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This is the News!

Started by Funt Solo, 28 March, 2022, 05:16:33 AM

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The Legendary Shark

Lorenzo makes an excellent point. Where were people like me while all this was going on in the past?

Personally I didn't really understand the situation, thinking it was some ancient and complicated religious feud I simply wasn't informed enough to comment on beyond the most basic blanket condemnations of human-on-human violence. However, my understanding deepened as a result of the October 7th attacks. While the mainstream media proceeded from the assumption that the current situation basically began on October 7th, the better alternative media reports set the current events in the context of the last seventy five years (and more) and suddenly it didn't seem so complicated any more. Israel has been stealing Palestine for nearly a century, village by village, farm by farm, home by home. That's the core of the problem, religion's just the excuse. Now I understand. Now I see the barbarity of it. Now I feel "qualified" to comment and justified in feeling anger towards those enabling or excusing this failure of our collective humanity.

More importantly, where was the government or the BBC? Everything I've learned comes from publicly available and ostensibly reliable sources (Amnesty International, the UN, etc.) documenting horrific events stretching back decades. How were journalists and politicians not condemning this history of atrocities all along? How is it that, on the contrary, anyone who did criticise the situation ended up being viciously harangued or fired or smeared as a racist?

The sickening way our government is responding makes me feel like one of the characters in Mitchell & Webb's excellent Are we the Baddies? sketch.

So yeah, I am late to this party - but I'm here now and, as you all know, I always bring a bit of punch...


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Funt Solo

[Responding to Lorenzo's last post.]

Well, compared to the UN I also count myself in the group "some random", yes.

---

Now you're intimating that people who want civilian deaths in the Gaza conflict to stop are anti-Semitic. That's a ludicrous statement, given that a lot of the people you're talking about are Jewish.

At no point since the UN data was posted have you agreed that you'd like the civilian deaths in the Gaza conflict (on either side, mind you) to stop. I've invited you to several times. I can only assume, then, that you don't. All the other things you're saying seem like hand waving to avoid that central point.

I suppose this brings up the question of why you want the civilian deaths to continue? You don't need to answer.
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Funt Solo

And, y'know, this is not really about scoring points on a silly little message board. It's really happening, and it's really avoidable. We can protest to our governments, we can donate in the hope that aid will reach them.

Trigger warning - this C4 news report is not easy to look at (even just clicking the link shows you an image none of us would like to see):
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Definitely Not Mister Pops

Quote from: Funt Solo on 14 March, 2024, 08:55:20 PM[Responding to Lorenzo's last post.]
I suppose this brings up the question of why you want the civilian deaths to continue?

That's an incredibly scurrilous accusation.
You may quote me on that.

Funt Solo

...that you've quoted outside of the context it was placed within.
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Tjm86

Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 14 March, 2024, 07:51:49 PMLorenzo makes an excellent point. Where were people like me while all this was going on in the past?

Personally I didn't really understand the situation, thinking it was some ancient and complicated religious feud I simply wasn't informed enough to comment on beyond the most basic blanket condemnations of human-on-human violence.

On one level this is not a wholly inaccurate understanding.  There certainly is that dimension to this conflict although it has grown inevitably far more complex over time.

There is the small matter of the Crusades to factor in as the massed ranks of European chivalry answered the papal call to 'free the holy lands' (again, this doesn't accurately describe events during this period).

If you skip forward several centuries, quite a bit of the current conflict is rooted in the machinations of the late 19th Century and the post WW1 dismantling of the Ottoman Empire.  This is where Britain really comes into its own as a villain of the piece with its chicanery around many of the nations currently involved in the conflicts and tensions of the region although America and France are equally implicated with their manoeuvring around oil.

Skip forward to the post WW2 decisions in the wake of the Holocaust and you add another layer of challenge.  The establishment of Israel once more as a distinct nation, rejection of a two state solution and general indifference towards Palestinians even among other nations in the region, coupled with the approach of Israel to how it approached Palestinians as well, is arguably the latest phase in this age-old problem.

Another jump to the tail-end of the 20th Century with the Iranian and Iraqi revolutions and the establishment of two nations implacably hostile to Israel ... well, you can guess how that worked out, really.  The obvious hostility of both nations to America, and by default to the nation they sometimes see as America's regional proxy (although in Iran's case there is also a profound thread of Anti-Semitism) has only really been tempered by the decades long feud they were engaged in.

In Iran's case though, taking a leaf out of the Russian and American playbooks, proxy fighting has become the preferred approach over the years.  As a relatively low-cost approach with limited exposure, provisioning 'freedom fighters' and other assorted groups has kept the conflict simmering.

Of course the rather aggressive approach of settler groups in Israel has not helped either.  To argue that this is all the fault of Iranian-backed groups misses this dimension.  In allowing such activity, the Israeli state has given credence to the grievances of groups like Hamas.  As circumstances in places like the Gaza Strip have become increasingly dire, Israel has almost become a recruiting sergeant for its own enemies.

Even this is a gross over-simplification of an insanely complex issue that the greatest political minds of the last few generations have been grappling with.  It is highly doubtful that these issues will resolve themselves shortly.

Hawkmumbler

TLDR version: Its all fucked, I'm going to the pub.

The Legendary Shark

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Definitely Not Mister Pops

You may quote me on that.

Definitely Not Mister Pops

Another thing that gave me a chuckle was the BBC  unironically accusing the Russians of holding a corrupt and unfair election.
You may quote me on that.