Big oof

Am I crazy for assuming that they’re in “go for broke” mode, and everyone else assumes this too?

Yeah, that was my thought.

I think it’s clear that Biden and the west is banking on collapsing the country economically, which I totally understand as a reasonable idea. But I think that it fails to account for the incredibly unpredictable and negative consequences of collapsing a state. And that’s before considering that it’s a nuclear state.

I’ve heard of at least one: believe it or not, Hapoel Tel Aviv F.C..

They’re a socialist Israeli football club popular among leftist Israeli Jews and Arab Israelis. Famously, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the American-Israeli hostage who was killed in Gaza in August was among their fans.

As you can imagine, they face a pretty hostile environment throughout Israel these days.

I think people should also be aware that Israeli football culture is notoriously violent and nationalist. Even by Israeli standards.

It should come as no surprise at this point that Israelis have come to believe in an entitlement to act aggressively anywhere in the world and treat any response as illegitimate and unjustifiable. This has become an inherent part of Israeli nationalist culture from top to bottom at this point.

That is factually untrue.

Brig Gen Itzik Cohen declared last week that the hundreds of thousands of people remaining in northern Gaza have been reclassified as combatants and no further food will reach them.

They are going to be eliminated, and the land annexed and resettled.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/07/idf-israel-military-no-return-remarks-north-gaza

Maybe one day we can get there, but right now it might be better for a lot of folks if the default was “I’m not horny”.

But I’m with you on the dream.

I don’t know if this is a hot take, but I think allowing straight and cis people to identify as such is appropriate, because the alternative assumes that we live in a state of default heteronormativity.

If anything, I want to live in a world where homophobes get mad that if they want to be assumed to be straight online they have to identify like anyone else. No one gets assumed to be straight any more. That’s better imo.

Do you know what I’d like to see?

Instead of banning them, ban the extraction of profit on producing and selling them. Turn them into an entirely recreational market. I’d love to see the outcome of trying that.

I’m not sure what the point of this is.

I didn’t know who this specific woman is, but it doesn’t sound like any of this is a secret. For instance, it is public knowledge that Qatar has provided financial aid to Hamas, and serves as a go-between for Israel and the US. Netanyanu famously defended his practice of facilitating these cash transfers.

Also, this all seems sort of secondary when Israel – the US’s close ally – is beginning an extermination campaign in northern Gaza. It’s hard to really discuss any other issue in the midst of what has become a macabre genocide in full view of the international community.

This is the shoddiest “good-cop-bad-cop” routine I’ve ever seen.

DAMN! That’s fucking hilarious.

And also… you know. Sad. But boy: it’s wild how well that aged.

That doesn’t sound at all like the point he was making, but I haven’t read the book so I’ll withhold further opinions.

There’s a lot in there I agree with and a lot I find unconvincing, but the thing that really jumped out to me was this line:

Elites seek to concentrate profits. In our book Why Nations Fail, we compare Bill Gates and Carlos Slim. In the book, we point out that while Gates made his fortune through innovation, Slim did so by forming a telecommunications monopoly thanks to his close relationship with the government. It is an example of the link between monopolies and clientelism that has been seen throughout history in Latin America since colonial times.

I’m sorry, what? Does he not remember Microsoft losing perhaps the most famous successful American antitrust case of the last fifty years?

I don’t think this guy is dumb, but I don’t know how to fully take him seriously when he says something like this in passing.

Yeah, which I think is a real weakness in the reporting.

40k dead is bad, but it’s a rounding error of the total population.

A tenth of the total population dead, a fifth or a quarter of the population subjected to severe permanent disabilities, and nearly the entire population displaced, homeless, and presently starving to death is a clear genocide. They really are trying to exterminate them. It strains my ability to comprehend. In any case, “40,000” does not begin to capture the current scale of what has become a pretty standard, unambiguous genocide.

I mean… Isn’t the elephant in the room that this is not going to happen if Trump wins?

It’s like speculating over whether either candidate might push for am arms embargo against Israel after the election.

I don’t really see any ambiguity here. If Trump wins, Zelensky should probably prepare for a complete end to support from the US, right?

Am I missing anything?

Damn, that’s rad as fuck

I’m not disputing this, I’m just asking for clarity so I can understand key facts. Are there soldiers actively serving in Israel? How many? Since when?

That article didn’t actually provide much clarity. I tried searching for more, and found a bit in this article:

https://theintercept.com/2023/10/27/secret-military-base-israel-gaza-site-512/

The main thing this says is that US military presence in Israel is deliberately ambiguous. For instance, the day after the commemoration in the article you shared, US European Command actually denied that this was a us military base, insisting that it was actually a “living facility”.

I don’t doubt that we have troops there. But historically the army doesn’t seem to acknowledge them. So announcing sending people does seem significant.

If it makes you feel any better, I remind myself that I myself am subject to the same irrationalities and motivated reasoning as anyone else. We’re all just people, and people aren’t logic machines. We’re bundles of impulses and habits that live within whatever stories our minds have to create to make sense of all of this.

In this context, if you’re looking for some kind of remedy, the best I can offer is that instead of trying to bother disputing with myths and superstitions, recognize that anyone who grows out of them usually does so because they find some other way to the same fundamental bedrock notions. Your friend wants to adhere to the rules laid out by the creator. They want to be worthy of Christ’s love.

I think if you were inclined to change their mind – which I’m not recommending – it would be when this comes up to remind him how many people have been seduced into supporting ungodly things thinking they were following God’s will. That’s Satan’s number one tactic. So all we can do is stay humble and listen to our hearts. If seeing kids living in Bethlehem struggling to survive under an oppressive king just as Jesus and his parents did seems wrong, it’s okay to not have a confident stance. Maybe your pastor says it’s God’s plan, but no one – not even the disciples – could ever no God’s plan for sure. You don’t have to have a stance. You can say “God’s will will be done. He does not require my involvement.”