PugJesus

Enjoy. The short of it is what you probably already expect: The Quartet (most relevantly the EU and US) imposed sanctions on the PA, Israel arrested a ton of Palestinian MPs, ministers and Hamas members, the US and Israel conspired with Fatah to overthrow the democratically elected Hamas government (either by calling new elections or by force) and the Quartet (again, most relevantly the EU and US) managed to somehow ignore all this and call on Hamas to moderate, accept Israel’s right to exist and denounce violence, nonsense that stopped working in 1996. Basically Western countries spat in the face of the democratic process they promoted when it didn’t produce the puppets they wanted it to produce. And to rub salt in the wound who did they want to lead after Hamas was deposed? Fucking Mahmoud Abbas, the guy who has been running Fatah (and therefore the West Bank) for 20 years.

I have a lot I could say on this, but for now, I'll keep it at "This is what I understood the reaction to be and I disagree with your characterization", since this conversation is already covering a whole lot of shit.

No effective resistance was going to make it without Israeli massacres.

That's not my point. My point is that Hamas is not what has raised awareness, but the increasing intensity of the Israeli state in massacring the Palestinian people for the aforementioned domestic political reasons.

It does. Western “interest and support” after 1996 was a farce, and not at all something that could lead to peace, therefore for all intents and purposes yes the West didn’t give a shit about the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza or elsewhere, in the same way your average white moderate didn’t give a shit about the suffering of black people during the Civil Rights Movement.

Ah, no TRUE interest and support. Got it. Just had to narrow and redefine the criteria once the initial claim was disproven.

By the way, how is the Western "interest and support" now, with Hamas's heroic efforts, going to lead to peace?

Are we counting the total genocide of the Palestinian people as peace?

Or is it fingerwagging as effective action?

Okay if you believe what you’re saying and are trying to have an honest conversation then ignoring everything that’s relevant from the other side’s argument and treating that as a gotcha is really not a good look. Hamas’s conservative mafia state hasn’t been pivotal towards Western awareness of Israeli crimes, but them picking fights with Israel politically and militarily in ways that despite Israel’s best efforts end up in global news in very unflattering ways.

... do you think Israel would be refraining from these crimes were it not for Hamas?

Here’s the thing: You need something to highlight the nakedness and brutality (which I’d argue is the same as ever, just with a brief stint with sanity in the early 1990s, but that’s not relevant here), because Israeli settlements just don’t make global news.

That's not at all fucking true. Jesus Christ. It was a major issue in the US, poster child for "I only know geography because of war", during Bush Jr's term, even despite the other much more major foreign policy issues taking up air in American electoral politics at the time.

I mean how many non-Hamas related events in Palestine have gotten global outrage since 2007? The West Bank is almost completely under the rule of the deeply compromised Fatah, and that’s why it’s always playing second fiddle to Gaza in global discourse.

"Israel is focused on genociding Gaza, therefore, whoever is in charge there is the TRUE hero of The Resistance(tm) and Making A Difference(tm), unlike whoever is in the West Bank!"

Love that Fatah is 'deeply compromised' while the literal Mossad plant is lionized.

That's a problem with the voters, man. That's my point. GIGO.

Conversion of plant material to animal feed, for the resulting caloric equivalent, is extremely inefficient. The amount of land, labor, and resources spent on animal feed is a disproportionate expense in the modern day, as feed and coverage are not grown primarily in a crop rotation, but as desired monocultures themselves.

In other words, the costs of feeding a society (or the average citizen, if you will) a vegan diet, compared to a non-vegan diet, might be more efficient than a very well planned society on a non-vegan diet (as many animal feed crops restore soil fertility, grow in less-arable environments, and have only marginal use for human consumption), but in the current environment of economic incentives, a vegan diet would be immensely more efficient.

I say this as a filthy meat eater who has no ethical problem with eating (non-factory farmed) meat.

I’m not sure lack of a primary was a problem. The last time we had a primary, there were several worthy candidates, including Harris, Warren, Mayor Pete, Klobuchar, and others. Yet, we still ended up with EVERYBODY’S last choice.

Bruh, Harris, Pete, and Klob all consistently polled under Biden as first choices before they dropped out.

NOTE: While there were widely-recognized iconographies for representations of imperial power (the eagle, Jupiter's thunderbolt, SPQR), there was no standardized flag. as we would recognize the concept, for the Roman Empire.

NOTE: While there were widely-recognized iconographies for representations of imperial power (the eagle, Jupiter's thunderbolt, SPQR), there was no standardized flag. as we would recognize the concept, for the Roman Empire.

https://www.runjeetsingh.com/inventory/105/rare_tibetan_sword

Me, after a horrific 20s: "Alright, the 30s are gonna be my decade!

... please... they have to be..."

Last one.

Didn't you say that about the last four responses you've made?

I’m blocking you for at least a week after this comment

Feel free to make it permanent.

so spam a couple paragraphs of the sheer hatred you feel for anyone who doesn’t like genocide.

I'm not the one who worked for a fascist victory by the party that was promising unlimited support for genocide, guy.

I said that they don’t learn. That’s different from me being their tutor. They don’t learn from others who try and they certainly will never learn from their own multitudinous fuckups. They don’t learn at all under any circumstances.

"They don't learn, but I'm totally going to try to convince them to change!"

Uh, okay. That's about the level of coherence I expected.

"Oh yeah, quote me!"

[quotes you]

"You're just trying to bait me!"

Yep. About the response I expected.

Sorry that you find details like "The actual composition of the Senate" to be troubling and mentioning it to be 'a slapfight'. Reality is troublesome to the whole "Dems are worse now than they've been in decades!" narrative, I know.

Please quote my alleged claim that I was trying to teach democrats anything. Or don’t.

You’re absolutely right in that you’ve taught no one a lesson

democrats are spectacularly bad at learning.