fionwe1987

No, I really am not. October 7th was less effective action to carry out Hamas's aims than what Israel has done since. Unless we're under the impression that 16000 is less than 1700. If we're disagreeing about basic math, then please let me know.

Yes, even with Hamas saying those things, Israel is more effective in actually killing and displacing Palestinians than Hamas has been in what it wants to do to Israelis. The point we're trying to make is that the awful rhetoric of Hamas doesn't justify doing unto Palestinians what Hamas wants to do to Israelis. That makes no kind of sense. If the situation were flipped in terms of military strength, yes I expect Hamas to be extracting vengeance on Israeli lives at the same scale or worse as what Israel is doing in Gaza today. And in that hypothetical, I would spend my energies condemning Hamas, not implying the Israeli's deserved such losses because some Likud lunatic had rhetoric about settling Gaza and the West Bank and running out all the "human animals".

This is no longer true. Israel is louder, in words and in actions, and in effect, when it comes to killing or displacing Palestinians.

But this fresh round of horro and humiliation and destruction is going to trump all that. The scale and recency of these acts, and the fact that this is what half of Gazan's population which is under 18 will grow up with as the main shaping moment of their lives, means that what happens now will shape what's to come. There was nothing inevitable about this. Why?

And the amount of this kind of sentiment on this thread has only grown. Its sickening. Whatever Hamas gets replaced with is going to be built atop these horrors and humiliations. And whatever that group does, it will be on the hands of this Israeli government. Seriously, is this what you believe? Then the Florida laws that allow me to shoot someone on suspicion they may have a gun are alright too? But right now, the more likely outcome is Israeli settlements in Gaza, and actual Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Can we hear some outrage against those actual actions as opposed to the words of a people that have no chance of enacting them?

Ok. What is Gaza, then?

I had a 9.5 year PhD where basically, around year 5/6, my thesis committee had declared me ready to defend. But all the cards are held by your thesis advisor, depending on which University you attend. And while my thesis advisor wasn't the worst there could be (no physical or sexual assault, no verbal assaults ether), they were quite happy to keep students around forever to "produce" for the lab. As my advisor was very senior in the department and raking in lots of funding (based on grants their students wrote for them), the thesis committees views did not matter. All I can say is, be very very very careful to pick someone who shows the qualities of a true mentor interested in your success. Unfortunately, they mostly all know the language needed to pretend that is what they're about. So look to their past record. Look to their future goals. And see if you feel enslaving yourself to their will will be tolerable and will give you something of value in exchange. Otherwise, bail. The sunk cost fallacy is hardest to fight when the sunk cost is your own effort and time, your own weekends and late nights over years. All I can say from the other side of the PhD is that no matter what effort you've already put in, if there's no end in sight, and only demands for more efforts, ever grander plans where you are the sole person required to keep digging away at some research question your adviser feels attached to... bail. More years of labor abuse don't make early years of labor abuse worth it. ETA: I don't want to be a downer. I learned and did a lot in my PhD. Made some of my best friends. Met some of the smartest people I know who continue to enrich me intellectually to this day. All I'd say is that the value of your PhD is, unfortunately, entirely in the control of your advisor. And the outright nasty advisors are actually a step up, in some ways, than the ones who just don't care much about your success, and see you and all their students as cheap labor. It frustrates me to this day that this power dynamic, so ripe for all kinds of abuse, is left intact and rarely questioned. Some universities do better, but most don't, especially if your advisor is a "star" who rakes in enough money for your university that they will look right past their own rules to protect these folks. It took my cohort a long time to realize that our first impressions of most of the scientists in the department were completely out of whack. That the reputation they have is often created, and bears deeper scrutiny, which we didn't think to do when it mattered most, early in our PhDs. So that would be my advice to you. Set standards for your advisor, and if/when they begin to fail them, consider an exit sooner rather than later.

To want to destroy them? No. But to proceed to try to do so while inflicting indiscriminate civilian loss and massive structural damage, and to literally poison the aquifer with salt water? Yes, yes that is evil. Not to mention absolutely stupid. All they're doing is making it incredibly easy for Hamas to draw more support, more troops, and yes, more justification for their next acts. If those acts are against Israeli civilians, I'll call them out as evil too, but they'd be no more evil than what this Israeli government is doing.

Giving the phrase "From the river to the sea" a whole other meaning, in the process. Especially since part of the plan is to bring in the sea, to seed perpetual destruction so return to the land becomes impossible. I feel nothing but contempt for the Israeli state, anymore. It is living proof that ethnostates are evil.

At this point, can we stop pretending the bombing is targeted, humane, and the only way forward? Or are we going to see continued hymns sung to the mythical restraint if the IDF?

IF SCOTUS does rule that Trump is not immune, at least one Trump appointed judge will have to join the majority opinion, since I don't expect Alito or Thomas to do anything but declare that Trump is the God Emperor, above all laws. Assuming we come to such a point, how will Trump respond to that? Will Gorsuch/Kavanaugh/Barrett have been a liberal mole all along? Captured by the woke media? Be branded betrayers of MAGA who have gone over to the Deep State?

For those hoping/thinking a post-Trump GOP would simply collapse, this is a template of what to fear. A more disciplined and capable, but no less noxious and power-hungry leader could shape the GOP in the BJP's image, and find sustained electoral success. As terrifying as things are in the US, y'all don't have it as bad as it could be. The Dems have many flaws, but they're no Indian National Congress.

I have no particular confidence in the American people. But I do have confidence in the electorate's short memories. And the reversion to the mean the closer we get to election day. The polls reflect current and rage. They're well merited, and they'll certainly persist in some corners, but current polls will not reflect anything like the final election result. There is too much time, and it isn't going to be boring, slow-news time. Its going to be filled with Trump prosecutions, more details on his Day 1 Dictatorship, and I'd be gobsmacked if a Muslim Ban 2.0 (4.0, technically, I think?) doesn't pop up sometime soon in Trump's rhetoric. Please. Covid didn't take the guy. This isn't gonna happen. This simulation isn't designed for such convenience.

I dunno. I think there's a danger in assuming the Republican party and its bubble is totally beyond being affected by reality. Nothing in the world works like that. Now, whether interaction with changing reality will lead to a clean end to the party to be replaced by a wonderful rational system... Yeah that isn't what's gonna happen either. But I think it's worth noting that totalitarian systems are brittle. That they have structural weaknesses that are exploitable. That these weaknesses can compound when their strategies are tied to the whims of one person. None of this means what comes next will be net good. You may get a violent splinter cell that wreaks havoc and large scale destruction, for example. I don't think anyone wants that, but such a result would, I think, cause realignments in the political landscape that can have negative impacts on the Trumpian right wing as it exists today.

Those newspapers, of course, are antisemitic. Or naive shills for Hamas. So there's no real need to deal with their content. Simple.

That is not what anyone here is asking for. Israel does not have to give in to a ceasefire with no guarantees, or hostages. But Israel also doesn't have to bomb indiscriminately. It doesn't have to quite literally salt the earth. It doesn't have to show such patent disregard to the humanitarian situation. It doesn't have to strip people naked and take pictures of them, even if they are worthless Hamas scum, and definitely not if they're regular Palestinian citizens. The space between Israel caving to Hamas's unreasonable demands and what it is doing is vast. But the OP and you pretend it is either surrender to Hamas or doing what Israel is currently doing. All that is is a convenient excuse for turning a blind eye to thousands of innocents dying. And no history of pain or trauma justifies that. What I find utterly contemptible is declaring that what is happening now is all Israel can do. To state that this isn't retaliation, just the "best" way to "end Hamas" whatever that even means when you take actions that will radicalize substantial portions of the populace... That's moronic and immoral. And I see the "but what about Hamas" argument to distract from Isreal's actions to be just that. Moronic and immoral.

Would a nuclear bomb on Gaza not achieve this? Since you're able to ignore the ludicrous civilian toll and make this claim with a straight face, can you tell me if you'd support dropping a nuke there, and if not, why not? I don't expect Hamas to give two figs about what I say. I do think the Israeli people are a lot more amenable to pleas for restraint and compassion than Hamas. It appears you think this isn't the case. Lovely. Such a convenient and unfalsifiable set of judgements. Sure helps you keep your head shoved deep up your ass and support tens of thousands of deaths.

I wonder if it may also be what Rosamund Pike said in an interview, that a lot of female actors are seeing a chance for meaty roles in a world and story where the female perspective is centered. That's gotta be somewhat novel, I'd imagine.

Great casting. Here's hoping Morgase's storyline gets improved for the show. I was not a fan of how RJ handled her in the books.

It is truly tragic that this pustule on the face of humanity lived this long. The minions of hell were clearly involved in this plot to keep themselves safe by inflicting his continued presence on Earth.

Probably why we see things differently. I think people are mostly fine. The systems they live under (religious, national, economic) are the problem. They're less awful that before, but plenty awful, and the only way out is to imagine better ones, shop them around, change them based on feedback, then give them a try. Anything else is self-fulfilling doomerism, to me.

So what's an example of a good kind of integration of Jews in a Christian majority country? What caused such "good" integrations to occur, which you think Muslims are fundamentally incapable of achieving? There's a long history of all kinds of debates about imposing Christian law in Western cultures too. Not just debates, but successful implementations. And the history of Islam also includes traditions of secularism, to the extent of Emperor Akbar literally creating a Hindu-Muskim syncretic religion (only to have his great grandson go in exactly the opposite direction). I think your failure to see the deep and varied tradition of secularism under Islamic is part of the problem, here. Sharia law existed in those cases too, as did political factions interested in imposing it. Yet the fact that stable societies emerged under Islamic rule that didn't impose Sharia show that there's nothing inevitable about it under Islamic rule. I don't assume it'll change because it's convenient to me. I'm saying that change needs to be induced, rather than expecting it to come out of nowhere. A major inducement for such a change would be having actual alternate options, one where they'll definitely have to give up stuff, but one where they'll also get safety, peace and a chance to wield democratic power. The current situation is neither a one or two state solution. That this cycle of violence has enabled, and been enabled by, far right factions is a given. We're discussing what happens in a unitary state, and comparing it to a two state solution. Neither is reality now, and the question I'm asking is are they both structures that will entrench fundamentalists on both sides? A two state solution can (though it certainly doesn't have to, and I'm far from writing off a two state solution for this reason). A unitary state can also collapse into failure and civil war. But the benefit is also that the divisions and frictions have a common battleground to flow into in such a state, and that battleground can be one of votes not of bombs. Hmm how's this on the flip side? Not quite sure I follow. Thanks. Of course they aren't the same thing, but while the scale is totally different, there's certainly a lot to learn for both sides from the other. The right wing powers of both countries certainly think so. They're allies, because they see the similarities, and have shared anti-Muslim sentiments, and a love for missiles and military strength for macho posturing and vile repressive actions. Seems to me the exact wrong lessons are being learned both from Israel-Palestine and India-Pakistan. I wish instead it was the left in both countries (and in Pakistan) who would get together and learn from each other and fight the toxicity.

I think we have our wires crossed, then. I'm not bringing up a unitary state as a solution that gets implemented tomorrow. Neither populace is ready for that. But I think the idea needs to be in the conversation. It needs to be explored, it needs to get support. Not squashed as "forerver impractical because Muslims", which is the only argument against that I've seen here, dressed in various guises.

So the existence of ethnostates is more palatable because countries with Jewish populations couldn't get their act together enough to let them live in freedom inside their borders, necessitating a Jewish ethnostste, which by the choice of its location (and it was a choice), is going to have to project sufficient force so their neighboring ethnostste will not contemplate using their own forces to end said state. In the meantime, the people displaced by the establishment of this ethnostate must remain stateless. I gotta say, I'm having a hard time understanding this. I think Israel's experience is an excellent argument against ethnostates. Not really, know. We're questioning whether there's something essential about being born Muslim that prevents you from forming a country that allows members of other religions to coexist as equal citizens. That geopolitical tensions in the Middle East has made many Muslim majority countries create an apartheid regime of their own, preventing Israeli citizens from traveling within their borders, does not to me prove that a Muslim majority land, especially with a very sizeable Jewish majority, as any unitary state in the region would have no chance of coexistence. As TrueMetis said, if you believe that, then all that's left is more bodies to be buried. We don't need to continue this discussion at all, do we? This will plague a Two-state solution too. Do we know of neighboring Muslim and Jewish ethnostates that have managed to be at peace? No? If that means it can never be so, then there's no solution to this problem, ever. To me, that kind of cynicism is especially crazy when we're thinking of solutions out of this mess. You're saying we're in a mess, it's been messy forever, it will remain messy forever, because something about at least one faction fundamentally prevents peace and always will. Cynicism doesn't either. In fact, mathematically, it is guaranteed to make the worse outcomes more likely, because it gives licence to extremists to say, with justification, "what choice but violence is there?". You don't have to convince me Indonesia is an imperfect experiment. You do need to convince me this means nothing better can ever come. Hmmm this doesn't seem correct. Hinduism has a lot about legal foundations of governance in its texts too. Monarchies, of course, so not exactly relevant today. Beyond that, I think specific texts of various religions containing absurd ideas is a really silly reason to say every follower of said religion is doomed to repeat some perceived pattern of behavior. Religion just doesn't work like that, and if it did, the Renaissance wouldn't have happened, and Islam would have a continuous history of nonsecular rule by its followers, which really really isn't true. Actually it very much is reasonable to think that. A broader polity under one state with a federal election to fight over power has a lot more chance for moderate voices on both sides, than the current situation. This is also true of India/Pakistan, btw. Religious fundamentalists gained significantly more power after Partition, and continue to use "point the finger at the Boogeyman across the border" to stoke violence internally, and also to justify war and mistreatment of the people caught in the midst of their territorial conflicts. And if Palestinians are, for the foreseeable future, locked into wanting fundamentalist governments, then how is a Palestinian ethnostate, which will almost certainly have territorial quibbles with Israel, going to solve these problems? The bolded is the part that underlies a lot of the arguments I'm seeing here.

Some do, yeah. And while Hindu's are a tiny majority, they do enjoy freedom of religion. Way more than Muslims do in India, anyway. Yeah. But I'm not saying Indonesia is pro -Israel, or Jews. Just that the notion that Muslim majority nations will never accept equal rights and citizenship for minorities is incorrect from current examples, too, apart from being Islamophibic bullcrap.