ZanarkandAbesFan
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User ID: 2935
ZanarkandAbesFan
1d ago
What foreign policy losses has Trump incurred?
Not OP but has someone who had the same questions I appreciate the explanation. I've seen some people say that Maduro has links to Hezbollah's drug-smuggling enterprise - do you know if this is also true?
ZanarkandAbesFan
1d ago
Then perhaps they should have cast one that was "still pretty far" rather than heading straight into the uncanny valley?
I think they did. I didn't for a second look at Holly Wheeler and think "that's an adult woman".
ZanarkandAbesFan
2d ago
A more principled approach would have been for the Brits to indicate a willingness to prosecute her for any and all crimes she may have committed for Daesh, while also allocating funds totaling zero pounds towards facilitating her safe return to the UK.
The practical issue is that realistically it would be a whole new headache trying to prosecute her if she ever got back to the UK, given how many human rights lawyers I'm sure are itching to make the case she was only a child, was groomed etc.
ZanarkandAbesFan
2d ago
I recognise the double standard, but I suspect many of the female so-called collaborators were really just girls who the occupying soldiers took a liking to and who were forced into sexual relationships. It seems quite cruel to call them collaborators for that, and it's probably not a problem most of the men faced.
Lots of people say season 1, and I get it, but I liked season 2
What makes S2 really unforgivable in my eyes is how they emasculate/relegate the Demogorgon. Like, I can overlook whatever that weird Chicago Antifa episode was supposed to be, but taking the most engaging part of the first season and replacing it with...dogs? That can be dispatched with bullets like any other animal and that show loyalty to certain humans? The fuck?
ZanarkandAbesFan
2d ago
It's a grown woman wearing child-face.
I think this is a bit hyperbolic (perhaps deliberately so). Plenty of 14 year old girls are still pretty far from physical adulthood.
ZanarkandAbesFan
2d ago
On top of that, the squad of Demogorgons which had, a few episodes ago, demolished a small military base, were nowhere to be found.
The show's handling of the Demogorgon post-S1 has been so dumb that this would probably be the least of my criticisms. Remember when Hopper literally beheads one with a sword?
ZanarkandAbesFan
2d ago
Will being gay is because the actor is gay and wanted Will to be gay.
I don't believe this at all. Him being gay has been hinted at since the start of the show. In the very first episode Joyce mentions that her ex-husband used to call Will queer.
ZanarkandAbesFan
3d ago
Stranger Things has been circling the drain for many seasons
I really think that only the first season was good. The second one had its moments, and everything after that was trash.
The name "Kneecap" specifically refers to the IRA torturing suspected informants. I think this scans rather differently to torture committed by agents of the state, which is the first thing people think of when they hear "waterboarding". A lot of Irish people still carry a residual fondness for the IRA (hell, one of our most popular political parties is literally the parliamentary wing of the IRA).
Sure, but is this disagreeing with my point? The fact that there's plenty of support for the IRA and Sinn Féin suggests a lot of the Irish openly favour extreme violence against their perceived enemies in a way that I don't see as usual in other first world nations. My question is whether the fact that the typical Irish person's attitude towards Israel seems indistinguishable from that of Hamas/Hezbollah is a consequence of this type of attitude being redirected towards an easy new target more than a consequence of anti-semitism per se.
ZanarkandAbesFan
16d ago
Something I've wanted to ask you for a while is how much of the Irish obsession with Israel you think can be explained by Jew hatred (probably at least some) vs widespread Irish enthusiasm for horrific gratuitous violence as some sort of spectator sport. The fact that a band like Kneecap can name themselves after a torture procedure and have backing from the country's elites is pretty remarkable to me as someone not from the country - I can't imagine even the most gung-ho Americans would want to be publicly associated with a band called something like "Waterboarding".
ZanarkandAbesFan
18d ago
I will admit that it’s difficult to directly link all the events over last year or two, but some of it sure seems memetic. Attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, his lackey, a healthcare ceo, to name a few. What’s it gonna take for people to notice?
If you're a committed progressive, i.e. most journalists, what's the incentive to notice?
but I don't want to be ruled over and shut out of good positions by a cabal of people who don't like me much, especially when nobody else gets to play the same game.
I mean, some UK MPs have Jewish backgrounds but I don't see them advocating for particularly ethnocentric positions. The highest profile Jewish MP, Zack Polanski, is an example of the opposite.
Regarding getting shut out of good positions, if that's been your professional experience then I can't say otherwise, but I've literally never heard of this happening in the UK (not to say it's never happened, but I would think it's exceptionally rare). There simply aren't enough Jews for them to be regularly hiring each other over everyone else.
ZanarkandAbesFan
24d ago
"It didn't happen and it's good that it did"
ZanarkandAbesFan
25d ago
Pretty sure OLD = Online Dating
ZanarkandAbesFan
25d ago
How would you suggest he do that?
ZanarkandAbesFan
25d ago
Over here in Sweden subcontinentals aren't a very big group but despite this they're still easily the most disliked and made fun of group in workplace environments.
I'd have said MENA Muslims are more disliked.
ZanarkandAbesFan
26d ago
I'm pretty sure they liked Obama.
ZanarkandAbesFan
30d ago
Well obviously, the Israeli Arabs are just a well-off subset of the oppressed Palestinian people, in the anti-Israeli view. That's not exactly unreasonable, the Israeli Arabs aren't enthusiastic participants in the Zionist project.
This doesn't change the fact that hating Israelis and hating specifically Israeli Jews are meaningfully different positions.
I'm not sure that view is that common.
I stand by my position, with the caveat that by "leftist" I'm not referring to normal people who typically vote Labour/Democrat and only get their news from the BBC/NYT. I'm talking about the sort of left-wing people who put flags/pronouns in social media bios, usually very online and of the sort who show up to LGBTQ/BLM/Palestine marches. I'd estimate that about significant proportion of them literally want every Israeli Jew dead. If you've got evidence against this, I'd be happy to hear it. It would definitely restore my faith in humanity somewhat.
I enjoyed it. I'd definitely recommend it to someone who's already got an interest in the conflict more generally.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
My own mother (generally a very sensible woman) recently saw a movie about the Israeli hostage situation in 1972 and immediately jumped to the conclusion that those monstrous Jews Zionists had financed the movie's production in order to curry favour for their genocide in Gaza. A cursory Google quickly showed that the movie went into production months prior to the October 7th attacks – but then, I suppose those were staged by Shin Bet and Mossad as a false flag, weren't they? It never bottoms out.
Has she seen Munich?
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
These people don't hate Jews, they hate Israelis
My feeling is that what they particularly hate is Israeli Jews. If you asked them about their opinion on Israeli Arabs (assuming they know they exist), they'd probably be neutral to positively inclined.
Regardless, I find the arguments about whether or not all of this counts as anti-semitism to be a distraction. The common leftist position that every Israeli Jew deserves to be brutally murdered would be equally horrific in an alternative universe where everyone in Israel was Hindu.
To what extent do the Saudis project power? I imagine they have an on-paper good military but I haven't heard of any conflicts in which they've performed particularly impressively.
Time is a pretty good proxy for competence. Time is also money. Maduro was a thorn in the US' side, and for a minimal investment of time and money the US is at the very least going to get someone marginally preferable to Maduro running Venezuela. That's a good deal.
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