If he can follow up on even a portion of what he promises, a 2nd Trump presidency will bring the USA to a halt at multiple levels like a car hitting a reinforced wall. The best version of a Trump presidency is him raging daily as he's blocked constantly by legal challenges and bureaucratic measures thus getting nothing done. The worst version is that he succeeds in his goals, reforms the USA into a right-wing autocracy and destroys things like checks/balances and separation of church and state.
There's nothing damning after the "but" though. What part specifically of "but unfortunately they are the folks bargaining for Gazans" do you take issue with? That's the provable reality of the negotiations. I even call it unfortunate.
Israel has repeatedly stated their intent to continue the war in Gaza regardless of international approval. Netanyahu, among others, has stated intent to establish a long-term/permanent security presence in Gaza.
Since Oct. 7th the Israeli military has either directly killed or provided protection to lethal settler attacks in the West Bank, resulting in over 500 deaths in a section of Occupied Palestinian Territory that theoretically isn't at war. So there's Israeli military presence, violence, and oppression of Palestinians even where Hamas isn't in control.
Hamas are not good guys by any stretch, but unfortunately they are the folks bargaining for Gazans. In the face of continued Israeli aggression, disregard for international approval/law, and stated plans it's no wonder they're demanding that any deals have rock-solid guarantees on an enforceable timetable.
I almost never buy multiplayer-focused games anymore. Of course not all gamers are shitty, but enough are to matter. Having left those games behind I can see how they were taking more joy from my life than they added. If friends want to do private co-op that's cool, but it's also rarer now that we're all older.
As far as sales go, I love playing a year or two behind new releases. Patched games at a discount ftw and timing doesn't matter in single-player games.
At first I was like
But within an hour I was all
Generalizations like "All X are Y" should be used VERY sparingly if ever, and are almost never correct or helpful when talking about large groups of people - i.e. an entire ethnicity. Jews are people like any other ethnicity, and as such span the whole range of ethics and personalities. I personally know a very ethical and kind Jew who does not deserve to be labelled as an asshole or anything similar, and I know of many more who also prove that claim wrong.
Moreover, being abused is not a valid excuse to be an abuser. A lawyer tells a story about his client who tried to justify his domestic violence by saying he was abused as a child. The judge responded to the effect of, "then you should know even more than most people how very destructive and wrong it is".
Got to respect the decision to just step away instead of settling for mediocrity.
Serious answer: I remind myself it's normal to be shocked by some stuff people do/create. I check the content against my ethics, and try to decide if I'm being uptight or if it really is messed up. If it's something that isn't unethical/harmful but I just don't like, then I remind myself that not everyone needs to share my tastes.
If it's genuinely terrible I allow myself to feel the anger/sorrow for a bit, try not to let it become excessive, and congratulate myself on having limits that fit my ethics. I remind myself that good people exist and they are the ones I want to support, emulate, and engage with. As others have mentioned, distraction can also help. Video games, music, socializing - whatever will move your train of thought along.
Upvoted because it's a story worth knowing, but as far as I can tell this is just further harassment/condemnation of anything pro-Palestinian. As of the end of April, independent review "finds no evidence for Israel's claims about UNRWA and Hamas".
Israel has declared organizations as terrorists on bad premises before. E.g. - in 2021 Defence for Children International was formally labelled a terrorist organization after they reported the rape of a 13-year-old Palestinian to the US State Department. Josh Paul, a director involved with the investigation, gives details in an interview about why he resigned from the State Dept. post-Oct. 7th. The short version is: the allegations of rape were credible, Israel was confronted, the next day Israeli forces seized all the local assets of Defence for Children International and declared them terrorists.
EU nations have formally rejected "terrorist organization" labels being applied to humanitarian/watchdog agencies in Israel/OPT before.
So I decided to do a week of these posts and then see how it was going. It seems to have gone well enough, but it's probably time for me to take a break from this format specifically for a while. In true Star Trek spirit though I want to get some use out of the misfit ideas so here's the memes I didn't pick each morning for whatever reason.
Just to get it out of the way at the start - Hamas is terrible. They are violent fundamentalists and do not deserve support. Neither Israel nor Hamas are "good" and the only side that deserves support and recognition are the civilians, Israeli or Palestinian, suffering because of/under their evil regimes. Now on to the rebuttal.
Israel needs no "baiting" to kill or otherwise abuse Palestinians - it's their policy and has been for a long time. From the Nakba until today, the history of Israeli human rights violations, violence, lies, etc. is well-established. "Look at what you made me do" is such a typical excuse used by abusers that it's almost a trope. Moreover, Netanyahu's government deliberately kept Hamas in power as a useful bogeyman and an way to divide/foil Palestinian statehood. There is ample evidence that Israel has directly supported Hamas and other extremists for decades.
"Hamas, for its part, is alleged to have emerged out of the Israeli-financed Islamist movement in Gaza, Israel’s then-military governor in that territory, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, disclosing in 1981 that he had been given a budget for funding Palestinian Islamists to counter the rising power of Palestinian secularists."
"In a 1994 book, “The Other Side of Deception,” Mossad whistleblower Victor Ostrovsky contended that aiding Hamas meshed with “Mossad’s general plan” for an Arab world “run by fundamentalists” that would reject “any negotiations with the West,” thereby leaving Israel as “the only democratic, rational country in the region.” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official involved in Gaza for over two decades, told a newspaper interviewer in 2009 that, “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.”
As far as the nature of the demands: "one-sided deals" is a matter of opinion, but "we need guarantees you'll actually leave, stop killing/injuring many tens of thousands of civilians, destroying hospitals/schools/aid, etc." seems like a pretty standard request at peace negotiations. Especially since Israel has repeatedly promised to continue to prosecute the war and establish long-term armed forces in Gaza.