The people screaming genocide were applying the very broadly defined Convention Against Genocide to the Israel-Hamas War. The problem is that the Convention Against Genocide, most likely to prevent wiggle room in the case of a trial, defined things like "(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group." Any war that is vaguely intra-ethnic in character and has civilian casualties can be therefore called a genocide. Hamas action on 10/7 were an attempted genocide under this definition.
In conflicts where outside partisan factions rage strongly like the I/P conflict, it wa inevitable that people would scream out genocide. I think this was a really ineffective tactic for the Pro-Palestinian side because it prevented useful alliances with anti-Netanyahu Israelis or Diaspora Jews but they seemed intent on making this about "anti-Zionism."
50,000 with 20,000 to 25,000 being Hamas soldiers seems fairly reliable. Hamas would obviously love to give a much bigger number and anti-Israel forces were predicting basically over a million dead Gazan Palestinans since the start of the Israel-Hamas War.
4 weeks ago
AP estimates the current death toll in the Hamas side of the Israel-Hamas conflict to be 50,000. Since this is Hamas, they do not distinguish between Hamas soldiers and Palestinian civilians.
India sometimes gets something like this. I'd argue that most countries do get a lessser version of what Israel gets from the Left. Muslim majority countries are give a big freaking exception to liberalism or if problems are acknowledged, it's all blamed on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Monarchies.
Being governed by idiots is the style of the time but America's long tradition of anit-intellectualism isn't helping here. Our far right is a lot more suspicious of book learning than other far rights.
The global left criticizes those and Hinduism or even Budhhism for good measure while basically deciding that Islam needs to be allowed to naturally evolve rather than marched forward into modernity.
I am looking at this from the perspective of United States citizens. What good does this do to the people of the United States? Will the money be re-invested in American universities? Of course not. Nor will it be used for anything else.
There are ways to do these things with tact. I might be even prone to agree with you that maybe America shouldn't be funding universities in developed democracies. Just turning off the money spigot suddenly and without warning is not the way to do it though. Even from a pure realpolitik standpoint it is incredibly bad because it makes us look like a big villain.
America not becoming a pariah state and hated by most of the entire world isn't a strong defense? Trusk is undoing decades of hard work done by Democratic and Republican Presidents to make America the leader of the free world and the liberal order for no reason but pure spite and the fact that they see everything as a zero sum game. Tens of millions of Americans are seemingly fine with this. They are turning us into what the further left clowns accused us of being and you are fine with this?
Do you think this is a good thing. I mean maybe universities in other countries shouldn't be so dependent on American aid that turning off the spigot is a mortal threat but this is just a mafia tactic. It isn't like Trusk is going to re-channel the money towards American universities or other things for the benefit of the American people. Trusk will just pocket the money for themselves.
I'm fascinated on why Japanese parents have a higher freak out threshold compared to parents in basically every other developed democracy, including ones from the same Confucian world view, on the amount of sex and violence they can deal with in kid's entertainment compared to everybody else.
4 weeks ago
So apparently in his letter from an ICE jail, Mr. Khalil states that Biden and Trump were equally bad on Palestine. He might not be a terrorist but dear Lord is this representative of the stupidity in the pro-Palestinian movement. They have been following the same strategy since my grandparents were kids during the mandate period. Like literally massive uprising or spectacular terrorism violence and when that doesn't work, stubbornly insist on their full demands being met despite not winning any battles. Then insist that anybody who doesn't agree with them fully or insists on working from the basic reality that Israel exists, is not going to stop existing, and showed repeated determination to fight for it's existence, plus that 45% of all Jews live there, are just as bad as the worst of their enemies. It's the do the same thing and hope for a different result again and again.
I mean obviously the fan service is problematic for their world view but I think the violence is even more problematic from a Western liberal-left world view. Japanese parents don't seem to mind their kids watching the good guys use a large amount of violence against bad guys as much as American and European parents do. They would have issues with boy heroes dishing out as much violence as anime boy heroes do.
4 weeks ago
Polling indicates that rank and file Democratic Party voters want the Democratic Party to fight against Trump but also move to the center on many policy issues like police reform and housing construction:
I am not sure that Disney is all in on girls kicking physical ass. The, for lack of a better term, In This House version of the Disney princess is still far from an anime heroine who can and will kick ass. There does seem to be a sort of an inmates running the asylum thing going on where some very ideological sincere people working for Disney decided that this would be a great propaganda and teaching opportunity and that it was possibly also bad for little girls to watch stuff with romance.
This just shows the utter stupidity of the Pro-Palestinian movement in the West. Netanyahu is not popular in Israel. By making the entire protest movement about "Anti-Zionism" and anti-colonialism, they made it impossible for Anti-Netanyahu Israelis and anti-Netanyahu Diaspora Jews to team up with them.
Fairy tales and other stories are continually updated to meet modern social conditions but there is an art to doing this. Adding a Moorish/Arab character in Robin Hood stories so that non-white can see the Robin Hood stories as something they aren't excluded from is doing this correctly. Adding a lot of girl-boss to a fairy tale is not. You want to add something rather than divide, multiply, and subtract from it.
I might have over stated but I don't think that Israel can diplomatically get away with that level of violence without becoming North Korea diplomatically.
I am on the record for not trusting Palestinian leadership as negotiators either. They either see any such negotiations as temporary ceasefires or are too afraid of starting a Palestinian civil war, imagine like the civil war in Ireland between those that accepted the Irish Free State proposal and those that did not, either. The Palestinians and their allies are going to have to come to some painful conclusions as well like Israel exists and it is going to continue to exist, no right of return, etc. So far, a lot of Pro-Palestinian protestors seem to want to spray paint "F-word Israel" and go on and on about Anti-Zionism or Settler-Colonialism than make sensible alliances with anti-Netanyahu Jews inside and outside Israel because they are petulant children.
Wanting Hamas not to exist is like the people who think that Israel can be made not to exist, bloody stupid. For the foreseeable future, the Muslim world is going to be filled with a lot of groups that really shouldn't exist but they do. These groups will exist until Islam confronts itself and this might make the European Wars of Religion look like pikers. I don't think that better policy from the West can get read of the attraction of groups like Hamas but I don't think the West can bomb them out of existence either. Muslims themselves must decide to confront groups like Hamas or Boko Haram.
2025-03-20 17:28:54
Trump's AG seems to be in bloody defiance of a court order:
https://www.rawstory.com/pam-bondi-perkins-coie/
2025-03-20 10:10:15
Netanyahu apparently decided to launch a surprise attack on Gaza for no good reason with Trump's backing. We are in a world ruled by mad men.
The people screaming genocide were applying the very broadly defined Convention Against Genocide to the Israel-Hamas War. The problem is that the Convention Against Genocide, most likely to prevent wiggle room in the case of a trial, defined things like "(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group." Any war that is vaguely intra-ethnic in character and has civilian casualties can be therefore called a genocide. Hamas action on 10/7 were an attempted genocide under this definition.
In conflicts where outside partisan factions rage strongly like the I/P conflict, it wa inevitable that people would scream out genocide. I think this was a really ineffective tactic for the Pro-Palestinian side because it prevented useful alliances with anti-Netanyahu Israelis or Diaspora Jews but they seemed intent on making this about "anti-Zionism."
50,000 with 20,000 to 25,000 being Hamas soldiers seems fairly reliable. Hamas would obviously love to give a much bigger number and anti-Israel forces were predicting basically over a million dead Gazan Palestinans since the start of the Israel-Hamas War.
AP estimates the current death toll in the Hamas side of the Israel-Hamas conflict to be 50,000. Since this is Hamas, they do not distinguish between Hamas soldiers and Palestinian civilians.
India sometimes gets something like this. I'd argue that most countries do get a lessser version of what Israel gets from the Left. Muslim majority countries are give a big freaking exception to liberalism or if problems are acknowledged, it's all blamed on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Monarchies.
Being governed by idiots is the style of the time but America's long tradition of anit-intellectualism isn't helping here. Our far right is a lot more suspicious of book learning than other far rights.
The global left criticizes those and Hinduism or even Budhhism for good measure while basically deciding that Islam needs to be allowed to naturally evolve rather than marched forward into modernity.
I am looking at this from the perspective of United States citizens. What good does this do to the people of the United States? Will the money be re-invested in American universities? Of course not. Nor will it be used for anything else.
There are ways to do these things with tact. I might be even prone to agree with you that maybe America shouldn't be funding universities in developed democracies. Just turning off the money spigot suddenly and without warning is not the way to do it though. Even from a pure realpolitik standpoint it is incredibly bad because it makes us look like a big villain.
America not becoming a pariah state and hated by most of the entire world isn't a strong defense? Trusk is undoing decades of hard work done by Democratic and Republican Presidents to make America the leader of the free world and the liberal order for no reason but pure spite and the fact that they see everything as a zero sum game. Tens of millions of Americans are seemingly fine with this. They are turning us into what the further left clowns accused us of being and you are fine with this?
Do you think this is a good thing. I mean maybe universities in other countries shouldn't be so dependent on American aid that turning off the spigot is a mortal threat but this is just a mafia tactic. It isn't like Trusk is going to re-channel the money towards American universities or other things for the benefit of the American people. Trusk will just pocket the money for themselves.
It does pre-exist the liberal order. There is an arrogance in Islam that nobody has any idea how to handle.
There is no easy or good solution to a movement that proves to be as stupidly obstinate as the Palestinian movement under the liberal order.
I'm fascinated on why Japanese parents have a higher freak out threshold compared to parents in basically every other developed democracy, including ones from the same Confucian world view, on the amount of sex and violence they can deal with in kid's entertainment compared to everybody else.
So apparently in his letter from an ICE jail, Mr. Khalil states that Biden and Trump were equally bad on Palestine. He might not be a terrorist but dear Lord is this representative of the stupidity in the pro-Palestinian movement. They have been following the same strategy since my grandparents were kids during the mandate period. Like literally massive uprising or spectacular terrorism violence and when that doesn't work, stubbornly insist on their full demands being met despite not winning any battles. Then insist that anybody who doesn't agree with them fully or insists on working from the basic reality that Israel exists, is not going to stop existing, and showed repeated determination to fight for it's existence, plus that 45% of all Jews live there, are just as bad as the worst of their enemies. It's the do the same thing and hope for a different result again and again.
I mean obviously the fan service is problematic for their world view but I think the violence is even more problematic from a Western liberal-left world view. Japanese parents don't seem to mind their kids watching the good guys use a large amount of violence against bad guys as much as American and European parents do. They would have issues with boy heroes dishing out as much violence as anime boy heroes do.
Polling indicates that rank and file Democratic Party voters want the Democratic Party to fight against Trump but also move to the center on many policy issues like police reform and housing construction:
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/dems-need-to-moderate-and-fight
I am not sure that Disney is all in on girls kicking physical ass. The, for lack of a better term, In This House version of the Disney princess is still far from an anime heroine who can and will kick ass. There does seem to be a sort of an inmates running the asylum thing going on where some very ideological sincere people working for Disney decided that this would be a great propaganda and teaching opportunity and that it was possibly also bad for little girls to watch stuff with romance.
An English language version of the controversies surrounding Netanyahu:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-22/six-controversies-plaguing-israel-benjamin-netanyahu/105080272
This just shows the utter stupidity of the Pro-Palestinian movement in the West. Netanyahu is not popular in Israel. By making the entire protest movement about "Anti-Zionism" and anti-colonialism, they made it impossible for Anti-Netanyahu Israelis and anti-Netanyahu Diaspora Jews to team up with them.
Disney used to be able to slip in light liberalism into their movies with out being blunt about it.
It seems like a movie steeped in the ethos of college educated bougie liberals but with the subtlety of the hammer.
There are a lot of practical problems for deputizing the bailiffs that need to be worked out.
Fairy tales and other stories are continually updated to meet modern social conditions but there is an art to doing this. Adding a Moorish/Arab character in Robin Hood stories so that non-white can see the Robin Hood stories as something they aren't excluded from is doing this correctly. Adding a lot of girl-boss to a fairy tale is not. You want to add something rather than divide, multiply, and subtract from it.
Federal courts can actually deputize people. So theoretically, the court bailiffs can be used to carry out court orders.
We are so fished:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/politics/musk-pentagon-briefing-china-war-plan.html
I might have over stated but I don't think that Israel can diplomatically get away with that level of violence without becoming North Korea diplomatically.
I am on the record for not trusting Palestinian leadership as negotiators either. They either see any such negotiations as temporary ceasefires or are too afraid of starting a Palestinian civil war, imagine like the civil war in Ireland between those that accepted the Irish Free State proposal and those that did not, either. The Palestinians and their allies are going to have to come to some painful conclusions as well like Israel exists and it is going to continue to exist, no right of return, etc. So far, a lot of Pro-Palestinian protestors seem to want to spray paint "F-word Israel" and go on and on about Anti-Zionism or Settler-Colonialism than make sensible alliances with anti-Netanyahu Jews inside and outside Israel because they are petulant children.
Wanting Hamas not to exist is like the people who think that Israel can be made not to exist, bloody stupid. For the foreseeable future, the Muslim world is going to be filled with a lot of groups that really shouldn't exist but they do. These groups will exist until Islam confronts itself and this might make the European Wars of Religion look like pikers. I don't think that better policy from the West can get read of the attraction of groups like Hamas but I don't think the West can bomb them out of existence either. Muslims themselves must decide to confront groups like Hamas or Boko Haram.
Trump's AG seems to be in bloody defiance of a court order:
https://www.rawstory.com/pam-bondi-perkins-coie/
Netanyahu apparently decided to launch a surprise attack on Gaza for no good reason with Trump's backing. We are in a world ruled by mad men.
White supremacists are going to white supremacists.