it before opposition becomes hopeless.

Once the government has shown that it will incarcerate dissidents, it's only a matter of time until enough dissidents are incarcerated that no one else sticks their neck out. "Right now" is the window you have until this happens. The government's monopoly on violence needs to be broken when they abuse it, which means today. Explicitly, this means that if unlawfully incarcerated people are not broken out by force, this only gets worse.

Thanks for this! I want kids myself, and constantly see people online being so negative to the idea, it's nice to see someone here being positive to it.

To me, it's quite simple: I really want kids. Have wanted for years. It's probably a biological urge more than anything else, but I find myself daydreaming about playing with my kids, taking them camping, and showing them how to build a treehouse.

We've accepted that there will never be an "optimal" time to have kids, so at this point we're kind of just "waiting for it to happen" (i.e. not actively preventing kids from showing up).

There are people out there moralising about how it's irresponsible to bring kids into this world, and I honestly couldn't care less what they think. I'm confident that I can give my kids a good life, that they'll be glad they were born, and that they will bring a lot of joy to the world.

You summed it up perfectly. What you're saying is exactly the point I'm trying to get across. We're just using different words.

You're using "physics" in the sense it was used 2000 years ago when you say "from their perspective all our fields fit under physics". I'm saying the exact same thing, only replacing "physics" with "natural science/natural philosophy", which are the umbrella terms used today.

You even point out that "all our fields fit under physics (natural science/philosophy), except for applied science (engineering)", which is exactly the point I'm making when saying they saw no distinction between the different natural sciences, but did distinguish between "pure science" and "engineering".

The word physics comes from Latin physica ("study of nature")

This is essentially my point. You don't have to go more than a couple hundred years back before "natural science" or "natural philosophy" was considered a single field, without a distinction between e.g. physics and chemistry. Engineering (as we call it today) or "crafting", has been considered separate from the study of nature itself (or "natural philosophy") all the way back to before Ancient Greece.

I'm not saying they knew nothing about physics. I'm saying that they didn't regard it as a distinct discipline the way we do today. No Greek philosopher would have called themselves a "chemist" or "physicist" or "biologist", but they would separate between "natural philosopher" and "craftsman", just as we today separate between "scientist" and "engineer".

Economists set option prices. That is literally trying to predict the future.

Edit: To be fair, I shouldn't say "economists" in general. There are plenty of good economists out there that understand that economics is not a predictive science, I know a couple personally. But there are definitely some economists out there that think their degree lets them predict the unpredictable.