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REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS
As Palestinians pushes for statehood, Israel finds itself more isolated
Wednesday, November 1, 2023 2:31 PM
SECOND
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Quote:Originally posted by 6ixStringJack: You're a liar. But admittedly, that doesn't speak at all to my ability to spot one. It's blatant and regular.
Wednesday, November 1, 2023 5:54 PM
6IXSTRINGJACK
Quote:Originally posted by second: Quote:Originally posted by 6ixStringJack: You're a liar. But admittedly, that doesn't speak at all to my ability to spot one. It's blatant and regular.“There is not an independent body that’s operating in Gaza that can provide an accurate number. But we do have skepticism about everything that Hamas says, but that said, obviously a number of civilians have died, which is why we’re working to do everything we can to minimize civilian harm and get humanitarian assistance in to the civilians in Gaza.” https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-october-26-2023/ Far from doing everything it can to minimize civilian harm, the IDF has said its “emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/right-now-it-is-one-day-at-a-time-life-on-israels-frontline-with-gaza Amir Avivi, former deputy commander of the Gaza Division of Israel’s military, said recently, “When our soldiers are manoeuvring we are doing this with massive artillery, with 50 aeroplanes overhead destroying anything that moves.” https://www.ft.com/content/92a31b6e-a5b7-4533-96ed-89d14e6c2b14 6ix, this is not really complicated when Israelis say they are going after Hamas but the methods Israelis use kill women and children above ground rather than Hamas in underground bunkers. The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Thursday, November 2, 2023 1:39 PM
SIGNYM
I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.
Quote: SECOND: 6ix, you are foaming at the mouth. SIX: No I'm not. It's the same I don't give a fuck attitude that I have over Ukraine. I've had to listen to your bullshit about how Russia was going to nuke us for years now. Get fucked. -------------------------------------------------- Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
Thursday, November 2, 2023 2:39 PM
Quote:Originally posted by SIGNYM: Quote: SECOND: 6ix, you are foaming at the mouth. SIX: No I'm not. It's the same I don't give a fuck attitude that I have over Ukraine. I've had to listen to your bullshit about how Russia was going to nuke us for years now. Get fucked. -------------------------------------------------- Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
Thursday, November 2, 2023 4:11 PM
Thursday, November 2, 2023 4:23 PM
Friday, November 3, 2023 3:50 AM
Quote: Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
Friday, November 3, 2023 9:34 AM
Friday, November 3, 2023 12:57 PM
Quote: Surging Abuse Of West Bank Palestinians May Spark New Front For IDF Friday, Nov 03, 2023 - 06:10 AM In a trend that threatens to spark a major Palestinian uprising in the Israel-occupied West Bank and a new combat front for the Israel Defense Forces, abuse directed at Palestinians by Jewish settlers and IDF soldiers has surged in the wake of the Hamas attack on southern Israel. There have been more than 170 attacks Quote: QUSRA, West Bank, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Mourning his father and brother, Mohammed Wadi says armed Israeli settlers from outposts overlooking his olive-growing West Bank village no longer aim low when they shoot at Palestinian neighbours. "Now, they shoot to kill," he said. Violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, already at a more than 15-year high this year, surged further after Israel hurtled into a new war in the separate enclave of Gaza in response to Palestinian militant group Hamas unleashing the deadliest day in Israel's history on Oct. 7. MORE AT https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-settler-attacks-fuel-fire-gaza-war-rages-2023-11-02/ by Jewish settlers on West Bank Palestinians since Oct 7, and some of them have been deadly. In one back-to-back episode, three Palestinians were shot dead on Oct 11. The next day, settlers and soldiers descended on the funeral procession and killed a man and his son. Israeli settlers went on a rampage in the small town of Deir Sharaf west of the city of Nablus, etc., which caused clashes. notice IDF soldiers just standing around doing nothing. pic.twitter.com/l7Fpfxp2IT — jalbert king (@jalbert_king) November 2, 2023 https://twitter.com/jalbert_king/status/1720069637910528163 Last Saturday, Bilal Mohammed Saleh was harvesting olives with his family when four armed Jewish settlers accosted them, witnesses say. The family fled, but when Saleh doubled back to retrieve his phone, he was shot dead. More than 120 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Oct 7. This video purports to show the incident: https://twitter.com/i/status/1718970150685392935 Since Oct 7, Palestinians also report widespread threats and intimidation. Palestinians have found threatening leaflets Quote: Israel-Palestine war: Settlers threaten West Bank children with bloody dolls By Fayha Shalash in Ramallah Published date: 27 October 2023 Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank have distributed threatening leaflets on cars and left bloodied dolls at schools, warning Palestinians to leave or be killed.on their cars, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-west-bank-attacks-leaflets-blood-dolls-nakba reading: "By God, we will descend upon your heads with a great catastrophe soon. You have the last chance to escape to Jordan in an organized manner. After that, we will destroy every enemy and forcefully expel you from our holy land...Load your bags immediately and leave wherever you came from. We are coming." Others say settlers have come to their homes, telling them to leave within 24 hours. Many families have taken the threats to heart and fled. The UK's Channel 4 News reports Jewish settlers blocking roads with boulders, cutting electricity lines to Palestinians' homes, and shutting down water wells -- "they do everything they can to render life in these villages unlivable." It's not just civilian settlers who are inviting a Palestinian uprising. This week, photographs and video recordings made by soldiers and circulated online depicted their abuse and humiliation of Palestinian captives. In one, soldiers have stripped and blindfolded seven laborers who were trying to enter Israel without the proper paperwork. They're needlessly thrown around, with one dragged across the ground and another has a boot placed on his head. Quote: IDF soldiers film themselves abusing, humiliating West Bank Palestinians By Gianluca Pacchiani 1 Nov 2023, 4:48 pm 93 Dozens of pictures and videoclips have emerged over the past week showing IDF soldiers abusing and humiliating Palestinians apprehended in the West Bank, often while they are blindfolded and handcuffed. In one of the most brutal videos, which has been blurred, IDF soldiers filmed themselves as they abused seven West Bank laborers who were caught as they attempted to enter Israel without a permit, in an area south of the South Hebron hills. The footage shows the Palestinian men stripped naked or half-naked, blindfolded and handcuffed, and screaming in pain. One of them is being dragged on the ground. . . . The incidents of abuse have occurred amid escalating tensions in the West Bank between Palestinian and Israeli security forces and settlers. According to Palestinian government sources, 122 West Bank Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war between Hamas and Israel on October 7. Most of the casualties were caused by IDF fire, while in a handful of cases Palestinian were gunned down by settlers. MORE AT https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-soldiers-film-themselves-abusing-humiliating-west-bank-palestinians/ https://twitter.com/OkbiYasser/status/1719468063823663374 https://twitter.com/kzxkzxkzxkzx/status/1719351372888387965 This latest spike in abuse comes in a year that was already considered the worst in more than a decade. There were 21 killings of West Bank Palestinians by settlers before Oct 7, and already another 8 since, according to the U.N. Humanitarian Affairs Office, OCHA. In an analogue for what the IDF is now doing in Gaza, Jewish settlers are prone to punish innocent individual Palestinians for the actions of others. As we reported in June, for example, in the wake of the killing of four settlers, mobs of West Bank settlers went on a rampage in several Palestinian villages, setting fire to dozens of vehicles and occupied homes and killing one person. Settlers have a long history of assaulting Palestinians, wrecking their property and destroying olive groves that are essential to their livelihoods and are a cherished part of their culture. https://twitter.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/1720029333861896250 Much of settlers' bad behavior happens in direct view of the IDF, though at times soldiers do intervene to keep the violence within limits. However, with the IDF's resources now being focused on the war in Gaza, settlers are more free to act with impunity. Israeli settlers harrass a Palestinian family https://twitter.com/i/status/1720080287152140403 At the same time, Jewish settlers have been emboldened by the installation the most extreme ruling coalition in the country's history. Quote: Israel's New Government Will Put American Lives At Risk https://starkrealities.substack.com/p/israels-new-government-is-a-menace National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir -- the man responsible for policing the West Bank -- adorned his living room with a photograph of mass-murdering settler Baruch Goldstein, who killed 28 Muslims and wounded 125 more in a 1994 massacre. Settlers are often seen carrying AR-15 rifles. The 29-year-old son of one of the slain funeral attendees told Reuters that while settlers used to fire shots into the ground or air as a scare tactic, things have changed: "Now, they shoot to kill." Those rifles are about to grow in number. Earlier this month, Ben-Gvir announced his ministry would distribute 10,000 rifles Quote:Ben Gvir says 10,000 assault rifles purchased for civilian security teams https://www.timesofisrael.com/ben-gvir-says-10000-assault-rifles-purchased-for-civilian-security-teams/ to distribute to "civilian security teams" in border towns like those attacked by Hamas, but also in mixed Arab/Jew cities and West Bank settlements. The West Bank has twice been the scenes of popular uprisings called "intifadas," an Arabic word that roughly translates into "shaking off." The first intifada lasted from December 1987 to September 1993. The second began in September 2000 and petered out in 2005. Together, they brought death to about 1,400 Israelis and 5,000 Palestinians. If a third intifada is in the cards, expect mayhem in the form of Palestinian riots, shootings and suicide bombings. Unlike Gaza, the West Bank areas in which Israel allows a small degree of Palestinian autonomy aren't ruled by Hamas, but rather the Palestinian Authority. However, Gallup polling of West Bank Palestinians before Oct 7 found a marked decrease in hope for the next generation, with just 28% saying their children have opportunity to learn and grow. Israeli settlers stealing Palestinian olives in vew of IDF https://twitter.com/i/status/1717845143443677542 Similarly, a late-2022 poll found 69% felt a two-state solution was impossible given widespread Jewish settlement of the West Bank, and 65% backed the formation of Palestinian militias. Notably, only 26% said they supported Hamas. Against that backdrop of hopelessness after 56 years of military occupation, if Israeli settlers and soldiers continue their heightened abuse of Palestinians, a third intifada seems inevitable. Combined with the potential for all-out war with Hezbollah in the north, that could leave the IDF fighting a multidimensional, three-front war.
Quote: QUSRA, West Bank, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Mourning his father and brother, Mohammed Wadi says armed Israeli settlers from outposts overlooking his olive-growing West Bank village no longer aim low when they shoot at Palestinian neighbours. "Now, they shoot to kill," he said. Violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, already at a more than 15-year high this year, surged further after Israel hurtled into a new war in the separate enclave of Gaza in response to Palestinian militant group Hamas unleashing the deadliest day in Israel's history on Oct. 7. MORE AT https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-settler-attacks-fuel-fire-gaza-war-rages-2023-11-02/
Quote: Israel-Palestine war: Settlers threaten West Bank children with bloody dolls By Fayha Shalash in Ramallah Published date: 27 October 2023 Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank have distributed threatening leaflets on cars and left bloodied dolls at schools, warning Palestinians to leave or be killed.on their cars, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-west-bank-attacks-leaflets-blood-dolls-nakba
Quote: IDF soldiers film themselves abusing, humiliating West Bank Palestinians By Gianluca Pacchiani 1 Nov 2023, 4:48 pm 93 Dozens of pictures and videoclips have emerged over the past week showing IDF soldiers abusing and humiliating Palestinians apprehended in the West Bank, often while they are blindfolded and handcuffed. In one of the most brutal videos, which has been blurred, IDF soldiers filmed themselves as they abused seven West Bank laborers who were caught as they attempted to enter Israel without a permit, in an area south of the South Hebron hills. The footage shows the Palestinian men stripped naked or half-naked, blindfolded and handcuffed, and screaming in pain. One of them is being dragged on the ground. . . . The incidents of abuse have occurred amid escalating tensions in the West Bank between Palestinian and Israeli security forces and settlers. According to Palestinian government sources, 122 West Bank Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war between Hamas and Israel on October 7. Most of the casualties were caused by IDF fire, while in a handful of cases Palestinian were gunned down by settlers. MORE AT https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-soldiers-film-themselves-abusing-humiliating-west-bank-palestinians/ https://twitter.com/OkbiYasser/status/1719468063823663374 https://twitter.com/kzxkzxkzxkzx/status/1719351372888387965
Quote: Israel's New Government Will Put American Lives At Risk https://starkrealities.substack.com/p/israels-new-government-is-a-menace
Quote:Ben Gvir says 10,000 assault rifles purchased for civilian security teams https://www.timesofisrael.com/ben-gvir-says-10000-assault-rifles-purchased-for-civilian-security-teams/
Friday, November 3, 2023 7:19 PM
Saturday, November 4, 2023 11:06 AM
Quote:Originally posted by SIGNYM: I INCLUDED SNIPS FROM THE ORIGINAL ARTICLES AND THEIR LINKS BECAUSE I KNOW THUGR WILL CLAIM THAT IT'S NOT NEWS, ITS PROPAGANDA.
Quote:One of the great mysteries of the pandemic is why so many countries followed China’s example. In the U.S. and the U.K. especially, lockdowns went from being regarded as something that only an authoritarian government would attempt to an example of “following the science.” But there was never any science behind lockdowns — not a single study had ever been undertaken to measure their efficacy in stopping a pandemic. When you got right down to it, lockdowns were little more than a giant experiment.
Quote:The Bush team’s final document, published by the CDC in February 2007, stopped short of mandating lockdowns but came as close as its authors dared, calling for the use of “social distancing measures to reduce contact between adults in the community and workplace.” One of the leaders of the effort, a government scientist named Richard Hatchett, would later tell Lewis what he really believed: “One thing that’s inarguably true is that if you got everyone and locked each of them in their own room and didn’t let them talk to anyone, you would not have any disease.”
Quote:Today, the world is almost a controlled experiment in pandemic response, and the returns are already unmistakable: The nations that took the most aggressive actions, most quickly, have fared best, and those that have moved cautiously, waiting for undeniable prompts to action, have done worst. In South Korea, the implementation of what is effectively a medical surveillance state means that life in most of the country has continued mostly undisrupted, at least by the standards of Wuhan or the lockdowns now in Lombardy and New York and San Francisco; in the U.K. a strategy to stand down and let the virus pass through the population proved so disastrous that, within a few weeks, it was abruptly reversed; in Iran, they are digging mass graves big enough to be seen from space.
Quote:At first it was just random resistance from rural or Mountain West areas hardly affected initially by the coronavirus pandemic. But now it’s spreading to places near COVID-19 hot spots where some people think restrictive measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus have gone too far, or are willing to take their chances (and force others to do the same) with deadly infection in order to keep their businesses, their jobs, or their “freedom” as they understand it. By now it’s clear that there is an organized national effort to fight extended lockdown orders. It has already helped generate loud public protests in Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky. And it’s probably going to spread nearly as rapidly as the coronavirus itself in the rich soil of anti-government subcultures where it’s widely accepted that “tyrants” are exploiting the emergency to impose their godless socialist views on freedom-loving but fearful Americans.
Quote:Faced with the desperation of a disintegrating revenue base and spiraling needs for social spending, governors may be forced to risk the health of their citizens and try to gamble that they can restart the economy. The certainty of an unsolvable fiscal crisis, requiring massive cuts to education and health care, may outweigh the risk of a new outbreak. If the economy blossoms, Trump gets the credit. If the recovery sputters because people remain afraid to leave their homes, or if they do leave their homes and thousands of them die, then the governors who made the decisions get the blame.
Quote:It’s been obvious from the get-go that the rapidly spreading protests against state coronavirus stay-at-home or “lockdown” orders were intensely ideological in nature, emanating from hard-core conservatives who didn’t much believe the pandemic was real or had objections to government-imposed restrictions of dangerous activities on various pseudo-constitutional grounds. And it’s also been apparent that these protests were not spontaneous but largely the product of local, state, or national coordination by right-wing groups, many of them veterans of the tea-party movement that also began over a decade ago as a bunch of “plain citizens” in Revolutionary War garb and insignia who just happened to share the constitutional, fiscal, and economic policy views common among well-heeled K Street conservative lobbies and Republican pols. There’s new reporting from the New York Times illustrating the connective tissue among these state protests, which (like the tea-party movement) has some grassroots elements but wouldn’t have gone very far without the artificial turf of national coordination. ... These groups need all the firepower they can get to give the protests the look of size and momentum, since polls show a sizable majority of Americans support the measures they are protesting, some of which have emanated from Republican governors and those trying to follow the Trump administration’s own guidelines. Their relationship with the White House is both stealthy and symbiotic, since they are keeping the president’s fingerprints off extremist activities he has clearly inspired, and that may help him mobilize supporters for his reelection campaign. ... Eventually the tea party became a self-conscious faction of the GOP before its anti-government and anti-Obama slogans were absorbed by the Republican Party so thoroughly that the imagined separation was no longer credible. In the hothouse atmosphere of the pandemic and the run-up to the 2020 elections, any claim that anti-lockdown demonstrators are independent from Team Trump probably won’t last as long as newly planted grass seeds in a cyclone.
Quote:In the furor of demands to pare back coronavirus-related restrictions on business and other activities (a.k.a. “reopening America”), churches — particularly conservative Christian churches — have been very prominent. Given the considerable overlap these days between white Evangelicals and the Republican Party, it’s not surprising that the former share the latter’s rapidly growing inclination to view COVID-19-related public-health measures as a socialistic impingement on individual freedom and private enterprise.
Quote:Soon, New York will start pulling up shutters and setting out chairs. Work-from-homers will venture beyond their neighborhoods from time to time. Employees will trickle back into offices. Housekeepers, electricians, dentists, and security guards will repopulate the subway, because they will have no choice. The city is gambling that we have learned enough in these past months to keep the risks under control — that masks, distance, hygiene, and anxiety will keep us, if not exactly safe, then safe-ish. With no cure, no vaccine, and limited treatment, we have to rely on our own behavior and that of everyone around us. We have to trust our fellow New Yorkers to stay home at the first sign of the sniffles, to share our habits of caution, to wait for the next train if necessary, to step politely aside. We have to trust the MTA to keep crowds thin, employers to think through workplace logistics, the transportation department to dissolve the knots where pedestrians might jam the sidewalks, the school system to have a plan for a million kids that will protect their families too. Lockdown was easy compared to this.
Quote:The U.S. passed 2 million total coronavirus cases last week, reaching the mark just six weeks after it hit 1 million. According to Reuters, “Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, North Carolina, Oklahoma and South Carolina all had record numbers of new cases” in the past week. Columbia University virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen wrote on Twitter Monday that Arizona, Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina need to go back on lockdown “like NOW.” “At least 4 states are going to need to reinstitute stay-home orders this week–like NOW–to stop upward case trajectories,” she wrote. “This pandemic is still going on. We failed to use the time we bought to prepare & build capacity. We reopened before we were ready. Now we pay.”
Quote:Almost as soon as the first marches to protest the killing of George Floyd began, in Minneapolis on May 26, conservatives and COVID contrarians seized on the rallies as a case study of liberal coronavirus hypocrisy. If the disease spread rapidly through the assembled protesters, they felt, it would show that those who’d spent the spring scolding Americans for resisting lockdowns didn’t care as much about public health as they did about advancing their own set of political values. (Liberals, of course, would put it differently: that the cause was worth the risk.) If there were relatively few new cases, the thinking went, it would demonstrate that the lockdowns themselves were unnecessary. Three weeks later, we have the first results from the natural experiment: Across the country, from Minneapolis to California and New York City to Albany, the protests produced, at most, very few additional cases of COVID-19. The same, more or less, was observed in the aftermath of the much-derided Lake of the Ozarks Memorial Day party (where one sick partygoer may have infected as many as … one other). Does this mean we’re out of the COVID-19 woods, all clear for mass gatherings and the end of social distancing, and that the intrusive and intensely burdensome lockdowns of the spring were excessive? Well, no. The same week, a major study led by Berkeley’s Solomon Hsiang exploring the effect of lockdowns across the world found that, in the U.S., social distancing and shelter-in-place guidelines prevented as many as 60 million additional cases (since, at least in the early days of the epidemic, many more are believed to have been infected than were tested for the disease). And if those measures had been implemented sooner and more effectively, one review suggests, between 70% and 99% of American deaths could have been avoided. Instead of 120,000 deaths, we might have had fewer than 2,000.
Quote:By midsummer, as the coronavirus receded throughout most of the world, Trump’s supporters were engaging in cultlike displays of devotion. Republicans were pointedly holding mask-optional gatherings. “When the good Lord calls you home,” one Republican Senate candidate explained, “a mask ain’t going to stop it.” As masks became symbols of subservience to public health (“COVID burkas,” as former Trump official Sebastian Gorka called them), these people even held rallies to protest them. A county Republican Party chairman in Kansas who owns a weekly newspaper published a cartoon depicting face masks as yellow stars and the people bearing them as Jews forced into cattle cars. In Scottsdale, Arizona, a Republican city councilmember announced, “I can’t breathe!” before dramatically removing his face covering. A Republican sheriff in Ohio, despite a statewide facial-covering requirement, declared, “I’m not going to be the mask police. Period.” The first day that Oregon governor Kate Brown imposed a requirement that residents wear masks in public, four police officers walked into a coffee shop in Corvallis mask-free, and when asked to comply with the order, they yelled, “Fuck Kate Brown!” In recent weeks, more than 20 county health officials have left their jobs in the face of protests, harassment, and threats. Georgia governor Brian Kemp went so far as to ban local governments from mandating masks. In late June, Trump staged an indoor rally in Tulsa. His staff removed stickers on seats intended to space out attendees. Announcing his presence, Cain wrote, “Masks will not be mandatory for the event, which will be attended by President Trump. PEOPLE ARE FED UP!” (A few days after the rally, Cain tested positive.) ... And they will be tapping into a deep vein of paranoia. Polls have shown somewhere between a quarter and a third of the public already does not intend to take a vaccine when it becomes available. In a country with a cult of self-reliance so ingrained that every new mass shooting propels more panicked arms purchases, is an act of collective, mutual security like public vaccination even workable? The truly remarkable thing about the right-wing revolt against public health is that it has taken place under a president whom conservatives trust and adore. From the standpoint of running the government, these have been awful conditions for handling a pandemic. But from the standpoint of persuading citizens to cooperate, they have been almost optimal. When we look back a year from now at the frenzied, angry revolt against science, the spring and summer of 2020 may seem like halcyon days.
Quote:President Trump repeatedly attacked and denigrated the nation’s most respected infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, on Monday. Trump first started in on Fauci during a call with his campaign staff, and then publicly on Twitter. Later at a campaign rally, Trump warned that his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, would actually listen to Fauci’s advice. The new insults came, not coincidentally, one day after Fauci said on 60 Minutes that he was “not surprised” that the president had caught COVID-19, confirmed that the White House has been restricting his media appearances — and revealed that he has received death threats amid the pandemic. Trump called Fauci “a disaster” during a morning call aimed at rallying his staff for the final stretch of his flagging reelection campaign. But going after Fauci is a puzzling tactic, to say the least. Polls have consistently shown that Americans approve of and trust the top public-health official far more than they do Trump or anyone else with regard to the pandemic. In addition, Trump’s mishandling of COVID-19, which has killed nearly 220,000 Americans and is currently prompting a third wave of cases around the country, appears to be the most significant reason he is falling further behind Biden in the polls. ... “They’re getting tired of the pandemic, aren’t we?” Trump also said during his rally in Arizona on Monday. “You turn on CNN. That’s all they cover. COVID, COVID, pandemic. COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID. Wha, uh-uh. You know why? They’re trying to talk people out of voting. People aren’t buying it, CNN, you dumb bastards.” Pandemic fatigue is real, of course, but annoyance doesn’t make the virus go away. And COVID-19 continues to be a massive story across the media because it continues to be a massive crisis across the country — and it’s getting worse as the U.S. heads into what Dr. Fauci and most other experts warn will be the most difficult phase of the pandemic yet. But instead of talking about flattening the curve, Trump keeps crazily claiming that the country is rounding the corner to recovery — and now appears to be jealous of not only Fauci and Biden’s popularity, but how much more attention the pandemic gets than him.
Quote:In 2003, SARS had been eliminated after only 8,000 infections; its biggest foothold outside Asia was in Canada, which reported just a few hundred suspected cases. With COVID, Sridhar says, “I was following the response in China. They went into lockdown. You saw New Zealand pivoting that way and then Australia after.” But not the U.K., where an erratic series of scientific advisories pushed the government first to embrace a target of herd immunity, then to backpedal, but not enough. Sridhar describes those advisories with retrospective horror, an inexplicable preemptive surrender by the public-health apparatus. “Basically, going back to January, they’d be like, ‘China’s not going to control it; 80 percent of the population is going to get it; all efforts to contain it are going to fail; we have to learn to live with this virus; contact tracing and testing make no sense; this is going to be everywhere; right now we need to build up hospitals’ — which they didn’t even do. But they really didn’t think it was stoppable,” she says. “And then all of a sudden you started to see, in February, South Korea stopping it, Taiwan stopping it, and China stopping it. Then, in March, New Zealand. And then Australia. And then there’s this realization of, ‘Oh, wow. Actually, it is controllable.’”
Sunday, November 5, 2023 2:03 AM
Quote: Israel Cementing Its Reputation as a War Criminal, U.S. feeling the Heat, and Hezbollah Responds https://sonar21.com/israel-cementing-its-reputation-as-a-war-criminal-u-s-feeling-the-heat-and-hezbollah-responds/
Sunday, November 5, 2023 4:02 AM
Sunday, November 5, 2023 2:34 PM
Quote: Given authoritarians’ general willingness to submit to traditional authorities, combined with their intolerance of ambiguity and need for closure, it is perhaps unsurprising that right-wing authoritarianism predicts tolerance for, and susceptibility to, misinformation. Authoritarianism also fosters conspiratorial thinking about politics, especially if the conspiracy supports the status quo. … [T]hose who are high in right-wing authoritarianism will go to great lengths to protect the in-group — including believing the unbelievable and other ‘alternative facts’ propagated by in-group authorities. The implications of right-wing authoritarianism thereby extend beyond out-group perceptions and into areas that impact public health and safety. Finally, right-wing authoritarianism influences people’s views on the environment and science, especially when these topics are perceived to conflict with long-standing conventions and traditional authorities. For example, right-wing authoritarianism predicts anti-climate change beliefs, resistance to plant-based diets and science scepticism in general. Longitudinal analyses further reveal that right-wing authoritarianism precedes both increases in climate change denial and decreases in environmentalism.
Sunday, November 5, 2023 10:45 PM
Monday, November 6, 2023 2:38 PM
Monday, November 6, 2023 10:05 PM
Quote:Originally posted by second: More than 10,000 Palestinians killed since 7 October, say health officials
Tuesday, November 7, 2023 5:09 AM
Wednesday, November 8, 2023 12:24 AM
Quote:Originally posted by second: Old Joe Biden is making some seriously incoherent decisions about Gaza. Lower-level State Dept. employees are warning Joe but he thinks he can have his cake and eat it, too. 1) U.S. supplies Israel with bombs then grieves the devastation they cause The Washington Post: As Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza escalates, the Biden administration finds itself in a precarious position: Administration officials say Israel’s counterattack against Hamas has been too severe, too costly in civilian casualties, and lacking a coherent endgame, but they are unable to exert significant influence on America’s closest ally in the Middle… Read More » https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/05/white-house-resigned-israel-onslaught-gaza/ 2) State Department approves $320 million sale of guided bomb equipment to Israel The New York Times reports: The U.S. State Department has approved a $320 million sale to Israel of equipment for kits that turn unguided bombs into more precise, GPS-guided munitions, according to a letter sent by the department to Congress that was obtained by The New York Times. The order comes on top of an… Read More » https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/world/middleeast/us-israel-bomb-equipment-sale.html 3) U.S. diplomats slam Israel policy in leaked memo Politico reports: State Department staffers offered a blistering critique of the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war in a dissent memo obtained by POLITICO, arguing that, among other things, the U.S. should be willing to publicly criticize the Israelis. The message suggests a growing loss of confidence among U.S. diplomats in President Joe Biden’s… Read More » https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/06/u-s-diplomats-slam-israel-policy-in-leaked-memo-00125538 The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Wednesday, November 8, 2023 5:00 AM
Quote:Originally posted by 6ixStringJack: Mark the date, Ted. Second said his first shitty thing about Joe Biden* on 11/07. Your boy Second loves him some terrorists. That's because he's Antifa scum. Too bad I got his Reaverfan handle banned from FFF.net or you'd really get to see what he thinks.
Wednesday, November 8, 2023 10:56 AM
Quote:Originally posted by second: Quote:Originally posted by 6ixStringJack: Mark the date, Ted. Second said his first shitty thing about Joe Biden* on 11/07. Your boy Second loves him some terrorists. That's because he's Antifa scum. Too bad I got his Reaverfan handle banned from FFF.net or you'd really get to see what he thinks.Biden would not be secretive about weapons if he was proud of how they were being used by Netanyahu, the Trump of Israel, to kill women and children:
Wednesday, November 8, 2023 5:21 PM
Quote:Originally posted by 6ixStringJack: Well then... Maybe he should just go full retarded and side with you and the Lunatic Fringe of the Left and be done with it. Let's just put all the cards on the table once and for all before election season.
Wednesday, November 8, 2023 9:54 PM
Quote:Originally posted by second: Quote:Originally posted by 6ixStringJack: Well then... Maybe he should just go full retarded and side with you and the Lunatic Fringe of the Left and be done with it. Let's just put all the cards on the table once and for all before election season.Not ‘Mr Security. He’s Mr Bulls**t’: Former Israeli Prime Minister slams Netanyahu’s plans for post-war Gaza Tel Aviv, Israel Edited By: Nishtha Badgamia, Updated: Nov 08, 2023, 11:22 PM IST https://www.wionews.com/world/not-mr-security-hes-mr-bullst-former-israeli-pm-slams-netanyahus-plans-for-post-war-gaza-656618 I agree with Israel’s former leader Ehud Olmert that Netanyahu's plans are bullshit. Time is running out for devising a better plan. Israel has only weeks to defeat Hamas as global opinion sours, former PM Ehud Barak says https://www.politico.eu/article/ehud-barak-israel-palestine-war-hamas-global-opinion-sours/ The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Thursday, November 9, 2023 5:17 AM
Thursday, November 9, 2023 2:51 PM
Thursday, November 9, 2023 6:09 PM
Friday, November 10, 2023 8:36 PM
Friday, November 10, 2023 9:47 PM
Quote:Originally posted by 6ixStringJack: Second is an anti-Semite. I find that quite funny. -------------------------------------------------- Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
Sunday, November 12, 2023 2:50 AM
Sunday, November 12, 2023 10:23 AM
Sunday, November 12, 2023 1:54 PM
Quote:Originally posted by 6ixStringJack: No money or aid to anyone. Let them figure it out. -------------------------------------------------- Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
Monday, November 13, 2023 1:51 PM
Monday, November 13, 2023 6:04 PM
Tuesday, November 14, 2023 3:57 PM
Tuesday, November 14, 2023 5:02 PM
Quote: Scoop: Internal State Dept. memo blasts Biden, U.S. policy on Israel-Hamas war An internal State Department dissent memo accuses President Biden of "spreading misinformation" on the Israel-Hamas war and alleges that Israel is committing "war crimes" in Gaza, according to a copy of the memo obtained by Axios. Why it matters: The scathing five-page memo — organized by a junior diplomat who has suggested on social media that Biden's support of Israel has made him "complicit in genocide" in Gaza — offers a rare look at the raw divisions within the Biden administration over the Israel-Hamas war.
Wednesday, November 15, 2023 8:02 AM
Thursday, November 16, 2023 11:27 AM
Thursday, November 16, 2023 1:42 PM
Saturday, November 18, 2023 11:30 AM
Quote:Originally posted by 6ixStringJack: Second hates Jews.
Saturday, November 18, 2023 2:22 PM
Sunday, November 19, 2023 8:53 AM
Quote:Originally posted by SIGNYM: Oh yes, cue...TRUMP! TRUMPTARDS! NAZIS! THE CONFEDERACY! HOLDOMOR! Jeez, SECOND, even when I agree with you, I can't agree with your arguments!
Sunday, November 19, 2023 10:21 AM
Sunday, November 19, 2023 11:02 AM
Quote:Originally posted by 6ixStringJack: Hey Ted. I think your boy Second is turning on Biden because he's an Antifa Antisemite.
Sunday, November 19, 2023 11:04 AM
Quote:Originally posted by second: Biden should act less like "the best"
Sunday, November 19, 2023 11:42 AM
Quote:Originally posted by 6ixStringJack: Your poor brain has been fucked to oblivion. You're barely even human anymore.
Sunday, November 19, 2023 3:43 PM
Sunday, November 19, 2023 4:12 PM
Quote:Originally posted by second: Quote:Originally posted by 6ixStringJack: Your poor brain has been fucked to oblivion. You're barely even human anymore.You know what happens when people like Netanyahu, Trump and you make decisions, which is why none of you should be in charge of anything. Your lives are tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury. You are not competent to run your own lives, let alone other lives. 1) The corruption and autocracy nexus: The case of “King Bibi” | April 10, 2023 https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-corruption-and-autocracy-nexus-the-case-of-king-bibi/ 2) Where the criminal cases against Trump stand | Aug 15, 2023 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/where-the-criminal-cases-against-trump-stand The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Sunday, November 19, 2023 7:07 PM
Quote:Originally posted by 6ixStringJack: Quote:Originally posted by second: Quote:Originally posted by 6ixStringJack: Your poor brain has been fucked to oblivion. You're barely even human anymore.You know what happens when people like Netanyahu, Trump and you make decisions, which is why none of you should be in charge of anything. Your lives are tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury. You are not competent to run your own lives, let alone other lives. 1) The corruption and autocracy nexus: The case of “King Bibi” | April 10, 2023 https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-corruption-and-autocracy-nexus-the-case-of-king-bibi/ 2) Where the criminal cases against Trump stand | Aug 15, 2023 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/where-the-criminal-cases-against-trump-stand The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly We're all living through going on 4 years of Biden* right now, buddy. I've heard a lot of lies and bullshit about Trump, but I want to know what was so bad about life for everyone in the entire fucking world compared to right now when he was President. Something real. Something tangible. -------------------------------------------------- Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
Quote:“Biden will flunk the question.” I was speaking with two senior Democratic operatives last week about the upcoming election and more specifically about the suggestion from David Axelrod — CNN analyst and former senior adviser to President Obama — that President Biden may want to reconsider his reelection bid as former President Trump gets closer and closer to becoming the presumptive Republican nominee. Axelrod logically voiced his fears after the New York Times and Siena College published polls showing Trump leading Biden in five of six key battleground states. In a social media post, Axelrod wrote, “It’s very late to change horses; a lot will happen in the next year that no one can predict & Biden’s team says his resolve to run is firm.” He then added: “Only @JoeBiden can make this decision. If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?” For daring to voice his honest opinion, Axelrod — as reported in Politico — was referred to as a “prick” by President Biden, who has been known to fire off profanities when upset. Being told to pack it in by a former Obama guy was clearly just the thing to push Biden’s buttons. Regardless of that spat, the Democratic operatives were not interested in any of it. Nor were they interested in debating Biden’s age nor his cognitive ability. “I don’t care about any of those things,” one of them said. “They honestly don’t matter in relation to the question. And Biden is going to flunk that question and lose.” The question these Democratic operatives feared being: “Were you better off four years ago than you are now?” This is a reverse of arguably the most important question ever asked in a presidential debate. During the final week of the 1980 presidential race between Democratic President Jimmy Carter and GOP nominee Ronald Reagan, the two candidates held their sole debate on October 28. Reagan used his closing remarks to look into the camera and ask Americans the question — one that became the defining moment of the election: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” He then followed with: “Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we’re as strong as we were four years ago?” Now, the reverse of that question is the one Biden should fear most: “Were you better off four years ago than you are now?” There is no doubt that former President Donald Trump and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will use variations of those questions to pummel Biden. And with good reason. Tens of millions of Americans do believe they were much better off four years ago than now. Americans who know mortgage rates were at record lows; gasoline prices were well below three dollars per gallon; inflation was under control; our border was more secure; our major cities were not homeless encampments; crime was dramatically lower; and the world was more at peace. To add insult to injury for President Biden, while confirming the worry of the Democratic operatives, the Financial Times just ran an article headlined “Only 14% of US voters say Joe Biden has made them better off.” Ouch. Ultimately, some percentage of voters may care about Biden’s age or ability to govern effectively. But every single voter is concerned with quality-of-life issues that negatively affect them and their families. Trump and Kennedy pounding on that question for the next several months will prove to be devastating for Biden.
Monday, November 20, 2023 9:12 AM
Quote:Originally posted by 6ixStringJack: And the fact that RFK, who the Biden* Administration wouldn't even debate is going to be asking Americans that question at least as often as Trump will be once the primaries are over WILL doom the Democratic party after they made the decision to stand with the Roomba and Chief.
Monday, November 20, 2023 9:02 PM
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