“Truth? You can't handle the truth!”

[Funt Solo]

Georg Rockall-Schmidt*: YouTuber, Lava Lamp connoisseur, successful author - hear him!

David Icke: [has broken me]. 


* I'm just being a King Cnut - I liked his video.

[Funt Solo]

I was going to make a joke about the Luton airport carpark fire and how "it couldn't possibly have collapsed like that just because of a measly fire" - but actually folk are already spinning mad conspiracy threads into jumpers of doolally without my help.

Lizards!

[edgeworthy]

I was going to make a joke about the Luton airport carpark fire and how "it couldn't possibly have collapsed like that just because of a measly fire" - but actually folk are already spinning mad conspiracy threads into jumpers of doolally without my help.

Lizards!

Its Luton Airport.

That it didn't unmask a howling vortex into a Hell Dimension is the surprise!?

[Hawkmumbler]

It was JUST the carpark? Fack sake.

[The Legendary Shark]

From a couple of years ago, BT's Kei Pritsker speaks with Abby Martin about the occupation of the West Bank, the siege of Gaza, and other aspects of Israel's criminal occupation of Palestine in Palestine 101 with Abby Martin. .

The BBC, of course, has another take in the 2008 documentary The Birth of Israel, which seems to substantially misrepresent the Nakba, but I'll leave it to you to decide whether it actually does so or not.

As to the recent atrocities, I'll leave the last word (for now) to The Times of Israel and its article, For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it's blown up in our faces.

 

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

The conspiracyists are right that Stanley Kubrick filmed the moon landings, but they failed to realise that he was such a stickler for authenticity and attention to detail, he insisted on filming on location.

[The Legendary Shark]

[paddykafka]

I don't know which made me laugh more - the 'interview' itself, or the fact that some individuals actually assumed that what they were seeing was genuine. I mean, come on. Vegan hand grenades?! 

https://www.facebook.com/kevin.kavanagh.37/posts/pfbid02RMmNRVuKPMnyD1EoAu8Wn7ZZJe7UTsiXuGUbkd5L5vByHNxci4hK2uku1vTTpeQml

[Funt Solo]

A true story: The Beekeeper

[The Legendary Shark]

All governments, to me, are nothing more than sophisticated pantomimes designed to foster divisions amongst populations and hide the excesses of the status quo. All of them - fascist, communist, apartheid, democratic, monarchic, religious - rely on organised violence to enforce their legislation (which they conflate with Common or Natural Law). All governments rest on the lie that some people have more rights than others. All forms of government, again in my opinion, are illegitimate and dangerous. We need better ways to organise ourselves.

Okay, so you all know this already. I've banged on about it enough.

Governments overwhelmingly attract the least desirable personality types into "power" - but a few decent people slip through, and more power to them, I say. If they can fix at least bits of this monstrous system from the inside then I'm all for it.

Anyway, I wanted to point to Clare Daly, MEP, who writes, "World Children's Day 2023. EU leaders sit around congratulating themselves for signing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, while their ally, Israel, "defends itself" by raining white phosphorus on a concentration camp full of children. Well, aren't we great?" She then posts this powerful video.

I hope her honourable colleagues can get their heads out of one another's arses long enough to hear her.

[The Legendary Shark]

[linked removed]

[Funt Solo]

I realize that news about the Israel-Hamas conflict is terribly upsetting. I'd caution against throwing out content, though, that sways into dangerous polemical territory. I wouldn't like to see more threads locked.

(I'm deliberately avoiding pointing out the specific ways in which the video that was linked-to crosses lines - but it does. I just don't want to get bogged down in specifics because I think that's exactly the sort of debate that would probably result in flames and thread locks - given past experience on the board.)

[The Legendary Shark]

I understand your point but, respectfully, I cannot agree. Ethnic cleansing is crossing a line, being angry about it doesn't even get close.

There is a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the only people capable of stopping it are us. We must shout at our own politicians until they see through the lies and misinformation, see what is really happening, and develop courage enough to speak out. We are the foundation of all government power. If we refuse to go along with them, what are they going to do? Arrest all of us? Bomb us into submission? As soon as they realise that antisemitism and anti-Zionism are not the same thing their spines will stiffen and they'll start to do what we pay them to do - to keep the peace, operate lawfully, look after people. Isn't this what they claim to be for anyway? To stop us savage nobodies kicking the sh*t out of each other? Without them, they like us to believe, there'd be no law or order. Everywhere would be in chaos without their guiding hand - yet see the global chaos and misery they inflict under the banner of "freedom" or "order" or "law."

Yes, the man in the video is angry. Yes, his words are harsh. But have not we all got the right to be angry about this? Have not we all the right to use harsh words? Everything he says is verifiable, and the Zionist Israeli government is guilty of oh-so-much more, from urging Gazans to flee south for their own safety and then bombing the south to accusing the UN's Secretary General of antisemitism and demanding his resignation for the crime of questioning Israel's disproportionate response.

You're an intelligent person, Funt (I like to think everyone here is), so I won't insult your intelligence by listing the Zionist Israeli government's crimes over the last seventy five years. They're easy enough to find on what I believe most people would consider to be reputable sites from Amnesty International to the United Nations. Even the MSM has documented some of it, though often in a biased way, sometimes blatantly so and sometimes far more subtly. Most of the things I've learned about the current horrible situation, its history and context, comes from The Last American Vagabond, which I believe most people would consider to be a disreputable site. Things I've recently learned, of which I was shamefully previously unaware, include things like; as Palestine is officially recognised as an Occupied Territory under International Law, on October 7th Palestine technically invaded itself; Israeli citizens are tried in civilian courts with lawyers and such but Palestinians (being Under Occupation) are tried in military courts which have a near 100% conviction rate with no defence and often no understanding of the charges against them; that Israel constructed the tunnels under the Al Shifa hospital in 1983; that even before the current atrocities, 95% of the water in Gaza was undrinkable and they were allowed electricity for only four hours a day; that Israel is an Apartheid state. And although, as an Occupied Territory, Palestine has the legally recognised right to armed rebellion, that right is restricted to military or other direct-force targets. Civilians are off limits and anyone harming them must be brought to justice. No matter the ideology or the flag. I know you all think I have some funny ideas about the law (and I do want to get into it with Professor X at some point, for us to exchange perspectives and maybe deepen our respective understandings), but rule-based international order is a must if our species is to grow up. We must force our governments to acknowledge this and stop letting £$€ get in the way.

It may sound strange for a staunch anarchist to be calling on governments to do something when I hold them all in such contempt. The fact is that most people do believe in governments as a force for good, and if this were true then I'd have saved myself (and you) a lot of grief over the years. If ever there was a time in human history for statists to be proved correct, then this is it. If you can make your government speak out, and if your government can make other governments speak out, between us we can stop a genocide in real time. That's the potential power we collectively wield, this is our superpower and we must start using it for good. And we have to start now. Because I guarantee you that, absent international disapprobation, this slaughter will continue until Palestine and its people have been erased from history.

TL: DR - In this situation, with so much obvious corroborating evidence, harsh words are justified. That said, I should have labelled the link as NSFW, for which I apologise. Maybe a Mod could add that?

[Funt Solo]

Everything he says is verifiable

Well, that's the problem, right there - it isn't. For example - he equates The Holocaust with current events. That is minimizing the extent of The Holocaust, which is an anti-Semitic trope.

(Note - I'm not saying he doesn't also make valid points about current events, but he does also minimize The Holocaust.)

---

Flagging this up to moderation - is it really okay to propagate this stuff on here?

[Jim_Campbell]

Flagging this up to moderation - is it really okay to propagate this stuff on here?

I've been largely giving this thread a wide berth, but it does kind of feel like we're replicating the shut-down Political Thread to a significant degree, if I'm honest.