Roboticide

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.

I feel like if Hamas knows what’s good for them, they’ll return any foreign nationals they have ASAP.

Beef with Israel is one thing, but “accidentally” kidnapping people from foreign countries you ostensibly want sympathy for is a bad move.

I mean, they have electricity.

Amish aren’t anti-technology across the board. They pick and choose, trying to prohibit what they feel weakens the community.

It’s common for Amish to operate phones or computers for their businesses, they’re just not allowed at home.

Are you talking about Tel Megiddo?

The only battle there in the last two millennia was in 1918AD. Not 70AD.

The people expecting or hoping for it in their lifetime should have read their Bibles better. I’m not religious anymore but I still remember one of the last things Jesus said was “You won’t know when I’m coming back.”

Just throw Matthew 24:36 at them.

There’s nothing more capitalist than pushing coal and oil.

And any rational green energy advocate knows it’ll take us decades to build enough solar/wind to fill the fossil fuels gap, but would only take us a couple years to fill that demand with nuclear and also produce fewer emissions. That’s simple numbers.

So are you just irrational or a coal-snorting capitalist yourself?

They’re private, so it’s not disclosed, but I’m pretty sure it’s been stated by Shotwell at this point that they’re cash positive.

They don’t even really build Falcon 9’s anymore, the existing fleet is so reliable. They’re the best launch provider in the game currently, and while they spend a lot on Starlink and Starship, their actual launches are tremendously profitable.

This is a valid way to camouflage rocket artillery that was seen in Iraq by US armed forces.

It won’t stop the US and S. Korea from also just bombing every garbage truck if it comes to it, but we then waste a ton of bombs on harmless garbage trucks trying to hit ~100 rocket trucks.

It’s a good idea.

On both the standard web page and through Sync, it shows the article text. But on any format, you can click the little link and it will take you to the full article.

And I’m sorry dude, but it’s the internet. If you feel called out over little criticism of your unwillingness to read an article before commenting, that’s a you problem. It’s hardly “vitriolic.” We can and should try and make Lemmy better.

I like that on Lemmy, you now don’t even have to click the link to actually read the article, and people still don’t do even that before making a stupid comment that is addressed by the article.

Yeah, and since you don’t see real ones that often the fakes are kind of convincing if you’re not paying attention.

Found one in a river once while tubing. Was excited for about an hour until we got out at the dock, I pulled the bill back out and gave it a closer look, and realized it was a movie bill.

Why do you guys keep talking about Minke whales?

Read the fucking article. They’re hunting fin whales, which are considered Vulnerable.

Which would be great if they were hunting Minke whales, but they’re hunting fin whales, which are endangered.

Whales have been used for a number of resources in the past.

Oil from blubber was a big one, and used in everything from lamps to soap.

Ambergris was a perfume base.

Spermaceti, the substance in the head of sperm whales, was used for candles and also lamps, as it was a higher quality.