FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
No bio...
User ID: 757
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
3hr ago
I think you're making the same kind of mistake a lot of people on the left made when they assumed that having people banned from society for publicly admitting to being racists meant that there weren't anymore racists in society. Something like 80-90% of republican congressional staffers are groypers or deep-cover groypers, and their numbers are heavily concentrated amongst right wing youth (there aren't many 50 year olds watching Nick Fuentes).
When people get evicted from polite society for revealing that they're groypers, you don't actually create a society free of groypers - you create a society where you can no longer trust that any given individual is or isn't a groyper, which is very different (and in my opinion worse).
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
3hr ago
But therein lies a question: why the arms race for authenticity, instead of just, you know, being good at your job. We need to realize that it is entirely possible that being Good At Job is simply becoming less and less important these days.
I think you're spot on here. I've long believed that one of the reasons behind a lot of current employment isn't any actual requirement for productive work to be done, but to satisfy primitive primate desires to have flunkies and exert authority over other people. I'd be surprised if anyone who has worked in an office environment for more than a few months hasn't encountered a time when a decision was made that was bad for the business and reduced profits but satisfied the psychological needs of the managers in question.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
3hr ago
You have no idea what my positions are and telling other people what they believe is to the best of my knowledge explicitly against the rules on this forum - I'm not going to report you or anything, but I am going to refrain from replying to you any further on this thread.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
4hr ago
What a garbage article.
Unfortunately, there are many cases in which the people are right to distrust elites. Analytical reasoning is sometimes a poor substitute for intuitive cognition. There is a vast literature detailing the hubris of modern rationalism. Elites are perfectly capable of succumbing to faddish theories (and as we have seen in recent years, they are susceptible to moral panics). But in such cases, it is not all that difficult to find other elites willing to take up the cause and oppose those intellectual fads. In specific domains, however, a very durable elite consensus has developed. This is strongest in areas where common sense is simply wrong, and so anyone who studies the evidence, or is willing to engage in analytical reasoning, winds up sharing the elite view. In these areas, the people find it practically impossible to find allies among the cognitive elite. This generates anger and resentment, which grows over time.
This is completely false - there is no counter-elite in Washington fighting against wasteful foreign wars, there is no counter-elite fighting against immigration policies that enrich the wealthy by driving down wages and driving up asset prices, there is no counter-elite fighting against H1-b visa abuse, there is no counter-elite fighting against omnipresent warrantless surveillance, there is no counter-elite fighting against obsequious support for foreign nations that the majority of the population dislike. Where is the counter-elite arguing against illegal immigrant farm labor, a policy which Trump has explicitly come out and supported? "Common sense" is completely, 100% correct in these cases.
The elite, cognitive or no, act in their own interests and those interests are not the same as that of the populace.
The problem with demanding political correctness in speech, and punishing or ostracizing those who fail, is that it turns every conversation into a Stroop test, allowing elites the opportunity to exhibit conspicuous self-control.
No, this isn't the problem - the problem is that this language policing makes it impossible for the lower classes to object to the policies responsible for their impoverishment and elite enrichment. They're not upset because they aren't smart enough to play the language game (plenty of them can and do), but because the entire purpose of this language game is to deny them the vocabulary to describe their problems. Illegal immigration directly contributes to the impoverishment of the wage-earning class, and so their opposition to it is considered low-class and problematic because it comes from them. The reason that this system is breaking down is not that these people hate thinking, but because the failures of the policies endorsed by these "cognitive elites" are finally reaching the more privileged classes. Unemployment among people with degrees is skyrocketing, and tech degrees are now far less capable of getting someone into a good career - not because the people getting them are stupid, but because the policies of outsourcing, infinity indians and overt discrimination against men.
But to leave the article aside and return to your post...
The problem is that one cannot run a modern government without "fancy theories" that conflict with "common sense". This creates a dynamic in which the easiest strategy for a politician is to:
No, this isn't the case at all. These "fancy theories" are just so much squid ink deployed to mask the obvious underlying incentives - widespread H1-B abuse is a policy with very clear winners and losers. You don't actually need infinite immigration to run a modern government! What, exactly, is the fancy theory that justifies insider trading on the stock market by members of congress? That justifies immense corruption in military procurement (what's the fancy theory justifying 8000 dollar plastic wastebins)? You don't need a mass welfare scam run for the benefit of intertribal Somalian warfare, but that's exactly what all those "fancy theories" have produced. I'd actually go even further - when the democrats passed laws which meant the government provided vast amounts of money to their captive NGOs and political influence operations these actions are entirely understandable through the lens of common sense. It isn't that people are angry about these policies because they don't understand them, they are angry about these policies because they are directly injured by them!
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
8hr ago
Well what exactly in the evidence shows that this is not a "fog of war" incident?
If you think that there is any way in which that incident could be described as due to the fog of war you are not a serious person attempting to have a meaningful conversation. I'm not going to bother responding to the rest of your points until you can explain to me exactly how the "fog of war" could explain what happened to Hind Rajab, because you're either too stupid to engage in a conversation like this or arguing in bad faith.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1d ago
Can you summarize the best evidence for this please?
We have the audio of the call, a crime-scene investigation, etc. Wikipedia actually has a pretty good article on the topic - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Hind_Rajab
Can you summarize the best evidence for this conclusion as well?
https://www.ft.com/content/8885c13c-eada-4bf8-b896-f7a242ade641
“We bring in aid because there is no choice,” he said on Monday, according to reports in Israeli media. “Nobody will let us cause 2mn civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned.”
“What can we do?” he added. “We live today in a certain reality, we need international legitimacy for this war.”
Can you please provide 3 specific examples of this?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-idf-general-likens-military-control-of-west-bank-to-nazi-germany/ Pressed on whether he saw specific similarities with Nazi Germany, Levin said: “Of course. It hurts, it’s not nice, but that’s the reality. It’s better to deal with it, even if it is hard, than to ignore it.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/deputy-idf-chief-israeli-societal-trends-akin-to-pre-holocaust-europe/ “If there is something that frightens me in the memory of the Holocaust, it is identifying horrifying processes that occurred in Europe…70, 80 and 90 years ago and finding evidence of their existence here in our midst, today, in 2016,” Golan said.
https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/ide-fixe “As Hitler, may his name be erased, once said: ‘I cannot live in this world if there is one Jew left in it,’ we could not live in this land if even one such Islamo-Nazi remains in Gaza, and not before we return to Gaza and turn it into Hebrew Gaza.”
What is the evidence that the IDF is "torturing lambs" and "tearing down olive trees" in Gaza?
Direct video evidence. You can quibble that it is the settlers rather than the IDF, but I feel like it is perfectly reasonable to associate the IDF and the settlers.
https://israelpalestinenews.org/settlers-torture-lambs-in-the-west-bank/
You're not going to convince anyone that this stuff is just coming from irrational hatred of jews when we can watch them doing this shit in HD.
As far as the other things go (producing corpses, demolishing buildings, and starving people) would you agree that this is also consistent with a Hamas that is hiding behind civilians and deliberately intercepting food aid?
Not to the scale that Israel has done, and not when viewed in combination with the quotes I've provided above (and countless others I have not). You don't get to say "Oh we had to kill all the children because they were Hamas" when you have previously said that all of them need to be dead so Gaza can become Hebrew Gaza.
To deflect attention from their own wrongdoing. Duh.
Please provide an example of the wrongdoing that China, Russia or Thailand has done which comes close to what Israel is currently doing in Gaza. Before you bring up the Uyghurs, please make sure to post an example of what Uyghur cities look like now and place it side by side with photos of the Gazan moonscape.
No, I'm asking about the last 10 years. Is it your position, that in terms of war crimes, human rights abuses, and the like, Israel is the very worst country in the world over the last 10 years. Very simple question.
It isn't that simple at all - was Isis a country? Were the Israeli weapons they were caught with stolen or officially supplied? But if we leave them aside, I went and had a look at a list of war crimes over the past 10 years to refresh my memory and I can't see anything that compares to what Israel has done.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1d ago
Sure, of course. Civilians regularly get killed in the fog of war.
This was not a case of the fog of war - the IDF waited for the ambulances to arrive before they killed the 5 year old girl who had been crying while surrounded by her dead family and murdered the medical workers.
I do know that if it were official Israeli policy to target non-combatants, there would be no Arabs left alive in or around Gaza.
The official Israeli policy is, to the best of my knowledge, to make sure that they don't simply wipe them out and exterminate them directly because the international pressure that would bring down on them would be too severe. Wiping out the Palestinian christian communities would also cause some problems with the Christian Zionists currently paying for their lifestyles and military defence to boot.
Do I understand your argument correctly?
No, not at all. Sarah Hurwitz' responses are given as an illustrative example of how zionists discuss these issues due to her prominent position in US politics. When somebody who is actively supporting the IDF and Israel's actions makes statements like these it isn't really possible to claim that they're some jew hater with an irrational hatred of Israel. She's just one example, but there are countless statements by people like Smotrich, Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and other members of the Israeli government on the same topic. As I said, official statements and interviews with members of the Israeli government make it clear that they, internally, believe that what they are doing is on the same level as what Hitler did to the jews in Germany. While this wouldn't be compelling by itself (maybe they're all just larpers), when you combine that with the incredibly well documented evidence of their actions in Gaza it actually does form a viable argument - they are producing mountains of corpses, reducing cities to a moonscape, torturing lambs, tearing down olive trees, starving people, etc. One example I've brought up on this site before is the growing number of IDF soldiers who are killing themselves because they can't live with what they've done - that they can't bear to look at meat anymore because it reminds them of all the Palestinian corpses they crushed under a bulldozer. When giving speeches at the funerals of IDF soldiers, their compatriots frequently mention how much they enjoyed killing civilians and blowing up houses. IDF soldiers post on social media about how they're wearing the lingerie of female Palestinians after driving them from their homes - the mountain of evidence is so voluminous that it beggars belief.
I certainly concede that many people and groups have bought into the fantasy that Israel is engaged in serious wrongdoing. So what?
Leaving aside the non-fantastical nature of Israel's wrongdoing, this is actually a serious problem. If everyone in your community suddenly started accusing you of being a pedophile and posting pictures of you behaving inappropriately with children, along with you giving speeches about how the age of consent is just a polite fiction, even if you weren't actually a pedophile you would have some explaining to do. Why, exactly, do all these people believe what they do?
Sadly, there are very good reasons: To virtue signal; to deflect attention from actual wrongdoing; to find a scapegoat.
Why the fuck would China need to virtue signal? Why the fuck would Thailand need to virtue signal? Why would Malaysia need to virtue signal? I can already tell you from my direct personal experience that my distaste for Israel stems from the videos of their actions and speeches that I've seen, and not because I need to virtue signal or find a scapegoat (as I have previously attested I'm an extremely cool and good-looking sex-haver with no need to deflect attention). I just can't take this claim seriously when it applies to so many people all over the world. Are you aware of how widely loathed and detested Israel and their actions are across the globe?
Let me ask you this: Of all the countries in the world, do you believe that Israel is the very worst behaved in terms of war crimes?
Historically? No, I think there were definitely worse regimes in the past. The Athenians were pretty nasty to the Melians, Alexander was nasty to the Thebans, etc. In the modern day, right now? I think it depends on how you attribute blame - the only other contender I can see in the present moment is the USA, but that is in part because they're also culpable for what Israel is doing. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has produced far fewer civilian casualties and far fewer warcrimes (which is one of the reasons I find it so laughable that they would need a scapegoat).
Serious question: Were you an adult in the 1940s? If so, where were you living at the time?
No, I'm basing this on the education I received during history class.
it wouldn't be credible that they'd mistreat someone as visible and with friends as powerful as Greta Thunberg.
She has come out and directly, unequivocally claimed that they mistreated her - and nothing happened. Who exactly is this mysterious power that will punish Israel for sexually assaulting an autistic girl who is widely mocked and insulted by the conservatives who are already firmly committed zionists? I don't understand why you think they'd be afraid of mistreating her when she has made the exact same claims she would have made if they actually did assault her and there have been no consequences whatsoever beyond me mocking antisemitic rightwingers who made sexualised jokes about her by saying their behavior is spiritually Israeli.
The child wasn't starving; its appearance was due to the disease.
Have you seen the photos? Do you really want to claim that cerebral palsy is responsible for the appearance of Yazan's corpse? Here's a photo of someone in the west who has cerebral palsy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RJ_Mitte#/media/File:RJ_Mitte_by_Gage_Skidmore_3.jpg and here's the photo of Yazan's corpse after he died of starvation https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/db/Death_of_Yazan_al-Kafarneh.jpg
Are you really going to tell me that the same condition which RJ Mitte has is responsible for the conditions seen in Yazan's corpse? If you've got an expert who can explain how cerebral palsy lead to that, I'm all ears. I've known people with cerebral palsy in real life, and I have never seen them looking like that.
And yes, the actual starving is in question.
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/29/nx-s1-5483520/gaza-famine-hunger
The report said that more than 20,000 children have been admitted for acute malnutrition treatment between April and mid-July, with more than 3,000 of them severely malnourished. Hospitals have also reported a surge in hunger-related deaths among children under 5, with at least 16 fatalities recorded since July 17 alone.
This was from July 29 - how exactly do you have 20 000 children with acute malnutition and a surge in hunger-related deaths among children without a famine? If there's no starvation and famine, why were Palestinians so desperate to go to aid distribution sites run by the GHF who gunned them down for trying? Why is every major international body warning about the famine in Gaza? Even when I take a dispassionate look at the evidence, I can't see how you can possibly claim that the starvation is even in question let alone fictional. It was official Israeli policy for decades!
Edited because I accidentally deleted a paragraph in my post and didn't realise it:
I found the original report this claim supposedly comes from. It has few statistics and says basically nothing at all (it doesn't even make that claim).
This isn't the report that the claim comes from - it cites the report that the claim comes from, but the link is now broken. When I checked it at the time the link was functional, but that was quite some time ago and I don't have any archives. Nobody at the time of publication made this objection anywhere, and the rest of the report is really nasty as well - this objection doesn't really damage the point at all even if we just assume that the number wasn't 100%.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1d ago
Everything Israel has done has been well within the bounds of legitimate warfare.
lmao at the idea you expect anyone to believe this at all. Can you actually explain the legitimate military purpose behind what happened to Hind Rajab? Look, this is the motte - you don't have to pretend that you're some social justice activist and that the IDF are the most moral army in the world. You can just admit that this is ethnic cleansing for more lebensraum, like many members of the Israeli government have already done. Hell, Sarah Hurwitz, an incredibly pro-zionist speechwriter, recently came out and said that one of the problems advocating for the state of Israel is that she has to argue through a wall of dead children (how do you get walls of dead children in legitimate warfare?). She explicitly compared what they were doing to the holocaust and said that holocaust education was working against them because it made people think that strong militaries wiping out poor and weak minorities is bad. Your own advocates explicitly compare themselves to the Nazi genocide! Not to mention that we live in a world where I can just have a computer translate hebrew messages and news articles or look up what it means when they say that the Palestinians or people like me are Amalek.
If you are talking about the fantasy that Israel is engaged in a psychopathic genocide campaign, well, countries should learn to get beyond Jew-hatred and start distinguishing between fantasy and reality.
Russia has claimed that they don't deserve any sanctions for what is happening in Ukraine with direct comparison to Israel. China has come out and said that what Israel is doing is bad. All over the world, countless nations have come together and outright stated that what Israel is doing is monstrous. Official IDF photos now show them with their faces censored and hidden, because there are credible threats to prosecute them for warcrimes whenever they leave their ethnostate. In the US, support for Israel's genocide is splitting the conservative movement into not-quite equal halves because even they are unable to justify what they are seeing on their screens every day.
Have you ever heard the saying "If it stinks everywhere you go, check your shoes"? The idea that the entire world is just possessed by irrational jew hatred for no reason (lol at the idea China or Russia would be jealous of Israel) is so much less likely than people objecting to Israel's conduct that I can't understand how you could believe in it beyond thoughtless support for your ingroup. Why, exactly, did this irrational hatred of jews suddenly appear at the same time as Israel's genocide of the Palestinians? Coincidence? I'm honestly curious here.
Which was hardly a surprise, given the large number of progressives (as well as members of the "Global South") who thirst to undermine and destroy Israel.
Yes, I actually am one of those progressives. I thought that Nazi germany needed to be destroyed because what they were doing was unconscionable, not because I have an irrational hatred of bratwurst and oktoberfest. My feelings towards Israel are similar(have been ever since Rachel Corrie), and I proudly link arms with Torah jews and other jewish antizionists at the protests - while also considering christian zionists (who actually outnumber jewish zionists) to be just as bad.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
2d ago
So that in the same way Disney keeps churning out lousy woke movies that lose money, the ICC has seriously undermined its own legitimacy in order to damage Israel.
The problem here is that you've ignored the other side of the equation - failing to prosecute Israel would cause just as much, if not more damage to the ICC's credibility. Why, exactly, would any nation sign up to the ICC when they can see Israel doing what it has done without any kind of censure? Failing to prosecute Israel while at the same time prosecuting Russia for conduct that is less egregious than what people can see Israel proudly proclaiming would destroy the court's legitimacy in the eyes of the global south. Sure, the real principle at play is and always has been that "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must", but that's not actually a principle that will convince the weak to sign up for your criminal court.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
2d ago
That doesn't seem right to me, if anything stable HBD arguments would notice the higher average IQ of jews and say antisemitism is combination of invalid jealousy and valid concern about ingroup bias, same as lefty feelings about white people in general are.
As an actual HBD understander I have to step in here - this is not something that HBD proponents would proclaim. IQ and its heritability is one of the most basic aspects of HBD, the very first thing you learn when you get started. When you start talking about jews through the lens of HBD you start talking about things like ingroup preference(which you did, to your credit, mention), distinctions between verbal and visual IQ, levels of neuroticism, etc. There's some interesting information in there, like the obvious-in-hindsight knowledge that the European portion of Ashkenazim genetics came from Italians, or that several of the genetic diseases that are common amongst jews relate to the same kind of neurotransmitters that are involved in verbal IQ.
I don't care enough about jews to go through all the evidence and declare one way or another that the field supports antisemitism, but I can confidently state that your view here isn't correct. At no point does HBD support the idea that antisemitism is caused by jealousy - if you're being intellectually honest, the difference in population size between Ashkenazim and gentiles means that there's actually a higher population of gentiles at any given level of IQ than there are jews. If you want to bring out the jealousy argument, it would actually be running in the opposite direction. I'm not going to do it because I have better things to do, but it would actually be possible to take population numbers and IQ averages to work out how much jewish overrepresentation in certain fields is due to IQ and how much is due to ingroup preference and kinship networks.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
2d ago
But a lot of the accusations against Israel are A Rape on Campus-level incredible, and that includes claims that Greta Thunberg was sexually assaulted by the Israelis. Not because they're such saints, but because they're not utter idiots.
This is actually extremely credible - have you heard of the Sde Taiman rape protests? Sexual abuse and humiliation is a well-attested and confirmed feature of Israeli incarceration, to the point that when prison guards are arrested for rape there are pro-rapist protests held to ensure they can continue to rape prisoners. Government ministers referred to the rapists as "our best heroes" and led efforts to ensure they were set free. The statistics we have regarding sexual abuse of foreign women in Israel are pretty nasty too - https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/israel-a-new-report-reveals-100-of-thai-agricultural-workers-were-sexually-assaulted/
I don't feel like it is stretching the bounds of credibility to say that a country which sexually abused 100% of their female foreign agricultural workers and had protests to protect their ability to rape prisoners would have sexually abused a female prisoner. For the record, I don't think they rape because they're idiots, but because they believe they are immune from consequences (and for many of them, that's been true so far).
I don't know about that particular cardiologist, but I do know doctors have been involved in creating and perpetuating Hamas hoaxes,
You don't need to say it twice - your comment has absolutely nothing to do with the case at hand and no relation to the story itself. This doesn't even reach the level of a counterargument, and even if I simply accept your claims it doesn't refute my point at all. I can understand not wanting to read, but next time please just say that instead of pretending to engage with the argument.
including the "starving child" who actually was born with a genetic disease,
...what exactly makes starving children more morally acceptable if they were born with a genetic disease? The actual starving isn't in question at all, and it has been an explicit Israeli policy going back decades. We can even go back to 2006 when an advisor to the Israeli PM spoke about how they were planning on putting the Gazans on a "diet" by reducing the food they allow in.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
2d ago
I believe that this is true for a minority of cases - I'm sure a lot of people on here have seen absolute losers latch on to the jews as the reason why their life sucks, a reason that they can't do anything about and have no power over which thus gives them permission to not do anything about the actual problems in their life. These people exist, they have always existed and if the jews themselves never even existed they would find some other group to blame (maybe Majestic12, the Illuminati, the Freemasons or The Man).
But that just isn't the case for the majority of what I see called antisemitism today. Hell, I'm considered an antisemite - not because I have a terrible life that I blame on the jews, but because I actually sincerely oppose the actions of the state of Israel. I am a left-winger and think that it is wrong to murder children because they were born the wrong ethnicity, even if that ethnicity is Palestinian. Because I think that's directly comparable to the behavior of the nazi regime, this marks me as an anti-semite despite the fact that I'm not a loser (like all other posters on anonymous imageboards, I am tall, good-looking, wealthy, well-endowed, in great shape, have lots of sex, etc). I've actually changed my beliefs because of some of the arguments and discussions I've had on the motte to boot, so I'm fairly certain I am actually amenable to rational arguments.
And I'm not alone. Greta Thunberg qualifies as an antisemite now too for the same reasons, and she then went on to get sexually assaulted while in Israeli captivity - good luck making the case that she's an antisemite because she just has an irrational hatred of jews when The Jewish State detained and assaulted her for trying to deliver food to starving children. Similarly, the most recent case from my home country was this story - https://michaelwest.com.au/antisemitism-st-vincents-heartless-treatment-of-cardiologist-who-asked-a-question/ A cardiologist who has saved countless lives, developed heart transplant surgical techniques and visits an indigenous community to provide healthcare on a regular basis is now prevented from performing his literally life-saving work because of the zionist lobby's efforts to defend the genocide they're undertaking in Palestine. To use an example from the US, Ms Rachel's "antisemitism" very clearly comes from her love of children and opposition to the people currently creating vast numbers of child amputees (and child corpses) rather than some kind of personal failing on her part.
People who learn about and see this stuff get legitimately upset - and the idea that this heart surgeon is "unreachable by any means" doesn't even rise to the level of a joke. Israel has engaged in a campaign of mass murder and openly bribes western politicians to ensure that our tax dollars continue to support what they're doing despite the opposition of the majority of the population. These are real, serious reasons for people to oppose Israel, and Israel goes out of its way to make sure that criticism of their state is classified as antisemitism. I think that this is extremely dangerous, because when you tell people that opposing the murder and mutilation of innocent children is antisemitism you don't stop people from getting upset about what happened to Hind Rajab. Rather, you make people believe that the social proscriptions against antisemitism are an evil that needs to be removed - and while I think that removing those proscriptions are going to cause big problems in the future, I can't bring myself to argue against the idea that a cardiologist should be able to save lives even if he engages in political speech that zionists don't like.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
8d ago
TVtropes highlighting particularly egregious examples.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
8d ago
Hypersonics dont do shit.
Are you sure?
I don't think we're really going to have a productive discussion here because we disagree on some of the basic assumptions about reality. I think that hypersonic missiles ignore a lot of existing missile interception technology and will have a huge impact in any kind of fight with the western powers. At the same time, I think Russia is far better and more experienced at using drones in warfare than the US - how long has it been since the US military actually fought a near-peer competitor?
Poseidon is an extremely interesting weapon system, but I didn't bring it up because as a nuclear weapon it once again just ends the debate and replaces it with a showing of Threads.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
9d ago
I am confident that in some sort of US Army vs Russian Army showdown
Russia lacks the force projection ability to really pose a threat to the US, but I don't think the US would be capable of invading Russia and winning in a conventional military engagement. Their supply chains and logistics would be far too vulnerable in any kind of protracted conflict, and I don't think the US can actually stop the newest hypersonics. That said I think the only thing I can say with real confidence is that no matter what happens the US would have lost a lot more money than Russia did. And of course this assumes that nuclear weapons have been disabled by a kindly wizard too, otherwise the conflict only ever ends in "everybody loses".
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
9d ago
A single shred of evidence that Epstein had even the faintest connection to Israel or Israeli intelligence before he became a close associate of Les Wexner.
What's the actual point of this argument? "Oh Epstein isn't Israeli Intelligence because he only became Israeli Intelligence later in life"?
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
9d ago
I've never watched TOS, but based on the fanfiction I've read it has to have been among the most pro-gay shows ever made.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
9d ago
If there’s anything I potentially would want from YouTube such that I’d consider paying for it is to tell me what the background music is that’s often playing in the background of certain videos that I like.
It depends on the subject area in question, but a lot of Youtube background music is just taken from the soundtrack to a Japanese Fighting game called Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes].
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
13d ago
That one of their editors appears to be a bit of Zionist apparently had no impact on their fawning coverage of Hamas talking points,
This isn't actually true at all. People have done the research - the numbers were even included in that article. But if you want another source... https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/israel-palestine-bbc-news-coverage-bias-gaza-war/
We found that “murder”, “murderous”, “mass murder”, “brutal murder” and “merciless murder” were used a total of 52 times by journalists to refer to Israelis’ deaths but never in relation to Palestinian deaths. The same pattern could been seen in relation to “massacre”, “brutal massacre” and “horrific massacre” (35 times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths); “atrocity”, “horrific atrocity” and “appalling atrocity” (22 times for Israeli deaths, once for Palestinian deaths); and “slaughter” (five times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths).
In the current Gaza war, when a former Israeli general was interviewed for BBC Online, he was described as “straight-talking” when he said that innocent civilians would have to be killed when Israel “crushed” its “enemy” and that “we need to be tough”. It is inconceivable that any Palestinian group would be given space to describe the need to kill Israeli civilians – let alone be described as “straight-talking” when doing so.
The main reason people believe there's any equivalency is that zionists tend to be incredibly histrionic and react with screaming meltdowns at the idea that anyone could oppose their genocidal ethnostate. Here we have a media organisation that the evidence shows is objectively biased towards the zionist perspective, and yet zionists still wail and whine that their coverage of "Hamas talking points" is fawning or that they committed hundreds of Gaza blunders when the evidence is clear that the coverage was objectively and explicitly (as confirmed by Raffi Berg) biased in their favor.
"LGBTQ desk" somehow getting veto power over any and all trans related articles.
I'm on the left but I agree this was bad - I don't think that trans issues have been handled well by the left at all. At the same time I don't think that a genuine concern for trans people was behind this coverage, but I'm not really going to fight you on this issue. You're right, it is a problem.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
14d ago
I am entirely open to the possibility that my enemies are dumb, evil or both.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
14d ago
As someone on the left I can assure you that the BBC is not in any way representative of actual left wing thought, or indeed the views of the left wing base. They represent and serve the interests of the establishment, with no real consistent political valence beyond that. They were relentlessly hostile to Jeremy Corbyn and still are - despite the fact that he's who the left actually wanted representing him. I'm not saying they don't hate Trump, far from it - but their hatred stems not from his being a conservative but from him disrespecting the established political order.
And, of course, there's the Palestine issue - the BBC's editor in charge of reporting on this topic, Raffi Berg, is utterly devoted to Israel and the Mossad. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/bbc-middle-east-editor-suing-said-mossad-made-him-proud
"Or things like that which really - as a Jewish person, an admirer of the state of Israel, then, to know that these people carry out these kinds of fantastic operations, it's really, it's what makes you tremendously proud. Absolutely.
"Talking about it still gives me goosebumps."
In August 2020, Berg posted in celebration that his book was pictured on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bookshelf.
I don't think you can really call a news organisation with an editor like this remotely leftist even if they hadn't already spent hundreds of hours trying to get rid of a leftist candidate.
Like another Trump could rise, just as easily as the Dems could get a Trump of their own.
Could? I think you're being a bit pessimistic there. Trump arose because he channeled the frustrations of his base and promised opposition to the policies that were hurting them. Since then, all the conditions that lead to his rise have gotten significantly worse - none of the zoomers who are realising that a six figure income isn't enough to let them start a family or live in the area they grew up are going to vote for another boring swamp creature promising business as usual ever again. A Trump-like figure on the left would be able to get a truly massive share of the vote, including a lot of people on the right wing who expected actual economic relief and instead got 50 year mortgages.
A lot aren’t willing to risk that brave new world.
Au contraire! Those people are doing everything they possibly can to make sure that a brand new Trump-like figure arises. If they ACTUALLY didn't want to risk that brave new world, they'd have to improve the material conditions of the electorate - but they'd prefer to spend that money on more wars in the middle east, more bailouts for the rich and their own personal enrichment. Maybe the growing angry mobs will be appeased by just banning Nick Fuentes from public discourse, but I really don't think so.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
16d ago
I think Australia has been successful without actively sinking boats,
It hasn't. The offshore detention process is corruption, with each illegal immigrant costing 1.5 million dollars a year in fees (some of which goes directly to organised crime). At the same time, indian immigration is currently running at absurd levels to boot.
I feel like it is worth pointing out that this would absolutely be better for the businesses in question. Microsoft have embraced H1-B visas and Infinity Indians with open arms... and look at what's happened to their products. These policies aren't actually good for businesses at all in the long run, but they are good for executives who get quarterly performance bonuses and are incentivised to jump ship with a golden parachute before the consequences of eating the seed corn actually show up. I don't think these people are just morons who don't know how to run businesses, I think they're responding rationally to the incentive structures around them, incentive structures which are ultimately bad for the businesses in question.
More options
Context Copy link