No, and I didnt say that. One bad deed doesn’t absolve another. The main point of my comment is that there are still women being held hostage that are probably experiencing sexual torture right now and desperately need to be rescued immediately. Do you want to wait years for the final investigation before prioritizing the release of these poor women?
So, rather than believe the words of the UN report, the 5000 photographs and the 50 hours of video they reviewed, you are proposing a conspiracy theory that the Israeli government’s reason for refusing to cooperate with certain people in certain ways means that the rapes never happened? Dude…
“The men are experiencing Ladies Lounge, their experience of rejection is the artwork,” Kaechele told the Guardian.
This is so interesting. I interpret this to mean that having a man sue them for discrimination could also be considered part of the experience of the artwork. It is very clever and very modern, and also good media exposure. It reminds me of when Banksy sold a piece of art at auction and the frame was a disguised paper shredder that shredded the artwork immediately after it was bought. I hope the media continues to cover this story to see if the artist/museum reveals that being sued for discrimination was their intention all along.
That’s why I said preliminary investigation. They said that there was enough clear and convincing evidence to warrant a full investigation by a range of UN bodies. That doesn’t make it propaganda, you troll. It means that they are certain that sexual violence occurred, just not the full extent of it.
The UN conducted a preliminary investigation and found clear and convincing evidence of rape, gang rape, sexualized torture, and even sex with the corpses. Just think about that for moment and imagine what those poor female hostages are almost certainly going through right now. Disgusting. Hamas is the absolute scum of the earth.
From the UN report:
Based on the information it gathered, the mission team found clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment has been committed against hostages and has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing against those still held in captivity. In line with a survivor/victim-centered approach, findings are conveyed in generic terms and details are not revealed.
In the context of the coordinated attack by Hamas and other armed groups against civilian and military targets throughout the Gaza periphery, the mission team found that there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred in multiple locations during the 7 October attacks, including rape and gang-rape in at least three locations, namely: the Nova music festival site and its surroundings, Road 232, and Kibbutz Re’im. In most of these incidents, victims first subjected to rape were then killed, and at least two incidents relate to the rape of women’s corpses.
https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/press-release/israel-west-bank-mission/
Thanks, you summed it up nicely. I’m very committed, both personally and professionally, to the left in terms of social policy, but I recognize our tendency towards tribalism, doctrinaire language policing, and groupthink.
Also, you nailed it when you said that one of main differences between left and right is their degree of earnestness. Anyone who has watched the development of identity politics since the 1990s can recognize that the right is now just doing a bad imitation of the left’s rhetorical tactics. That’s why they seem disingenuous: because most of them are acting out their impression of the so-called “radical left”, but from the other side.
Whether you agreed with them or not, the right used to pride themselves on being the sober, fiscally conservative, “responsible”, establishment people, while the left were the loud, obnoxious ones screaming about identity and shaming normal people for their supposed “privilege”.
The rise of the Tea Party marks the beginning of the right-wing adoption of these left-wing identity politics tactics. The right has now become a radical reactionary movement rather than the small-c fiscal conservatives of the past. Watching the nuttiness on the right makes me think that the transformation happened largely because many middle- and working-class whites now see themselves as victims of the same race-based persecution that the left correctly complained about for decades, so they’ve just leaned into it.
All of this reminds me of Foucault’s assertion that ideologies are not about right and wrong, but rather about power. That’s why we are in the middle of a culture war. Of course, we can’t let the oligarchs, the fascists, or the Christian Nationalists win, but the left is not entirely innocent either in the sense that we have demonized and alienated a very large segment of Western society. I don’t absolve myself, either. I have railed against the right, especially the religious right, in the past just as hard as anyone.
I wish you were correct, but you aren’t. The left is famous for its identity politics, which is precisely an in-group/out-group game. Also, the left is just as bad as the right when it comes to lacking nuance and brigading people who express ideas that the hive mind doesn’t like.
That was a very well-crafted and insightful comment, especially that last paragraph.
What historical precedents would you cite as examples of your statement, “fascism is a natural consequence of late-stage capitalism”?
If Trump gets into office, you better believe Saudi, Qatar, and the UAE will be whispering sweet nothing’s into his ear while donating some sweet money to his corporations to care more about Palestine.
I don’t think the Saudi royal family cares about Gaza. They may talk the talk because it helps cement their regional leadership. But billionaire Arab oil monarchs don’t care about a bunch of half-Arab refugees hiding in tunnels under shanty towns.
The truth is that radical Islamist groups like Hamas, the Houthis, and ISIS are a potentially grave threat to the Saudi royal family. It is absolutely in the Saudi’s interest to have distraction targets. The US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict, the Syria war, Houthi attacks on western-owned Red Sea shipping, simmering tensions between the US and Iran… these are all good for thr Saudis. They all increase the price of oil, make Saudi Arabia an attractive, stable ally for the West, and keep Islamist radicals focused on the evil unbelievers rather than the evil oil monarchs.
That’s a workaround, not a fix.
I’ve never seen that diagram before. I like it.
I think Americans need to absorb a bit more global context about the left-right spectrum. I see people saying that policies like universal health care, access to abortion, basic worker rights and affordable education are “far left”. Most of the proposed policies of the left in the US are centrist in the rest of the Western world. Unless you are advocating for a Communist regime along the lines of the Soviet Union or Maoist China, you aren’t really “far left”. Similarly, unless someone is advocating for a fascist dictator state, we should probably not call them “far right”. Of course, that is what Trumpists advocate for, so they really are far right!
Not at all. I identified a particular historical event where the French failed badly. Identifying one country’s specific mistakes doesn’t imply that others are angels. For example, obviously no one would claim that Germany and Japan were “angels” during WW2, but that goes without saying, right?
In fact, I responded to another commenter who called them out for racism and arrogance because that is far too general a claim with no evidence.
Tough guy calling people names while hiding behind a keyboard. I loooove meeting guys like you in real life, LOL.
No, calling someone a liar is making an assumption about their intentions, which, in most cases, you do not know.
Sure, when you hear false statements from a public figure all the time, like Trump for example, you can eventually have enough data to conclude that he is a liar. Do you have that kind of data on the commenter you replied to? No? Well, then it is more appropriate to assume they are mistaken. At least in English, calling someone a liar is very, very aggressive.
Maybe the upvotes have nothing to do with the statement about how Hamas was elected, which is frankly not that interesting, and everything to do with the fact that the commenter correctly identified Hamas as a religio-fascist organization. You can disagree without calling someone a liar. It is more conducive to conversation to assume that someone is mistaken or has different information than you do. Calling someone a liar is contrary to the spirit of good faith debate.
Okay, good, keep doing what you’re doing.
What? That isn’t even a sentence.
Gotcha. “We’ll stop raping your women once you agree to the ceasefire. Never mind that the ceasefire is only necessary because we raped and killed your citizens first.” Good logic. What a humanitarian you are. What should we call that, “rape diplomacy”?