Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I was going to respond to this with something snarky like "yes, there should never be any hyperbole in one line chants during rallies" but thinking about it I'm no longer sure it's hyperbole.

What is the word to describe the nearly complete (>90%) displacement of a people, the destruction of all of their universities, most of their hospitals, their libraries, their birth and death records, their churches and mosques, their bakeries and other food supplies, and a large portion of their housing, the control and restriction of their infrastructure, including power, water, and communications, and the widespread random bombing of the populace, with effort to specifically target its writers, journalists, and poets, with the restriction of basic humanitarian aid meant to avoid starvation and widespread disease, all combined with the express intent to occupy the country and impose on those who remain a government by occupiers that will impose martial law and restrict the countries' ability to rebuild, to feed people, and to provide healthcare, all while establishing settlers with preferred legal rights, even including the ability to commit violence against the residents with virtual impunity? And outlawing such basic expressions of nationalism or cultural identity as showing their countries' flag or reading their countries' poets? What is the word for that? Genocide, ethnic cleansing, something else?

When Raz Segal wrote his already seminal brief article making the case for calling this genocide and even going farther and calling it "obvious" and a "textbook case", I disagreed with him. But I think he's proving right. https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide Support for Israel's war today, particularly without restrictions, and after seeing everything Israel is doing and that its officials are saying, right out in the open, is effectively support for Genocide. It's a bitter truth I speak.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

As usual, there is a lot of talking past each other with some using genocide to mean "deeply unjust action taken by bad people" and others using its closer to the legal definition. On the latter, I think it's pretty clear.

On the former, I think about it the way I do our invasion of Iraq. Tragic, wrong, and a massive mistake that will cost many innocent lives. And yet difficult to resist in our grief and rage.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Very much Raz' point, that legally this is pretty clearly in the category of genocide. The thing is, that legal category comes about based on the really horrible things done in the past. The unexpected part of the legal definition for some people is that genocide can focus on things that deny a people's ability to identify as a people, regardless of whether it involves things like concentration camps.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I think it's another form of cancel culture horseshit.

The proper reply to such posters if one takes issue with them is to put up posters supporting Palestinians.

Of course, the next question will be, "What if the entire area is covered in posters of hostages?"

In that instance, the proper response is to paper over up to half of the space with your pro-Palestinian posters. One is allowed equal time and space, approximating what he'd get were it a formal debate, but he may not take all the time and space.

And yes, for the next inquiry - this confers a duty on the part of people posting anything regarding the conflict to not take all of the space initially. (This should be obvious as such behavior is rude, as it blocks others who might want to just post a pic of their missing cat, but given modern America has no fucking manners or sense of shame or propriety, it needs explaining.)

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

You and I rarely agree on anything, but here we're almost entirely aligned. Only difference is I think our grief justified Afghanistan, but not Iraq.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Our actions in Afghanistan were justified, just as Israel targeting Hamas is justified. Iraq was not justified. Irrational yet understandable on some level, like Israel's lack of proportionality in Gaza.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Gay's later statements ("I'm sad," "My truth," and other noxious wokespeak) have shown her to be a creature living exclusively in the increasingly fabulist world of academia and an embarrassment to the school.

But Harvard did the right thing by keeping her. (For the wrong reasons, I'm sure, which are avoidance of protests if she were fired, and avoidance of appearing to have bowed to Bill Ackman.) First, a person is more than their most notable gaffe. She doesn't deserve to lose a job for once speaking in an avoidant fashion on the advice of counsel. Second, a mob of voices on the internet and among pundits and donors should not control what a school does or does not do. Bill Ackman is not in charge of Harvard's standards. No institution is required to bow to a group of people like Ackman or Stefanik who on one day cry about censorship and cancel culture and the next use exactly those same tools to stifle their perceived enemies.

Free speech should - must - be as close to absolute as possible in every conceivable regard. One cannot run around decrying woke campus speech codes and then attempt to employ his own.

This debacle highlights that we've become a nation of authoritarians. Everyone just wants what he or she wants and doesn't really give a fuck about any actual principles of freedom.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I disagree on Iraq. I think that was a cynical ploy to develop a staging area in the middle east. FWIW, I think Wolfowitz, Perle, and Cheney deserve to tried for war crimes in absentia for it. Bush gets a pass for being too dumb to have participated knowingly, and Rumsfeld is dead.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

It wasn't our grief that justified Afghanistan, it was that the government there supported and hosted a group that attacked us. And that much at least is pretty similar to what is happening in Gaza, where the de facto government is Hamas. No one thinks Hamas is a legitimate government, but not many people thought that the Taliban was either. Both are a bunch of nihilist thugs who took power by force and will not give it up willingly.

But Afghanistan is not urban like Gaza is, and the Taliban did not hide in the cities, but rather melted into the countryside. So we didn't have the same impetus to level Kabul or Herat or Mazar-i-Sharif.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

You may remember that in Afghanistan our initial involvement was supporting existing forces within Afghanistan looking to overthrow the Taliban. That is also a big difference.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I'd just like to wish very Happy Holidays to everyone complaining about Starbucks cups.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

That depends.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

An interview with my son's classmate, shot in Vermont for being Palestinian. This story has disappeared from most media.
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12...nan_abdalhamid

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

2023 was a great year professionally, and personally, but the news was bad overall. Hopefully 2024 hits on all levels! Happy to know you all, and wishing the best for your 2024s.