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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 22nd, 2023

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  • A lot of people dont understand US foreign policy. Do not interpret my post as taking a stance.

    US foreign policy is all about 3 key issues, carrot and stick diplomacy, containing China and Russia, and protecting the global market.

    Carrot and stick diplomacy is using positive reinforcement to make changes in totalitarian governments.

    Containing China is all about making friends with countries near China and putting a base there, along with allowing companies, military arms deals, and joint intelligence to happen in that country.

    • That is why the US wants Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalize. And do to that, the US turns a blind eye to tons of bullshit done by countries in the Middle East. If they were to normalize, then a solid logistics chain from Europe to the Gulf can be established, and the two countries would bolster the front there. Then the US could pivot its power projection over to Taiwan.
    • The US is powerful, but its not tactically sound to manage three fronts at the same time.

    If you remember how pissed off the US got when Russia put missiles in Cuba, then you can see why China and Russia will team up with everyone they can to foil this plan to contain them.

    Since the world is now globalized, the US has to protect lots of boats carrying oil, chips, and food. If something fucks up, then everyone pays for it. Of course, if youre resisting western imperialism then its in your best interest to make people suffer by blowing up the boats.

    Now geopolitics makes sense.

    From here, then if youre an idealist, you can make an informed opinion on US foreign policy. Should the US continue its world police campaign at the expense of people suffering under its allies?

    Can you achieve US foreign policy goals without suffering?

    Will a reversal of US foreign policy lead to more domestic suffering in the West due to economic turmoil?

    These questions should be debated and examined thoroughly.



  • Let it be noted that this is an opinion article.

    Editorials and Opinion pieces do contribute to social discourse regarding news, and may be correct, but unlike their normal news, they can say whatever they want about the news from the authors they hire.

    Opinion pieces allow news sources to use sensationalist and inflammatory articles to drive engagement without harming their credibility, because of that giant OPINION label.

    NYT and WSJ’s editorials and opinion pieces tend to be quite left and quite right leaning respectfully, to an almost satirical level. In my opinion, the WSJ’s comment section under its editorials are much worse.

    I’m not disparaging the article in any way, just saying for those that may not already know.


  • Al Jazeera had been live streaming and live reporting the entire thing, and there are multiple angles and phone videos from them and other sources that show the entire incident, from the rocket barrage, to the booster failure, to the hospital explosion.

    The Associated Press has the complete analysis to your question, including the videos I mentioned, posted yesterday.

    Alot of the videos in there were confirmed 8 hours after the incident, this is the first mainstream media outlet that put it all together.

    The AP was one of the first to report what the Gaza Health Ministry said, “Israel strikes hospital, killing 500”, then edited their article 3 times in 1 hour, with new titles and recharacterizing the report as “they said” to try and cover the increasing uncertainty of the situation. Along with the casualty number dropping. Now some might say “But any death at all is bad, 50 or 500!”. That’s true, it’s still really tragic, but it’s also a 90% error, which is a disaster for journalism.

    The article covers the JDAM theories, the Israel warned them, the Hamas announcing their launching rockets a little after the incident. All things that would make the situation more murky.

    I admit I do sound like I’m defending Israel with this. This particular event is a flashpoint for me personally since I’m heavily invested in the state of journalism in an age where the flood of information can overwhelm news and lead to innaccuracies.

    The rocket turning around video is a different video from last year.

    Unfortunately I got banned from World News on lemmy.ml because posting this was “War Crime Denial” apparently.



  • Well it’s understandable that you think the predators are random men in white vans texting your kids, grooming, and abducting them, but in actuality, a ton of the major produces of CSAM are parents or family members.

    This doesn’t account for a smaller, but significant percentage of self-producers that post online because they’re following online sexual trends, innocently self-expressing, or self-exploiting.

    Having the goverment ban encryption will only undermine the privacy and security of law abiding citizens, and jeopardize national security. Parents don’t have to send messages to their kids really.

    The police won’t protect your child from your spouse.

    Banning encryption won’t do anything to curb this concern of yours, its like banning car locks because people could hide heroin in cars.

    I can empathize with your stance, but I have to tell you, that the “protect children” argument has been used to justify genocide, racial segregation, and so many other violations of civil rights within the last 100 years.


  • Well yes, because it’s not up to the government to take care of or protect your kids. And it’s your job to make sure they can protect themselves online. That’s just common sense.

    Additionally, the government is still effective at catching bad guys without backdoors to encryption, and this stuff doesn’t stop you from monitoring your kids devices.

    Yes in the US, Texas for example has used publicly available information to jail moms who travel for abortions.

    If the government were to trample on the freedom of privacy, it would affect the right to protest, it would affect freedom of assembly, it would affect freedom of opinion.

    China literally monitors most of their citizens communications this way.

    We do NOT want governments to invade privacy for the sake of security.

    Because, if the government can see what you do, then criminal actors can also see what you do too.




  • Absolutely not, at first I thought it was infact an Israeli airstrike, but upon pouring over multiple angles of video that has been geographically confirmed, it’s fairly damning, and fairly convincing that it was not in fact, an Israeli airstrike.

    The incident had been broadcasted live by Al Jazeera too, so even if you have a bias in favor of Hamas and Palestinian struggles, all signs point to a self-inflicted tragedy.

    Despite that, its far too late since everyone already started protesting at embassies in greater numbers. PA president and Jordan leader cancelled meetings with Biden.

    The situation is deteriorating rapidly.



  • This is an old thread, but I thought I’d give my thoughts.

    I absolutely love the Android Open Source Project. The amount of things you can do with Android are spectacular. Pixels especially are wonderful devices.

    However, it’s come to my attention that I think iPhones make better “Phones” than any other device.

    Apple is in a unique position of having fast and sleek operating systems and software, and wonderful integration.

    Homestly if you’re not running privacy focused stuff, like your own homeserver, or a custom OS, or anything. Apple is the best for your privacy.

    The reason I believe this is due to their implementation of their Apple TV Box. Google’s TV stuff is designed first and foremost to give you advertisements, even on the home screen, and Apple does no such thing. Needless to say, I switched TV Boxes. Upon researching what Apple does with your data, I’m becoming convinced that the Apple ecosystem has become a better option for consumerist services, like social media, news, streaming, and banking.

    It’s not enough to make me get rid of my Android Pixel, but I’ve been heavily considering getting an iPhone, iPad, Watch, Mac Mini.

    Powerful math tools, diagnostic tools, chatroom apps, forum apps, Signal, games, emulation, privacy tools, all mostly open source software, they’d all go on an Android Pixel running a custom OS still.



  • Okay I’ll answer you. It’s wrong for Israel to cut power to civilians. It’s right for Israel to cut power to military targets.

    If military targets embed their infrastructure with civilian infrastructure. Oopsies. Civilians are now military targets.

    Palestinians MAYBE shouldn’t have Hamas in power if they’re going to power their military operations with civilian power. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

    Every world power knows that, that’s why most have pretty much gotten behind Israel, regardless of any apartheid Israel has done.

    The US did the same thing when 9/11 happened. The US did the same thing in Operation Desert Storm along with other NATO countries who joined the US in operations in the middle east.

    Nobody in the west complained then, and nobody’s complaining now, because Hamas did the dumb dumb.



  • I’m not justifying anything that Israel has done in the past. The main point of my comment is that Hamas made a really poor decision here on behalf of the Palestinians. There is absolutely no doubt.

    There is no moralizing or whataboutism.

    The fact of the matter is that this caused a divided Israel to unite in anger. And support for Palestine has been cut by all European nations and Australia. Palestinian sympathizers and charity leaders have been among the victims.

    The question you should be asking is if you support the Palestinian people is…

    What the actual hell is this bonehead decision-making by Hamas? There is no scenario of success in this endeavor unless the Western world decided to withdraw all support from Israel and give it to Hamas.

    Was that going to happen? No. Hamas never tried to establish good diplomatic relations with anyone.

    The world stage is a democratic club, and Hamas rejected it all. Hamas burned every single bridge with other countries no matter how many citizens of those governments complain.




  • Let’s not forget that the act of using civilians as shields is a warcrime in the first place to prevent this kind of situation from occurring.

    If Israel tells Palestinian civilians to evacuate because there’s Hamas military targets in that building, and Hamas troops tell them no. Then they die, and Hamas can cry wolf.

    It would be Israel who is following international decorem and Hamas making it difficult for any country to support them.

    Just now, Austria cut off aid to the Gaza region. Is that Israel’s fault? Nope.

    Hamas had good PR going and they fucked it up by escalating with brutality.