HereAndGone
2hr ago
I don't believe the Israelis. After all this time, I don't trust them, I don't think they're honest, and how they are cracking down (not) on the [settlers](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c776x78517po0 who are literally and not metaphorically shooting people reveals their actual preferences, not what they're saying.
I'm going to light my hair on fire here, but Israel is imitating how Germany decided to deal with its 'Jewish problem': can we get any foreign country to take them off our hands? No, nobody wants a bunch of these guys because they are trash? Okay, let's solve this by taking their property, confining them in sequestered areas, and then shipping them off to camps - for their own protection, of course.
HereAndGone
2hr ago
You know, right now I'm listening to the news on the radio and it's another interview with someone about what is happening in Gaza.
I have two options:
(1) Everyone in the world is a lying liar who loves Hamas and wants to obliterate Israel. There is no starvation, no Israeli blockades, and the hard-core Zionists who want an ethnically Jewish state for an ethnically Jewish people are just lined up waiting with bouquets and gift baskets to hand over to the Palestinians once they take control of Gaza.
(2) Maybe, just possibly maybe, the IDF are fudging the truth about what they are doing and the Israeli government is being hands-off in hopes that the problem will solve itself - no need for a Palestinian state when there are no more Palestinians (be that 'encouraged forcefully to emigrate to other countries or dead of famine and disease').
I think Hamas are terrible and should disappear if at all possible. But when people are dying, I don't give a flying fuck about their politics. Even the most obnoxious hair-dyed queer tranny activist, if they were literally starving to death, I'd say "help them" and not "hur-dur, they should have picked the right side in the political fight". Stop people dying of starvation first, worry about rooting out the terrorists second.
What I'm reading on here is awfully like all the commentary about problems in red states, with gleeful gloating about "natural disaster/economic crash serves them right for voting for Trump".
HereAndGone
20hr ago
If the current generation of Palestinian children are raised under the understanding that Israel will never be defeated (and hence they might as well learn to play nice with them and stop being completely unruly), that serves everyone's interests.
There won't be a current generation, they'll be dead before they can leave infanthood. And any who do survive will have learned: you don't have a place here. Israel wants you gone. Not even toleration, they intend to take this land and give it to their people.
You and Hanania are telling the Warsaw Ghetto to just play nice with the German government, then it'll all be okay once they have total rule.
Please forward me a link to that. I'm hearing that the Israelis do things like deliberately route aid convoys the long way round and into territory where they will be ambushed and robbed, and similar fun things like that. Oh those wacky Zionist boys, such a sense of humour!
What I'm hearing is the Israeli ambassador claiming this, and at this point I don't believe one word out of any Israeli officials, not even "water is wet". They pulled their ambassador out because apparently us here in Ireland are so anti-Israel or pro-Palestine, maybe that's why their army is shooting at our diplomats. And our peacekeeping troops.
Okay, maybe I believe the words of the likes of this Israeli minister, because he's not pretending about what's going on:
Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu said Thursday that Israel is advancing the destruction of Gaza, and that the Strip will be made totally Jewish, drawing outcry among opposition politicians and eventually from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.
“The government is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out,” Eliyahu told Haredi radio station Kol Barama. “Thank God, we are wiping out this evil. We are pushing this population that has been educated on ‘Mein Kampf.'”
Eliyahu said that Gaza will be cleared for Jewish settlement and that Jewish towns won’t be “fenced in inside cantons.”
“All Gaza will be Jewish,” he said, though he clarified that Arabs who are loyal to Israel will be tolerated.
“We aren’t racists,” the far-right Otzma Yehudit politician added. “We are fighting those who fight us.”
Eliyahu also denied that Gazans are not getting enough food, calling it a campaign against Israel, but noted that the country was at war and trying to kill “these monsters.”
“There’s no hunger in Gaza,” he said. “But we don’t need to be concerned with hunger in the Strip. Let the world worry about it.”
HereAndGone
20hr ago
Look at Northern Ireland. The greatest recruiting campaigns for the IRA were when the British Army did something stupid and cruel.
If you're a Palestinian, your choice is between "Trust the Israelis and the IDF, the same IDF targeting hospitals, the same IDF shooting kids collecting water. Or Hamas, who may be sons of bitches, but they're our sons of bitches".
HereAndGone
20hr ago
Which apparently is Israel's fault?
When they're the ones blocking all routes and all aid in, yes.
HereAndGone
20hr ago
That's what it means to be a nation-state.
A Palestinian doctor has warned: "We are out of options, and we are running out of time."
Dr Salha, working at the al Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, warned of the dire circumstances they said the hospital was operating under.
Salha said: "We used to care for 200 women and children a day, now it's over 2,000.
"We simply can't cope. Malnutrition is devastating mothers and newborns.
"We're seeing a sharp rise in caesarean sections, miscarriages, and babies born underweight."
Salha warned they were running out of vital supplies for newborns, and that their own staff were surviving on just one meal a day.
"Three colleagues collapsed in our emergency department last week due to hunger, while working around the clock to care for patients. This is a humanitarian catastrophe," Salha said.
Sorry, newborn baby, you are an immediate threat to this poor defenceless country and have to be crushed before you can attack it. But it's okay, that doctor is really a secret Hamas plant and he's lying about it all.
So is this British doctor. Everybody is lying, it's all Hamas propaganda, and Israel is totally blameless and only wants the chance to create a nation where Arabs, Christians, Jews, secular or whomever you are, wherever you are from, are all equal citizens and cherished by the nation as its people.
HereAndGone
21hr ago
Try not rounding up the civilian population into camps, or shooting people rushing forward for food aid because they're starving. It's amazing how not being stormtroopers helps shift the views of the people on the other side.
Yes, I said stormtroopers. I don't think the IDF is behaving in an honest fashion. I'm hearing news reports on our national broadcaster every morning about what's going on in Gaza. Unless you want to convince me every single one of the people, the doctors, the volunteers, the journalists, the UN observers, interviewed on those reports is secretly a Hamas mole, horrible things are going on and Israel is doing them.
HereAndGone
21hr ago
You know, it took a lot to get me to this position, but here I am: yes, Israel wants the Gaza problem solved by having them disappear. Deported out of the country if possible, but dead works too.
Settlers running amok and nobody stopping them, with the Israeli authorities (police on up) just winking at burning land belonging to Palestinians, shooting at them, and moving in and taking over land. Too many "oopsies, we didn't mean to hit that target" events. "Oh yeah sure we'll let in the aid convoy - oh no, we can't, security issues y'see".
Israel wants the entire territory to belong to them, and they don't see the Palestinians as any kind of citizens to remain there. "It's all Hamas propaganda, nobody is starving, if only they turned on Hamas then there would be peace". If they turned on Hamas, then they would just be bulldozed into the ground even quicker.
I'm not supporting Hamas. I think they're terrible. But I also understand why a lot of Palestinians will support them, in the face of "we're shooting people queuing for water, we're blocking aid so babies are starving to death, and if anyone says anything then we cry anti-Semitism and invoke the Holocaust".
I don't believe in Israeli good intentions anymore, if ever I did.
HereAndGone
1d ago
It's not on a pedestal, it's "marriage is a partnership and the unpaid work of running a household is, indeed, work".
HereAndGone
1d ago
Not just the rich guys at Davos, though, is it? It's the support staff around them, and all the journalists reporting on it, etc. Plenty of transient custom to be worth importing some short-term workers for.
HereAndGone
1d ago
I would imagine rich men getting married (relatively) earlier, as it used to be (and maybe still is) that settling down and getting married was seen as a sign of mature stability that proved you were ready for greater responsibility and promotion up the ladder. So marrying someone of a similar background and age who knows how to navigate the work and social circles where you'll be networking your little heart out is an advantage; you can always have a discreet affair with a hot young thing from the secretarial pool later on once you're established.
HereAndGone
1d ago
They want peers who can fit in with their social and work circle and who will advance alongside them. Younger wives might not be as clued-in, so unless it's a second marriage it's not going to work as well. Her career is in the home supporting his career; making sure the dinner parties are hosted, the right people invited, remembering when to send cards and gifts for special occasions to business contacts, helping him navigate the web of relationships, turning up at the right events looking suitable on his arm, and so forth. His suits are pressed and ready for him, the home looks as it should, the exact balance of good taste and understated wealth on display to help him get promotions and move on up in the world. Everything running smoothly in the support system to his career so he can concentrate on work and not on "are the kids going to piano lessons or horse riding after school today? who is going to pick them up? mom is in the hospital, is everything okay on that end?"
HereAndGone
1d ago
Just understand you're creating an incentive for men to avoid marriage as a institution since it takes most of the control of their wealth away from them at the drop of a hat if they get married before they build their kingdom.
Some of the comments about women and marriage on here are also creating incentives for women to avoid marriage. Even relatively tame, like "The thing is, that work doesn’t hugely differ whether you’re the wife of a coal miner or a self-made billionaire."
Yes, gentlemen, I hope all of you are telling the women in your lives (mothers, grandmothers, aunts, female cousins, sisters, daughters, wives) that you don't consider them equal partners, that you are the superior person in this relationship because you are the breadwinner and her little job (if she works outside the home) doesn't count. Working in the home only? Absolutely does not count for anything, she's replaceable by a coal-miner's wife because being the spouse and mother for an upper-middle class household doesn't involve any kind of extra work at all, and maybe even less work because you're rich enough to hire help. If you do decide to dump her, she deserves maybe ten bucks and a pat on the head, but certainly nothing more. Not one drop of your vast wealth (should you have vast wealth), even if that share does not, in fact, leave you penniless but you retain possession of the majority of the vast wealth.
Why, with such examples of how respected they are, why aren't women jumping at the notion of not getting an education and a career of their own and instead getting married as soon after high school as possible then producing a few kids as rapidly as possible? And if hubby gets tired of you after a while, well, you can probably find work somewhere scrubbing floors or something, automation and AI hasn't yet taken those jobs away!
Women - such ungrateful bitches, to turn down a wonderful offer like that!
I don't consider myself a misandrist, but some of you guys make it tough going, and more and more I am grateful to the Lord God Almighty for making me without the wiring to desire and need love and romance, because blow me down, I'd be fucked if I had to rely on a guy for anything from emotional validation on up.
HereAndGone
1d ago
Any controversy about, say, recordings in bathrooms is going to go through the roof if these things become commonplace. You can (maybe) grab some pervert with a phone in the women's bathroom or changing room, but someone just wearing a pair of spectacles?
HereAndGone
1d ago
I'm honestly not sure how much of this is that management thinks we're too retarded to estimate people's ages
There is that, of course, but I think this is just CYA from management for scenarios such as the one outlined by Westphalianpeace. Can't be accused of racism if you're scanning everyone's ID.
(Of course they still can, and will, accuse you of racism and management will still throw you under the bus despite any video evidence to the contrary because a law suit is the last thing they need and some bleeding-heart activist judge will rule that asking a potentially underage urban youth for ID is racism on the same level of voter suppression, don't you know minorities have little free time to get, or access to, forms of ID you bigot? But it's a tiny shred of protection for both the business and the employees.)
HereAndGone
2d ago
Yeah. The tattooed women are not (necessarily) violent themselves, they just associate with and get into relationships with the tattooed guys who are drug addicts, small-time drug dealers, petty criminals, drunks, and violent.
HereAndGone
2d ago
whatever tattoos might have once indicated about a person (besides wanting to be perceived as cool) is gone since they've been normalized
Context is exactly that. Did any of the tattoo girls look like this? If an individual looking like this were in the vicinity, would you guys have invited him to hang out, or would you have avoided him? Would your group have finger-wagged at anyone wanting to avoid this person due to the tattoos since "tattoos are now normalised" and they don't tell you anything about latent criminality?
I'm betting your group would not. Because the tattoos in that case would indeed be a signal, one that even "cool stylish fashion piece" tattoo girl would ignore at her peril. (Quite literally, as this "tattoo artist" is a convicted murderer).
HereAndGone
2d ago
some 21 year old girl from a good suburban family studying at Vassar isn't suddenly a dangerous individual because she has a 1 inch wide rose motif tattooed on her forearm.
Why do you think the forerunners of this were called "tramp stamps"? Why would a harmless (if tasteless) little tattoo on the lower back indicate "ahoy, trollop ahead"?
Because it did. Because Ms. Vassar is not going to stop at the forearm tat, next is the hair dye and septum piercing and more tattoos and then shrill critical/queer/feminist/trans theory lecturing.
HereAndGone
2d ago
Wait wait wait, I just realized, under idealized circumstances that approximately what a spouse can help achieve, if you marry well and have a good, cooperative, teammate relationship. That was probably the secret for middle class couples leveraging into higher income brackets.
And your realisation there is what annoys me about the commentary post Bezos divorce about MacKenzie getting all that money for nothing. Jeff was the guy who made the billions, she was just the wife, what did she do to deserve this money?
Well, let's see: first, she wasn't the one who blew up the marriage by hooking up with the thot next door. Second, back before Jeff was Mr. Mega-bucks, she was working a job too and contributing to the household income while he got Amazon off the ground. Third, all the support that faceh mentions that isn't explictly 'a paid job' - running the household, nurturing relationships (business as well as personal), raising the kids, being there for Jeff in the ways spouses are supposed to be there for each other. Being willing to be seen out in public with him when he was still a googly-eyed nerd before he buffed up and got work done to fix his googly eye.
But sure, none of that matters, she's just a parasite who got undeserved riches in the divorce settlement.
HereAndGone
5d ago
Oh, way way back when the first shoots of trans right activism were budding, and it was still possible to have civilised conversations around the topic, I was part of a discussion elsewhere where we were assured up, down and sideways that any qualms were just slippery slope conspiracy thinking. No boy or man would incur the stigma of dressing like a woman or claiming to really be a girl in order to get into locker rooms or bathrooms, we were told.
And then events eventuated, and turns out "I am a girl even though all I've done is grow out my hair and change my name" is plenty okay enough to be worth it. For a while, at least, seems Lia Thomas is not having the career promised after all.
HereAndGone
5d ago
he was not an American, but actually Burmese
Finally an explanation for orange man! Not orange, Oriental!
HereAndGone
5d ago
This is also part of it. I can't understand how Owens transitioned (heh!) from "well-regarded conservative commentator" to whatever the heck she's doing now.
HereAndGone
5d ago
They shouldn't even need a medical test, just hospital records of the birth of her kids. So, yeah: I think the ridiculousness of the claims undercuts the Macrons' case. Had Owens been claiming that Mme. Macron was a cougar who had sex with then-15 year old Emmanuel when he was a student in her class, then sure, go ahead with the defamation case. But "she's saying I'm really a man! who stole someone else's identity! and then married my blood-related literally young enough to be my son husband so we're in a gay incestuous underage relationship!" is so extreme, the standard of "would a reasonable person be led to believe this?" can't be proven. And Michelle Obama hasn't sued anybody for similar claims, so it makes the Macrons look even more thin-skinned and, dare I say it, Trumpian?
May you all live under the same conditions as the benign and beneficent rule of the IDF. After all, you're not trouble-makers so you'll be fine, won't you?
I suddenly feel a need for the cursing psalms.
Psalm 10
10 Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
2 In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;
let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised.
3 For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul,
and the one greedy for gain curses[a] and renounces the Lord.
4 In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him;
all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
5 His ways prosper at all times;
your judgments are on high, out of his sight;
as for all his foes, he puffs at them.
6 He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved;
throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.”
7 His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.
8 He sits in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places he murders the innocent.
His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
9 he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket;
he lurks that he may seize the poor;
he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.
10 The helpless are crushed, sink down,
and fall by his might.
11 He says in his heart, “God has forgotten,
he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”
12 Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;
forget not the afflicted.
13 Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
14 But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
to you the helpless commits himself;
you have been the helper of the fatherless.
15 Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.
16 The Lord is king forever and ever;
the nations perish from his land.
17 O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear
18 to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.
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