Roboticide

There’s a theory that Taiwan could achieve mass destruction with just regular cruise missiles, no need for actual WMDs.

The destruction of Three Gorges Dam would kill millions of people from the resulting flood. Be a tough target and air defense would be a nightmare, but it is still within Taiwan’s cruise missile range.

There’s been no acknowledgement ever of this plan, but it’s pretty obvious.

If China invades Taiwan our entire economy will come to a screeching halt. Hence why America is interested.

If China wanted to invade, idk, Thailand, we’d just kind of shrug and say “Hey, don’t do that.”

That’s fine! We should not invade Panama. I don’t think the US is currently planning on it, but after the last 20 years I’m pretty sure most citizens would be fucking glad for any excuse for our military to think twice before invading a foreign country.

Presumably people who bought NFTs. If you’re going to trick yourself into thinking your dumb, AI-generated piece of shitty “art” was a worthwhile investment, you might as well enjoy the perks of being in such an exclusive, stupid club.

There’s a power discrepancy now, but there wasn’t always.

By this analogy, Palestine is a drunk 17 year old, who along with a bunch of 20-something friends jumped one another kid when he just turned 18. Except the 18 year old won the fight and the older pals of the original drunk kid have backed off. Beaten to shit, the 17 year old keeps trying to swing at the 18 year old, who continues just kicking him while he’s down and everyone is looking on in horror but unwilling to jump back in the fight.

The fact they went 1 v 8 probably contributes a lot to Israel’s absolute unwillingness to not put themselves in a position where they are less powerful.

It only took me a day to learn just that, so why more people don’t bother to understand the conflict more before commenting is shameful, especially because it’s nothing really new.

But it also doesn’t really matter because the people who do know more and are in a position to create (inter)national policy haven’t seemed to be able to find a solution, so I doubt armchair internet historians will either. 🫤

You mean the canal that is entirely within Egypt? That argument seems like a stretch to me, and clearly wasn’t the argument the above was trying to make either.

They’re a democracy and have historically been opposed to many counties the West was already opposed to. Their strategic importance is military, not oil.

Both Jews and Palestinians have claims to the area as “their own land.”

You may note that when Russia invaded Crimea, the West did basically fuck all about it. Russia invaded it and so Russia has kept it. You wanna play that argument, then Israel gets to keep everything they got in '48 and '67.

If you’re arguing it’s Russia’s to take “back” because Crimea is part of Ukraine which used to be part of the Soviet Union, that’s also not a great argument. Ukraine’s borders were accepted and recognized internationally. By that token you could argue Palestine should be able to “take back” all of their territory to the '48 borders, and Israel was content with that border at the time. The Arab nations weren’t happy with that in the first place though, which is why they tried to wipe out Israel.

So maybe you argue that it’s the pre-1948 border they should be able to “take back,” and it should all just be one state, like Mandatory Palestine as it was under British Rule. Except neither side really wants a one-state solution and obviously the elimination of the entire Jewish people is not a good one.

You can keep going farther back and claim that it was all Ottomans anyway so only those who have really lived there since the 7th Century have a claim (ie. Palestinians). Of course they’re only there because of the Rashidun Caliphate, so why stop there? If we push back farther we should really give the region to the Greeks. If they pass we can give it to the Italians, and if they pass, oh look, hey, ethnic Jews have a claim to the area before even Rome showed up.

Now obviously, the modern Israeli government is tremendously overreacting and the West should sanction them to hell until they return to the table for a two-state solution (or any solution both sides agree on), Netanyahu is gone, and Palestinians are given their own recognized state. Palestinians need support, aid, and the backing of the globe to push for their rights as a country. But Hamas is not necessarily going to get them that either.

1. Unarmed protest is always an option. It’s a harder option, but it is an option.

2. Hamas could keep their weapons, and target actual military targets in Gaza.

3. Israel already withdrew from Gaza in '06, but Hamas is happy to launch rockets at civilian targets in Israel.

4. Hamas could launch rockets at civilian targets in Israel from non-civilian locations in Gaza, instead of using schools and hospitals.

Hamas has consistently picked the most hostile options because Hamas doesn’t just want a free Palestine, Hamas wants the destruction of Israel and rejects any territory existing as an Israeli state. Gaza isn’t even fully isolated by Israel, but Egypt wants nothing to do with Hamas either.

I’m not even saying armed resistance is wrong, but what Hamas does is. And yes, Israel’s government is also just as wrong, if not more so.

I mean, the government is incentivizing it and enabling it.

Settlers wouldn’t settle the West Bank if the Israeli military wasn’t protecting them. The government is absolutely the problem.

Go try and take someone’s home by force. It won’t go well. But it will go a lot better when it’s sanctioned by an overwhelming military force.

And in turn, Western governments are enabling the Israeli government. If the West sanctioned Israel as hard as they sanctioned Iran or Russia, they’d probably think twice about annexing the West Bank. But instead of sanctions they get weapons.

I would argue education is important, because this isn’t actually really a religious conflict, and perpetuating that belief causes harm - namely that this is some intractable millennia old conflict rooted in fundamental beliefs and not one only a hundred years old largely just about lines on a map.

2,000 years ago the region was largely inhabited by Jews, under the Roman Empire, and known as Judaea. With the split of the Roman Empire by around 300AD, the region became known as Palaestine under the Byzantine Empire, and obviously started seeing a lot of Christian activity. By the 800s, the region was conquered by Islamic caliphates, and by the 1500s was part of the Ottoman Empire. For nearly 400 years Jews, Muslims, and Christians all got along perfectly fine in Palestine under the Ottomans.

But with WW1, Britain was fighting the Ottomans. Britain promised the region to the people who by that point came to see themselves as “Palestinians” (largely Muslim but with a sizable Christian minority), as well as to Jewish diaspora if they’d help fight the Ottomans. They did, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and Britain created the state of Mandatory Palestine, but decided to just keep it and rule it themselves. This was an unpopular move, but to make sure they didn’t have to fight everyone, manufactured Jewish vs Palestinian antagonism so they’d just fight each other instead of British colonial rule. This unfortunately worked.

After WW2, Britain decided it didn’t want all its colonies anymore, especially the mess it created in Palestine, so just left and told the brand new UN to fix it. The UN drew some borders, which the newly created modern nation of Israel was fine with. The people who would inhabit the newly created modern nation of Palestine were not fine with it, nor were the other neighboring nations, so there was a war in '48 and it’s basically gone down hill from there.

I’m not a historian and that’s a very, very, very superficial explanation of one of the longest inhabited regions in the planet, but it’s just worth noting this conflict is not really religious in nature. It’s two peoples, of various religions (or no religion at all, since there are secular Jews), who are fighting over land and recognition as a sovereign state due to a manufactured nationalism and border dispute barely more than 100 years old.

There is no path out of this that makes anyone happy.

I really wish everyone would accept this so world leaders could just buckle down and resolve any sort of permanent solution. Israel would have to make concessions but oh boo-fucking-hoo. The Palestinians don’t even have anything they could concede in the first place. Hell, the only thing Hamas would have to concede is “No, you don’t get to destroy Israel,” since anything else they’d get in a permanent agreement is going to be a step up from the current situation. The UN is fucking impotent though and partially responsible in the first place, but even with the power they do have seem unwilling to use it to try and fix anything. The whole time the US is happy to sell as many weapons as possible to Israel just on the off chance Iran looks the wrong way, but as long as a bomb lands on an Arab we’re seemingly not too fussed about it. Wonder how quickly Israel would be willing to make concessions towards a two-state solution if the West told them “no more weapons.”

Ignoring nuance is claiming only one side is right. It’s easy and borderline brainless to simply claim Israel is the only side wrong for bombing hospitals.

But this ignores that Hamas is committing war crimes by using civilian facilities as staging grounds to launch attacks on Israel. This ignores that Hamas’ charter calls for the destruction of Israel, and the only thing stopping them is lack of weapons. This ignores that Hamas, the democratically elected ruling party of Gaza, has continued to use resources to attack Israel instead of building infrastructure to actually function independently.

Ignoring nuance is to ignore history. Ignoring that the West created this whole situation, by both promising one region to two peoples then creating division where there was none to make colonial rule easier, and by also so brutally attempting to wipe out an entire people it created a hardline cultural belief that swift and severe military action is necessary to insure “never again,” (and two wars in '48 and '67 didn’t help either).

None of this is to say Israel is innocent of wrongdoing - they sure as shit aren’t and certainly seem happy to bomb 100 Palestinian civilians if it means they get 1 Hamas fighter. But rejecting nuance pushes a belief one side is right and one side is wrong, and that the only sides here are national ones. Both suck, both are morally wrong. The only “right side” is Palestinian and Israeli civilians being killed because the only “wrong side” - extremist Israeli and Palestinian leaders - are happy to kill as many civilians as possible for some acres of land.

But please, do tell me how my opinion is wrong and there’s no complexity here.

This specific conflict is more related to early 20th Century Britain promising two different people the same land after the Ottoman Empire collapsed and then being dicks about it for another 20 years. So UK imperialism, not US for once.

The US certainly still arms Israel, but the US arms basically anyone they consider an ally. The US would arm Israel if Palestine were its own state, were part of Israel, or if the whole conflict never happened. But Israel wouldn’t have existed at all past '67 without Western equipment.

Nah, you can go through the comments here and find people taking the easy, position here too. “Bombing kids is bad, so Israel is bad, so Palestine must be good, therefore I support Palestine.” No nuance, no attempts to look at a more complex situation or consider anything other than the most basic information.

Both sides suck, both sides will happily commit war crimes, and civilians on both sides are getting hurt. One side is getting more hurt than the other, but that’s just a difference in capability, not belief.

Hey, don’t forget those of us who made this mess and walked away,

The early 20th century British Empire?

through our continued oil addiction.

Israel, let alone Gaza, don’t exactly produce a lot of oil, and I certainly don’t know that they sell it.

This whole conflict in Israel is more about land, and the West supports Israel bEcAuSe DeMoCrAcY in an otherwise unfriendly region. The region as a whole might be messy “because oil,” but that’s rather tangential to this conflict.

In my experience, ad personalization is still so bad it has no impact, like in your last example. But at least now I’m not seeing random shit. I don’t really bother to try and counter targeted ads, and the vast majority of the ads I get are for products I actually already bought or never intended to buy but was researching for other purposes. Yes, Google knows I spent a lot of time researching drills, but guess what, Home Depot isn’t telling them I bought a drill, so I’ll get drill ads for a month. And yeah, I looked at a bunch of luxury sail yachts, private jets, and cars, but it’s not because I suddenly make more money. It’s because I’m interested in design and engineering. But Google just stupidly assumes I became a billionaire overnight and gives me 100’ yacht ads.

I’d honestly be more worried about a random ad getting lucky and pre-emptively catching my interest. Targeted ads are so reactive it’s not a problem.

I mean, kinda? They’re also heavily descended from 7th Century AD Arabic conquerors, but yes, many other natives may have adopted Arabic culture, language and religion at that time.

But Jewish culture is also derived from the Canaanite culture, with arguably more overlap. Jewish culture in the region can be traced back to at least the 9th Century BC, with the literal Kingdom of Israel. So the argument of “Well who was there first?” does not necessarily favor the Palestinians over the Israelis.

This has always been happening though. It’s not like the Ottomans took over the region peacefully. It’s been conquered and re-conquered by Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans…

That’s been happening for the last 5,000 years in that region though, since the Canaanites.

It’s not like the Palestinians were the first there.

And where these are most popular, the police would choose not to do anything anyway.