~*Official Utterly Useless Old Woman, AOC, and UBI Thread*~

[RedSoxFan9]

21 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

Sure, but she's not even close to anti-Semitic. The fact the right keeps pushing that says more about them than it does Ilhan Omar. And her point is still well-taken regardless. Israel's government, particularly it's conservative, xenophobic, right-wing one, does seem to have the major powers of the world under its thumb.

 

there are different standards for people who think Palestinians should be treated as human beings

[TheGreatGamble]

22 hours ago, sblfilms said:

 

Why use anti-Semitic language (Israel is hypnotizing the world) towards a nation comprised largely of Jews if you aren’t to some degree anti-Semitic.

 

Might one say there is a sliding scale of anti-semitism  

Is it anti-semetic now to criticise a country which would love nothing more than to do the same to you as was done to them 80 years ago? The Israeli people would have no problem with the slaughter of Muslims. It's one of the worst, most hateful nations in the world. But hey, 'Murica needs a friend in the middle east! 

 

Israel is the oppressor, not the other way around, and more people should call them out. 

[Guest]

56 minutes ago, TheGreatGamble said:

Is it anti-semetic now to criticise a country which would love nothing more than to do the same to you as was done to them 80 years ago? The Israeli people would have no problem with the slaughter of Muslims. It's one of the worst, most hateful nations in the world. But hey, 'Murica needs a friend in the middle east! 

 

Israel is the oppressor, not the other way around, and more people should call them out. 

 

Let me make my point as simple as possible, she isn’t criticizing Israel when she says they are hypnotizing the world, she is slandering Jews. Anti-semites love that they can just substitute Israel for Jew and say the same things they used to explicitly say about Jews, but get cover because now they are just taking issue with the nation. And people fall for it over and over.

 

This can all be true while recognizing policies and practices of Israel that are objectionable.

[TheGreatGamble]

17 hours ago, sblfilms said:

 

Let me make my point as simple as possible, she isn’t criticizing Israel when she says they are hypnotizing the world, she is slandering Jews. Anti-semites love that they can just substitute Israel for Jew and say the same things they used to explicitly say about Jews, but get cover because now they are just taking issue with the nation. And people fall for it over and over.

 

This can all be true while recognizing policies and practices of Israel that are objectionable.

Israel and Jew are interchangeable. It’s them that insist it’s a Jewish state. 

 

The Israeli’s (or Jews, take your pick) literally have parades calling for the genocide of Muslim Iranians, and in support of of soldiers who murder muslims in cold blood, hailing them as heroes. Let’s not pretend they haven’t earned the ire of Muslims worldwide. They propagate the same hate that the Nazi’s destroyed them with. And the only reason they don’t create their own holocaust is because the rest of the world is against it. The Jewish state is steeped in hate, and it’s time they were treated like the hateful people they are.

 

and yes, I feel the same about Iran, but at least they have a reason to be mad, they had their land stolen with a few pen strokes. And I feel the same about America’s support of Saudi Arabia as well. It’s nothing to do with race or religion. It is all about the way the western world ignores their crimes, and even tries to stifle criticism of them. The house even voted to condemn BDS, which is disgusting.

 

So yes, “hypnotized” might be a trope, but it’s also accurate. 

[Guest]

9 hours ago, TheGreatGamble said:

Israel and Jew are interchangeable.

Wellthereitis.gif

[GoldenTongue]

6 hours ago, TheGreatGamble said:

Israel and Jew are interchangeable. It’s them that insist it’s a Jewish state. 

Always easier when painting with such a broad brush.

[RedSoxFan9]

8 hours ago, TheGreatGamble said:

Israel and Jew are interchangeable.

 

nope

[Signifyin(g)Monkey]

The best and most rational perspective is to simply have zero sympathy for either side of the Israel/Palestine inter-semitic conflict/clusterfuck.

 

Will you be voting giant douche or turd sandwich this election day?

 

I'll stay home thank you, they both suck.

[Greatoneshere]

3 minutes ago, Signifyin(g)Monkey said:

The best and most rational perspective is to simply have zero sympathy for either side of the Israel/Palestine inter-semitic conflict/clusterfuck.

 

Will you be voting giant douche or turd sandwich this election day?

 

I'll stay home thank you, they both suck.

 

I'm pretty sure in terms of proportionality, particularly in the last 20 years, this is not a "both sides" sort of conversation. Israel has had the clear upper hand for awhile now, and their abuse of power has been ridiculous. They were sniping medics at the border who were there simply to provide medical aid to whoever needed it last year, if I recall. Having zero empathy for either side is just as much of a choice as picking a side at this point.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

14 minutes ago, Signifyin(g)Monkey said:

The best and most rational perspective is to simply have zero sympathy for either side of the Israel/Palestine inter-semitic conflict/clusterfuck.

 

Will you be voting giant douche or turd sandwich this election day?

 

I'll stay home thank you, they both suck.

That is a fundamentally irrational perspective that all but ignores the historical forces that led to this situation and the current "on the ground" reality.

[Signifyin(g)Monkey]

1 minute ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

I'm pretty sure in terms of proportionality, particularly in the last 20 years, this is not a "both sides" sort of conversation. Israel has had the clear upper hand for awhile now, and their abuse of power has been ridiculous. They were sniping medics at the border who were there simply to provide medical aid to whoever needed it last year, if I recall. Having zero empathy for either side is just as much of a choice as picking a side at this point.

 

I agree Israel often punches too hard, but let's not pretend the Palestinians are secularists intent on building a multicultural society.  The election of Hamas is enough to tell us what they really want--an Islamic dictatorship--and it's naive to think an Islamic dictatorship is going to treat Jews nicely, particularly Jews it has a grudge against.  To boot, the Palestinians have engaged in terrorism against Israeli civilians to get what they want, which anyone should know will beget counterterrorist tactics that will hurt their own civilians.  For Israel's part, it shouldn't come as a surprise to them when these counterterrorist efforts encourage more terrorism, especially when they're so often more destructive in magnitude than the acts that inspired them.  

 

It's a right old mess that both sides are perpetuating, not a conflict where a sympathetic party is being ravaged by a villain while attempting to 'do the right thing'.  I hope it gets resolved one day, but until then I can't really justify much sympathy for either faction.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

12 minutes ago, Signifyin(g)Monkey said:

 

I agree Israel often punches too hard, but let's not pretend the Palestinians are secularists intent on building a multicultural society.  The election of Hamas is enough to tell us what they really want--an Islamic dictatorship--and it's naive to think an Islamic dictatorship is going to treat Jews nicely, particularly Jews it has a grudge against.  To boot, the Palestinians have engaged in terrorism against Israeli civilians to get what they want, which anyone should know will beget counterterrorist tactics that will hurt their own civilians.  For Israel's part, it shouldn't come as a surprise to them when these counterterrorist efforts encourage more terrorism, especially when they're so often more destructive in magnitude than the acts that inspired them.  

 

It's a right old mess that both sides are perpetuating, not a conflict where a sympathetic party is being ravaged by a villain while attempting to 'do the right thing'.  I hope it gets resolved one day, but until then I can't really justify much sympathy for either faction.

Do you know why Hamas was elected?  Because they were viewed as the less corrupt alternative to Fatah, which had done practically nothing for the Palestinian people since the Oslo Accords except line their own pockets and say "How high?" when Tel Aviv asked them to jump.

 

Do you know who helped facilitate Hamas's rise?  Israel.  The Israelis "helped" Hamas grow in order to undercut the secular Fatah who they viewed as the greater threat through the PLO.

[Signifyin(g)Monkey]

26 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

Do you know why Hamas was elected?  Because they were viewed as the less corrupt alternative to Fatah, which had done practically nothing for the Palestinian people since the Oslo Accords except line their own pockets and say "How high?" when Tel Aviv asked them to jump.

 

Do you know who helped facilitate Hamas's rise?  Israel.  The Israelis "helped" Hamas grow in order to undercut the secular Fatah.

That's a simplification; if Fatah was just 'Israel's monkey' it wouldn't have funded militant terrorist groups like the Tanzim and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Fatah Hawks, the (earlier) Black September Organization, etc.

 

And groups like the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are unrepentant militant Islamists.  You can't credibly argue the ultimate goal of their struggle is a secular pluralist society.

 

And, yeah, in its struggle to undercut a party funding militants fighting for an Islamic dictatorship, Israel threw its support behind Hamas, a party gunning to create an Islamic dictatorship.  It's not the first time it's engaged in this kind of ironic self-mutilation, and yet another reason that I don't really sympathize with Israel.

 

But I also don't sympathize with militant Islamists, either.  I'm totally cool with Muslims who want to live in a secular pluralist society--but, again, that's not what groups like the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are fighting for--and we both know that Fatah knew that, too.

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

3 minutes ago, Signifyin(g)Monkey said:

That's a simplification; if Fatah was just 'Israel's monkey' it wouldn't have funded militant terrorist groups like the Tanzim and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Fatah Hawks, the (earlier) Black September Organization, etc.

 

And groups like the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are unrepentant militant Islamists.  You can't credibly argue the ultimate goal of their struggle is a secular pluralist society.

 

And, yeah, in its struggle to undercut a party funding militants fighting for an Islamic dictatorship, Israel threw its support behind Hamas, a party gunning to create an Islamic dictatorship.  It's not the first time it's engaged in this kind of ironic self-mutilation, and yet another reason that I don't really sympathize with Israel.

 

But I also don't sympathize with militant Islamists, either.  I'm totally cool with Muslims who want to live in a secular pluralist society--but, again, that's not what groups like the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are fighting for--and we both know that Fatah knew that, too.

Fatah knew how to play a knife's edge game of when to accede to Israeli demands and when to turn loose its pet insurgents/militants/terrorists/freedom fighters - no doubt about that.  There is also little doubt that galling corruption of Fatah contributed significantly to Hamas's rise.

 

One doesn't have to sympathize with militant Islamists to be able to recognize that the Palestinians are indisputably the aggrieved party in this conflict and when the world -- including their fellow Arabs who have used and abused them for their own political purposes -- seems utterly unsympathetic to their plight, how does violent militancy NOT become a "justifiable" course of action?

 

As Christopher Hitchens -- who is no friend of Islam, militant or otherwise -- put it:

 

Quote

Suppose that a man leaps out of a burning building—as my dear friend and colleague Jeff Goldberg sat and said to my face over a table at La Tomate in Washington not two years ago—and lands on a bystander in the street below. Now, make the burning building be Europe, and the luckless man underneath be the Palestinian Arabs.

 

Is this a historical injustice? Has the man below been made a victim, with infinite cause of complaint and indefinite justification for violent retaliation? My own reply would be a provisional 'no,' but only on these conditions. The man leaping from the burning building must still make such restitution as he can to the man who broke his fall, and must not pretend that he never even landed on him. And he must base his case on the singularity and uniqueness of the original leap. It can't, in other words, be 'leap, leap, leap' for four generations and more. The people underneath cannot be expected to tolerate leaping on this scale and of this duration, if you catch my drift.

 

In Palestine, tread softly, for you tread on their dreams. And do not tell the Palestinians that they were never fallen upon and bruised in the first place. Do not shame yourself with the cheap lie that they were told by their leaders to run away. Also, stop saying that nobody knew how to cultivate oranges in Jaffa until the Jews showed them how. 'Making the desert bloom'—one of Yvonne's stock phrases—makes desert dwellers out of people who were the agricultural superiors of the Crusaders.

 

[ort]

On 7/26/2019 at 2:56 PM, sblfilms said:

“Israel hypnotizes the world” is a totally normal non-anti-Semitic thing to say @ort  

 

Well, two things... one, I'm Jewish... and two, I agree with her. So, yeah, I don't really have a problem with it at all.

 

It's still so unbelievably tame compared to the response. It's ridiculous.

 

Could some of the things she have said be viewed as possibly anti-Semitic due to some of the language having some historical weight? Sure, maybe. But it's still a huge stretch... and the reaction to her comments has been about 100 times stronger than it should be.

 

The whole situation is just dumb. They are vilifying her because she's an easy target. She's pretty much completely irrelevant in the politicly landscape, but the republicans found a nice brown woman in a headscarf to put on a pedestal and sneer at. It's worked out great for them. Heck, even the democrats got in on some of that action. Their initial response was also a hot load of crap.

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, ort said:

Well, two things... one, I'm Jewish... and two, I agree with her. 

My Dad is a black Republican Trump supporter, we all have our blind spots

 

But I appreciate your perspective  

[Greatoneshere]

3 hours ago, Signifyin(g)Monkey said:

 

I agree Israel often punches too hard, but let's not pretend the Palestinians are secularists intent on building a multicultural society.  The election of Hamas is enough to tell us what they really want--an Islamic dictatorship--and it's naive to think an Islamic dictatorship is going to treat Jews nicely, particularly Jews it has a grudge against.  To boot, the Palestinians have engaged in terrorism against Israeli civilians to get what they want, which anyone should know will beget counterterrorist tactics that will hurt their own civilians.  For Israel's part, it shouldn't come as a surprise to them when these counterterrorist efforts encourage more terrorism, especially when they're so often more destructive in magnitude than the acts that inspired them.  

 

It's a right old mess that both sides are perpetuating, not a conflict where a sympathetic party is being ravaged by a villain while attempting to 'do the right thing'.  I hope it gets resolved one day, but until then I can't really justify much sympathy for either faction.

 

But your potential villification of Palestinians is based on an assumption of a future consequence they haven't enacted yet (I don't disagree with this possibility but I think you overstate their intentions), whereas Israel is committing atrocities right now. How can it be a mess "both sides are perpetuating" when your example of Palestinians hasn't occurred? That would mean, presently, one side is disproportionately perpetuating things to an unreasonable degree, and the other side may as well be on the most endangered species list. The irony of the Jewish people doing it to another ethnicity when it was just done to them within the last 100 years is mind boggling.

[Guest]

40 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

But your potential villification of Palestinians is based on an assumption of a future consequence they haven't enacted yet (I don't disagree with this possibility but I think you overstate their intentions), whereas Israel is committing atrocities right now. How can it be a mess "both sides are perpetuating" when your example of Palestinians hasn't occurred? That would mean, presently, one side is disproportionately perpetuating things to an unreasonable degree, and the other side may as well be on the most endangered species list. The irony of the Jewish people doing it to another ethnicity when it was just done to them within the last 100 years is mind boggling.

 

Speaking of overstating things, the Palestinian population is growing. Israel really sucks at the whole genocide thing  

[Anathema-]

If the only group that fought for my defense was Hamas, why wouldn't I vote for them?

[Greatoneshere]

2 hours ago, sblfilms said:

Speaking of overstating things, the Palestinian population is growing. Israel really sucks at the whole genocide thing  

 

Just because their growth outpaces their deaths doesn't mean there isn't a lot of really bad shit happening to Palestinians. That'd be like saying because overall the Hispanic population is growing that the detention camps at the border where migrant children have died don't matter a whole lot. But it does of course.

[Guest]

40 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

Just because their growth outpaces their deaths doesn't mean there isn't a lot of really bad shit happening to Palestinians. That'd be like saying because overall the Hispanic population is growing that the detention camps at the border where migrant children have died don't matter a whole lot. But it does of course.

You’re really overstating what is going on. Relative to almost all ongoing conflicts around the world, the Israeli/Palestinian is one of the least deadly but gets vastly more coverage than the others and Israel gets vastly more condemnation in the global community. Why do you think that is?

 

Apoc said the quiet part out loud that answers the question.

[Greatoneshere]

7 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

You’re really overstating what is going on. Relative to almost all ongoing conflicts around the world, the Israeli/Palestinian is one of the least deadly but gets vastly more coverage than the others and Israel gets vastly more condemnation in the global community. Why do you think that is?

 

Apoc said the quiet part out loud that answers the question.

 

I never said that there aren't worse situations than the Palestinian/Israel one (Yemen and Syria come to mind) but between plenty of Palestinians being in camps and having few real rights (particularly in the Gaza Strip) I'd say their standard of living is so poor and they've been so disenfranchised (not to mention the hundreds dead over time) that it's not really overstating things. In what way am I? That it's bad? It is. How bad? Bad enough to chastize the right-wing conservative government of Israel over it. 

 

Apoc and I only happen to agree on the barest of terms. He said the quiet part he thinks out loud, but obviously I don't think like he does. 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

I never said that there aren't worse situations than the Palestinian/Israel one (Yemen and Syria come to mind) but between plenty of Palestinians being in camps and having few real rights (particularly in the Gaza Strip) I'd say their standard of living is so poor and they've been so disenfranchised (not to mention the hundreds dead over time) that it's not really overstating things. In what way am I?

 

6 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

presently, one side is disproportionately perpetuating things to an unreasonable degree, and the other side may as well be on the most endangered species list. The irony of the Jewish people doing it to another ethnicity when it was just done to them within the last 100 years is mind boggling.

 

This is your overstatement. Directly equating the treatment of the Jews in the Holocaust with the treatment of the Palestinians in the Israeli conflict is an overstatement. By orders of magnitude.

[Greatoneshere]

11 hours ago, sblfilms said:

 

 

This is your overstatement. Directly equating the treatment of the Jews in the Holocaust with the treatment of the Palestinians in the Israeli conflict is an overstatement. By orders of magnitude.

 

I wasn't equating it to the severity of the Holocaust, I simply meant rounding up an ethnicity and putting them into camps. I don't think I'm overstating anything in that comparison, that is what they're doing to one degree or another.

[MarSolo]

So uh, apparently Pelosi and Omar went to Africa together?

[SuperSpreader]

 

[RedSoxFan9]

 

Impressive way to lose your dream job

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

1 hour ago, RedSoxFan9 said:

 

Impressive way to lose your dream job

I assume you are referring to this?

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/business/media/times-editor-weisman-demoted.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR39tuXA4QfhbVLhGUOmSvPChP3VMjxdLu7jLA4BeFpfIVtIagQEknRZDlo

 

I suppose he'll be full time at Quilette now.

[thewhyteboar]

Just now, SFLUFAN said:

I assume you are referring to this?

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/business/media/times-editor-weisman-demoted.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR39tuXA4QfhbVLhGUOmSvPChP3VMjxdLu7jLA4BeFpfIVtIagQEknRZDlo

 

I suppose he'll be full time at Quilette now.

So now his dream job is to measure skulls.

[RedSoxFan9]

yeah he's had a very quilette summer.  he also said Omar and Tlaib aren't real midwesterners 

 

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/455514-ocasio-cortez-blasts-nyt-editor-for-suggestion-tlaib-omar-arent-representative

[thewhyteboar]

Soooo many mediocre white dudes are desperate for a date with AOC.

[RedSoxFan9]

he's going to accidentally motivate barstool employees to unionize

[thewhyteboar]

If Donald Jr. were a website, he'd be barstool.

[RedSoxFan9]

 

[RedSoxFan9]

 

but the tropes