This is the News!

[Hawkmumbler]

Fuck, I love those panels so much.
The slight change in silhouette from the Lloiger'd up sup' in the background, his face visibly turned to the reader, taken in horrible context with the foreground imagery.

I'm a sucker for Yeowell on his worst days, the his work on Phase III might just be among my favourite run of comics art of any era or form. Just peerless.

[JayzusB.Christ]

I have to admit I'm not a huge fan of the modern Yeowell style but his art on Zenith Phase 3 was just flawless. 

[Le Fink]

I have to admit I'm not a huge fan of the modern Yeowell style but his art on Zenith Phase 3 was just flawless.

Agree on his Zenith work. Just wonderful. I caught it in the prog, which might affect my feelings about it. Has his style changed so much? I wonder if he's simply better presented in crisp black and white. I thought Red Seas was certainly up there - not sure when that was though, caught it in the Hachette collection. Perhaps his drawing changes when he knows he's being coloured in?

[Funt Solo]

How a chatbot encouraged a man who wanted to kill the Queen

[paddykafka]

Sycamore Gap: Boy, 16, arrested after Hadrian's Wall tree felled

It's things like this that point to humanity's predictable doom. We are a pathetic species.

Calvin & Hobbes' reaction upon arriving at the scene of that tree felling.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=266931256312544&set=gm.3611475559120619&idorvanity=1951125591822299

[Funt Solo]

You've heard of Atlantis - now tremble in geographical excitement as ye hear tell of Pacificus Zealandia!

[Funt Solo]

If you want to see British politicians struggle desperately with the concept that the state of Israel can be both a victim and perpetrator at the same time, then watch today's Sunday with Derbyshire.

Summary: according to both Tory and Labour ministers, it's okay to bomb the shit out of civilians break international law in this case.

[The Legendary Shark]

To be honest, the Israeli government has been getting away with it for at least 75 years. Amnesty, and others, label Israel an apartheid state. Israel has also defied U.N. resolutions on numerous occasions. But it is the only Western-style democracy in the Middle East, so the rest of the club seems to turn a blind eye. We must open it for them.

Oh, and before anybody screams "antisemitism!" at me, I stand with this guy.

And before anyone screams "apologist!" at me, I want to make it perfectly clear that the deliberate taking of innocent human lives, especially for a political ideology of any kind, is Wrong and anyone who commits such a crime must be brought to justice - no matter which "side" they are on or which ideology they follow. This is how Justice is supposed to work, isn't it?

But I am not naive enough to think that this simple insight, which I've been trying to get across for years, is going to solve anything. It isn't, especially in the short term. What might help is imagining that 1) killing innocents for ideology is wrong, and 2) just as Judaism is not Zionism, Hamas is not Palestine. Then just get the word out. The Powers-That-Shouldn't-Be might just hear us if we scream loud enough. They might just pause in their blind support of a bully who's enraging others in the area, and the dangers that situation presents, just because "democracy." That's a simplistic assessment, sure, and calling out the Israeli government, and our own governments for supporting it, might be nothing but hot air and stink. Surely, though, in a western style democracy such as ours, where public debate and the public voice have every right to be heard, it's at least got to be worth a try. It might at least slow down the bombings, the invasion, the Unthinkable.

For my part, I'll risk the programmed knee-jerk smears for calling out the Zionist Israeli state because I'm also calling out Hamas. Both are guilty. I stand with the innocent Palestinians and the innocent Jews against Hamas and the Zionists. Enough is enough. These innocents are dying for politics. All their crimes are well documented all over the place, down from the highest United Nations decrees, through the most respected human rights groups' reports, blundering through Wikipedia and the MSM and down into blogs and vids everywhere. It's not hard to look up. It's not hard to see that we've been fed a line about Israel. Our governments and our corporations have not only been condoning this shit, now they're cheering it on. If this macrocosm of globalization doesn't convince you that governments and corporations don't care about you half as much as they care about ideology, power, and wealth, then nothing will. There are oilfields off Gaza. Israel's stated goal is a Jewish only state (deliberately blurring Judaism with Zionism). The globalists want western-style governance zones to fill the world. The military industrial complex wants the whole thing to explode so they can sell lots of materiel. The private sector wants to build it all back up again when the shouting stops. The banks want to fleece the lot of 'em. All these tides converging directly onto millions of innocent human beings strewn across a set of imaginary lines.

But tides can be altered. We've got to figure out how to South Africa the shit out of this thing.


TL;DR

Guys, we just gotta stop murdering each other for bullshit reasons.

[The Legendary Shark]

An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians.

I'm not a fan of top-down institutions, as you well know, be they governmental, corporate, or religious. What I am a fan of are the human beings caught up in those institutions and trying to use them properly - for the good of everyone. I think the above letter is an attempt to do just that, and I hope it gains traction - even amongst us cynical unbelievers.

[Funt Solo]

Why are mass shootings on the rise in the US?

That's a two-minute info-vid from the Beeb, but TL;DR - it's because there are as many guns in the US as people.

(But someone has two because I don't own one.)

[JayzusB.Christ]

I watched a clip recently of Piers Morgan making a similar argument to a bullshit-spewing gun advocate on Fox News.  Fuck Fox News already, of course, but fuck them even more for making me cheer for Piers Morgan.

[The Legendary Shark]

That's a really odd item.

Why is the presenter projecting as a primary school teacher? Maybe to tell us she's not to be questioned? And why shouldn't she be questioned? The BBC has been misrepresenting and cowering before Zionism forever, so who else might they be misrepresenting and cowering before?

And, how far does gun control go? One doesn't have to look far to see what can happen when one group has virtually all the guns and the other has virtually none. Do we include armies in this? Air forces, navies, police, government agents, licensed hunters, government-backed Israeli settlers, legitimate freedom fighters, legal mercenaries? How about the military industrial complex? I mean, all these devices of death come from somewhere, right? And governments, of course, who want to keep their guns because freedom and collect oodles of taxes because economics. They speak out of both sides of their mouth, advocating fewer guns for those people over there and more guns for these people over here, ignoring the complex spectrum between aye and nay or those people and these people to collapse a complex argument into pro or anti with no middle ground - the poster child of the false left/right paradigm. You're either with us, or you're against us. Pick a side.

What I'm saying is that it isn't simply the availability of guns that's the problem, although the access to opportunities presented by such a glut is most definitely a part of it. The presenter's conclusion is that mass shootings lead to both calls to ban guns and increased sales, with an implied causal connection to further mass shootings. A leads to (B+C) which leads to A. Neat, but somewhat lacking in nuance.

I'm all for cutting down the number and range of guns produced and sold - but across the board. As an extreme example, is there any logical reason on God's green Earth why the MIC should still be producing white phosphorous shells, cluster bombs or land mines?

Hold on, maybe I can explain it better with a few squares of coloured sugar paper and some crayons...

[JayzusB.Christ]

I'm all for cutting down the number and range of guns produced and sold - but across the board. As an extreme example, is there any logical reason on God's green Earth why the MIC should still be producing white phosphorous shells, cluster bombs or land mines?

I had a long post but I edited down.  Yes, I agree that if we could somehow stop authorities making weapons in every country in the world, it would be a far better place.

But the clip was about a different issue - mass shootings of civilians by other civilians and how easy access to guns by civilians is probably a major cause.

[Funt Solo]

It's not, indeed, rocket science. A Scot was jailed recently for trying to procure a firearm from overseas with which he planned to ... do unspeakable things. His plot failed, because he did not have easy access. In the US, there's nothing to stop the plot.

(It's not a conversation about military capabilities.)

[The Legendary Shark]

Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 31/10/2023, 20:49:51Quote But the clip was about a different issue - mass shootings of civilians by other civilians and how easy access to guns by civilians is probably a major cause.


Which I agreed with. What I disagree with is that it's the sole cause - not that the video makes that claim anyway. It just throws a bunch of statistics out without much analysis to make the argument "guns bad." Which is true, as far as it goes, but for many more reasons than mass shootings. Shootings by troops, agents, police etc., along with wider psychological, political, economic, practical and sociological issues must also be taken into consideration.There is no single explanation just as there is no single solution. Well, maybe universal enlightenment would solve everything, but that's a big ask.