I’ve already said, I don’t give a shit what an IDF officer says. I actually know better than to listen to military messaging. Yes they get weapons from us, but do they have to or are there other ways on planet Earth to get weapons asides buying from the US?

Still waiting for your Egyptian victory.

Perhaps you were talking about Yom Kippur, where if I recall Egypt and one other country (not Hezbollah) launched a surprise attack with the aid of advanced kit from the USSR, gained some ground and then were beaten back?

Quit believing dumb propaganda

Ooh, fascinating. Name me when Hezbollah and Egypt defeated them.

They won several wars in their early history, before getting an advanced air force, on the back of heavy infantry casualties. Again, you have no evidence.

What would a rocket barrage do? Kill tons of Israelis. Would that defeat the IDF somehow? We learned in WW2 that you can level cities, but the country will fight on. What can Iran do asides fire missiles? March through the two countries in the way?

I am not the one living in fantasy. I am not the one just conveniently believing dumb shit spoonfed to me for someone’s political purposes.

Yes, they get a lot of weapons from us, no question. It is very advantageous for them to do so. The question is, do they have to? You seem to think yes, but have no evidence to support that. Nor does it make any sense, except with regards to the most advanced weapons.

Plenty of other countries manage to get weapons without getting them from the US.

Do the bulldozers need to be armored to do work enabling the genocide of Gazans? No, right? You cannot seem to distinguish optional things from requirements. Necessities from conveniences. Why is this?

That article quotes an IDF officer, whom you just believe all of a sudden, just because he says something convenient to you. This is very foolish, he is an officer participating in a war, and will say what he needs to or is ordered to say.

Bulldozers can be purchased in many places, they are not difficult to build.

edit: Oh, and I almost forgot, but Israel imports more from China than it does the US, as of the latest data I can find.

https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/import/isr/show/all/2022

It’s a good pressure mechanism, but again, it wouldn’t save Gazans unless used strategically. Machine guns and bulldozers could eliminate them all, fancy bombs are not needed. It’s a tightrope walk.

They don’t actually need interceptors either, incidentally. Netanyahu gives no shits about his people, if a few thousand die in rocket strikes, I doubt he cares if he gets Gaza in the end.

Oh, and we don’t actually supply all their stuff btw, just a lot of it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_industry_of_Israel

Yes, we are helping protect Israel, no question about it. We have treaties with them. Hopefully they come to their senses and throw out Netanyahu soon, the protests against him have gotten pretty fucking huge recently. I’m less hopeful on that one though, just keeping my fingers crossed.

So you starve them. See how that works? There’s a small amount of food aid getting in, that’s how they’re not all dead yet. You cut that lifeline.

Anyways, still not seeing how Biden is the reason it is happening.

Also, I find it funny that you suddenly believe the IDF when they say something you think might be convenient.

Yes. More specifically an ethnic cleansing.

Answer the question. In what way is Biden like Hitler?

Yeah, crazy spin is all you have left when you have no facts or arguments. The Holocaust and Gaza are nowhere near comparable, and Biden isn’t hamas or Netanyahu.

So, in what way is Biden like Hitler?

Biden was a good candidate, just too old, that’s all. He’s saved far more Palestinian lives than anyone in your movement did, though. You want us in the West to divest, at which point nothing holds Netanyahu back from just completely cutting the last of the food aid and finishing the job in a single month.

You just don’t know how to recognize a messy, ugly, harm reduction scheme, instead preferring some sort of purist, noble-minded alignment driven by wishful thinking and based on a misinformed concept that Israel would somehow magically fall apart without the US. When they’re really just using us, because it’s conveniently their best option.

The ugly reality is, though, that you don’t actually need big bombs to kill all the Gazans. Or even defeat Hezbollah honestly, considering they’re outnumbered 4 to 1 by the IDF. And no, the Sunnis will not all rise up to attack Israel alongside a Shiite militia funded by a regional rival to the Sunnis, regardless of your fantasies. And that’s not even mentioning the modern Israeli nuclear arsenal.

So sick and tired of you tearing down what you don’t understand because it doesn’t fit your childish views of somehow saving the day. It’s not that easy. Biden did the best anyone could have, in an ugly situation. He kept Netanyahu strung out on a line, needing us, and was able to stop him before Rafah by withholding those bombs.

The man deserves some understanding for how many people could have died if he just did what you all ask for, because Netanyahu would not have just sat down and stopped. Not so long as he still had bullets for machine guns, hand grenades and bulldozers, which is all that’s really necessary to wipe out every last Gazan.

Yeah I caught that when I reread your comment. I made an edit, just a little too slow.

Oh, I see. Still not seeing a big incentive for big tech, those meat bags are providing free labor. No strong need to replace them.

edit: Oh wait, you’re talking about paid ones. Nevermind.

Why would big tech ever want to get rid of nasty meat bags when nasty meat bags drive much of their engagement and thus increase their advertising revenues? We can’t escape the realities of how the human brain operates, how much it likes to be stimulated regardless of the qualities of the stimulus.

I think a much more logical goal would be to take just enough action to avoid most (but not all) legal consequences while otherwise encouraging as many nasty meat bags to encounter other nasty meat bags with opposing viewpoints as possible. That would maximize brain stimulation, increasing engagement and thus revenue. This improves the stock price and makes your boss happier with you.

It’s true they’re getting very hard to find these days. I was very disappointed that even NBC the other day, reporting on the House investigation into Biden, had the gall to simply say that “the White House has not yet had a chance to comment”.

There’s a small handful of good ones still, though, depending on the niche you’re looking for. ProPublica is still an example of responsible journalism for instance.

You do have a valid point. When I encounter something they are reporting that interests me, it would behove me to do further checking. There are other fact checking and news comparing services, and wikipedia usually has some good background information.

Additionally, I could check an article myself to make sure they actually do include an IDF statement in addition to any pro-Palestinian sources’ statements.

I can’t help but notice that Five singles out “lack of transparency” while ignoring “poor sourcing” and “one-sided reporting”. This is a common tactic.

Any responsible journalistic entity should be confirming their sources, and giving any accused a chance to give their own side of a story.

Excellent summary overall.

One thing though, regarding feeding trolls. This was excellent advice in the earlier days of the internet, back when anyone trolling was doing it simply as a recreational activity, to have fun.

We no longer live in that world though. People have realized that there’s real power here, where one guy on Twitter can start riots through an entire western European country with a single tweet. Where an online campaign can change the political makeup of your country.

Now, in this day, we have a civic responsibility to treat trolls as we would if we encountered these behaviors in real life, because there is no difference anymore. It would be unrealistic to set some utopian standard for our online interactions when the digital sphere has simply become an extension of the physical world, with all the same problems and issues, and thus a responsibility to engage as one’s conscience demands.

As a side note, one idea I saw recently that I liked, I think it was mozz’s, that people receive temporary bans for any examples of using a classic strawman argument. I think this would be fairly easy to enforce and quite productive. It’s almost impossible to troll effectively if you can’t strawman, it’s probably one of the most common features.

No, there is no real need. An account is already pseudo-anonymous. Full anonymity adds no real value beyond making it easier to manipulate vote tallies with bot accounts undetected.

edit: As a side note, this is one of the more transparent social media communities. It’s not terribly privacy-oriented in general. The enhanced transparency is part of its appeal.

One of the most impressive political maneuverings of the modern day has been the success of the pro-gun and pro-fossil fuel lobbies at driving a wedge into the old partnership between environmental activists and hunters/fisherman, that was responsible for much of our past success in passing environmental regulation. Neither group on its own has anything resembling a majority, but together it becomes a very powerful bloc. And the interests of the two groups are very clearly aligned on preservation of wildlands and environmental health.