polyploy

The choice is between imprisonment/discharge and participating in the actions of the fascist war machine. Is obeying orders worth ruining the rest of your life with the knowledge and scars (physical + mental) that stem from them?

You do still have agency, the choice is just between being punished for doing the right thing, or participating in something illegal and monstrous with the slim chance of never being punished for it. Even if that punishment never comes, the internal torment and external judgement will be unavoidable.

Seriously, there is absolutely no disguising what is being defended here, the israelis have been starving, torturing, and murdering Palestinian children for over 600 days. There is no shortage of evidence of their heinous conduct. If someone is ordered to participate in an illegal war of aggression on their behalf, it is their moral and ethical duty to disobey those orders.

the full quote, which is actually quite accurate and succinct:

"Because of racism, that's the simple answer I would say. Racism, and uh, basically, desperately trying to defend a destructive deadly system, that systematically puts short term economic profit, and to maximize geopolitical power, over the well being of humans and the planet. And right now it's very very difficult to morally defend that, it is impossible, but still, they are desperately trying which is... absurd is not the word, but there are no words to describe it."

When people are having members of their community kidnapped at graduation ceremonies, hearing stories of secret police trying to enter elementary schools to abduct 1st graders, that affects you. Masked agents of the state who hide their identities are routinely disappearing people, and when communities respond to protect each other from abduction, or protest these monstrous actions, the police show up to disperse them so the kidnappers can do what they came to do. They routinely attack people unprovoked.

If you have never been to a protest where the cops decided to escalate, you cannot know how crystal clear the barbarity becomes. These cops have been pelting peaceful people with pepper balls, tear gas, concussion grenades, and baton rounds. According to a study, those "less lethal" rubber rounds permanently injure ~15% of the people hit by them. 3% are killed, eventually dying to injuries sustained.

Here's a video of someone being shot with one point blank for asking an officer to identify himself, who refuses to do so. Here's a police horse being used to trample a man that is already subdued and surrounded.

The other thing to understand is that while the outrageously ghoulish shit ICE and other state bodies have been getting up to, this situation with the police has been the status quo for a very long time. The same forces have been doing this shit to virtually every form of protest for ages. These are the same people that are responsible for the highest incarceration rate in the world, with a for-profit prison industry, and contracts to exploit incarcerated labour.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the situation is already incredibly violent, that violence has just been normalized, and people are literally trying to protect their neighbors from being kidnapped by the state. Communities have been experiencing relentless institutional and systemic oppression for generations. Appealing to the conscience of people brutalizing and kidnapping targeted groups on behalf of the state is a fool's errand, they clearly have none.

Asking people to remain completely peaceful is to ask them to sit back and watch their neighbors disappear. It's to ask them to passively watch as more people get subjected to greater levels of violence, to show up and be beaten themselves for daring to resist the expansion of fascism. Burnt Waymos and shattered glass can be replaced, rebuilt. Objects are not people, and it's overwhelmingly cops that have been damaging people.

I am not advocating for violence, but I think every person understands the innate urge to rebel against oppression. Whatever shape that takes, people that are not putting their bodies on the line do not get to tell those that are what to do.

There are also people who have no choice in the matter, their bodies are on the line either way because state agents have orders to take control of them in some way or other. Before you think to tell people what they should or should not do, take a moment to ask yourself how it would sound if it was you and yours in that position.

Beyond that, expecting that years of passivity will somehow pay off is absurd. If it worked, the situation would be getting better over time, not worse. This regime is going to escalate no matter what, it's already deporting dissidents and shipping innocent people off to foreign concentration camps. They're already actively trying to revoke citizenship from all sorts, unilaterally criminalizing completely law-abiding people overnight.

We know where this road leads. Whatever actions people take to shut it down, history will be on their side.

If you would like something to read, a good and free place to start would be this chapter of israeli historian Avi Shlaim's book "Genocide in Gaza: Israel's Long War on Palestine", which is publicly available right here.

Some relevant excerpts about Jabotinsky specifically:

The Zionist mainstream settled on Palestine as the location of this state because of the territory’s resonance in Jewish history and culture. How large should the state be, what should be its character, how could it be realised – such questions provoked heated controversies within the Zionist movement. But almost the full spectrum of Zionist opinion cohered around the essential goal of establishing a state in Palestine populated by an overwhelming Jewish demographic majority.

This objective almost inevitably provoked conflict in Palestine between Zionist newcomers and the territory’s existing inhabitants, who were overwhelmingly not Jewish. Palestinian Arabs had no political stake in an endeavour that sought, as the leading Zionist diplomat Chaim Weizmann put it, to render Palestine “as Jewish as England is English”. On the contrary, Palestinians reasonably feared that Zionism could succeed only by dispossessing them of house and homeland. Palestinian opposition to Zionism was therefore as comprehensive as it was consistent. This fundamental clash of interests was spotlighted by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the ever-candid leader of Revisionist Zionism. In his seminal 1923 article, “The Iron Wall”, Jabotinsky argued that Palestinians would never “voluntarily consent to the realisation of Zionism” because “every native population in the world resists colonists”. This meant “Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population” behind “a power that is independent” of them. Zionism for many Jews was a movement for collective assertion as well as defence through national self-determination. Zionism for Palestinians was a violent colonial imposition.

and later

As Jabotinsky prophesied, expanding Jewish settlement frequently provoked Palestinian opposition as well as resistance. Such opposition was typically overruled by means of discriminatory administration while resistance was suppressed by force. In the Mandate period, the Zionist leadership rejected the democratic principle of majority rule in Palestine so long as Jews comprised a minority, on the correct assumption that an Arab electoral majority would vote to end Jewish immigration and settlement. Between 1936 and 1939, British armed forces along with Jewish paramilitaries viciously crushed a Palestinian national revolt. After the 1948 War, Israel subjected some 90 percent of its Arab citizens to military rule. This emergency regime facilitated the destruction of Arab property and expropriation of Arab land until it was lifted in 1966, by which time the state’s demographic objectives within the Green Line had been substantially accomplished. The pattern repeated in the OPT from the following year. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have lived under Israeli military rule since 1967: three-quarters of Israel’s lifespan as a state. The occupation has been enforced through harsh repression including deportation, arbitrary detention, collective punishment, and unlawful killings. By one estimate, Israel jailed more than 800,000 Palestinians from the OPT between 1967 and 2016; those detained were “routinely subjected to torture”.

The ridiculous thing is that by acknowledging you have no idea how foundational Jabotinsky was to the genesis of the state of israel, you've revealed how little of the history you actually know and understand.

There is a direct line from Jabotinsky and Irgun to Menachem Begin, a former prime minister who was a member of Irgun and who later founded Herut, which eventually transformed into Likud, which is literally the current ruling party of the state with Netanyahu at its helm.

These are not fringe figures, revisionist zionism has been the dominant tendency for decades by this point, though it has intensified and become even more vicious and genocidal as the war on terror gave them ample cover and support for their brutality.

You insist it is complicated but clearly have no idea how uncomplicated it really is. The first zionist congress was in 1897, and the zionist occupation of Palestine began shortly after. Colonization started at a trickle but ramped up during the british mandate period. By the time israel declared independence, it had already been engaging in ethnic cleansing campaigns and massacres for years.

Do you not understand that israelis today very literally live in stolen homes, and are in the process of actively stealing and demolishing homes throughout the entire region? Every week more people have their homes and crops taken or destroyed by settlers, settlers who poison their livestock and take chainsaws to olive groves that have existed for centuries. Settlers who routinely attack and terrorize Palestinians under the watchful eyes of the occupation forces, who will step in to detain or murder Palestinians that resist in any capacity. Settler who have planted millions of european trees over the ruins of Palestinian villages to try to cover their crimes.

It has never not been a settler colonial project in service of creating an ethnostate. It has never not been rooted in violent dispossession and ethnic cleansing. There have been figures and groups that sought to soften the brutality, some early on that even had more of a vision of peaceful coexistance with the indigenous population, but that has never been a real manifestation of the zionist project.

While all history has complexity and nuance, it is not so complicated that we can't see a very clear and consistent aggressor and occupier, alongside resistance to it which has been routinely portrayed as somehow unjustified. If you really think it's complicated, I'd wager you've literally never even attempted to understand the history from the perspective of Palestinians. If you had, you wouldn't be saying any of this shit. Do yourself a favor and learn so you stop being a part of the problem.

It's not accurate in the slightest.

It's a genuinely disgusting mischaracterization of violent dispossession and genocide as some kind of sibling rivalry.

This is not an argument between family! Palestinian people are being maimed, tortured, starved, and killed! They have been subjected to relentless oppression, occupation, and brutality under an internationally recognized system of apartheid for decades. The perpetrators of these heinous crimes do not need a stern talking to from a parent, they need to be brought to justice.

What is happening now is the culmination of years of this sort of dismissive patronizing bullshit framing of some of the most despicable things humans can do to others. The genocidal intent motivating these acts is spoken openly and plainly by zionist officials and media, and all foreign backers have made it abundantly clear that they will do their part to try to sanitize and legitimize these horrific crimes.

A reckoning will come, and absolutely no one who sided with israel, in virtually any capacity, will be able to claim ignorance nor innocence. Every one will be remembered for their role in supporting these sadistic genocidal child murderers.

anti-zionist jews are some of the loudest voices and most crucial organizers of resistance against the zionist occupation of palestine. fuck right off you antisemitic piece of shit.

Syrians deserve peace and stability, but that is not at all what is being offered here. Sanctions are cruel, and it's worth celebrating that they've been lifted, but the cost looks like it's going to be an international effort to pillage and exploit Syria.

These puppets did nothing while israel systematically bombed most of Assad's leftover military infrastructure, stockpiles, and vehicles. Literally hundreds of airstrikes without any meaningful response. They're barely disputing occupied territories, even as they expand. Instead they've gotten into border skirmishes with Lebanon, attacked the Syrian Druze, and killed thousands of Alawites.

The testimonies of coastal massacre escapees are harrowing. There are more widely publicized stories of door to door executions, but there's another pattern I heard described several times by people that lived in smaller villages.

Security forces would show up in uniform during the day, ask around about locals and their backgrounds, and disarm the population while assuring them that they would be protected. Then at night, there would be a brutal attack, and what I heard again and again is that the groups doing this are one and the same.

It's ludicrous to describe this demon as protecting ethnic minorities while his forces have systematically killed thousands in an ethnic cleansing campaign. There were a few scattered clashes with Assad loyalist forces, but Alawite civilians were then described as such in order to justify liquidating entire villages.

Just because this monster puts on a suit, gets some official uniforms for his dogs to wear for the public, it does not change who he is and what he does. Don't be fooled by the hollow condemnation of what he dismisses as the actions of extremist elements. This entire regime change operation has been undertaken not by Syrians seeking liberation, but by foreign powers conspiring to strip the country and its people for parts.

Thousands of Syrians trusted this new regime, believed it could be a step in the right direction, and were instead brutalized and exterminated. al-Jolani is an implant and a foreign instrument, and he's given himself 4-5 years in power. Syrians did not choose him, other states did.

Thank you, way too many people here who seem to completely misunderstand the nature of Miyazaki's resentment towards AI.

He was not simply put off by the appearance of the animations, but rather repulsed by the entire process and the idea that machines could ever replicate the creativity of humanity. This is a man that had one of his animators work more than a year on a 4 second shot, refusing to use CGI in any capacity to speed that process up. The notion that he would have anything but contempt for AI is laughable.

I can't speak for all provinces but the three I've lived in all had smaller private clinics for specialists, imaging, specific fields of medicine and so on that are established parts of the public healthcare system. In these cases, the government effectively works as the insurer on behalf of patients, but many of these clinics also offer services which are not covered. The Canadian Medical Association provides a more thorough explanation of this here.

Here's a different source for you.

The National Institutes of Health will begin collecting Americans' private health records as part of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s controversial plan to discover a cause and a cure for autism. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya told a panel of experts about the plan this week.

The NIH plans to gather information from a wide range of private sources, including pharmacy chains, hospitals and wearable devices with health sensors, like smartwatches.

"The idea of the platform is that the existing data resources are often fragmented and difficult to obtain. The NIH itself will often pay multiple times for the same data resource," Bhattacharya told the panel, according to The Guardian. "Even data resources that are within the federal government are difficult to obtain."

The NIH did not return a request for comment.

Kennedy has made autism research a central pillar of his role as America's official health advocate. He has made a number of conspiratorial, anti-science claims, including that childhood vaccinations could cause autism, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Earlier this month, he called autism an "epidemic" and vowed to find an "environmental toxin" responsible for the disorder by September.

"Overall autism is increasing in prevalence at an alarming rate," Kennedy told reporters at the time. "We're going to get back to it with an answer to the American people very, very quickly."

He further described autism as "a preventable disease."

[...]

Bhattacharya, the NIH director, also has a controversial background in the medical community, questioning early on the lethality of COVID-19 and being a vocal opponent to lockdown mandates.

That's fair and I understand the impulse. The point of flooding the zone is partially to create panic and confusion, but it's also a way to rapidly scatter a bunch of possible seeds of division or control at once, then focus on tending whatever works best, whatever has the least opposition afterwards.

There's absolutely no situation in which a fascist regime making registries of "diseased" children is unworthy of alarm though.

I point out the vulnerability of kids because fascists always start with their easiest targets. It allows them to normalize, practice, and develop the systems they are building while also instilling fear and eroding opposition. That's why we have to take this shit seriously from the start, the longer anyone waits the fewer there are around to fight back.