Go watch "The Jinx" on HBO to see how rich people can literally get away with murder in the U.S. HBO just started running a part 2 of the series. Is it any different in Canada?
I could've sworn with my pinkie on the Bible that Harvey had already died in jail. Color me surprised.
I'm not sure if this should go here, or the political thread, because it seems to be split along party lines, but Net Neutrality has been reinstated. I always thought that was a good thing, but all the Right-wing pundits are saying that this is actually bad, because, you know, stuff. What do you smart people think?
Net Neutrality, done properly, is a great thing. Right wingers are pissed because their lobbyists can’t make as much money with NN in place.
If the right-wing pundits are all saying it's bad. Then it's probably a good thing for the common person, and bad for corporations. That's almost an across the board litmus test; not just for NN.
Look at it like a utility. You pay for your electricity, you get to divvy it up as you see fit and the electric company doesn't get to tell you, "hey, it's Friday night so we're prioritizing televisions and hot tubs. If you'd like to do laundry you're going to have to pay our Friday Night Chores surcharge." Net Neutrality is that on a broader scale, because your data isn't local - it's going all over the world. ISPs are not allowed to differentiate that traffic, which is mostly great for individuals. The upside is also the downside; your ISP can't, for example, prioritize their TV streaming service over everything else, or offer a tier where you pay to have your Netflix prioritized over everyone else. The downside of that, of course, is that you can't get those prioritizations even if you want them. The upside is that these things are almost never a benefit for the customer - ISPs use them as a siphon to extract more money, so "oh well, we don't want to pay to expand our capacity - sorry your Netflix experience sucks. If you want something better, please subscribe to Netflix And Chill Premium, or buy Time Warner Cable's streaming package." In addition, prioritization can be used for much more nefarious purposes - like deprioritizing certain sites and topics if the ISP has ideological disagreements with it, or allowing large content providers to pay to have their data prioritized over other services, regardless of what the consumer actually wants. The internet as it exists today literally wouldn't have happened without net neutrality. The fact that everyone can carve out their segment of the internet, publish their thing, and have it consumed with virtually no barriers to entry, no pay-to-play - it has shaped everything we do today. Imagine if Facebook, with its unlimited money, could now pay ISPs to prioritize their data over other social media sites. Republican pundits hate NN for two reasons: 1) the ever-present bogeyman of "government overreach" which, if they were consistent, I could at least respect as a position. But that's total bullshit, they love government overreach when it comes to the gays or women or scary literature or whatever. And 2) it reduces the potential profit for ISPs - they can't use prioritization as a fee structure, and they need to expand their capacity to keep up with demand instead of just deprioritizing certain types of data. Oh and also 3) the generalized hatred for literally anything the democrats do, regardless of its actual merits.
Small side note: I've always felt that, ideologically, republicans should actually love net neutrality. It allows the internet to operate largely on what amounts to pure capitalism/meritocracy. Build a better mousetrap (by which I mean a small casual game for smartphones that lets users compete to catch mice), and the world will indeed beat a path to your door. Get those users hooked on catching mice and build an unstoppable e-juggernaut that prints money. I know that we're long past the republican party that operated on their original principles, but neutral internet delivery seems like it enables such an ideal expression of a free market.
anyone keeping up with the protests on college campuses? I got back into town right after it started so I'm trying to play catchup on what is happening (anyone fill me in), but in London there were MASSIVE protests, and fairly constant at that. Specifically around the Westminster Hall/Parliament area. Never personally witnessed anything remotely like it. Feels like the energy is here for this to turn into something much larger. Personally, regarding the whole Israel/Palestine thing, I think both sides suck and killing civilians by both sides is absolutely horrible. Militaries duking it out is one thing, but leave the citizens out of it. Beyond that, I don't really have a horse in the race.
I don't know what these college administrations were expecting. They let this shit happen on their watch then only care when it becomes a PR issue. If they actually cared, they would immediately expel anyone threatening or intimidating Jewish students, or any other students for that matter. All that nonsense about having a safe environment on campuses and this shit happens. Hopefully they get sued into oblivion.
Don't worry - even if they don't get sued, the media will pick up on the irony and run lots of stories pointing out the hypocrisy.
I had to turn on fox news because at the time they were the only one running an active feed -- there's MASSIVE protests at columbia and about to be some kind of police response soon -- and the headline was "Police respond to pro-HAMAS protest".... I don't think that's what they are doing
This is playing out as a huge generational difference. Remember, Hamas, a terrorist organization, attacked Israel and took hostages, hid in hospitals, and did all the bad stuff terrorism usually inspires. The younger folk recoil at the Islamophobia that ran rampant post 9/11. Most of the kids on campus today were born after 9/11 and only saw our various responses. I think it just somehow gets lumped in with a bunch of conservative shit they just don't believe, or they don't know the kinds of issues Islamic fundamentalism poses to our way of life, etc. Also, they're just more likely to have Muslim folk in their lives at this stage (and Muslims outnumber Jews). They don't see Israel as a Jewish state that emerged after WW2. A fairly large swathe of Holocaust deniers are under 25, and there's been a huge uptick in Holocaust denial among Palestinians in recent years. There's also a sort of generation removed phenomenon where even if they agree it happened, WW2 is so much more ancient history to them, they genuinely wonder why it's still relevant. To put a finer point on it, Ukraine gave up nukes in '96, and we could barely be bothered to honor that agreement today...why should we give a flippant fuck about shit that went down in the 1940's? They see a religious state, sanctioned and bankrolled by the US committing crimes and genocide. Which....isn't technically wrong. It does conveniently omit a great deal of context over a period of time that eclipses most people's lifespans. Also, there's an uncomfortable ick around a bunch of wealthy folks advocating and spending money to support Judaism as a religion, institution, nation, etc. To these kids, the intersection of business and belief is filled with the kinds of manipulation that they will fight against their entire lives, there's no way for someone with wealth and power to innocently demonstrate support for Israel. They've seen all the dirty tricks the Christians have used on the right wing, and see the same shit being done to their precious left wing. Thus, the calls for the universities to divest, which given the size of some of these endowments is...not unreasonable. The older folks see Israel as a result of WW2, that ensured the US wouldn't be embroiled in conflict after conflict in the ME going back to the 1950's, and some of our leaders see it as a weird omen of the end times, which is concerning, but not so much that it warrants us doing anything about it (apparently). We see the islamophobia as a somewhat rational (if indefensible) response to a violent, repressive and....opposing (in terms of values) religion that became wildly problematic in the 1970's and remains a very real threat to this day. A core division is simply that based on 9/11 older folks are more likely to empathize with the nation attacked by terrorists, whereas the younger folks hear the word "terrorism" the way Bush used it: inconvenient adversary, not as a genuine threat. FWIW, if you look at places that are highly likely to be unstable and have thousands, if not millions of climate refugees in the next 25 years, the ME is....concerning, to say the least. When these folks immigrate to Western-ized places, they are problematic and seem to stress test liberal democracy. As citizens, their beliefs tend to skew conservative, especially on matters such as reproductive rights, childhood education, LGBTQ rights, etc, which....makes for strange bedfellows, but also begs the question why a bunch of liberal college kids are so hell bent on supporting Palestine over Israel. Several ME states are going to produce millions of refugees that are inherently problematic for many potential host countries, and we are not far from seeing the term "climate genocide" applied to that part of the world. Some of these places already HAVE produced thousands of refugees, and are unwelcome in many of the same islamic states that denounce Israel. My .02 is anyone participating in the "My Imaginary Friend is Better Than Yours" wars deserves whatever death they get, just not fast enough. Israel was attacked and if this happened on US soil, we'd have "Genocide Bowls" at KFC as we gleefully committed atrocity after atrocity. Israeli intelligence got caught with their pants down, and during the response, the Israeli government essentially said "we don't need intel to send a message". I am still baffled at how Bibi fucked this all up. He could have played the "woe is us" card into another generation of unquestioning American support, cementing the idea that anti-Israel is anti-Semitic. That failure will cost him his job, the only question is when. Israel generally wants to pin the blame on him, and is letting him go as far as he can, so the next leader can wash their hands of it. He will double down on the violence, so that the next administration can pretend to have clean hands. You'll know it's almost over when it gets WAY worse. Incredibly, Hamas picked the right time to attack, and even with open Iranian support, have faced very few consequences. It's scary how successful this attack was. Long range, the declining religion in the US and the heavy-handed police response are poisoning an entire cohort of Americans against our pro-Israel, anti-Islamic stance. I can't see that ending well for Israel, and as soon as the Iranian leader dies (he's in his 80's now), a wave of change will sweep the region, and based on the Arab Spring in 2010, I don't think it'll be pretty. There's no easy solution here, and the police response is definitely going to get some folks in trouble. This is a generation of kids who watched cops in Uvalde do nothing, but show up to campus with sniper rifles...that shit will not be forgotten.
Israel has been against Ishmael for 4000 years of human history, not just since WW2. It won't ever stop. Ever. All because Abram / Abraham couldn't get preggers with Sarah, so he had to stick his dick in Hagar. And, it's not just the imaginary friend thing - literally, these countries are founded on their religious tenants and they put as much into that foundation as we do for George Washington / Alexander Hamilton / Abraham Lincoln / Martin Luther King. You can't tell a nation their 4000 year old person is not important because he's 4000 years old, but our person from 60 years ago IS important.
It's almost predictable at this point. Flare-ups in the Middle East are generally correlated to a rise in global food prices.
The shit will stop hitting the palm fronds in the Middle East when we have all been dead for at least three thousand years.
Shrug. Let's ask the Vatican about the fidelity and hard truths of historical record keeping, or ask anyone who specializes in archaeology, translation, or history about how those records were "interpreted" and how that interpretation just so neatly fits the narrative of some power-hungry cunts right now. Bottom line, I think most societies draw lines around "believe what you want, up unto 'this' point." For the US, that point has been increasingly secular, private and less bug-fuck crazy, despite what social media would have you believe. Church attendance, religious affiliation and people citing religious beliefs for decisions (across multiple sectors, not just abortion) are declining. As such, I would assume the appetite for bug-fuck crazy belief systems across the globe to wane as well. Certainly the appetite for giving a government predicated on such things billions a year to commit war crimes is collapsing in front of us. Also, the propaganda machine is running a bit...amok. I don't know that we've seen social media frame so much of this conflict, whereas for much of history (certainly for us older folks), it was framed for us by the evening news. The news also edited and curated things to ensure we weren't treated to confounding scenes of war crimes, genocide, etc. so it was easy to "pick the right side". I think the days where we have support for a given conflict in the high 80's/low 90's are forever gone: every asshole has an opinion and can show a video of where Ukraine "went too far" or Israel "didn't pursue due diligence in selecting targets". The authorities entrusted with enforcing international law and investigating such crimes are simply not credible, because they refuse to contradict the party line, can't enforce anything or refute the overwhelming and prolific evidence circulating online. Would anyone give a shit or believe the findings of an independent UN commission? Do any of the people pulling these triggers fear a trial maybe eventually possibly with such threats as a sternly worded letter? It's not that their beliefs are less important than ours, it's that we no longer feel the need to commit atrocities, genocide and war crimes over whether Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson was better in bed, or how ticklish George Washington was. I don't know anyone stoned to death or crucified because they had some wild ideas about seraphim and didn't exactly toe the line on the subject of cherubim. Until they lose the taste for holy war, and they can keep this shit contained to their own little fucked up corner of the world, I don't think the world is any poorer for having a few more dead religious fundamentalists fighting over 4000 year old propaganda. Somehow, Indonesia can keep millions of Muslims from trying to foment the apocalypse, and most of the Jews I know wouldn't fight for Jake Paul money, much less "defense of the promised land". So, I reject the notion that violence is inevitable. Violence is just very very very likely if every time people get hungry or the politics seem unstable or the blame seems to point internally, they seem to want to blame the Jews/Muslims for whatever, as Juicy alluded to, but it's not inevitable. Israel is useful, and I get keeping them allied and armed. Also, Israel is a nuclear power. For all practical purposes, so is Iran, until we have to fuck around and find out. This means we need to pay attention, remain involved and ensure this crisis does not get...existential. It's hypocritical to the point of hysterical that the US is pointing fingers at an Israeli response to a terrorist attack and saying "whoa, man, not cool, that's too much!" These college protests are not wrong, and may reflect a fundamental shift in the US left on Israel (almost certainly to the current administration). They do seem to willfully ignore a lot of history, realpolitik and context, and that seems to further irritate the rest of the country. Furthering the irritation is...well, most of these kids have no actual skin in the game. This is performative. The vast majority will never go to either Israel or Palestine, have no serious interests there, and will likely never develop any. They are recoiling at the insinuation of "antisemitism", which I think is fair. Anti-war should not mean antisemitic. But this seems childish and performative because it sort of is precisely that. Put another way: protests of this magnitude should have occurred during the Roe v. Wade rollback, because that has direct and wildly serious impacts on these people's lives. They didn't. Israel vs. Palestine has fuck all to do with a bunch of Ivy Leaguer's thousands of miles away and yet here we are.