news

omg I glanced at the TV on the news:

• report begins on the ground operation of Israel with a headline of an Israeli soldier having been KIA
• apparently the bullshit bioweapon story or whatever has also spread to my country's news of course, why wouldn't it

This whole war would be over tomorrow if all of Gaza just converted to Mormonism.

Blinken told American Jewish leaders on Monday that when he was in Doha on Oct. 13 he asked the Qatari government to change its public posture towards Hamas, three people who attended the meeting said.

According to the three attendees, Blinken said he gave toning down Al Jazeera coverage of the war in Gaza as an example of steps the Qatari government can take to do this. Blinken said he asked the Qataris to "turn down the volume on Al Jazeera's coverage because it is full of anti-Israel incitement," according to one source.

Blinken didn't give any examples of the heightened rhetoric he asked to be dialed back.

Axios

It’s a cliche quote but it really feels appropriate now:

Hell is empty and all the devils are here

"There were no initial signs of terrorism."

Re: the Maine mass shooting.

Oh, you support sending tanks into Gaza or to Ukraine? Goddamn tankie.

Country Assumes They Are the World’s Morality Arbiter As They Routinely Have Terror Attacks

🍷 🍷

If Palestine didn't want to be genocided, maybe they shouldn't harbor Hamas terrorists, sweetie.

Israeli media: An Israeli interceptor missile almost brought down a passenger plane

The amount of water for all uses in Gaza has plunged to 3 liters per person/day. Like three liters. Two bottles of pop. For an entire day. By comparison, a single apartment tower uses 100K-200K liters per day.

At what point are people going to respond to pro-Israeli rallies with actual

How does the US justify voting against Russia’s resolution calling for a ceasefire?

This is what Robert Wood, the US’s alternate ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council after the United States voted against Russia’s resolution:

“I’ll keep this short because frankly, it’s not worth wasting any more time discussing Russia’s bad-faith resolution.

“Colleagues, the United States could not support yet another Russian resolution that was put forward with no consultation, that failed to reflect the realities on the ground.

“It is disappointing that Russia would rather try and score political points and further divide this council than address the current, urgent needs of Israelis and Palestinians.

“We all see that Russia is doing nothing to engage with any of the relevant parties who support diplomatic efforts, including by the United Nations, to get more aid into Gaza.

“I’ll say this again: The United States stands ready to work with all member-states that are genuinely committed to advancing peace and security. We must put the interests of the region and the world above all else.”

- Al Jazeera

"we voted against the ceasefire because peepee poopoo"

Genuinely insane that Jackson Hinkle is the most viewed twitter account right now

i'm more than a lil tipsy and all i want to post everywhere is how much i wish for the end of israel

I've been noticing an increasing number of people boycotting American media altogether for all the wrong reasons. They mostly claim it's "American woke culture" trying to brainwash their kids into being lgbt. This has lead to more emphasis on Mexican, Korean, and occasionally Chinese media.

Trump Jr posted a super racist disgusting anti-Palestine tweet.

Update For Both The Week Beginning October 9th and October 16th, Kinda

We're (mostly) back on track after the Israel war derailed me. To keep this manageable, for you and me (this takes me more cumulative hours every week than I would like to admit), I've had to substantially limit my criteria of what to include, and also keep things to headlines for this week. This actually wasn't that hard - I'm not sure if all the journalists covering Israel were usually the really productive ones covering exciting events elsewhere or what, but honestly not a ton has happened in the last two weeks. A few elections here and there, the BRI summit, a broken pipeline, and other such things, but not many flashy events outside of Israel.

I have also substantially cut down on the reporting on Israel in the update. Thankfully the list of sources I've curated is now of sufficient quality that I wasn't wading through endless takes like "Israel might be bad, but Hamas is even worse!" and "Over 1000 Israelis brutally murdered by terrorists, also there's a few thousand deceased Palestinians, but that's not important here and they deserve it actually." While an update consisting of a thousand dipshittery articles would be pretty funny in any other circumstance, I don't want their rotten sewage in my updates in this case. And, honestly, I didn't fancy having like 50 headlines slowly showing the number of dead Palestinian children and destroyed buildings increasing as the days went by. Nonetheless there's still a pretty decent number of pieces there, from October 7th all the way to decades in the future to today.

Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 House Republican, dropped his bid for speaker on Tuesday hours after securing his divided party’s nomination, after a swift backlash from the right, including former President Donald J. Trump, left his candidacy in shambles.

lmao this is amazing. They nominated Scalise but realized he wasn't viable so no vote, nominated Jordan and held three failed votes, nominated Emmer but realized he wasn't viable either. I think they literally have no viable options.

Next I'm thinking they might nominate another Freedom Caucus member, probably Hern or Donalds, who won't be able to get enough of the moderate vote like Jordan. Then another moderate who won't get the Freedom Caucus vote, and the circus goes on.

Absolute funniest outcome is either Trump or them just putting McCarthy back. Second funniest is no speaker until 2025, especially if they don't empower McHenry to do actual speaker duties.

Unfortunately, Democrats really wanna get that genocide funding passed, so at some point they'll probably cave and vote present or something. But that was speculated for Emmer and they didn't do it.

And some numbers (will include in further comments to keep track of the circus):
Floor votes: 3
R nomination ballots: 8, plus a vote to remove Jordan and two failed post-nomination loyalty votes.

Ron DeSantis hasn't been in the news (that I've seen) since the second GOP debate, the last week of September. washed

There is ongoing rocket and mortar fire out of Gaza basically on and off all day. I'm a little over posting all of them at this point so I won't, we're essentially past the point of this being a short event now unless a political miracle happens.

I'll be posting any notable interesting things that are different to the usual routine fighting and bombardment. Along with any of the good propaganda I come across.

Just thought I'd mention this in case anyone thinks this is burnout. It's more like avoiding the stuff that has now become routine.

Boiling down to fundamentals I've encountered two types of arguments in the past few weeks:

Hamas is beheading babies, so retaliation makes sense, Israel has a right to defend itself, Jewish people are entitled to their homeland

deranged, out of touch with reality, historically ignorant

Well Hamas is a conservative islamic organization led by dudes living in Qatar, so they would just create their own apartheid ethnostate lead by rich palestinians

this is just bizarre radlib bothsidesing using a hypothetical outcome to Hamas winning and them not being perfect secular social democrats

And this made me realize that the biggest propaganda achievement by Israel and the US has been convincing people that this is between Israel and Hamas, and not an anti-apartheid insurrection that happens to be led by Hamas among others.

In other action, the Committee approved a draft on the right to food by a recorded vote of 180 in favour to 2 against (Israel, United States), with no abstentions, expressing alarm that in 2020, the number of people lacking access to adequate food rose by 320 million ‑ to 2.4 billion ‑ amounting to nearly a third of the world’s population, and that between 720 million and 811 million people faced hunger.

November 2021

Like I understand why the US would vote against it (agricultural company lobbying), but why would Israel? It really seems like voting against that draft resolution provides no tangible benefit to Israel.

Does anyone have a breakdown of military and civilian deaths from the Al-Aqsa Flood? I've been trying and every single article obfuscates the military impact of the operation and basically insinuates that it was a massacre of civilians.

The IDF is using a film festival model for their release of all the evidence they claim to have against Hamas.

Netanyahu: 'We are the people of light, they are the people of darkness; light will triumph over darkness, and we will fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah'

Been reading William Gibson's The peripheral, and came across this topical scene:

"Indeed," said Lowbeer. "The use of explosives is unusual, and we prefer to keep it so. Too much like asymmetric warfare."

"Terrorism," said the rental.

"We prefer not to use that term," said Lowbeer, studying her candle flame with something that looked to Netherton to be regret, "if only because terror should remain the sole prerogative of the state."

many Long Island IDF volunteers will meet their ends tonight