yunyun333
7d ago
a few hours ago: US approves Rafah op. in exchange for no Israeli counter-strikes on Iran
so maybe israel isn't going to go through with that. or they just really don't give a shit about what the US wants
yunyun333
21d ago
caitlin clark is pretty fun to watch. the mens game this year doesn't have a similarly cool player, unless you like watching a 7'4 behemoth shoot free throws. 2024 is projected to be one of the weakest nba drafts in a long time.
It seems weirdly specific that people would be so into women's college basketball but not the WNBA.
college basketball at least can get alumni interested. the wnba has nothing of the sort
yunyun333
23d ago
no one's mentioned kobe bryant, so i'll throw his name in here. cultural icon who also totally got away with raping a hotel clerk. no one really wanted to bring it up when he died because of how tragic it was.
yunyun333
1mo ago
international happenings:
-princess Kate announced that she has cancer. for some reason it was such an important secret that she first released a doctored photo of her with her kids which only fed the rumor mill. kind of a letdown from the batshit crazy conspiracies the internet was cooking up
-after vetoing a bunch of gaza ceasefire proposals at the UN, the US finally put forward one of its own, and China and Russia promptly vetoed it back.
-mass shooting in a Russian concert hall. the US embassy was warning about an attack a couple of weeks ago. ukrainians, islamists, false flag, some other mystery group?
yunyun333
4mo ago
impose their will in what way? they can't just kill or expel millions of people. even the hardcore zionist bloc would be hard pressed to justify such a thing, it would instantly destroy their relationship with america.
the reason hamas launched this attack is because they were losing - israel was able to 'mow the grass' in gaza every few years, entrench its settlements in the west bank, and normalize relations with their arab neighbors. the status quo pre october 7 was totally fine for the israelis.
yunyun333
5mo ago
re the hockey incident that was discussed here a few weeks ago, the player involved has been arrested for manslaughter. they haven't released his name yet, but there's no one else it could realistically be. just yesterday he was getting a standing ovation; life comes at you fast sometimes.
from a legal perspective, it looks like they'll argue for gross negligence, since your skates should never be that high intentionally, and he wasn't violently blind-side hip checked. it's unfortunate that the races of the players involved is turning online discussion about it into a shitshow.
yunyun333
5mo ago
White House scrambles to repair relations with Arab, Muslim Americans
One ripple effect of the Israel-Gaza war is the warp-speed unraveling of relations between President Biden and some of his most loyal voters: Muslims and Arab Americans. The open disdain toward Biden from many in a reliably Democratic bloc is among the many signs the conflict is quickly remaking U.S. domestic politics, with public fury over a Hamas attack that killed 1,400 Israelis colliding with the horror of entire families in the Gaza Strip being wiped out in Israel’s retaliatory strikes.
“It’s really crazy to me that the Democratic party destroyed 20-years … worth of good will with Muslims and Arabs in just 2 weeks, losing an entire generation that was raised in the progressive coalition, possibly forever,” Eman Abdelhadi, a University of Chicago professor of comparative human development who studies Palestinian Americans, wrote Thursday on X, formerly Twitter.
In an interview, Abdelhadi said community members weren’t surprised Biden was supportive of Israel. But “the degree, the blank check,” is scary, she said, especially given the mounting civilian casualty toll. Young people already are talking about sitting out the election in protest, she said. At a recent campus event that drew hundreds of students, Abdelhadi said, she told the audience, “I think Biden has lost the Muslim vote.”
“The entire room erupted into clapping,” she recalled. “This generation was raised in a time when Muslims and Arabs were constantly in contact with Democrats, felt and were part of the progressive coalition. Now that is completely disillusioned.”
Gallup polling showed that in early 2022, for the first time in more than 20 years, more Democrats said that “their sympathies” lie with the Palestinians than with the Israelis, 49 percent to 38 percent.
Publicly the administration has been fully supportive of Israel, while behind the scenes they're attempting to restrain them; the blackout in Gaza ended after barely over a day because US officials pressured the Israelis. Biden's response has been pretty reasonable, but this may turn into a bigger domestic issue if the invasion drags on.
yunyun333
6mo ago
right. may as well ask why people are putting up posters of the hostages in america/england/other not-gaza places, or why other people are tearing them down.
yunyun333
6mo ago
For one making it back to the moon is what Musk was contracted to do. He's literally giving away tickets to the moon to youtubers, surely, if nothing else, giving away tickets for what is, charitably, a fake-it-till-you-make-it venture can be described as fraudulent?
what makes it 'fraud'? lots of space companies have sold launches for rockets that have never gone up yet.
I have to once again ask what is the marvel of engineering he created that has you so impressed? If his companies end up successful, I'll agree he's a brilliant executive, but from a tech point of view nothing he did seems all that impressive?
reusable rockets aren't impressive? even if you think the cost savings are all faked, the sheer volume of launches that they enable is an incredible achievement in their own right.
yunyun333
6mo ago
ongoing shooting in lewiston, maine
reportedly 22+ dead, 60+ shot. shooter is rumored to be an ex army guy. perhaps shaping up to be the next las vegas massacre. stay safe and prepare for the gun control debate to be revved up full force tomorrow
yunyun333
6mo ago
younger generations are more pro palestine, but that's mostly because they see jews as white people.
But in the Hamas attacks, many saw an existential threat, evoking memories of the Holocaust and generations of antisemitism, and provoking anxiety about whether they could face attacks in the United States. And they were taken aback to discover that many of their ideological allies not only failed to perceive the same threats but also saw them as oppressors deserving of blame.
“I am in such a state of despair — in my generation, we have been warned how quickly people would turn on us and we just thought no way,” said Nick Melvoin, 38, a member of the Los Angeles Unified School Board who is now running for Congress and keeps a framed picture of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his office. “Now we see, this is how that happens: When you dehumanize the group. This indoctrination that many of us have been warned about hit us like a ton of bricks.”
Attitudes toward Jews’ place in the progressive firmament are intertwined with their understanding of race and power in America. More than 90 percent of American Jews are white, and the country remains among the safest places in the world for Jews, despite a well-documented rise in antisemitic incidents in recent years. Some Jews see their safety as precarious, but some of their allies focus on their privilege.
“The left doesn’t have a level of sophisticated understanding of antisemitism that we need if we are going to defeat white nationalism and fascism in this country,” said Joanna Ware, the executive director of the Jewish Liberation Fund, a philanthropic group created in 2020. “It has been painful to see some people I consider friends or comrades seeming to have a hard time empathizing with Israelis and, by extension, Jews in the United States.”
leopards, meet face
yunyun333
6mo ago
random bullshit: activist greta thunberg posted a picture of herself supporting gaza. sharp eyed observers noticed the subtle dogwhistle in the background of a blue octopus plushie, and she's been forced to delete it and apologize for this dangerous display of antisemitism.
that video is strange. the rocket somehow morphs into an interceptor, and then the payload lands on the hospital?
here's a sync of a video recorded from the ground, and the al jazeera footage: https://is2.4chan.org/pol/1697578222179044.webm - there's clearly an initial flash before the main explosion, perfectly in sync, in both videos, so it seems likely that this was the explosion. the al jazeera video is at 7 pm israeli time, which is earlier than any news report i've seen of it.
that video looks plausible, and is taken directly from the livestream so unlikely to be doctored - one rocket noticeably goes in a different, lower direction from its compatriots, disappears, and you can see a bright flash ten seconds later at 20:00:11 that could be the explosion from the ground, followed by a zoom in on something on fire. bbc first reported it at 20:25 israel time. al jazeera first reported it at 19:49 israel time, so that would make the video irrelevant. another issue is that the timestamps from that livestream are all different. israel also updated that tweet without the video, so something fucky's definitely going on.
yunyun333
6mo ago
Long article, but the meat of it is that Israel allowed Islamist groups in Gaza, which had been repressed under the Egyptian government, to grow in influence after the six-day war, opting to focus on secular groups like the PLO. The precursor to Hamas, Mujama al-Islamiya, was officially recognized by Israel. The Israelis stood by and watched while the Islamists fought the secularists for power in the early 80s, but they didn't actively support them. HAMAS officially formed in 1987 during the first intifada, started carrying out attacks, and the Israelis finally realized that they were dealing with a serious threat, while the PLO moved towards diplomacy.
In Gaza, Israel hunted down members of Fatah and other secular PLO factions, but it dropped harsh restrictions imposed on Islamic activists by the territory's previous Egyptian rulers. Fatah, set up in 1964, was the backbone of the PLO, which was responsible for hijackings, bombings and other violence against Israel. Arab states in 1974 declared the PLO the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people world-wide.
Brig. General Yosef Kastel, Gaza's Israeli governor at the time, is too ill to comment, says his wife. But Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who took over as governor in Gaza in late 1979, says he had no illusions about Sheikh Yassin's long-term intentions or the perils of political Islam. As Israel's former military attache in Iran, he'd watched Islamic fervor topple the Shah. However, in Gaza, says Mr. Segev, "our main enemy was Fatah," and the cleric "was still 100% peaceful" towards Israel. Former officials say Israel was also at the time wary of being viewed as an enemy of Islam.
As the fighting between rival student factions at Birzeit grew more violent, Brig. Gen. Shalom Harari, then a military intelligence officer in Gaza, says he received a call from Israeli soldiers manning a checkpoint on the road out of Gaza. They had stopped a bus carrying Islamic activists who wanted to join the battle against Fatah at Birzeit. "I said: 'If they want to burn each other let them go,'" recalls Mr. Harari.
A leader of Birzeit's Islamist faction at the time was Mahmoud Musleh, now a pro-Hamas member of a Palestinian legislature elected in 2006. He recalls how usually aggressive Israeli security forces stood back and let conflagration develop. He denies any collusion between his own camp and the Israelis, but says "they hoped we would become an alternative to the PLO."
"I believe that by continuing to turn away our eyes, our lenient approach to Mujama will in the future harm us. I therefore suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face," Mr. Cohen wrote.
Mr. Harari, the military intelligence officer, says this and other warnings were ignored. But, he says, the reason for this was neglect, not a desire to fortify the Islamists: "Israel never financed Hamas. Israel never armed Hamas."
yunyun333
6mo ago
There's a debate on whether Deir Yassin was really a 'massacre'. both the Jews and Arabs trumpeted up the atrocities, the Jews to encourage other Arabs to flee, the Arabs to encourage other Arabs to stand and fight. the Jews turned out to be correct.
Every group in Palestine had cause for spreading the atrocity narrative. The Irgun and Lehi wished to frighten the Arabs into leaving Palestine; the Arabs wished to provoke an international response; the Haganah wished to tarnish the Irgun and Lehi; and the Arabs wished to malign both the Jews and their cause.
Hazem Nuseibeh, the news editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service at the time of the attack, gave an interview to the BBC in 1998. He spoke about a discussion he had with Hussayn Khalidi, the deputy chairman of the Higher Arab Executive in Jerusalem, shortly after the killings: "I asked Dr. Khalidi how we should cover the story. He said, 'We must make the most of this.' So he wrote a press release, stating that at Deir Yassin, children were murdered, pregnant women were raped, all sorts of atrocities."
Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun at the time of the attack, though not present at the village, wrote in 1977: The enemy propaganda was designed to besmirch our name. In the result it helped us. Panic overwhelmed the Arabs of Eretz Israel. Kolonia village, which had previously repulsed every attack of the Haganah, was evacuated overnight and fell without further fighting. Beit-Iksa was also evacuated. These two places overlooked the main road; and their fall, together with the capture of al-Qastal by the Haganah, made it possible to keep open the road to Jerusalem. In the rest of the country, too, the Arabs began to flee in terror, even before they clashed with Jewish forces. Not what happened at Deir Yassin, but what was invented about Deir Yassin, helped to carve the way to our decisive victories on the battlefield ... The legend was worth half a dozen battalions to the forces of Israel.
yunyun333
6mo ago
considering that egypt has had to ask israel to stop airstriking the crossing, it sounds like israel does have some part to play.
yunyun333
6mo ago
no argument from me that hamas doesn't care about improving palestinian lives. just questioning the telegraph article saying european donations are being used to build qassams.
yunyun333
6mo ago
is there evidence that they're using european donated pipelines to make rockets, instead of older lines? just send PVC pipe if you're worried about that.
yunyun333
6mo ago
sky high unemployment rate, youthful population, the corrosive mental effects of dependence on outsiders/foreign aid, and hatred of their neighbors/occupiers inculcated from birth. perfect cocktail for insurgency
yunyun333
6mo ago
they could have genuinely pursued a two state solution instead of using hamas to cripple the idea of palestinian statehood.
Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank
yunyun333
6mo ago
hamas is probably about as corrupt as the PA, but at least they occasionally accomplish things. the PA twiddling its thumbs while israel acts with impunity in the west bank is destroying their legitimacy to the point where israel is trying to keep it from collapsing.
yunyun333
6mo ago
the hamas leadership gives zero shits about the palestinians there and they'll never have recruitment issues. the optics of giving israel a broken nose and perhaps delaying normalization with the saudis are worth a few thousand lives.
divestment is a pretty clear goal. it's worked before
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